Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history interview with Dan Ostergaard on December 7th, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus on Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Dan about his experiences working at the Hanford Site. And for the record, can you state and spell your full name for us?
Dan Ostergaard: Okay, my full name is Daniel Vernon Ostergaard. The last name is spelled O-S-T-E-R-G-A-A-R-D.
Franklin: Okay, and your first name?
Ostergaard: Dan. I go by Dan. Daniel, D-A-N-I-E-L.
Franklin: Okay. Great. When I was doing that boilerplate, I almost said December 7th, 1941.
Ostergaard. Me, too. Well, that’s in my—I still live World War II. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Oh. So, tell me how and why you came to the Hanford Site.
Ostergaard: Okay. I got interested in photography in junior high school in Kennewick. And back—that would have been, well, I graduated from high school in ’65.
Franklin: So you’re from the Tri-Cities, then.
Ostergaard: Right, I grew up in Kennewick.
Franklin: Okay, and when were you born?
Ostergaard: December 27th, 1946.
Franklin: Okay.
Ostergaard: So, I got interested in photography kind of through the chemistry class. I was a lab assistant, and the guy who was doing the yearbook needed somebody that’d shoot pictures. And I had done a little bit of stuff with my mom’s help at home, so that just sort of got the ball rolling. Did the usual school stuff, graduated Kennewick High School. And in high school, shot pictures for the yearbook. We had kind of a unique situation where the yearbook actually provided us the facilities, but they actually bought the pictures from us. So we were in essence a little business.
Franklin: Okay.
Ostergaard: We had our accounts down at the local drug store that had a photo counter. And it was a real good training thing. We were given assignments—the yearbook advisor was named Mr. Shields, and he said, I need a one-column-wide picture about four inches high and I want four faces in it. I don’t care what they’re doing. I just want four faces. They won’t buy the book unless their face is in it. So that was kind of the direction we were given, and it was up to us to figure it out. And after I finished high school, went to CBC. In high school, I also worked at a portrait lab named Dave Studio in Kennewick, in the back processing film and prints and doing all the things you do. And continued that at CBC. I had my own stuff shooting on the side. And then I went to WSU in Pullman for two years. Through that time, I had worked two summers for the Hanford photo group. One summer in the Federal Building, and one summer in 300 Area in 3705 Building. It was Vietnam era. I enlisted, went in for two-and-a-half years. Got an early out when they were winding down. I called up my boss, Lance Michael, and I said, hey, I’m getting out of the service; you got any work? And he kind of said, when can you be here? I said, in a month? Okay, you’re hired. That was the interview. Of course, I’d interviewed for two summers prior, in essence. [LAUGHTER] So I started doing lab tech work, just kind of whatever was needed to be done. The reason that was so attractive, because the Hanford photo group was like Disneyland. There was everything there somebody with my background could aspire to want. We had the ability to do all the photo processes. We had very competent photographers. They were hired mostly out of Brooks Institute down in Santa Barbara. We called them Brookies. The lab people sort of saved the Brookies a lot, we thought. [LAUGHTER] After I got out of the service, we had just opened up the photo lab in 3706—they’d moved it from the old wood lab building at 3705. Went over there, and then just kind of evolved into doing higher, higher level things. The photo group had three different photo labs at the time. One in the Federal Building, one in the basement of the ROB, the Battelle building, and then one in 300 Area. They had all evolved for a specific purpose. The Federal Building lab was to keep the AEC/DOE people connected. The ROB lab was just directly for supporting Battelle at the time. They had just gotten the contract in, I think, ’64.
Franklin: What does ROB stand for?
Ostergaard: Research Operations Building.
Franklin: Research Operations Building, okay.
Ostergaard: Yeah, and then 300 Area, we did all kinds of things. And this was all pre-computer era. So we had—different labs did specific things. The color was done initially in the Federal Building. The ROB was pretty much black-and-white and copy work. And we did big enlarging and things like that. So some things, the jobs had to move back and forth to each lab’s specialty. So we actually had a courier who started at the Federal Building, picked up stuff and dropped off on the way out.
Camera man: I need to interrupt this. I don’t think this is moving. I don’t see any numbers changing or anything.
Ostergaard: [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Really?
Jillian Gardner-Andrews: Oh no.
Camera man: It’s bothering me.
[VIDEO CUTS]
Franklin: …records digital, so I don’t—
Camera man: Well, keep going. Let’s—I guess--
Ostergaard: [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Okay.
Ostergaard: He’ll get better a second time. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: So you’re saying that each lab had its own specialty—
Ostergaard: Right.
Franklin: And that there was a courier.
Ostergaard: Right, right. And because each lab was separate, and there wasn’t a computer, the cloud, or anything like that, everybody had their own numbering system.
Franklin: Okay.
Ostergaard: Which has led to complications to this day.
Franklin: Tell me about it.
Ostergaard: [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: I process a lot of photos from onsite and it’s always very confusing as to why some are stamped 300 Area, why some are stamped Battelle, why some are stamped 700 Area, and this is—I want you to go into this in detail for me.
Ostergaard: Okay, so, well, we’ll do that numbering thing then. If you see anything like with a 2-digit and then like an A or a B or a C and then three digits afterwards, those are from the ROB lab.
Franklin: Sorry, two-digit, ABC, and then three numbers?
Ostergaard: Yeah, the idea—first of the year, they would start out at A, and then run with the numbers, you know, the first two digits? So you could look at that. The first two was the year, always. And the second one was just an arbitrary A, and then if it ran through 999, they went to B and upward. The Federal Building numbers started out pretty much as four-digit numbers. And that was a carryover from the GE photo lab days. Some of those things I still never have figured out what they did. And then 300 Area just started out with the year, 7, 8, whatever. And then generally they’d run four digits. It got to be later on they would run five because they were running out of space. And then in 1992, we had our own computer system written, so it kind of linked up. Those dates always started with the first of the year and then the month, you know, 01. And then there was three digits after that. So by looking at those numbers, if you see an 89 blah, blah, blah, you’d know that was shot in 1989.
Franklin: Okay.
Ostergaard: So that was some of the numbering systems. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Okay.
Ostergaard: And then there were other—we supported some of the metallurgical labs and things who had their own thing going on also. So we supported a lot of specialty labs in the 300 Area, doing things then. So we would process film for them, make prints, and give them back everything. We were doing fuel studies where they would take fuel pins from bundles that had been through the reactor process, and in the 327 Building, section them remotely—because they’re screaming hot—and usually those things were about the diameter of a pencil. So they’d slice that across. And then through periscopes, using 70 millimeter film and Hasselblad cameras is actually shoot like an aerial mosaic of that thing at 75x or 125x magnification. We would process that film, print it on a machine printer 2x, and then literally mosaic them together. So you’d end up with like a large pizza. And that would show the cladding and then what had happened to the fuel inside. These things were fairly important. They spent a lot of money making them, so—
Franklin: Right. That sounds like very technical work.
Ostergaard: Well it was, yeah. We had at all levels. From the PR thing to the technical part. And you supported a lot of engineers for reports. We did a lot of what would be promotional stuff now for people to go back to DC and whatever, for pushing their project to get funds. In addition to—and then of course just reprinting. Negatives were in the file. And that was the other part of the problem with the negatives, is they were retired, not in any systematic order, they were just—when the lab ran out of space, we’d box up five cabinets’ worth of negatives, send them off to storage—you know, with the transmittal. But still—and then it got complicated—well, you know, I say, all this sounds silly, but it was all at the time very rational. You can’t judge—[LAUGHTER] They were doing good, actually, for what they were doing. But the specific photographers tended to work out of specific labs. Because we usually had seven or eight full-time photographers going at that time. And some of these guys were more specialized in technical things, and some of them were more people-oriented. And so, you had to kind of assign the right type of personality to the job. You didn’t want to assign a technical person to go out and shoot a PR thing somewhere. That would get you in trouble. [LAUGHTER] They just weren’t groomed for that.
Franklin: Right.
Ostergaard: [LAUGHTER] We had—along those lines—you know, the thing we had a difficulty with in hiring is we would—we were looking for pretty high-end lab tech people, too. So a lot of these folks would be coming out of Brooks with all this money they’ve spent training, and they couldn’t get a photo job. So we would hire them, but we’d caution them all the time—this is not going to lead to a photo job. We’re hiring you to do this technical thing. A few of them evolved over, and it was very frustrating for some folks who—I’m not doing what I want to do. But we already have—you know. So there’s always that line [LAUGHTER] of doing that. And again, back then, we were self-contained. The security was much tighter—I don’t know if you’ve went out to Energy Northwest lately or anything, or if you’ve ever been there, where they’re looking under your car with mirrors and all kinds of things. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, our security was pretty tight.
Franklin: Okay.
Ostergaard: The photographers, on the badge, they had the areas listed in a grid, the areas they had access to. So it was pretty tight, and we were playing TSA going in the gates at that point. We got so you just put your lunch in a plastic bag and just walk by and hold it up. It wasn’t metal detectors, but it was security. So that led to interesting things. The 300 Area lab was the largest, and we probably had the most people of any of them. We did pretty much our own maintenance. These were all chemical processes that needed to be maintained. So there was a great deal of quality control work going on, of running test strips and reading them and adjusting the chemistries. And just the simple things of inventory. We had a phenomenal—we had pretty much one person, that’s all they did was inventory. You know, ordering stuff, seeing that it was in, and then basically rotating the stock, so that we were using the oldest first. There was a lot of stuff going on. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: So you worked mostly at the 300?
Ostergaard: Right.
Franklin: Okay, and then how many people worked at that operation?
Ostergaard: Probably, 20, 25.
Franklin: Oh, wow, okay.
Ostergaard: Yeah. And the ROB was smaller—I’d say it was about four.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Ostergaard: And the Federal Building, they did the color and they could also—everybody could do black-and-white; that was just by default. And that was probably more like a dozen. And then there was a video—motion picture group down there also. At probably the height of everything, we were probably running 62 people. And during FFTF construction, we were doing a shift-and-a-half, basically.
Franklin: And that would just be documenting the construction?
Ostergaard: Oh, yeah. And then all the other stuff. Because everything that had to do with FFTF was a huge project. It wasn’t just building the facility you see, the white dome out there. There was a high bay in 300 Area, all kinds of research on—oh my god, it was huge. And so there was people busy all the time doing that. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Okay. Did you have much contact with the video people?
Ostergaard: Not a whole lot.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Ostergaard: That was kind of a different world.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Ostergaard: There was also kind of the contention—not necessarily nasty—between the labs.
Franklin: Okay.
Ostergaard: There was always a bit of tension there, that—ah, them dummies they screwed up again, so we got to run down there. There was a lot of that stuff going on.
Franklin: Like kind of like a friendly competition?
Ostergaard: Pretty much. Mostly friendly. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Mostly friendly? Did you know anybody that worked at the other labs or in the video group that’s still around that might want to talk to us?
Ostergaard: Let me think that through.
Franklin: Okay. We just--our collection—sorry, go ahead.
Ostergaard: No, I was going to say—yeah, I’m just thinking. Because I think Bud Mace is gone. Don Brauer’s gone. Yeah, it’s really thinned out. Thinned out everywhere. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: As happens. We have several hundred videos in our collection.
Ostergaard: Right.
Franklin: So it would be interesting to talk to somebody about that. Why they filmed certain—because some of them are very interesting films of processes and—so it’s kind of—
Ostergaard: Oh, yeah. They were highly technical. We had a technical person who was just in charge of doing extremely technical things. He was out of RIT. And he did some fabulous stuff. I always enjoyed hanging around Roland.
Franklin: RIT?
Ostergaard: Rochester Institute, yeah. And, again, it was—we had to support ourselves. There was no FedEx in the day. And not getting something done because something broke was not an excuse. That was not acceptable. So you always had at least two or three ways of getting something done. That was—and we always did come through; we had a reputation for that.
Franklin: How long did you work at the 300 Area lab?
Ostergaard: Pretty much—well, the last year—it was probably 25, 30 years straight.
Franklin: So you started in ’72, right?
Ostergaard: Yeah.
Franklin: So you would have gone into the early—late ‘90s, early 2000s.
Ostergaard: Something like that. Well, there was a migration. Everything wound down. As things closed down, the ROB lab was closed first.
Franklin: Okay.
Ostergaard: We moved that activity out to 300 Area.
Franklin: And do you know roughly when that was?
Ostergaard: Oh, I hate telling it wrong. ’78, something like that. And as things tightened up a little bit more, we actually closed down the Federal Building lab, which was on the third floor. Much to the happiness of the computer people, because there were leaks on the third floor out of all these processors. We had catch pans and stuff under everything.
Franklin: Oh, the chemical—
Ostergaard: Oh, yeah, these are all wet processes. Nothing digital there.
Franklin: And do you know when the Fed—
Ostergaard: God, again, that’s just kind of murky. It’s—
Franklin: Okay.
Ostergaard: You know, the big change happened for us when the contract changed in about ’87 or ’88.
Franklin: And that was from Westinghouse—
Ostergaard: Well, we were actually Battelle.
Franklin: You were Battelle, okay.
Ostergaard: Right. And the contract changed—consolidation, they liked to call it. We ended up getting transferred over to Boeing. Most of the service groups went as a package to Boeing. And then when Boeing came out and Lockheed came in, then we all were moved to Lockheed. So, as it wound down, we had a couple of pretty big layoffs where you just feel like a survivor the day it’s done, when they lay off twelve people in your group and there’s four of you left. Stuff like that. [LAUGHTER] So we kept plugging away out there, and then they finally found enough money to make us go digital.
Franklin: That’s good—I was going to ask about that. What year was that?
Ostergaard: Let’s see, I’m trying to think of what machines we were using. We were in the Apple side of the world at that point. And, you know, 7200 Mac or something was pretty jazzy at the time. [LAUGHTER] You know? So again, those dates are just—I could probably do some thinking on that, but I’d just hate to say something specific. But as we wound down, then they decided that we were too big of an expense to be in 3706. So we ended up moving down to the Snyder Building. This was under Lockheed. And set up shop down there. And of course, I was always—by that time, I had migrated my work into more doing archival stuff. I kind of just created that, in a way. I got tired of people asking for stuff that I knew we had, that nobody could find.
Franklin: Right.
Ostergaard: And so I just started—in the time when I didn’t have anything better to do, I just literally started going through the drawers. And that kind of got me the bug. [LAUGHTER] So my intention was to make a three-ring binder with Hanford’s 100 greatest pictures. That was my first goal. Well, that pretty quickly evolved into about 35 or 40 binders—
Franklin: Yeah, I was going to say, that’d be kind of—
Ostergaard: Yeah, well you didn’t realize what you were up against, you know. So you get to the point where you say, okay, I’ve got enough stuff here to make a collection of each of the reactor areas. So there’d be the 100-B book, there’d be the—you know. And do that. And then as a spin-off I would do aerials. Wherever I’d had enough stuff to organize, I would make another binder. And then, oh, about around 2000, when Hazel Leary was head of the Department of Energy, she was due in for this great opening up of all the information. And they started a project at DDRS—
Franklin: DDRS?
Ostergaard: Yes. And that worked out of the library there at 300 Area. They had, I think, five or six derivative de-classifiers. And they had a couple of students out there. Their goal was to scan 100 negatives a day. And they would arbitrarily take a storage box—have you ever seen a storage box? A real Hanford box?
Franklin: No, I don’t know if I’ve seen a Hanford box.
Ostergaard: Okay, well, most of these things early on—most everything was four-by-five negatives. So it was a half-cubic-foot box about yea high with a top that comes off. And then inside, there’d be rows, and there’d be a manila envelope with glassines, mostly, where there’d be a date and stuff written on them. And that was kind of—you got the date range to and from. And they started out and they did about 55 boxes. I don’t know how they were necessarily selected. But they did that. And the first box they did, they came down to us and wanted to see how they were doing. We had a higher-end scanner than they did. They were running off $150 scanners at the time, which was basically trash.
Franklin: Yeah, really low DPI.
Ostergaard: Yeah, you see some of those things now, those really crappy looking things. That was out at that project.
Franklin: Like 400k-size image files, if you’re lucky.
Ostergaard: Yeah, right.
Franklin: We get requests about images that people find online and they’re like, do you have a higher version of that? And I was like, that was scanned in 2002. Like, you know, sorry.
Ostergaard: Well, that’s the disconnect now. And they keep talking about getting me out there to help put some of that to bed and maybe leave a better trail than we did. It’s—yeah. [LAUGHTER] It’s an art to find some of that stuff.
Franklin: I bet.
Ostergaard: And you can’t do it—I don’t know what the mechanism is—I’ve been out of there now two-and-a-half years. So I don’t know if there’s anything in place. But I had pretty much, at the time, looking for things, I had the ability to request boxes endlessly. And so what I would do was I would get out my notebooks and stuff with all the transmittals and all my little notes I had made on the side. I had hand-written sheets for every time I’d order a box. And this went on for years. I would note the box and the date, and then I would look for what I wanted. But then anything else that was interesting in there, I would go ahead and make a note of it so I could backtrack a little bit. And that’s what I hope—that stuff hasn’t been disrupted too badly that it can’t get in there and say, this is golden. It looks awful, but this will really save you. [LAUGHTER] So, that takes a lot of dead-ends, but it also leads you to discoveries. And there was always the push to put more stuff into iDMS. My project for four years, one of the clerks, name of Bonnie Campo and I, pretty much, we did 20,000 a year into ARMIS, the database at the time. The selection process—that was my call. We’d literally start going through the files, and anything to do with helping the site be cleaned up, remediated, construction—all that was golden stuff. So that was the selection process for that. And then if I found—and I kind of took it upon myself—there were some culturally significant things, I’d put those in, too. So I would scan them, I’d transfer them to Bonnie, she would upload them with appropriate information. So we did 20,000 a year, so we did 80,000.
Franklin: Wow. What do you—can you expand on culturally significant things?
Ostergaard: Well, things like back in the ‘50s, where they would have pensioners’ dinners. They celebrated the employees. They weren’t disposable. They were treated with much more respect—this is all my personal stuff. [LAUGHTER] But it was celebrated more. And then also, up until ’58, ’59, the City of Richland was a company town.
Franklin: Yeah.
Ostergaard: Basically owned by GE. And they documented all kinds of cool stuff. So, a lot of that would go in. And just things like the first house being sold. And things like that. And then just the culture—the pictures of the safety prizes. If everybody—the thermoses and things. And then probably not socially appropriate things anymore of get some gal up on a ladder for Friday the 13th holding a broken mirror. And just stuff like that. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Any idea where those—where do those pictures live now, or those negatives? Do they—
Ostergaard: Oh! It’s all at 3212, the newest records—
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Ostergaard: Yeah, that’s pretty much where everything is, that I know about. And I’ve tried the damnedest to find everything. It gets to be a challenge. [LAUGHTER] But those first ones they did, that was where what we dubbed the DuPont Collection came out of and the GE Collection. Those first five boxes were the D numbers, the P numbers. Those were, of course, the most interesting ones, and that caught my eye right now. And then ultimately when they were asking, what could we do—national archives, they want stuff from us; we’ve never given them anything. And by that time I’d kind of rescanned a lot of the what I call the D numbers, the DuPont ones, just because they were very, very useful.
Franklin: Is that what the D stands for, then, on that?
Ostergaard: Okay, okay, let me go through that. There’s a set of numbers—or prefixes. D stood for Determinant, of all things. I found down, when the CREHST Museum was still operating, I had enough leeway, I would go down and kind of mine their resources. And I found the memo one day that directed from somebody in Delaware that they wanted this thing photographically copied, and it set the parameters for each eight-by-tens of each shot and to show construction progress. So there was the P number which was progress. D was determinant. There’s a few Es, which were emergencies. That wasn’t used too much. There was S for safety. And there was M for meteorological. I think I got them all. And the D ones—well, of course the P is progress, and what they generally did for—I mean, down to outhouses almost. They would shoot every couple of weeks or whenever something significant happened, shoot that. So you can combine those into collections of a particular building being built down to small little workshops and things. I found that memo down there, and then I found the part that is really the key to that thing, is there were—since everything was automatically classified at some level, just by nature of it existing, it was classified. And they had to move these around to get things made or whatever. So since it was classified, there had to be a transmittal for every time it moved. So here were these onionskin sheets that listed a set of numbers. And it said, okay, this was D such-and-such, taken on such-and-such a day, and this is what it was. That was just part of the security routine. So there was the marker that described that image by default.
Franklin: Right, yeah, the metadata kind of—
Ostergaard: Right, exactly.
Franklin: Produced in an ancillary process to—
Ostergaard: Right, so I kind of went, oh, how about this! [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Yeah, that’s something.
Ostergaard: So I handwrote some notebooks just so I could find that stuff easier. And—oh, also, what happened—there was a lady before I ever—I never even met her, name of Flo. She was the archival records genius lady. She could find anything. Flo Unterhagen, I believe her name was. And there was somebody in the ‘70s had taken all of those DuPont negatives. They looked kind of like—from the surface—like they’d kind of lived a rough life. Like they had probably just been thrown in boxes and stuff. And somebody organized those into the storage boxes, each with an individual manila envelope and the number on the outside, and that was about it. But somebody had organized that. Somewhere in the ‘70s, near as I can tell. And then the other—the GE ones were dubbed the Flo Five. Those were very significant. Because that was building up to the Cold War stuff. So that was the second project that I suggested to them. The first one was actually what we dubbed the Settler Collection. When I was doing my work for getting those 80,000 in there, I kept coming up with pictures of people prior to Hanford.
Franklin: Right, the residents in the towns of White Bluffs and Hanford.
Ostergaard: Right, so I kind of got the bug at that point. And some of the folks I knew—Annette Heriford, I knew her from—she worked in the photo group.
Franklin: Really?
Ostergaard: Oh, yeah!
Franklin: I didn’t—
Ostergaard: Yeah, Annette, yeah.
Franklin: We just recently got the collection of Harry Anderson.
Ostergaard: [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: A lot of his photos and things.
Ostergaard: Good old Harry! [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: But we’ve been going through those, and I know that he worked with Annette and with the White Bluffs and Hanford Reunion--
Ostergaard: Right.
Franklin: Organization.
Ostergaard: So I went to the last five or six of those things, and almost was accepted. But I did work for the government, so that automatically made me suspicious. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Oh, right.
Ostergaard: Harry was a piece of work. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: I’ve heard!
Ostergaard: Yeah, one time, on one of the tours, we all went out on a bus. And I come out, and what I did—I had the van, the photo van, and I had some composite, big map things I’d made. We had the ability to mount and laminate and everything. So I would show up with the van, would hang these things around the side of the van just as talking points for these people, and that would get the conversations going. They’d start to look at that and go, oh, well there’s my place, and then off you go. Cool stuff. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: That’s really neat.
Ostergaard: And so Harry was out there one day, had the van, and he was trying to—he said, you know, you’ve got a van here, how about we go over here and look at something? And I was going, ehh, I’ve got to get back to town. It’s like, I don’t want to get loose with Harry! [LAUGHTER] Get in all kinds of trouble. But, yeah, he was something else.
Franklin: And he also worked for—
Ostergaard: He was a security type.
Franklin: The Project.
Ostergaard: Yeah, oh, god, yeah. Well the rumors I’d hear was he’d hang around in bars, basically, and if people were talking too much, get them called in for—he was something else. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Wow, he was one of the—it’s just so interesting that he’s this transitional figure between White Bluffs and then—
Ostergaard: Yeah. Well he was in the right position, and probably rogue enough to—
Franklin: Yeah.
Ostergaard: [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: And then you said Annette worked for the photo group, okay. Did you she work for your photo group?
Ostergaard: She was down in the Federal Building. And so we always got along real well. She was a stickler. I’d show her stuff, and boy, if she thought that date was wrong, she was on your case like—[LAUGHTER] But so when they said, what can we give to the National Archives? I said, well, I’ve been collecting up these images, and I know a lot about them. And there are about 200 of them. So, we did the whole process as a trial thing, and pulled retired negatives out of our files to them and kind of learned the whole process. And it got a lot of nice press, and that’s what they wanted. They were making progress. And that went so well, they said, well, what next? And I said, well, we’ve got all this stuff DuPont shot. We’ve pretty well got it all scanned into our files. We’ve kind of got all the information out of it we’re going to need. So, we went ahead then and retired those over there. Which, again, was great for everybody concerned. It’s nice to kind of get them over there. I think it was five boxes, six boxes. And then the third series we did was GE—kind of the same thing, again. So we got a little more sophisticated each time. And then also the ability of iDMS to take file sizes got better each time. We were kind of held down to, oh, ten-meg JPEG compressed at first. And they would only take JPEGs. And then by the time we got to GE, it was like, well, pretty much just send us anything you want. Which was just the evolution of the whole thing. So I was making pretty good-sized scans.
Franklin: And is that how—so, I’m a little confused. Did you send the originals to NARA, or did you send the scans to NARA?
Ostergaard: No, they didn’t want anything to do with digital; they wanted the physical stuff.
Franklin: But you scanned the originals and put them into iDMS.
Ostergaard: Right, yeah.
Franklin: Oh, so is that still in iDMS, to your knowledge?
Ostergaard: Yeah! If you get ahold of somebody who can get you to the collections, it’s under the GE collection or the DuPont collection.
Franklin: Because we have access to iDMS.
Ostergaard: Okay, now it’s not—things are hardly ever taken out of iDMS, so you do a D number or something, you might come up with the old, nasty scan, you might come up with the one we put in.
Franklin: Okay, I’ll make sure to look at the file type and size.
Ostergaard: Yeah, because that’s—it’s a quirky thing to use. ARMIS, its predecessor for photos, was much better. And what we did a lot of—the folks—and this is what I learned—when they were doing their initial work on the DuPont stuff, they were making their best guesses to what it was they were looking at. Because they didn’t—they just had a negative and an envelope. And so a lot of those were way off. So Bonnie and I—if you had spare time, you’d just go, show me everything from 1952 or something. And they migrated all the stuff over from the Battelle system into ARMIS system. Of course, the things never fit the right boxes. And so we kind of just reworked the information—we had the ability to do that. Put structure in the structure box, and maybe leave the title. Because a lot of times they would write the title with the structure in it. So, it was—again, it was kind of an art form. [LAUGHTER] To define stuff. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Right, I’m totally aware.
Ostergaard: You’re finding that out.
Franklin: Well, I’ve been in archives for a little while, so I’ve seen—
Ostergaard: Oh, yeah. Well I had the big battle with the GE thing. They wanted to change the filename around to suit their system which then totally destroyed the providence of the damn negative. It just—ugh. [LAUGHTER] So, every time you do a move, you lose something, pretty much.
Franklin: Oh, yeah.
Ostergaard: And what we did for GE by then—security—we’d kind of gotten really in tune with security folks and their concerns. They wanted to know what we’d sent off. A lot of times, they were more concerned about the envelope than the negative.
Franklin: Right, because the envelope has the information and description.
Ostergaard: Right. By the time we got down to the GE stuff, I was overscanning the negative. I was scanning—put it on the flatbed and scan outside the boundaries of the actual negative itself. So they could see whatever had been written in the boundaries. I wasn’t cropping or doing anything like that. I was all about giving you the whole package.
Franklin: Right, because you can also crop that out later.
Ostergaard: Later, right. See, that’s what—you can’t put it back. I’ve always looked at is as me being the intermediary in this process, for somebody like me 30 years from now. I don’t want to box them in—I learned that real quick. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: It’s so refreshing to talk with somebody who understands--
Ostergaard: Yeah.
Franklin: The basics and things like provenance and—
Ostergaard: Yeah. Because things tie together later.
Franklin: Yeah, they do. And you need that if you’re coming at it without that institutional knowledge.
Ostergaard: Oh, my. Well, then, the other thing, I’m sure you’ve discovered it by now, is like the DuPont final report. The four-volume—
Franklin: [inaudible]
Ostergaard: Oh, boy. Okay, DuPont published, probably in February or March of ’45, what they called their final report. It’s four volumes, 1,500 pages where they do an incredibly good job of describing what they did without saying a damn word about what they did.
Franklin: Okay.
Ostergaard: Or what it was for.
Franklin: Right, that sounds—
Ostergaard: That thing is—that, and Groves’ diaries if you can stand—not Groves, Matthias’ diaries—those things. But I’ll get you the Hanford numbers for those DuPont things. Because that is a treasure trove. Once you get in there and start reading, you realize they did everything for a purpose and a reason.
Franklin: Okay.
Ostergaard: It was—and a lot of it—and then there’s some very miscellaneous other reports that link pictures to things that are—but that DuPont report gives you an incredible insight.
Franklin: Okay.
Ostergaard: Into what they did. Yeah, that’s—when I finally discovered that, I was going, oh, my god. It was so fun over the years, you kept having these—oh my god, I know what this is for. [LAUGHTER] It just evolved, you know, more and more into me doing archival things and less and less the other. Of course, I carried a big footprint around because I had all these negatives attached to me. And so we moved to Snyder, we actually had to have the floor reinforced where these—these are great big fireproof safes. So to get them down there—and I had them all fitted in, and then we were there for several years and then they wanted to move us to the Garlick Building over here. And so they’d give me a room to put stuff in, and then as we got it over there, the movers got all the cabinets moved in there, and then the powers that be decided, no, we don’t want to file the negatives here. We want to use this room for storing our junk or something. So, that was rather traumatic that day. [LAUGHTER] So I ended up putting my stuff in moving boxes around the hall in various places, and I was still working out of them. What I did when I was unloading the drawers, I color-coded each file cabinet. I had a number for each cabinet, and then a little chip of paper that corresponded to that. And then I would start a drawer one, box one, drawer one, box two, right on down the row. Finally, after a year or two of that, they ended up moving me down to the 712 Building, which is now where they’re building the new—across from the Richland Library where they’re building the new City Hall. That was the original records place, built in ’51 or ’52. It was just a big concrete bunker, basically. [LAUGHER] Which is a really cool place. So I ended up getting moved into there in some space. The print people—the union print shop was still there at the time, so it was me and them. And I loved that place; it was just Hanford from the ‘50s. It hadn’t changed a bit. We stayed in there, and of course that was a very expensive building to maintain because it was all full of asbestos and that kind of stuff. So that’s when we ended up getting moved to 3212 and they were building 3220 to store the collection. So that’s where I got out there with all my stuff again. So I had, like I say, this huge footprint carrying these negatives around. [LAUGHTER] And that was a great place to work for an archivist. It was in the back of the building, back with all the pipes and everything. Nobody bothered you; you were just back there doing your thing. It was great.
Franklin: And so how long did you—you don’t still work out there?
Ostergaard: No.
Franklin: No, and when did you finally retire?
Ostergaard: Well, they asked me to leave two-and-a-half years ago. One of those. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: One of those early retirement, or kind of--?
Ostergaard: Yeah, it was like—hi? You’d walk in there, the human resources lady is there. Like, okay, I know what this is. It’s like, okay, don’t blow it. [LAUGHTER] Just make nice. Nothing good will come out of anything other than being nice. So that was two-and-a-half years ago. So what you’re seeing me now doing is volunteer work. I got connected up with Colleen and stuff. And I still thrive on doing this stuff. That’s why I’m doing it.
Franklin: Great.
Ostergaard: I love access. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Yeah. And so you still have your clearance and everything to get in there?
Ostergaard: Nope. Well, see, that’s all B Reactor, see, it’s open to the public.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Ostergaard: I’ll do it again coming up this year. The Russians come over for their reactor inspection tour, PPRA, yearly. That’s a treaty that we signed with them in late ‘90s, I think it was. We inspect each other’s reactors to see what’s happening and make sure that, one, we’re not making plutonium, and two, they are because they’re dual-purpose reactors, what they’re doing with it, apparently. So I was doing that for five or six years before. And I found it quite fascinating. It’s something you have to be respectful and careful. We duplicate the picture we shot the year prior for their report they make. If the building still exists. And now it’s getting down to a little bit of 100-K West and B Reactor. So I’ve really—the PNNL folks like it because I’ve done it enough, they—Battelle knows me; the Russians know me. And everybody likes that uniformity. So that’s a fun thing to do, for me. And that one, again, you get a temporary badge where we’re going. I truck along. And do different pictures real quick for them, and then we have a final banquet where they sign the report and everything. That’s always quite interesting.
Franklin: Oh, yeah, I bet.
Ostergaard: It’s really cool. They love to toast everything. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Yes, they do.
Ostergaard: It takes a while.
Franklin: Yeah, I’ve been to Eastern Europe. Toasts are a way of life.
Ostergaard: Oh, god. So anyway, I’m still doing that and I’m looking forward to doing more of that.
Franklin: That’s really great. How did you get involved with BRMA, the B Reactor Museum Association?
Ostergaard: Well, it was kind of after I quit working out there regular. These guys, I was aware of them, you know. And so one of them called me up and said, you know, we’re looking for something. And everybody’s always calling me, looking for something. He said, you know, you ought to join. And I said, well, I probably should just to keep my hand in things. So that’s kind of how I became connected with it. And it’s really neat to sit in a room where there’s twenty guys who really knew their stuff. It’s something else, to have that ability. So I’ve been doing that. And then of course, I hear of things coming down the road and kind of watched the national park thing develop, and getting involved with Colleen. Every once in a while I have to remind her: you got something coming up, do you need pictures? Oh, yeah. [LAUGHTER] But that was the way out there. We always, especially when we were working for Lockheed. Lockheed was working on getting the MSA contract. So they were in the full PR, look how good a company we are, you should have us do the contract thing. So we were doing all kinds of stuff, back, again, ten years ago, things weren’t as tight as they are now. So our display group was actually making all kinds of display stuff for Lockheed Corporate under Linda Goodman. She grew her outfit quite large, but we went along for that ride. So we had people to go just do nothing but do displays and take them out. That was not a Hanford-related thing, but it was—we kind of had the ability to do all kinds of stuff. Which has always be exciting to be involved with something like that.
Franklin: Right, to make some things from site-specific to like more PR.
Ostergaard: And of course everything couldn’t be done fast enough. And you learn there that when they want it, they want it, but they don’t think they want it. So you have to sort of manage your managers in a way. You have to be ready to—well, they haven’t asked yet, but you know they’re going to want. You just learn after you get—
Franklin: How was the transition to digital photography for you as a photographer and someone that works—and an archivist—I’m kind of curious as to how you’ve managed that transition.
Ostergaard: Well, for some reason it was much harder than it should have been to get the digital equipment. Somehow it got involved with the printing people and how much elaborate stuff they go through to buy equipment. And we had people high up go, how in the hell is this taking so long? You just go buy some computers. But it’d somehow gotten into somewhere where you had to write things of why this would be good, and—ugh. It just drug on interminably. So we did—on the computer part, we had—the film scanner was always kind of a difficult thing, because they just weren’t that good at the time. And we’d always kind of prided ourselves in doing good things, exceptional things. Well, that’s when the thing I should mention of the evolution of film sizes. Four-by-five was kind of the standard from the ‘40s. When I came out there, I had to have the fortune, through our little business arrangements at the high school—I was making money, actually—and I needed a camera to shoot. Because they weren’t giving me anything. So I ended up buying a Hasselblad of all things in 1965.
Franklin: That’s an expensive—for a high schooler--
Ostergaard: The list price was 600 bucks.
Franklin: Yeah, that’s like a car.
Ostergaard: And the local photo camera down there, the guy, he knew I was looking for one and I was a regular. He said, well, he said, you know, if you can keep your mouth shut, I’ve had this Hasselblad way too long here in my inventory. He said, it cost me 435 bucks. I’ll sell it to you for my cost to move it. So I got it at a discount. I still have it. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Wow. Well, those are cameras that you—I mean, you pass those down.
Ostergaard: Oh, god, yeah. So I’ve still got all the stuff. So I was kind of primed up and then I started working summers out there. And then you see all the real—the stuff you see at magazines here, it is in front of you. So as it evolved, when I went out there, they weren’t shooting Speed Graphics, they were shooting Linhof Technikas. Big, huge, gorgeous cameras. Heavy as—and then there were view cameras, too, because of just the technical stuff that they did. And then it kind of evolved into two-and-a-quarter roll film, which was principally a Hasselblad with a set of lenses. Everybody had one. Everybody pretty much had a Technika setup, they had view cameras, and they had the Hasselblads. And 35 millimeter was considered miniature, and it was only for shooting slides, pretty much. And that kept on, and some of the illustrator types in Battelle wanted to have that editorial look so they would go shoot black-and-white. So they’d get the grain look and all that stuff. But the thing of choice was two-and-a-quarter roll film. And then of course it evolved from black-and-white and then the color started slipping in there. They were shooting some color sheet film, and it seemed like the preferred way at that point was transparencies first. And there are still some of those floating around in the files. And then it would move over into 50/50 black-and-white. Sometimes they’d go out and shoot black-and-white and color at the same assignment if they had the time. Sometimes you were moving around, you couldn’t do that. But they still wanted black-and-white prints versus color, because color was considered premium cost. So to make it look like you were not wasting money, you had it done in black-and-white. I’ve had people tell me that I don’t care what it costs, but I don’t want it to look like I spent any money. [LAUGHTER] You know, you’re out there, you just roll with whatever—and that’s part of the key to my being there so long, was I was quite flexible in going with whatever. You could do—so anyway, it evolved into roll film. And then we finally, on the digital thing, when we finally got this block of equipment, I think they bought two Nikon D1s. Which, probably your cell phone now would—[LAUGHTER] But we had all the Nikon stuff, so it was a natural to go with that, because the lenses still were compatible. And that was the beauty of that. We always were Nikon out there, just because we had massive amounts of lenses and everything.
Franklin: That’s why I always buy Canons, because I just inherited Canons.
Ostergaard: That’s what you do. There’s no sense in reinventing the wheel there. So that’s kind of how that evolved. And you can see that. And also you can see the quantities of negatives shot increase with the smaller film. Sheet film, you’re pretty—there’s a lot of work involved loading holders and processing and everything. And then when you get to roll film, well, hell, there’s twelve on a roll. So you shoot them all.
Franklin: And then now in the digital age, you’re just limited by—
Ostergaard: I’ll go out to B Reactor, you figure that’s 300 shots, easy, without even thinking about it. And you give somebody 25.
Franklin: Yeah.
Ostergaard: [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: It’s a different—which is also I think a challenge for archivists moving forward is—
Ostergaard: Oh, I know.
Franklin: The amount of stuff we produce in the digital world is greater.
Ostergaard: And how much of that stuff I’ve been giving you—well, I’ll give you the raw and what I gave the customer, but then here’s the other 250 which I can’t bring myself to throw away, unfortunately. [LAUGHTER] You just never know.
Franklin: So, did your parents work for Hanford at all?
Ostergaard: Nope! [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Okay, so you were the first one.
Ostergaard: Well, what happened—all my uncles and ultimately my dad, they were all in the service in World War II. This is all from Nebraska. They had had a rough time in the Depression. They’d lost the farms. They were traveling around before the war, picking fruit, doing whatever. They’d been out here before the war. My grandma’s sister was out here with—and they had her—the family farm they had was a typical chicken and eggs and fruit and alfalfa—everything, a truck farm. And so after the war, they all decided that it was time to get out of Nebraska. So in all their travels they had decided this was the good spot to go. I was born in ’46—essentially ’47, and I think they came out in ’48 and settled right when the Cold War was starting to ramp up. So there was plenty of employment. The family had always been carpenters and the like, and Dad, he had carpentry experience and working in lumberyards and stuff. It’s kind of my joke out of Caddyshack is he ended up right in the lumberyard. Of all the places you could work in here, he never made an attempt to get on at Hanford. He was working various lumberyards around and wholesale hardware and stuff like that. My other uncle did get involved in it, so. But, yeah, so that’s how it come to be. And Mom, she finally—she was secretary for First Lutheran Church. And again there, you’ve probably picked up, there was—then especially—sort of an animosity against Richland from Pasco and Kennewick.
Franklin: Can you talk about that a little bit? Because that’s—I think that’s very interesting.
Ostergaard; Well, you know, the perception was—especially because Richland was a company town at first. They were renting these places, in essence. So GE was the landlord. Everybody worked—Pasco, Kennewick, they were their own. So it’s like, well, they need a lightbulb changed, they just call somebody up and the company come change the lightbulb. Just all that kind of stuff. Locally, I totally, growing up in Kennewick, benefited from Hanford bigtime. Because a lot of Hanford—specially the doctor level and stuff, they didn’t live in Richland. They lived in Kennewick and Pasco, and they wanted their kids as well educated as the kids in Richland. So there the push was, boy, you have good schools in the Tri-Cities. That was just the accepted thing. So a lot of my contemporaries then, their fathers worked out here. So there was just a different set of expectations that went along with all that.
Franklin: So that kind of—the middle-class and upper-middle-class affluence sort of Richland--
Ostergaard: Oh, yeah, it spilled over. Big time. But I benefited totally from that environment and just those expectations: you were going to go to college, you were going to do this, you were going to— [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: But so you’re saying there was maybe some resentment that GE and the government took care of people in Richland—
Ostergaard: Oh, yeah way past—
Franklin: And there was this idea that they were freeloading or something—
Ostergaard: Yeah, and that was just probably a jealousy or something. Dad, he worked in the lumberyard in Pasco. And in summer, he’d have to come up and help fill-in—there was a lumberyard up here on Van Giesen. Where Boehm’s Chocolate is—or was. There was a lumberyard in there at one point. So he hated to come up here. He said, they expect so damn much and they don’t want to pay for anything. He called them smashers—for atom smashers.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Ostergaard: Damn smashers! God, I hate them! [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: That’s really—I’ve not heard that before.
Ostergaard: Well, that was his term.
Franklin: Right, I like that.
Ostergaard: And of course at that time, Richland had a really, really good basketball team. Art Dawald was the coach in that era. So there was a—boy, that was kind of the high school sports thing. And then Pasco and Kennewick had a giant rivalry in football. And that game was the only day game they played, and that was always on Veteran’s Day. That was a big deal, big time.
Franklin: Can you describe growing up in the Tri-Cities in the Cold War and how—being so close to Hanford, but living in Kennewick or Pasco, was there any kind of fear that Hanford would have been a prime target if the war were ever fought?
Ostergaard: Oh, yeah, we were totally afraid of the Russians. [LAUGHTER] There was not necessarily anything nasty out there, it was more the Russians. We had, probably not as intense as Richland with the duck-and-cover stuff. I don’t think we were ever scrambling under desks or anything. We didn’t have any air raid sirens; I know Richland did. They brought those things in from World War II and set them up around town here. So we had our instructions. And I know one time—I wish I had one of these things. They were flying around in airplanes one time throwing out little pamphlets to—What Should You Do—
Franklin: Like civil defense pamphlets?
Ostergaard: Yeah, right, yeah! It was just—
Franklin: That’s an odd way to distribute that.
Ostergaard: God, I know it. But I wish to hell I had one! Because I found one stuck in a tree. But, no, and unfortunately, it was hyped up enough at home—lived in a wood frame house. And in the night the wind would get to blowing and banging against the house and stuff. And there were several times I convinced myself that it was a bomb going off. It was serious stuff. You were totally into it.
Franklin: Was there ever any worry that you knew in the communities—Kennewick, Pasco—of the environmental aspect of Hanford—
Ostergaard: No.
Franklin: Or any kind of—
Ostergaard: No. That just wasn’t happening yet.
Franklin: Okay. Even though—I mean, because the Green Run was in 1940—
Ostergaard: I mean, nobody knew of that until—not even heard of it until probably 20 years after it happened when the Down Winders got going. Yeah, I’ve sat there thinking about 1954, November. Where the hell was I that day? The wind was coming out of—so you start thinking about it then. But, yeah, like I say, for me, I was kind of proud of the place. I still am. Of what had happened and everything. So I’ve benefitted—[inaudible] but have benefitted greatly from the whole business. We had one couple of Christmases ago, the family got together. And my brother, he’s working sheet metal contract out there—foreman for that. And his two sons, they were working down at Hermiston in getting rid of the mustard nerve gas and stuff.
Franklin: Oh, right.
Ostergaard: And I going, damn, World War II’s still been good to this family. We’re still working because of it. [LAUGHTER] Which is, you know, true!
Franklin: Yeah, yeah, there’s legacy aspects of weapons production.
Ostergaard; Totally. And of course back then the science thing was big. I remember in 1957, the International Geophysical Year and all this stuff we got handed at school. It was something to be—technology was just to be treasured. In this environment especially.
Franklin: What are some of your memories of any—some of the major events in the Tri-Cities? Like did you go to any Atomic Frontier Days parades? Or did you—what about Kennedy’s visit or Nixon’s visit?
Ostergaard: Okay, well, let’s see, Atomic Frontier Days—that was still when Richland was—we didn’t go to Richland. That was, no, we don’t go to Richland. [LAUGHTER] We were much more Kennewick and Pasco oriented on that. I missed the Nixon visit because I was in the service. And the Kennedy visit was ’62, ’63?
Franklin: ’63.
Ostergaard: That one, Jesus. I was probably—well, I was 16. I just wasn’t conscious of it at that point. It just wasn’t something you did. I do remember they had Eisenhower come out in ’54 to dedicate McNary Dam. And they ran school buses—loads of kids—down to see it. My folks wouldn’t let me go because they didn’t like him. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Were your folks Democrats?
Ostergaard: Yeah.
Franklin: Okay.
Ostergaard: [LAUGHTER] Oh, hardcore. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: But like FDR era, Progressive New Deal-era Democrats or--?
Ostergaard: Yeah, kind of. They were just like—[HISS] Republican. So there was that type of thing going on. I became aware of—fortunately, in high school, I had some very good instructors who made us politically aware. And so I knew all about Magnusson and Jackson and how all that works. The more I find out, the more interesting that gets. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Yeah. Yeah. Could you describe the ways in which security or secrecy at Hanford has impacted your work?
Ostergaard: Oh, yeah. Well, that’s just what you did. It was just an expectation. You go out there and here’s all these guards and all this stuff. You just played the game. I’d never considered it, necessarily, a burden. It was tedious and ponderous at times, but you just—you do what they say. They make the rules, they can change the rules, they can enforce the rules or not enforce the rules. You’re powerless, so you just go along. It’s real simple. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: What would you like future generations to know about working at Hanford during the Cold War and then afterward? Or just your kind of experience at Hanford?
Ostergaard: Well, first thing I’ve kind of learned is you can’t judge anything from the past in light of how you judge things today. That is the most—people kind of, especially Pearl Harbor and the activities around then—we were sort of caught flatfooted. And then some of the things that went on—internment camps and things like that. It’s just like, you got to go—okay, we didn’t know what the heck was going on. We didn’t know if they were going to land in Portland the next day or something. And so you react. And some of those reactions weren’t the best in the world. But you can’t end up—of that. And then the same thing with the environmental stuff out there. You can’t call any of those folks dumb or not caring, because all the stuff I’ve seen and all the images and stuff, everybody was doing the best of their ability with what they had. And so there wasn’t any just slipshod, they-don’t-care—except maybe the Green Run or something, but—[LAUGHTER] But you kind of look at some of that as an overzealous—because, again, it’s all driven by fear, or unknowns. Just for that not to be forgotten. And also that those people were as smart or probably smarter than we are, I think, as far as thinking things through and making do. Because that’s always been my contention with the construction camp and everything. You have those ’43, ‘44, ’45—they didn’t—if you were draft age, you weren’t there unless you had some real specialty. They recruited out of the southeast. And they didn’t want to recruit workers from the industrial—shipbuilding and all that, take those away. So they were down in the south where there was workers available. And all these people had just survived the Depression. And they knew how to make do. And they came up here and continued to make do. So that’s kind of my thing, is just that whole—and it’s unfortunate that such a great amount of energy and everything was expended on something that had such a nasty result. But—[LAUGHTER]—it’s just—
Franklin: What about later in the Cold War though? The ‘50s through the late ‘80s, and kind of that mass of—because a lot of conversations about Hanford, there’s the World War II Hanford, but then there’s the larger, much larger mission but with not such a dramatic conclusion to it, right? The Cold War kind of made 20,000 nuclear weapons around and then just kind of fizzled out.
Ostergaard: Yeah, the Cold War ramp-up thing was like—I just caught probably the tail end of that. But kind of—I got wandering here a little bit—but I always think it’s just so cool to be part of this process where all these things were happening. And being somewhat of an insider of it, I have a whole different perspective of things. If you say radiation, I go, well, okay, what kind and how much. Not, radiation?! Now, I’d be that way with nerve gas from Umatilla—which way do I run? [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Nerve gas is nerve gas no matter which way you look at it.
Ostergaard: That’s right! So I have just always been kind of a—had a little better understanding of what was going on and realized there are phenomenal risks still out there. And when you’re working with guys who, in the day we were doing in-tank waste tank inspections by putting a Hasselblad on a rig, shooting argon on the lens to keep it clean, button this thing up in plastic, and dropping it down a riser and rotating the camera, shooting pictures with a strobe inside to see the tank walls.
Franklin: Wow.
Ostergaard: Now they do it digital.
Franklin: Yeah.
Ostergaard: So that was some of our specialists who just—that’s what they did. And I got involved in—always in the after thing of all that stuff. I would be handling the film and processing things.
Franklin: Was that done for all of the tanks?
Ostergaard: Oh, god, yeah. I did--
Franklin: That’s such a laborious—
Ostergaard: Oh, totally.
Franklin: I mean, that’s necessary work, but that’s such a laborious technical process to go through that.
Ostergaard: Oh, yeah. I went through—for an outside contractor, went through and basically did all the single shell tanks that we could find. Everything I could find on each one of them. Of course that stuff was in essence obsolete now because of age and whatever. Yeah, it was fascinating stuff because it was just so scary—or so potentially bad. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Yeah. Yeah.
Ostergaard: Yeah, that was just a really—just in technical—I want to throw in a little pitch. The environmental stuff for the photo lab, we—back when I first came there, pretty much everything went down the drain. And again, it’s photo chemicals. And then in—when was it? When the Hunt Brothers kind of tried to corner the silver market there for a while, our boss, Les Michael—we had massive amounts of fixer we were generating. So he, on his own initiative, started reclaiming silver. We had a whole setup out there. We used an electrolytic process. So we were kind of ahead of that curve by our own doing. We were actually scraping—you know, we were doing the whole thing. And then as it got tighter and tighter, we started doing whatever is deemed proper at the time. So we had that running pretty tight. There was one time we—the state—we were actually functioning like a photo lab like you’d see in Seattle or Portland or anywhere else. Pretty much doing the same rules, because it’s just all the same stuff. They had some state inspector come in, and they were—since we were Hanford, we were kind of targeted, I think. We ultimately, one time, ran parallel processes on all the waste streams coming out of our processes, running typical batches of film. The state people brought in their sets of jugs and stuff to collect. And since the Hanford people didn’t quite trust and vice versa, they were doing a double set. And then they sent this stuff off, spent horrific amounts of money that proved we were doing everything right. [LAUGHTER] We weren’t really getting pats on the head. Everybody was just glad it was over. Whoops. So, we were doing a good job.
Franklin: Cool.
Ostergaard: And the cool thing about that, too, is our negatives are still hanging in there really well as far as process. I’ve had that question before: well, aren’t your negatives getting old? And blah, blah, blah, blah. Some lady from somewhere back east, one time, and I was very nice about it. But I said, well, no, our negatives are wonderful. They’re not fading. They’re not, because one, we had the budget and everything to do everything correctly. So everything was thoroughly washed, thoroughly fixed, everything. And also they’ve all been stored in human conditions. They haven’t been in a CONEX box or anything. They’re out where people are. And we’re in a desert; there’s no humidity. Everything--
Franklin: Yeah, that’s really good for long-term.
Ostergaard: Yeah, so everything’s fine. We do have—I think they got them out now—I went through and did a study on nitrate-based negatives. And I found you do all your work and mostly early ‘50s and mostly it was Ansco and it may be a few DuPonts and stuff. I found about 1,100. And you could just—in a storage box—you could just open the box up and sniff and tell. Oh, there’s something in here. So I went ahead and kind of made the guys—I think they pulled them out eventually. But that nitrate thing, especially at the Hanford environment, what do you do with them? Fortunately they’re scattered all over the place so there’s not a critical mass of them. And what the archive folks were doing with them is they were pulling them out and freezing them. But here, if you have a whole freezer full of nitrate negatives, you’ve created a waste. So it’s a double-edged sword. [LAUGHTER] But we had our share of 90-day storage pads and saving film to recycle and the yearly contract and we had our ion exchange column. We were doing everything. It was good.
Franklin: That’s good. Is there anything that I haven’t asked you about that you’d like to talk about or mention?
Ostergaard: Oh, I’m sure there will be 20 things the minute I walk out the door.
Franklin: Well, thank you so much, Dan, I really appreciate it. It’s really illuminating to hear you—to get some of that information on the photos and your perspective on Hanford, having not only worked there but also having seen so much of the history from the photo side.
Ostergaard: Yeah, great. Well, like I say, I didn’t want it to end. I was just having way too much fun.
Franklin: Yeah, I bet.
Ostergaard: And it was, the more—like you—the more time you invest and the more time goes on, the more you start to make connections of things. It’s just like, wow, this is just—I’m just getting good! [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Yeah. Well, thank you so much.
Ostergaard: Okay, all righty.
Franklin: All right.
Ostergaard: Great.
View interview on Youtube.
Northwest Public Television | Taylor_Diane_Bob
Man one: Okay
Robert Bauman: All right. Good to go?
Man one: You ready?
Man two: We're ready to go.
Bauman: Okay. All right, well, we'll get started. And I'm going to start first by having each of you say your name for us. Make sure we have that on there. So go ahead.
Bob Taylor: My name is Bob Taylor.
Bauman: All right.
Dianne Taylor: And I'm Dianne Taylor.
Bauman: And Dianne is spelled with two Ns?
Dianne Taylor: Two Ns, yes.
Bauman: Okay, great. And my name's Robert Bauman, and we are conducting this interview on the campus of Washington State University, Tri-Cities. And today is June 10th of 2015. And so, if we could start maybe, start, Bob, maybe, with if you could tell us a little bit about your family and how they ended up coming to the Tri-Cities area and when that happened.
Bob Taylor: My father was employed by the US federal prison system. He went to work as a guard at McNeil Island in 1934 for the Department of Prisons, the US Bureau of Prisons--there, I'm finally saying that correctly. And he started off as a guard and was employed at McNeil Island from 1934 actually until he retired in 1955. But the real story to talk about is how I happen to be sitting here. And in the early stages of the creation of the Manhattan Project and what was developing here with the acquisition of all the lands for Hanford, very early in that process, the US Army went to the Bureau of Prisons and contracted for a minimum security type prison camp to be constructed here in the Richland area. The purpose of that being the minimum security prisoners would be farming the lands and the orchards that were being acquired by the Manhattan Project, but would have no men available to take care of the fields and the orchards. And so the Bureau of Prisons contracted with the Department of the Army on behalf of the Manhattan Project to maintain those fields out in Vernita, White Bluffs, all in this area. And they agreed—they, the Department of the Army--agreed to build a, what they call, prison camp. It turned out to be right out on the bend of the Yakima River right near Horn Rapids Dam. And they constructed buildings, facilities, kitchens, dining areas, administration buildings, and the facilities to house and support approximately 250 federal prisoners who were brought in in early 1944 to take care of the agricultural needs of this area. And my father, who was at that point then had been with the federal prison at McNeil Island and had become a senior guard, was chosen to come over here and become superintendent of this camp. The name of the camp is Columbia Camp. And that's a little story in itself. The people in Washington, DC, were out here and didn't quite know the geography. They knew the Columbia River was here somewhere nearby, and even though the Yakima is a much smaller river, they didn't realize it. And so they named this federal prison camp Columbia Camp simply because they were on a river and they thought they were on the Columbia River. That's how it came to have the name Columbia Camp. Anyway, they started bringing the prisoners in in early 1944. And as I say, they typically for the next three and a half years, had about 250 prisoners on site at any given time. I think the number in the various information files I have, there were probably more like 700 prisoners rotated through this area. But the facilities were actually to hold about 250. So my dad took over as superintendent of the prison camp. He came here in early 1944, and initially they had—and I have many pictures of the whole camp, the buildings, and also the housing—there were initially 16 Quonset huts that were built out there for the initial officers and their families to move. At the time he came, those were the first. We moved in here actually on D Day, 1944, June 6th, in the middle of a major windstorm. And my mother who was born and raised in Western Washington, to arrive here in those kind of conditions—I don’t have to say that we had no air conditioning, and fans weren't even really very available. We moved into a Quonset hut. We ultimately, by the next spring, they—the Army, the prison—built eight more fancy housing. They brought in prefabs, the basic 609 square foot prefab that everybody in Richland is familiar with, of which there are still hundreds of them. That was the new fancy housing, and my dad as superintendent was able to claim the first one in the row next to the administration building. So in the next spring, then, we moved into a prefab. Again, I have lots of pictures, family pictures, of our housing. The kids, we were bused into Richland. Initially we all went to Sacajawea the first year we were there. And then when Jefferson grade school opened in the fall of '45, we all went there, switched over to there. We had a couple of older kids—family, kids in the camp—that went to high school at what was then called Columbia High School. My mother was a teacher, actually ended up teaching at Columbia High School part of the time that we were here. So as families living at Columbia Camp, we were bused into town, pretty much bused back home. And we played. As kids we played in the heat of the summer and cold in the winter and just pretty much in the desert surrounding the camp out there. The camp itself existed from early 1943. In early 1947, they started—they, again, the US Bureau of Prisons and the US Army--started writing back and forth corresponding about the continued need for the maintenance of the orchards and the fields and ultimately decided that it wasn't necessary anymore. And some of those fields ultimately were left to go, and others were maintained I guess in other ways. In the files that I have, my dad's files, I've got a tremendous amount of correspondence between he and the officials in Washington, DC. The Department of Army, I've got synopsis of what all was done during those period of years. I have interesting files about prisoners and some of their experiences in managing them as agricultural workers, how they got them to work every day, how they kept them fed every day. There's a lot of material in the files that I have of my dad's about that sort of thing. There's a lot of information about the contract itself between the US Army and the Federal Bureau of Prisons as far as payment of fees and expenses and also the type of crops that were harvested in volume and in prices and that sort of thing. It makes for very fascinating reading to have this kind of information available to me about what went on out there. Then ultimately in the fall of 1947, I think we were about the last to leave as a family. We left in November of '47. And basically the place was abandoned. I have, again in the files, there's information about dismantling the camp and sending knives and forks to Leavenworth and dishes to somewhere in Arizona. So there's a lot of very detailed information about the camp. But the long and the short of it is that the camp existed for those three and a half, almost four years. And very, very, very few people anywhere even know about it. The families, the other families, were rotated to different jobs. Three or four of the families went back to McNeil Island. Others went to Arizona, Leavenworth—other federal prison camps. And everybody just went their own way, and nobody was left here to even be a historian for what all went on. And thanks to my mother, who keeps all these documents and records and letters, and even—there’s a lot of letters between my father and my mother when he first came over here, where he's giving examples of daily life here in Richland in 1944 that are just fascinating reading. And the cost of a rental house that the government was charging for people and the cost to buy a refrigerator, things like that. So it's really fun for us to be able to come and sort of make some of this information available as to what Columbia Camp was all about over many, many, many years in Richland, because nobody was here to contradict that statement. A lot of people said, oh, it was a prisoner war camp. And ultimately, finally, that got changed. There was some documentation. At the present time, out at the day camp, there's a kiosk out there with a few pictures and a commentary posted out there, a little parking lot that you can drive to that gives just an extremely brief summary of what Columbia Camp was. There's a picture of a man, a far distant picture of a man standing in front of the administration building. Cannot guarantee it, but I think it—I'm pretty sure it's my dad. He was the superintendent of the camp, so his picture's out there in that kiosk for anybody that wants to go out there and look. But that's what Columbia Camp in a nutshell was all about. We have many, many, many pictures of the camp, the buildings, the dormitory buildings, the kitchen, the administration building, the power plant, the steam plant. And then we ourselves have taken pictures recently from some of those same positions, including the foundation of the steam plant that we've got so we can supplement a lot of what I've been talking about. Well, everything that I've been talking about we can supplement with pictures, and letters, and documents, and correspondence, and files.
Dianne Taylor: Memories.
Bauman: Yeah, right. So really interesting, and so first of all, let me confirm that there are still rumors out there. I've had students tell me, wasn't there a prisoner of war camp?
Dianne Taylor: Really?
Bauman: Oh, yeah.
Bob Taylor: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bauman: Or, wasn't a Japanese internment camp here?
Bob Taylor: That's what--
Bauman: No.
Dianne Taylor: Mm-mm.
Bauman: So this is great to--one great thing about interviewing you is to clarify that for people as well.
Dianne Taylor: One of the things that I'd like to bring in, because we didn't know about this for so long. Dad would not talk about his prison experiences. He was a loving, wonderful, wonderful father and grandfather and wonderful father-in-law. But this was never discussed. It wasn't until he died and I'm going through all of their things because Bob's an only child that I find all of this stuff. So Bob's mother's in a nursing home. She's quite elderly. We find this stuff. We get so excited over these pictures. Of course, she thought we were crazy to move to Richland anyway because her memories are not the Richland it is today. So we went, took all these pictures. And all she did was she took them from me, put them down in her purse. And I said, well, Mom, this is exciting. We found all dad's stuff, and we want to talk about it. No, it's secret. She would not talk about it. It was secret. And this is in 19--when did she die?
Bob Taylor: Well, this was in 1995, I think, that we--
Dianne Taylor: It was so ingrained in her, the secrecy of their lives, that even after all that time, she couldn't talk to us. So we took the pictures. I said, mom, I've got to have the pictures. And we took them back. But I think that's when it really hit me what their lives must have been like living here at that time.
Bauman: Right, that even that, which was only tangentially connected to Hanford--
Bob Taylor: Exactly.
Dianne Taylor: Yes. Yeah.
Bauman: Was very secret, right?
Dianne Taylor: Yeah, absolutely.
Bauman: So let me ask you a few questions. So first of all, what was your father's name?
Bob Taylor: Harold E. Taylor.
Bauman: Harold Taylor, okay. And your mother's name?
Bob Taylor: Doris C. Taylor.
Bauman: Okay. And so it was the three of you when you--well, your father came initially, and then you and your mother came.
Bob Taylor: Right, in June.
Bauman: In June of '44. And you mentioned the dust storm.
Bob Taylor: Termination wind.
Bauman: So, and you said that it could hold about 250 prisoners at the camp at once.
Bob Taylor: Yes.
Bauman: So it was minimum security. So what sorts of--but they were federal prisoners.
Bob Taylor: They were.
Bauman: So what sorts of crimes would these men have committed?
Bob Taylor: The vast majority of federal prisoners were not necessarily minimum security, but they were white collar crimes. In some cases bank robbers would sometimes fit into the category, depends on the nature of the individual. But bank robbers weren't necessarily restricted from ever being in the so-called minimum security camps. And, see, we went back to McNeil Island, where my dad then took over the minimum security part of McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary. And so some of these same prisoners went with us back over there. That's kind of an aside, but it's part of explaining to you, or answering your question about minimum security and who qualified. I'll finish that answer first. A lot of them were conscientious objectors. And in fact there's correspondence in the files where prisoners would be sent here to Columbia Camp, but they were always—the conscientious objectors—they were always being monitored, talked to, perhaps convinced that it would be to their best interest if they would revoke their claim to being a conscientious objector and go back and join the Army and basically reinvent themselves in society. And there's a few prisoners did that. We've even got in those boxes, we've got a couple letters that one or two of them wrote to my dad personally thanking him. He's gone back, he's gone in the Army. He feels better about himself. So we've even got that kind of stuff in the file. Anyway, then, just as an interesting aside, when you talk about minimum security versus the hardcore inside the walls type, like at McNeil Island, state prisoners—murders, that sort of thing—of course they're maximum security. But any white collar crime, including—might not sound like white color crime—but bank robbery, that sort of thing, there can be any number of--
Dianne Taylor: In those days.
Bob Taylor:--forgers. There can be any number of kind of people that aren't really hardcore criminals, but they've made mistakes. They've done things bad. But they know that they're decent people. And these are the people that, even on McNeil Island, again, same as here, they would stay in a minimum security area and do the weeding, doing the gardening, doing the orchards, doing the fields, like over there like they were doing here. My dad, as superintendent of the camp at McNeil, we had kind of a beautiful estate, ranch home estate with about an acre and a half of rockeries and gardens and rose trellises. And we had five--as a kid, I never mowed the yard. I had five prisoners that—we did, the family did—that took care of our yard and our place. It was kind of a strange childhood that I had. But that's what minimum security means, that they could be trusted. They were called trustees, as a matter of fact.
Bauman: And so about how large of a staff was there working at the camp?
Bob Taylor: Here at Columbia Camp, there were 24. 24 with families, and then there were another ten to 12 that lived in Prosser, Benton City, some of them right here in Richland that would come to work. So there was less than 40 total staff, 24 of whom were on site with families.
Dianne Taylor: Tell him the story that you were telling me about Dad writing a note about getting these guys to come in on Sunday for roll call.
Bob Taylor: Oh, it was one of the notes, one of the memorandums to his officers in the files that I read. It's something to the effect—no, I guess it was a memo to the entire camp, to the prisoners and the officers. And it's just kind of a tongue-in-cheek, that it seems to be hard to get prisoners to make bed call or duty call or account for themselves on the weekends. And it was just kind of an interesting, the way he wrote that even on the weekends, they still, after all, are prisoners and have to account for themselves. They actually only had I think it was three escapes. Nobody actually ever fully totally escaped. They had three that walked away, but they were caught along the river on the way to Benton City. So that was part of the minimum security idea is that they weren't particularly threats. They knew they just needed to serve their time and get out. And so they weren't trying to break out.
Dianne Taylor: And where could they go? That's the desert. There's no transportation. That's one of the stories Dad did tell me about two of the guys walking to Benton City. And of course they didn't get there because there's nowhere to hide.
Bauman: And so how old were you then when you came here?
Bob Taylor: My birthday's in July, so I was six years old when we moved here in June. And as I said, it was D-Day. And then just turned seven in July, and then I was ten when we left in late '47.
Bauman: Okay. And so what was that like as someone roughly between the ages of seven and ten living out here in the camp in initially a Quonset hut? Is that right?
Bob Taylor: Initially in Quonset hut and then in a prefab. Well, first of all, six-to-ten-year-olds don't really think about hot and cold. The only thing that we were ever really cautioned about by our parents is it's a little problematic to go running around in the desert barefooted. There were rattlesnakes. Never got bit by one. Saw a few. But we had the swimming hole right there at the bend of the river for summertime, spent a lot of time in the swimming. The pictures you can see the two rows of Quonset huts. It was kind of, I call it a parkway, which wasn't necessarily what you would call a bunch of grass in 1944. But nevertheless, there was a grassy strip, two street, two roads for cars, and the Quonset huts and in the middle grassy strip that that's where we played our soccer and mostly soccer that we played there as kids. And we were either in the river, out there in that strip, or just wandering out in the desert barefoot. And with our bicycles, there's a picture I've got showing me standing beside a tree that was very near our house that I crashed into and cut my head open. That sort of thing as living here as a kid. We were typical kids, even though we were--in fact, my entire life growing up was always subject to prison service. We lived on McNeil Island, which was, when we went back, I mean, my grade school and my high school years, I went to school in Lakewood Tacoma, Clover Park High School. But we still lived on the island. We had to catch a prison launch back and forth every day. As kids growing up, none of us ever had the typical life experience of just walking to the store, walking to the theater. We didn't live on Swift and could walk down to the Village—to the theater. We never had those kind of experiences. Speaking of the theater, we did get to come into town. Our parents would carpool or whatever, and we'd come into town to the Hopalong Cassidy, Tom Mix movies on Saturday afternoon at the Village Theater here in Richland. But it was never anything we could ride our bike to or walk to.
Bauman: Yeah, I was going to ask you about that, about getting into town and how often you were able to do that. And what was the town of Richland like? What sorts of memories do you have?
Bob Taylor: Well, I mean, you've got all the pictures as a historian. You know what Richland basically looked like in 1944, 1945. It was like that. I mean, we came into school. The first year I said we went to Sacajawea. The second year, we from then on went to Jefferson. We would become friends with kids in the class and do things with kids in the class, but it was always more difficult. I was in Cub Scouts. My dad would have to drive in to make separate arrangements to go, and to some of the other kids out there as well, to come in to the Cub Scout meetings. One of my memories, and I'm not sure why, but one of my memories was one of the girls’ parents had--and I don't quite understand it now, but her parents had—I can't say they owned, but maybe they did—a large enough piece of ground that she could ride her horses. And I remember some of us—and it was like right here. It was straight north from Jefferson that we would come out of town, although not very far, and ride horses out here in the open prairie. And it might have been right here. I don't know. But we were able to socialize to some degree with the kids in town. But again, one of the things that I have to say, it's like my mother. Even as kids, talked about secrecy. We were instilled with absolutely every bit of that, just like the adults. We absolutely were. And it was just a way of life, so we didn't question it. We didn't try to violate it. We just--everything was secret.
Bauman: So you didn't talk to anyone about the camp at all really?
Bob Taylor: Just that we lived out there. And that was all.
Bauman: Right. So did you know what Hanford was, what was going on?
Bob Taylor: No, not until the bomb was dropped and the paper headline right here in Richland. That's when we knew what was going on. The road now as you go out there is not the same road it was then. What is Horn Rapids Road, which comes across—wherever we are—comes across, that was the road that we came in on. So we came in a little further north into Richland than we do now, where the intersection is. And so right at that corner right there was the beginning of the trailer camp where so many people were living and so many of the kids in school with me were living in the trailer camp. And there was a wire fence along the road, and so we just knew we were outside the fence, and something was going on on the other side of the fence. But we didn't know what it was—until the article came out in the paper.
Bauman: You mentioned, so, the prisoners, would they get transported, then to different fields--
Bob Taylor: They were bused.
Bauman: --to different farms then?
Bob Taylor: There were like, I think as I recall in reading the files, there were sometimes as many as ten different gangs or groups, for lack of a better term, that were bused out to the various sites. And that's part of what's in my dad's files is just the logistics of taking--they called it dinner then--lunch out to feed everybody at lunchtime, and just the difficulties of that sort of thing in running this prison camp. Because some of them out in Vernita, for instance, they basically had to leave with the lunch service right after breakfast to get it out there. Because the road, the road was not great going out to Vernita from here. The road that we drive now and think nothing of was basically just a dirt road in those days going out there. Because the road, the paved road, bent south and went to Benton City when you go out that way. So yeah, there were a number of different orchards. I can remember clearly the—what are now all the Richland ranches on Cottonwood and Birch and Cedar, all those where all the Richland ranches were ultimately built in 1948. All of that was cherry orchards. And we always had one or two crews harvesting the cherries, for instance, right here in town. And a couple times my dad brought me out and actually I helped them pick cherries. So that's just one of my memories is picking cherries in what is now that major housing part of Richland.
Bauman: Right. Now, so, in 1947, when the camp closed and you left, I assume maybe your mother was probably happy about going back to the west side? [LAUGHTER]
Bob Taylor: Extremely, yes, extremely happy to get back to the cool west side, yes.
Dianne Taylor: She was a tiny, tiny, lovely lady, a teacher. Heart and soul a teacher, and totally supportive of Bob's father. But she wasn't happy to be here at all. [LAUGHTER] And she was very, very happy when they finally left.
Bauman: You mentioned she taught at Columbia High School.
Dianne Taylor: Yeah.
Bauman: What did she teach?
Bob Taylor: English, primarily English. And she was in charge of the journalism one school year.
Dianne Taylor: She had to quit teaching, though, because of her duties as--and the words are official hostess of the camp, which is really interesting. She organized bridge activities, social activities, to keep the wives that were thrown out here in the middle of the desert happy. Because of course they weren't working, very many of them. So she worked that first year at Hanford, and then she quit and was kept busy keeping activities going on for the women and children.
Bauman: That’s very interesting. Were there a lot of children around your age you were able to play with?
Bob Taylor: I'm trying to remember. There were, of my own specific age that were my closest friends, there were seven of us that were either within one grade one way or the other. I think there were some older kids that came into high school. Our bus—I think there were about a total of 12 or 14 of us rode the bus into town. There certainly weren't two kids in every household of the 24 officers that worked there. Some of them were more senior and kids were grown and gone.
Bauman: So did you have your own bus, then, that would just take a group of kids from the camp?
Bob Taylor: I guess, yeah, we must have, that there was just a bus that came out and got us and took us back into town. There was nobody else to pick up. [LAUGHTER]
Bauman: And do you remember how you felt about first of all coming here? Do you have any memories of that, and then when you left in 1947?
Bob Taylor: I certainly had no--at age six, everything in the world was exciting to me. I think I mentioned earlier heat and wind, that sort of thing didn't really mean much of anything to me. I have no recollection of being upset about being here, other than knowing that my mother was upset about being here. I liked it here. I had good friends. I was kind of disappointed to go back to McNeil Island. Three of my closest friends at camp that were out there too--let's see, Kenny and Jerry and—
Dianne Taylor: Were they out there then?
Bob Taylor: Yeah. There were, I think, five of us actually went back to McNeil Island. So, at least I wasn't--had my friends going back there with me, which made it better. And then we had a very--from a prefab in the desert, we went back to a fairly palatial estate that we lived on because of my dad's position, so I liked that. And then that next year I started junior high at Clover Park. And so starting then I went back to--I rode the boat to Steilacoom and caught the bus to school. And then I was off on a whole ‘nother part of my life. I think I'd say I was probably happy to be leaving, but not the way my mother was happy to be leaving.
Dianne Taylor: Well, I think it was a pretty idyllic childhood for kids like this. They've got the free reign of the desert, within reason. They've got the swimming pool. Nobody was worrying about jumping into the Yakima River. And they had friends, and they'd go into the movies. We've got a picture of Bob--we think it's Bob--with his buddies. There was a picture in Richland years ago at the post office there was a little museum.
Bauman: A kind of display.
Dianne Taylor: Yeah. And there's a picture of the kids outside the Uptown--not the Uptown, the old Village Theater. And we're pretty sure he's there. But the stories he would tell me, running around, riding their bikes, it was--
Bob Taylor: I just think of it as fun and unique. I really do.
Dianne Taylor: What about the stories about Dad and the baseball field? They had a baseball field there for the prisoners, for their recreation.
Bauman: Oh, at the camp.
Bob Taylor: Well, that was their big activity on the weekends. They had a very nice ball field. Again, there's pictures of it outside of the administration building. And my dad was a good guy. For somebody in 1934 to survive starting as a prison guard at McNeil Island, those were tough times. Those were really tough times. I don't mean living as a family, my mom and dad. I mean just as a human being who felt some degree of emotion about people. Prison guards anywhere in any prison in 1934 were really tough, mean guys. They had to be. But when he came over here, he really--and it shows in his correspondence--he really had a lot of humanity and caring. And he ran a really great camp here and has lots of letters saying so from people, from superiors. What started me on that was just her idea about the baseball. He wanted to make sure that they had sporting activities to do things with over the weekend.
Bauman: Recreation and entertainment.
Bob Taylor: Yeah.
Bauman: I find it very interesting neither of your parents really talked about this stuff, but they kept--
Dianne Taylor: Yeah, oh yeah.
Bauman: --the photos and the documents that you didn't even know.
Bob Taylor: Yeah. We didn't realize they had all that.
Dianne Taylor: And Dad would talk about it a little bit. It wasn't like he never talked about it. But he told me the story one time about the prisoners escaping, and he talked some of these things. But it wasn't something that you talked about very much. It was once in a while. I mean, like every few years there'd be a comment. But Mom didn't talk about it at all, other than the teaching, which of course she loved to be a teacher and loved doing that. But it was a very, very quiet non-discussed part of their lives.
Bauman: Are there any other either events or things that happened that were humorous or special things, memories that stand out in your mind about your years here?
Bob Taylor: One of my major memories actually was the very first summer we were here. And three or four six-year-old boys never, ever, ever, ever got in trouble. But for some reason, we chose to go into the crawl space underneath our Quonset hut. I mean, there was no foundation in the sense you’d think of a foundation. But there was a raised floor and so there was space under there with snakes and bugs and spiders. And my parents never specifically told me, don't ever go down there. You'd sort of think that was understood. But three of us, one hot, hot, hot day, we thought, well, it was just boiling hot outside. It was boiling hot in the Quonset hut. Those things are not fit for human habitation without air conditioning. And so we got the smart idea it might be cooler down there in the crawl space. So we got down in the crawl space, and then for some reason some guards--I say guards—some of the men came around doing some kind of a check of the housing. I don't know what they were necessarily—but here we were, little boys where we were pretty sure we weren't supposed to be, and the adult men walking around sounded like we just knew they were looking specifically for us to get us in trouble. That's kind of silly, really, but it was a big thing for me as six years old to be down there where I'm pretty sure I shouldn't be and knew what kind of trouble I was going to be in when they found us. The other thing is the coming into the shows in the afternoon and standing in the line outside the theater. And, as I say, Tom Mix, and Hopalong Cassidy, and whoever else, the Saturday afternoon shows at the theater. I remember going to those a lot.
Dianne Taylor: One of the fun things that we go out to there. We hadn't been there for a few years, out to the camp. It's just kind of fun to walk around and realize what was there--the families, the men—brought together from all over the country for one purpose. And they fulfilled their purpose and kept the orchards going and the fields, and then they left. And to me there's a lot of kind of neat spirit and ghost—ghost isn't the right word. But there's a sense that there was something really interesting, good happening here—good or bad depending on the way you looked at it. But it's just an interesting place to go and walk around out there. You should do it sometime.
Bauman: Yeah. And a unique place.
Dianne Taylor: Very unique, very unique. And it's fun to walk around, and we think we found the kitchen. So I'm thinking about the guy making the good cinnamon rolls. He was there. And you think you found where Dad—where the office was.
Bob Taylor: Yeah, I'm pretty sure I can identify where the administration building was. But the various cement foundations or partial foundations that are still out there can pretty well match up with the pictures that we have from back then.
Bauman: Well, great. Maybe this might be a good time, then, to sort of end this part, unless there's something we haven't talked about yet that you'd like to in this part of the--
Bob Taylor: Well, I've covered the things that I certainly, the bullet points that I had in mind that I wanted to cover. There's probably always more things to talk about. Part of it is sitting and having the box and going through and pulling a piece of paper might remind me to say something else. But I feel comfortable right now in saying that anybody watching this interview is going to know a whole lot more about what Columbia Camp was about than they knew before. And that's the main point of what we're trying to accomplish here.
Dianne Taylor: There were no fences at Columbia Camp.
Bob Taylor: Right.
Dianne Taylor: There were no fences.
Bob Taylor: Right.
Bauman: Right. And these were all male prisoners, right?
Bob Taylor: Oh yeah.
Bauman: Yeah, well, maybe this would be a good time to end this part, and then we can look at some of the photos and have you comment some of those.
Dianne Taylor: I wish that they had shared it with--Bob's mom and dad had shared it with us sooner, because there would be so many more stories and so much more understanding.
Man one: Okay, so I'm going to give this. Why was it located--I mean, I know it was located for the orchard support and stuff. But why where it was? Ever hear why it was located?
Bob Taylor: I don't specifically know, other than it was near Hanford. It was on the river, which helped with the infrastructure. It was away from this burgeoning 1,500 population big town of Richland.
Man one: And yet kind of remote.
Bob Taylor: And kind of remote. I mean, it was remote for those days.
Bauman: Like you said, escaping was tricky because--
Bob Taylor: Yeah, it was far enough.
Dianne Taylor: Yeah.
Man one: It was Alcatraz in its own way.
Dianne Taylor: Well, it was. It was, because it was--I mean, can you just imagine being out there and trying to escape? And how are you going to get water? It's the true desert.
Bob Taylor: I guess the real answer is, if you realize that Hanford took everything from here north and they weren't going to go across the river, and here's Richland, and down there is Benton City, and this is the Yakima winding out there and just kind of a nice little bend in the river of the Yakima.
Bauman: I love that they call it Columbia Camp even though it's not--
Dianne Taylor: Isn't that funny?
Man one: I know, it's great. Close enough.
Bauman: They didn't know their geography very well.
Dianne Taylor: Yeah. We know it wasn't Bob's father because there were guys from Washington out here long before that. But it's kind of interesting.
Man two: Well, [INAUDIBLE] will bring that light around, put it behind that camera if it'll reach. If it won't I'll bring--or just unplug it and I'll move this cord.
Dianne Taylor: What you doing?
Bob Taylor: Just got one minor issue. I'm just seeing if anything's--
Dianne Taylor: Yeah, this guy had no clue what it's like to be raised in the city, because he started--
Man one: The stories that you tell remind me of this other guy I knew that had grown up--his father was in the Navy. And he grew up on Midway, I think. Midway or Wake Island where it was a mile this way, and it was two miles that way, and that was it.
Bob Taylor: Yeah.
Man one: And as a kid, he loved it. Down at the beach, having a good time, going to the movies, all he wanted, soda pop and all that stuff. But the parents were going crazy.
[LAUGHTER]
Bob Taylor: Oh yeah.
Dianne Taylor: Well, when we got this little note from Bob's mother--there's pictures in there of the women of the camp. And if you watched at all the Manhattan Project TV show that was on for a while, these gals are—it's the same women.
Northwest Public Television | Silliman_Ken
Camera man: I'm recording.
Robert Bauman: All right. So I'm going to get the formal stuff out of the way first, and then we’ll talk. My name is Robert Bauman, and I'm interviewing Mr. Ken Silliman. And today is July 2nd of 2013. Interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. And I'll be talking with Mr. Silliman about his family's history about growing up in Kennewick and about his memories of the area and the impact of Hanford on the area and so forth. So Mr. Silliman, I'm going to start by just asking you to talk a little bit about your family and how and why they came to Kennewick.
Ken Silliman: Well, my mother's family was Case, and the Cases came in 1894 to the state of Washington. They came to Goldendale and then down to the Prosser area. And my granddad homesteaded then on Rattlesnake. When my mother and dad got married in 1914, Dad farmed a section of Grandpa's land for a year. And then he went out to the Weller Ranch and leased that. And he farmed that I believe until 1928 as close as I can figure. Couldn't afford to farm any more on dryland wheat on Rattlesnake, so he eventually took a job at Farmers Exchange. And that's how we got down to Kennewick. And then bought one of the partners out in '34 and the other one in '43, and we've had it since then.
Bauman: Okay. And so you moved into Kennewick in the 19--
Silliman: 1930.
Bauman: 1930, Okay. And then you were born in Kennewick?
Silliman: Yes. My brothers were all born on Rattlesnake. I was born in Kennewick in 1931.
Bauman: Okay. And what sort of memories do you have of Kennewick as a young boy growing up? What sort of community was it like? What sorts of things did you do for fun?
Silliman: Well, it was a very, very small town. Even in 1940, it was probably a little under 2,000 people. If anything happened in town and you got in any kind of trouble, well, your parents already knew about it by the time you got home. I learned to swim in the Columbia River and the irrigation canal there. Kennewick was very small. 10th Avenue was the boundary line of it on the south, Olympia on the west, and just past Gum Street on east. So there wasn't much town here.
Bauman: And so was it mostly an agricultural area then?
Silliman: Definitely, definitely ag. Both fruit and dry land wheat. Dry land wheat controlled a lot of the money that was spent in the area in that.
Bauman: Okay. I want you to talk about Farmers Exchange a little bit. I know your--was it your grandfather or your father who bought part of the business?
Silliman: My father.
Bauman: Your father.
Silliman: Yeah. Carl Williams and Alfred Amon, who were two dryland wheat farmers, started it either in '23 or '24. I can prove both dates there. [LAUGHTER] They came in towns, started--Alfred was mayor in Kennewick four different times. I believe it was in four different decades. And Carl Williams I believe was one of the trustees for WSU a period of time there.
Bauman: And so initially, what sorts of things did Farmers Exchange do?
Silliman: Well, it started as a livestock trading outfit. Trade horses for pigs or chickens for cows or just whatever you wanted to trade there. And then they got into the feed business a little bit to feed their own livestock and to sell a little bit. Got into garden seeds just a little bit. They were located right behind Washington Hardware on what at that time was Front Street. It's now Canal Drive. And our livestock pens were between us and Washington Hardware. They finally decided that, the city did, they did not want the livestock there a half block off Kennewick Avenue. So we moved our livestock down to behind Church's Grape Juice there on some leased land. And then when that Dad bought Alfred out, the last partner in '43, he couldn't go out and trade livestock and run the store, too. So we did away with the livestock at that time. Other than we still given into chickens, and rabbits, and wild turkeys, and things like that yet.
Bauman: [LAUGHTER] So did you help out at the store when you were growing up?
Silliman: Oh, sure. I worked the store. I was small for my age, so I didn't start right away there. And at that time the feed was all 100 pound bags except for wheat. It was in catch weights, which was just whatever would fit in the bag. It could be 125, 130, 120 there in that. Yeah, I worked there as a kid. But when I say how long I've worked there--which is 59 years--I don't count when I worked there as a kid because I probably wasn't worth much.
Bauman: [LAUGHTER]
Silliman: But also of course we know we worked in the orchards there. So we cut asparagus after the war started. They let us out early. They started school late so that we could go out and cut asparagus in the morning. Then we'd have to go to school some on Saturday to make up that time.
Bauman: Hm. Interesting. So what was school like in Kennewick in the 1930s, 1940s?
Silliman: Well, it changed considerably from the '30s to the '40s. They built the new high school in Kennewick in '36. And the first graduating class was '37, one of my brothers that I was later in business with was in that class. And I started first grade in the fall of '37 there. But very, very small. You knew everybody until about '43. Then things went nuts. People have asked us, didn't we resent all of a sudden, the class was just being overflowing and having to use extra rooms and storage buildings and stuff like that. We didn't think about that too much. Just more kids to play with. And a lot of those kids that came in the '40s are still my very, very close friends.
Bauman: Growing up, do you remember any community celebrations, picnics, 4th of July parades, any of those sort of community events?
Silliman: Oh, yes. We're right on 4th of July right now. And they always had a big to do it at the Keewaydin Park there. The Brandland wheat farmers would normally maybe make one round around outside of their field to make sure their machine was working. Then they'd take a break and come to the to-do downtown here. And then right after that, they'd usually start harvest there. Then there was the Gape Festival in the '40s I would guess, '46, '47. I remember that one specifically. They had two different entertaining groups. They had Spike Jones here and Jack Teagarden. And when Spike Jones sent them their contracts, there was two different contracts. And there were different amounts of money. So they took the cheaper one. So he put on the same show for three days in a row. That was right in the street there in the 200 Block on Kennewick Avenue. But some of the other Grape Festivals were held up around Keewaydin Park in that. We used to have rodeos up where the high school, Kennewick High School is now in there.
Bauman: And so you were born in 1932?
Silliman: '31.
Bauman: '31. And so you, when you were growing up, in the Great Depression, did you have a sense that there was an economic depression going on? Or as a young kid, were you not really fully aware of this?
Silliman: I probably wasn't fully aware of it. We had a great big garden. We had a couple milk cows. We had chickens. We were pretty self-sufficient there on it. I got a new pair of shoes usually the start of school, new pair of overalls. So I was doing fine, yeah. Probably the folks were having to scrape and stoove for it.
Bauman: So going back to talking about the Farmers Exchange a little bit more, you mentioned that your father was partners with--
Silliman: He went to work for Carl and Alfred. Then in '34, he bought Carl out. And he and Alfred then were partners until '43 when Alfred wanted to go run his cherry orchard. And so Dad bought him out there. Things were simpler then. They wrote the contract with an indelible pencil and half a piece of paper and tore the bottom half off. And I still have that contract.
Bauman: [LAUGHTER] Didn't have a roomful of attorneys there--
Silliman: [LAUGHTER] No, no.
Bauman: --to do the contract. So you mentioned one thing you noticed when, at some point, in the 1940s, suddenly there were a lot more students in schools in Kennewick. I wonder if you could talk about any other changes you noticed or impact the Hanford site on the town of Kennewick?
Silliman: Well yes, there was a lot of things. Avenue C went from the Old Grain Bridge to Benton Street and then as Columbia Avenue down to the river. And that was houses, basically. All of a sudden, any space that had a place where you'd put a trailer or any building that you didn't have rain coming through it was rented out. I remember one time, I think it was in '43, that we lived at 603 North Everett which was down by the river about half a block off the river. And we were out in the yard on a Sunday. This car drove by several times, a little coupe with a man and woman in it. And finally the man got out and came and said, do you know any place we can rent a bed and bath there? We've lived here for a week just in our car and we just can't find anything. My dad said why don't you sit down and have some iced tea. And I'll call around, surely I can find something. He came out about a half hour later and said you're right, there just nothing for rent in Kennewick. He said you might as well stay with us until you find something. And they lived with us for about a month. He was an engineer from the East Coast and his wife.
Bauman: Right, so it impacted your family directly, at least--
Silliman: Oh, yeah. And the schools and everything else there. The road, when the workers would come home there at quitting time, the roads would be so full you couldn't even get on Columbia Avenue and that. I remember Newman's Grocery, finally they had—most of the groceries closed at 6 o'clock. He started a second grocery on the corner of Benton and Kennewick Avenue. It was a cash and carry rather than a charge and fill your order for you. But he had stayed open late so the Hanford workers could get back and get some groceries there. Entertainment, I remember the folks would take their car over Saturday sometime and park on Kennewick Avenue, leave their car there. And then they'd go over in the evening and people would walk down street and visit. And women would sit in the cars and men would walk up and down the street and visit to different guys. It was a different time.
Bauman: You mentioned more students in school. Were more schools built then?
Silliman: Well, not right away. My favorite thing to do as a little boy was to go with my dad when he was trading livestock. And he'd go to Wallula, or Pasco, or Connell, or Benton City, or Richland. And I always had to ask him, when we crossed the river, whether we were going into Benton City or Richland because they were both very, very, very small towns there. I think Richland had a store in it run by John Dam, if I recall right. And his daughter was our sixth grade teacher there, Geri Dam was her name.
Bauman: So you did occasionally—you did go to the other towns sort of in the area at times?
Silliman: Oh sure. We came up to football games. Kennewick, Pasco, and Richland--Pasco and Richland kind of fought back and forth. Pasco of course was a railroad town and that. But we had friends in Pasco and we had friends in Richland. And we competed against some of them there.
Bauman: Mm-hm. So any other changes or ways that the sort of significant growth seemed to affect Kennewick at all, if you can remember? Obviously it changed some of the business practices. They stayed open later, at least—
Silliman: That grocery store did. Yeah, mm-hm. Things were just chock full. Everything was chock full. For instance, there was a place called Camel's Cabins right at the base of the old Green Bridge. And I've heard stories that at times, he had some CCC camp type places there with boards up about four foot and then canvas over the top. He rented those for eight hours at a time. You moved in, ate, slept, got out so the next family could come in there.
Bauman: Wow.
Silliman: So like I say, everything was just chock full.
Bauman: Right, right. Now, do you remember--so you were born in '31. So you were about 12 years old in '43 when the Hanford project started. I guess, first of all, do you remember--going back to 1941, when the attack on Pearl Harbor-- do you remember--
Silliman: Oh certainly.
Bauman: --that sort of thing. And do you have any memories from that? And then when did you find out about something happening out at Hanford?
Silliman: Well you never knew what was happening in Hanford. If you asked somebody what was happening out there, they said they're building Wendell Willkie buttons or nylon stockings or something like that that you couldn't get a hold of. But of course, everything like sugar and shoes were rationed.
Bauman: And when did you find out what was going on at Hanford? After the war ended, after the bombs?
Silliman: Yes. You just did not hear what was going on. And if somebody did say anything, they weren't there very long. Yeah.
Bauman: You just knew there was some sort of big project that people were working on?
Silliman: Yes, that's all we knew, was a big project.
B. Yeah. And so going back, do you remember finding out about World War II itself, the attack on Pearl Harbor?
Silliman: Oh yeah. As I recall, it was on a Sunday. And it affected me because my brother Clint, who was working for J.C. Penney's up in Palouse, he enlisted right away with the caveat that he be able to bring his stuff home before he went in. So he got to be home for Christmas. So that's the last Christmas he was home for a number of years.
Bauman: Right, so your family was impacted very immediately.
Silliman: Mm-hm. Yeah, all three of my brothers were in World War II.
Bauman: And so then what about yourself? What happened with you after finishing high school? What did you do from that point on?
Silliman: Well, I had grown up with a friend that lived down in the garden tracts with me there. His name was Bill Bryce. We'd gone all the way through--we played together before school. Went to school together. Walked back and forth to school together. Went to college together. Roomed together in college. Then when the Korean War broke out, they weren't giving deferments to begin with. So I enlisted and he sat it out. And finally they gave deferments there. So he went ahead and completed his college there and then went to University of Washington. That was at Central. And then he went on to the University of Washington and got his masters. And then did his service and put in his career with Boeing. In fact, he was responsible for writing the Boeing contract out here a number of years ago when Boeing was doing the computer service out here. He was the sales manager.
Bauman: And then what point did you come back to Farmers Exchange?
Silliman: When I got out of the service, I was considering a job with Fairchild Camera Corporation. I was in a RB-36 reconnaissance bomber outfit that used a lot of cameras. My job was to run the shop to repair and service those. And I got offered a job there. But it would've been travelling. And by this time, I married while I was in the service. And my brother came back to South Dakota where I was stationed at Ellsworth and said, would you like to come back to the store? And that's what I always want to do all my life. So I took him up on that. And when we got out, my wife I came back here and went to work. And I've been there ever since.
Bauman: And what year was that?
Silliman: That was 1954. And Clint and I and Dad were in partnership. Them we bought Dad out shortly after that. Then Clint and I were in partners until '81. His son was going to buy him out, and then he backed out. So I bought him out. And then they shut down Hanford. [LAUGHTER] And boy, did it have an effect on us through the '80s. Just almost busted us.
Bauman: Really?
Silliman: Yeah.
Bauman: Hm. So again, more impact related to Hanford?
Silliman: Oh yeah. And Hanford still has a big impact on us. We didn't realize, some of these people that traded with us had been trading with us for a number of years. We didn't know what they did. To us, that's Old Joe, you know? And in '81 when they started laying all those people off, Old Joe was coming in and saying hey, I make sure the family gets the feed and stuff they need. I’ll send you a check, I'm going to Texas or somewhere else and see what I can find. So it really had an effect on us in the '80s. Some of the layoffs since then haven't had as big effect. But they still affect us.
Bauman: Yeah, so it definitely says something about the economic impact that-
Silliman: But there's been more diversification since then.
Bauman: Mm-hm, mm-hm. And since 1954, a lot of grown in Kennewick?
Silliman: Considerably.
Bauman: Changed quite a bit from 1954. What are some of the biggest changes that you've seen since 1954 in Kennewick? Obviously the size is one of them, right?
Silliman: The size, the selection, the competition. You know, every time they open a big box store, they handle something that we handle there. But we find we can compete with them through service and other ways. And we've had to change. We started off trading cattle. Now we trade lawn mowers and power equipment there. We still have the feed. We still have the garden supplies. We've enlarged that. But you wouldn't recognize the store from what it was when I was a boy. We've also bought other buildings around us and expanded there.
Bauman: But still in downtown Kennewick?
Silliman: The same location. Other than the one move that we made there in '39 from behind Washington Hardware up to where we are now.
Bauman: Is there anything I haven't asked you about or that you haven't talked about in terms of, especially in terms of say, growing up in Kennewick or any stories or events that really stand that you think you'd really like to talk about?
Silliman: Well during the buildup of Hanford--we'd always had dust storms here. But during the build up of the Hanford, all the ground was been worked. And we had dust storms--you might as well just close everything down because you couldn't see, you couldn't drive there. It was just really bad. Obviously, part of it was from the dryland wheat farmer. But a lot of it was just from everything building up on that. We were offered some land to collect a debt one time. And my brother and I went out and looked at it and decided it was too far out of town and the town wasn't building that way. And so we said no, we couldn't use that for payment for the debt. That land was at 395 and 10th Avenue in Kennewick which now has got a whole bunch of businesses and PUD and that there, so--
Bauman: Probably a pretty valuable piece of property.
Silliman: Yeah. And you know everything built west to begin with. The city was able to--when Columbia Center came in--was able to slip in there and take a road, make it city property and get that in the city of Kennewick. But now it's building to the south in the downtown area. I've seen it go up and down and up and down. At one time I thought it was going to be just not livable down there. But it's changed again now. New storefronts, the businesses are filling the downtown area. When we came home in '54, my wife was not from here. So I took her around the Tri-Cities. And we start grading the areas. We graded Pasco as the best shopping area in the Tri-Cities. 4th and Lewis just had all sorts of stores around it. Good shoe stores and good clothing stores and that. Richland was nice and clean up there too. Not as many stores though. We rated Pasco first, Richland second, and Kennewick a very--downtown Kennewick a very poor third. We had J.C. Penney and that was about it. And that has changed. I would rate now Kennewick maybe as the top of the older areas there.
Bauman: The downtown?
Silliman: Yeah.
Bauman: What would you like for someone who maybe decades from now might be interested in watching your interview or something and learning more about Kennewick or about the Tri-Cities or that sort of thing, what do you think is most important for them to understand about the town of Kennewick that you grew up in the 1930s and 1940s?
Silliman: Well, it went from a strictly farm community. Everybody was either involved in farming somehow or dealing with farmers and that. And were the orchards were have been torn out. Now there's houses where the biggest grape vineyard, Concord grape vineyard was in the world. It's now buildings there. Those grapes are gone. So it's just entirely changed. The Tri-Cities is become a metropolitan type area there. And what are they, fourth or fifth in the state as far as there? You got Tacoma, Seattle, Tacoma, Spokane, and then maybe the Tri-Cities? Good place to live.
Bauman: [LAUGHTER] Yeah. Well, do you have any other things that you'd like to talk about or think would be important to talk about?
Silliman: Not that I can think of.
Bauman: Great. Well thank you very much--
Silliman: You bet. It's been my pleasure.
Bauman: --for coming in today and doing the interview.
Silliman: I'm sorry I didn't have more on Hanford. Oh, there used be a boat that went up the river to Hanford. I believe it's called the Hanford Flyer. And a number of years ago when the Tri-City Herald was repainting one of their buildings and striped the paint off, I noticed on the building, on the east side of the building, there which--and this building is just south of their main building. It had a sign up there for the Hanford Flyer.
Bauman: It was still on the building?
Silliman: Yeah. But they covered it of course when they repainted.
Bauman: Do you have any idea what years the Hanford Flyer was in operation?
Silliman: No, I do not. I meant to ask Tom Moak about that, if he had some information.
Bauman: And so what did it take up?
Silliman: I believe it took mail. And it would take passengers and freight up.
Bauman: That's a great story, and that it was still on the building after all those years.
Silliman: Yeah. There used be a couple horse troughs there in downtown Kennewick too, but they're all gone too. [LAUGHTER]
Bauman: Great. All right. Well Mr. Silliman, thanks very much.
Silliman: Thanks for having me, Bob.
Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history interview with Michael Lawrence on February 1st, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Mike about his experiences working at the Hanford Site. And for the record, can you state and spell your full name for us?
Michael Lawrence: Michael J. Lawrence. L-A-W-R-E-N-C-E.
Franklin: Great. Thank you. So, how did you come to the Hanford Site?
Lawrence: I went—I grew up in Washington, DC. I was born and raised in Washington, DC, and I went to the University of Maryland and lived at home when I did so. And I was a physics major. Between my junior and senior year of college, I was fortunate enough to get one of five internships at the Atomic Energy Commission. That internship had me working in a division of the AEC, or Atomic Energy Commission, called the production division, which was responsible for, among other sites, the Hanford Site, because of its production of plutonium. During that summer, I actually shared an office with an individual who was responsible for the operations and missions of the N Reactor which was located here. So I had an opportunity to learn a little bit about Hanford at that particular point in time. When I graduated from Maryland with my degree in physics the next year, I had already been offered and had accepted a full-time job with the Atomic Energy Commission when I went back to the production division again to work. I was working on isotopes programs and other things when I was called into the director’s office one day. It just so happened that several years previously, in 1969 I believe, President Nixon had signed the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, and one of the provisions in NEPA called for something which, at that point in time, was not known at all. Something called an environmental impact statement. You had to do environmental impact statements for any major federal projects, and our division was responsible for two projects that were going to occur in the early ‘70s here. One was the design and building of the quite a bit. And also had a sense of what it was going to be involved dealing with the public on important and issues that were of concern to the public, like the Z-9 crib and plutonium production. Because one of our hearings for those environmental impact statements was held down in Portland. And I can recall going down there, and there were demonstrators in radiation contamination clothing protesting and all the rest. And you got a chance to see just how the public felt about it. But that was my first instance of dealing with Hanford. Then later in the mid-‘70s—again, I’m still back in Washington, DC; AEC had become the Department of Energy—and I was responsible for a program to manage and store commercial spent nuclear fuel. And that program, the contractor and site that was helping us out was the Savannah River site in South Carolina. But because of the heavy burden they had, I decided it would be best if we changed the management of that program, or the contractor working on the program from Savannah River to the Hanford Site and to the Pacific Northwest National Lab—at that time was Pacific Northwest Lab; it wasn’t a national lab, but PNL. And so I started coming out again and working with the people here. So I had a pretty good understanding of the community and what was out here, and I liked it. But in the early 1980s, in 1982 to be exact, after several years of very, very intense negotiation back in the halls of Congress, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act was passed by Congress which set up a process and legal requirements for identifying, selecting, licensing, building, operating, and funding a geologic repository for commercial nuclear waste from commercial reactors and defense waste from the production of plutonium, primarily either at Hanford or at the Savannah River plant. I was one of several people called down from where I was working in Germantown, Maryland, down to Washington, DC to work on the direct implementation of that act. Obviously, that was a very—it was controversial, it was huge, and the new Secretary of Energy at that time—his name was Donald Hodel, who had formerly been the administrator of Bonneville out here in the Pacific Northwest—he was very familiar with the issues involved. And I got an opportunity to meet and work with him rather closely. And after several years of doing that, he asked me to come out here to be the manager of the Richland Operations Office.
Franklin: Wow. Thank you. That’s really fascinating, with all of your lengths between DC and to here. Did you—I want to ask—you mentioned a hearing in Portland where there were demonstrators. And that—I think it fits pretty well into what we hear a lot about how the west side and the east side of the state think about Hanford. Did you find a pretty supportive public here in Tri-Cities when you would come and hold meetings here in the area about, like, for example the Z-9 crib or other projects? Did you find a pretty supportive public?
Lawrence: I wouldn’t use the term supportive, I would use the term very informed and knowledgeable. They understood, to a greater degree, what the risks, what the concerns were, what the precautions were. Not universally, obviously. There were—and I have a good example of what a protestor would be. But basically, they seemed to be more informed, and certainly they were more knowledgeable of the situation. So the further away you went, the less direct knowledge people had of the situation. And so consequently—and it’s understandable, you know, they really didn’t have the same—they didn’t know people who worked at the Site. They didn’t—couldn’t appreciate the values that they had, their sensitivities. So that would be more the way I would describe it.
Franklin: Okay.
Lawrence: What was interesting, and I just had alluded to, was after coming out here—this was in 1984; I came—arrived in July of 1984. And at the beginning of that year was when the PUREX Plant, which processed the fuel coming out of N Reactor and reprocessed it to recover the plutonium, had just gone back into operation after a number of years of being mothballed. This was all part of President Reagan’s buildup of our military strength and weapons complex to more or less challenge the Russians or the Soviet Union in their ability to do so. And so we were gearing back up, really, the plutonium production mission at the Hanford Site. It was obviously very controversial here in the Northwest. And it was just starting up, and there had actually been a leak from the PUREX Plant right after it started up. And what I found when I arrived here in July was that even though the people on the Site—the contractor and the officials here—were saying, no, this is what it was and this is what the effects were. There was very little credibility. People would not believe them. And there was a strong opposition to what they were doing. That was a challenging situation to walk into where you really don’t have any credibility. But the first week I was in town, first week as manager, down in my office in the Federal Building, which is up in the northeast corner of the Federal Building, seventh floor, looking out over John Dam Plaza and the park, and I looked out on the street, and there’s a person with a big sign and billboard saying, Mike Lawrence, carpetbagger, go home. And he’s just sitting on the park bench in front of the building. And I—you know, I’ve just arrived in town, and I’m looking at him. His name was Larry Caldwell. He was known to everybody in town; he liked to protest. And I’m looking down at him and I—I sort of like to engage. I don’t like to ignore things. So I said, you know, I think I’ll go out and talk to him. Well, that caused quite a stir. But I walked down and walked across the street, walked up to the park bench, introduced myself, sat down and we started talking. I wanted to find out, well, since you don’t know me, why do you call me a carpetbagger, why do you want me to go home? Let’s talk. And it was funny because in the midst of discussing this with him, I happened to glance back over. And if you’re familiar with the Federal Building, it’s just full of windows. Every window was filled with faces looking out. [LAUGHTER] They said, this is our new manager and he’s out there. Security was very concerned. But you know? It worked out fine. Larry told me what his problems were. He didn’t like the mission. I told him, I said, I understood that. I had a job to do; Congress had appropriated the money, and I’d been given a job to do, and I was going to do it the best I could. But I was going to do it trying to do it in keeping the public informed of what we were doing and being as upfront and—now the term is transparent. We didn’t use that term back then—but as transparent I could be in handling it. So that was my first direct encounter with a protestor, if you will. But I thought it turned out pretty well. But that gets to a broader topic that I’d like to address, and that is, as I said, the Department and its contractors, I found they didn’t have credibility. And I’m not saying it was anyone’s fault, but it’s my opinion that it’s very easy for organizations—Department of Energy, Richland, Hanford—to lose credibility. And the only way you regain that credibility is through individuals, by really engaging with people so they get a sense of who you are or who the people are doing the work. And so we tried from the very beginning back in 1984 to go out and to meet with the public, to engage the public, to be as open as we could to explain our perspective and what we were doing. Obviously, we didn’t expect everyone to agree with us; some people were just diametrically opposed to it. But you’d like them to at least sense that the people doing the work shared some of their values, shared their concerns, in doing their work. The best example I have of that is—I believe it was in 1985. Again, Hanford, because of our role going back into the nuclear weapons complex had been quite controversial. I received a call from the pastor of the Catholic church down in Kennewick, St. Joseph’s. And he said, Mike, I don’t know if you’re aware of it, but the three bishops—Catholic bishops—in Washington State are having prepared a letter—very, very critical of Hanford, its operations, and the people who work there. And he said, I just think that it’s being, I guess—a focal point was being headed up by a person in Yakima where the bishop was a Bishop William Skylstad. And I happened to have met and knew Bishop Skylstad from my own personal dealings with the church. And so I thanked the priest in Kennewick, and I called up Bishop Skylstad, and I said, I’d really like to come—I understand you’re having some work done on behalf of yourself and the other two bishops, and I’d like to really come and talk to you about it. And so I actually took the president of Rockwell Hanford, who operated PUREX, his name was Paul Lorenzini—very, very intelligent, smart guy—with me. And we went to meet with Bishop Skylstad and he had the individual who was writing this who happened also to be a member of the Hanford Education Action League in Spokane. And, you know, I read what they had prepared. It was talking about the Department of Energy is lying about this, and they’re poisoning, and they’re making these intentional releases. And in discussing that, after a while, Bishop Skylstad said to me, he said, Mike, Mike, calm down. He says, you’re taking this personally. And I looked at him and I said, Bishop, of course I’m taking it personally. When you say the Department of Energy is lying, who is that? Who is it that you’re saying is lying? And it was amazing, because he just stopped; all of a sudden, it dawned on him. He said, oh my goodness, I never thought of it that way. But you had to put a face in front of the organization. And that helped a lot. Now, the letter still came out and it was still very critical. But it wasn’t as accusatory as perhaps it was. It says, we’re opposed to the mission. That’s fine; that I understand. But when you get into the motives and the ill will of the people, that’s where it goes a little too far.
Franklin: Mm. Right. The difference between unintentional or passive action and then direct action.
Lawrence: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Franklin: I wonder if you could talk about what it was like in the early ‘70s to actually—to physically get to Hanford from Washington, DC. Was it still very—was travel still kind of tough to get to Hanford? Or was there easy air travel or car travel? Or did you find it to be a little still off the beaten path?
Lawrence: Well, it was a lengthy trip. Coming from Washington, DC, I would fly from Washington, DC to Chicago, Chicago to Seattle, then Seattle to Pasco. And usually that was like going United, and then I think there was—it was called Airwest—Hughes Airwest, owned by Howard Hughes. Then it did get significantly easier later on when Northwest Airlines had a direct flight from Dulles Airport in DC to Seattle, and then you’d fly back over here. I always used to enjoy those trips. I mean, air travel was a lot different then than it was now in that it wasn’t as—a chore and the like. It was a little bit more creature comforts in traveling as well.
Franklin: When you mentioned NEPA and the need for the EIS, Environmental Impact Statement, and digging at Z-9 and I’m sure probably a couple other facilities—did that also trigger any kind of cultural resources work, archaeological digs? Were there ever any—was there any cultural resources work or things found?
Lawrence: In the ‘70s, no. I mean, that work was right in the middle of the 200 Area. Which is—it still today is the most concentrated area. I believe, if I recall correctly, the EISs probably said—would address that. But not—I mean, EISs then were maybe 100 pages long. Now they’re—[LAUGHTER]—multiple volumes and many thousands of pages long. But I wasn’t aware of any. I think the first real instance of dealing with Native Americans and their concerns was with a project we had on the center of the Site called the Basalt Waste Isolation Project, or BWIP, which was on Gable--
Franklin: I was going to ask you about that next.
Lawrence: --which was on Gable Mountain. But I’ll let you ask about it.
Franklin: Well, no, I was going to ask if you—you talked about the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and finding a geological repository. And I was just going to ask, I assume that’s BWIP, then, that is the—
Lawrence: Yeah, and, actually there’s a slight difference there. But the whole idea of the geologic repository, especially since I had been responsible for that program before coming here, led people to suspect or conclude that it was a foregone conclusion that Hanford was going to be named the geologic repository for the United States. And actually, when I came here, that Nuclear Waste Policy Act had set out a process for narrowing down until you had three sites that you would thoroughly characterize. We had gone from nine sites to five, and when I came out here, there were five sites under consideration. Once I was here, it was narrowed down to the three finalists, if you will: Hanford for basalt, Nevada for tuffs—that’s the Yucca Mountain Site—and in Texas there was a salt formation called Deaf Smith County. And so that was being looked at. Now, BWIP itself was not the geologic repository site. It was a test facility built into Gable Mountain—and Gable Mountain, of course, rises up and the geologic repository was going to go down several thousand feet. But it allowed the scientists to put heaters into basalt rock to see how the rock responded to it—expansion, contraction, did it attract water, was it pushed away, and the like. It was actually a quite successful project. We learned quite a bit about how basalt rock would interact. However—getting back to the cultural resources—during that period, we also found out that the Native Americans—the Yakamas, I believe—used to use Gable Mountain for vision-quest-type activities and places to send people on a spiritual adventure. This didn’t happen right away, but we finally worked out—because I saw no reason why we couldn’t—with a day’s notice, we let the Yakamas—we said, we will let you come on and go up to the site, and do whatever ceremonies, to do whatever you want to do. We just need to know about it. Obviously there is physical security and there’s safety we had to provide for them. But I think we were able to work out and arrangement with the Yakamas where they would have access. Perhaps not as freely as they would like, but it did allow some compromise to be worked out so they could still perform some of their religious ceremonies there.
Franklin: Sure. So you came—you arrived in July 1984, you said. And that was kind of—that was under this Reagan era mandate of basically restarting production.
Lawrence: Right.
Franklin: Because it had just been N Reactor through most of the ‘70s, correct, and into the early ‘80s. So I’m wondering if you can just elaborate more on that mission and some of the activities needed and the push back—if there was any push back—and the whole thing.
Lawrence: Well, there was opposition, particularly on the west side and in Portland to restarting plutonium production facilities. While N Reactor had continued to operate, the fuel had not been processed and plutonium had not been recovered in many instances until PUREX started back up. So that was the process of really then getting back into plutonium production. That’s what was leading to opposition to what we were doing. We did the best we could to try to go around and to explain at least what we were doing, how we were doing it, how we would interact. I can recall going with my wife to a meeting up in Spokane. I just went up on a weekday night and the Hanford Education Action League had asked me to come up and talk to them. It was clear. It was clear then, that there was very, very strong opposition to what we were doing. A person I remember asked me the question, did I realize that I was acting just like Hitler? [LAUGHTER] I said, you know, I don’t think of it that way. I think about what I do very seriously, and I’m doing something that’s approved by and funded by the government of the United States of America, from the President and the Congress. I have to do it safely, and I have to do it in accordance with the law, but that’s what needs to be done. But, again, it was another effort to try to get out and at least be present, answer the questions; you may not make them happy, but at least you know you’re there trying to interact.
Franklin: And so how many facilities ended up being restarted or brought online from when you got here to when things were shut down? Maybe you could kind of walk me through that process.
Lawrence: Well, as I indicated, N Reactor had continued to operate, because N Reactor, unlike the other production reactors that were at Savannah River, was a dual purpose reactor. It not only produced plutonium in the fuel elements, but the water which passed through the reactors for cooling it was then sent over to a facility operated by the Washington Public Power Supply System to turn turbines and to produce electricity, on the order of a gigawatt of electricity a year. And because of that, we needed to—the cycle of the N Reactor was different than other production reactors: it was on a shorter cycle. That was for production reasons, the type of plutonium we were producing. So N Reactor went from producing what was fuel grade—it was called fuel grade plutonium—for reactor development programs like the Fast Flux Test Facility and ultimately would have been a breeder reactor. It went to making weapons grade, which meant much shorter irradiation periods. Also, prior to their restarting of PUREX, the fuel was just stored. With the starting of PUREX, you would then let the fuel cool in the basin at N Reactor then ship it in casks on rail cars to the center of the site at PUREX where it would be dissolved in PUREX. The waste would be sent to waste tanks, the plutonium concentrate in a liquid form would be sent to the Plutonium Finishing Plant over in the 200-West area, where it would then be converted into a plutonium metal button about the size of a tuna fish can. And that would be then sent to Colorado—Rocky Flats Plant—where it would actually be fashioned into the material used in a nuclear weapon. So it was the facilities associated with reprocessing at PUREX, handling waste from PUREX, and the facilities associated with the Plutonium Finishing Plant for converting the plutonium to metal that were the primary set of facilities that had to restart.
Franklin: And so then N Reactor was the only reactor that was operated during that time?
Lawrence: It was the only production reactor on the Hanford Site at that time. And the only reactor that was producing water that was—steam—that was then used to produce electricity. There was another very important reactor at Hanford that was operating then. It was called the Fast Flux Test Facility, which had just started operation a year or so before I got here. And that was to be a precursor of a commercial breeder reactor. The developmental—the reactor, the full-scale reactor that was going to demonstrate the breeder process was going to be built in Oak Ridge, Tennessee at the Clinch River Breeder Reactor. But they built the FFTF prior to that in order to get a feeling for how the sodium cooling worked, the fuel worked, the interactions. It was a prototype, if you will, to see just how that system was going to work. And quite frankly, the FFTF was a tremendously successful test reactor and developmental reactor for liquid sodium. It operated flawlessly, really. Unfortunately, though, it shut down because the breeder program was canceled and there really wasn’t a need for it. People tried diligently to find a mission, to find a need for it. But it was a—it just wasn’t in the cards, and it eventually—it took until the late 1990s for it to be permanently shut down. But that was the other reactor that was operating when I came out here.
Franklin: Okay. Yeah, I’ve interviewed several other people that worked at FFTF, and they’ve all—
Lawrence: Oh, and they’re very enthusiastic about the FFTF. And I can understand it. It was a great reactor.
Franklin: Right, and a reactor with kind of a different mission than any of Hanford’s other reactors.
Lawrence: Yes, yeah.
Franklin: Save maybe the N Reactor which had a dual—
Lawrence: No, it was very different. It didn’t have that plutonium production role.
Franklin: How long did the production go at Hanford—that ‘80s Reagan era production?
Lawrence: Well, in 1986, the reactor in Chernobyl blew up—April of 1986. That was in Ukraine, at Chernobyl. Of course, there was very little information coming out after the news of that explosion occurred. You couldn’t get in; the Soviets weren’t saying anything about it. But they couldn’t deny it, because you could detect the radiation coming. But people knew, generally, what type of reactor the Russians were operating there. It was graphite-moderated, water-cooled, and very quickly they came upon the fact that, wait a minute, there’s a graphite-moderated, water-cooled reactor operating in the US out of Hanford that’s called the N Reactor. So consequently, I believe it was in the first week of the Chernobyl accident, one afternoon—I guess it was a morning—in the lobby of the Federal Building, it was mayhem. There must have been 50 to 100 people, representatives from all of the television networks, the major newspapers and wire services—all there wanting to do a story on N Reactor, the Chernobyl of the United States. So I got on the phone to Washington, DC and I said, look, we’ve got a problem here. Because we had been told, do not talk to the press about this. This is one of the few times when I was manager here that we were ever given instructions from Washington about how to interact and how to manage the sites. The managers had much greater authority then than they do now. And there was only one manager here at that point in time, as opposed to three that they have now. So we had a lot of leeway, but we’d been told, don’t talk about it because it’s very sensitive; it’s international news and we’re concerned about it. So when I called and said we have this mob scene in the lobby all wanting to talk about and go see the N Reactor, they said, don’t talk to them. Don’t do anything. I got back on the phone and I said, look, there’s stories that are going to be coming out of here. They can either be based on fact or they can be based upon fiction. If they’re based upon fiction, it’s not going to be pretty. And it’s going to be inaccurate. And I said, look, I will not speculate at all on what happened at Chernobyl. I don’t know. I care, but I’m not going to say a thing about that. I just want to explain how N Reactor works and what its safety features are, so that they can see for themselves. So reluctantly but finally, they relented and said, okay, you can show them. Go take them out. So we got a big bus. We put everybody on the bus—it was multiple buses. And we went out to N Reactor. And as you know, that’s about an hour’s drive out. But they were chomping at the bit. And I can remember the look on their faces when they saw—I think they were expecting a little Quonset huts with steam rising out of vents and out of chimneys and all the rest. And when they see this massive building—and in fact we were able to open one of the doors, which was three feet thick of concrete and steel. They looked at that and they were kind of amazed. And I explained to them that although commercial reactors have a system called containment, which is a big steel dome, production reactors don’t. It’s called confinement. It’s different. So it leads to speculation. Well, you know, containment’s going to keep it in; confinement’s not going to do it. And I was pointing out how we had ways of safely venting steam and pressure so it wouldn’t build up, so it couldn’t explode. And we went through all the safety systems, showed them in the inside, the face of the reactor. And consequently, the next several days in USA Today—I mean, it was front page stuff. But at least it was based upon, well, you know, here are all these safety features. It still raised a lot of issues and concerns because nobody knew what caused Chernobyl, so how could we say it couldn’t happen here? We could only say, here are all the safety systems we have to prevent something like that from happening here. Now, ultimately, we found out over time, that what happened at Chernobyl was a physical characteristic called a positive void coefficient. But basically something that didn’t exist in the physics out at N Reactor. But the damage was done. We did need to do some safety upgrades at N Reactor, which we did. But ultimately, in 1988 I believe it was, the Secretary of Energy, John Harrington, in testifying before Congress announced that the US had now produced so much plutonium that we were in fact, quote, awash in plutonium and didn’t need to produce any more. And quite frankly, with that being the case, we no longer had a justification for operating N Reactor. And ultimately it was shut down. To this day, I applaud the hard work and dedication of all the people out at N Reactor. They worked on the safety upgrades and the operation of that reactor, they worked extremely hard and were very, very proud of the operation of that reactor. I think we all owe a debt of gratitude to those people. They did a great job.
Franklin: There’s several things that strike me as really interesting that I want to return to in what you just said about Chernobyl and N. One was one of the last things, that John Harrington, awash with plutonium; the US had produced enough. Did you agree with that statement then? That we were—because that would be, I mean, your boss or boss’s boss.
Lawrence: Quite frankly, I didn’t know what the total plutonium numbers were for the country. I didn’t know what the total demand was. I do know that plutonium has a very long half-life and sooner or later, you’ve got to have more than you need. We had thousands and thousands of nuclear warheads then. So, I mean, I didn’t know for sure, but I knew at some point we were going to reach it, and quite frankly felt we probably had overshot. So I did not disagree with Secretary Harrington on that.
Franklin: Okay, because I mean, we had passed mutually assured destruction quite a long—
Lawrence: Yeah, yeah.
Franklin: And I guess, we know a lot more now about our stockpile then than we did then. But it’s a very interesting way to phrase that. We’re awash in—
Lawrence: Yeah, I mean, it conjures up an image that you really don’t want to have.
Franklin: Yeah. I wanted to return to the Chernobyl thing. It strikes me as interesting that this reaction of don’t talk to the press, which is—you can understand in some way, because you don’t want misinformation. But isn’t that the same kind of criticism that we would level at the Soviets? That they were clamming up and not saying anything, and we wished that they were saying something? So this reaction to not say anything on our side is—could have been seen as—you know—being too controlling maybe perhaps?
Lawrence: Well, I mean, it went against my instincts, but it’s understandable. The Soviets were the one who had the accident. Now, if we had had an accident and they said, don’t talk to them, I would have been incensed. But basically, we were just going along and people want to come in and try to write a story and say, you’re just like Chernobyl. Well, in a sense, we didn’t know what Chernobyl was, how could we have definitely refuted that? So I can understand their perspective, because, quite frankly, some people at other sites had been quoted by the press as saying, well, we think this is what happened at Chernobyl, or that happened at Chernobyl. And it was just—it was getting out of hand. So I understood that. That was—my point was, I’m not going to talk at all about Chernobyl, because I don’t know. I do know N Reactor. I do know how it works, and I do know its safety features; that’s all I’m going to talk about. And I was awfully glad they let me do it.
Franklin: That’s good, yeah. I’m wondering if you could talk about—being in charge of the Site here, I’m wondering if you could talk about the effect of Chernobyl on employee morale at Hanford. Did you notice a particular change—what changed as a result of—
Lawrence: I really don’t think I saw any change in the behavior of the people here. They were going about their work. They knew the systems and the procedures and the processes they worked by, the protections that they were given. I’ll tell you candidly one thing that always bothered me then and it bothers me today, is that sometimes people, they get off work and they act somewhat cavalier or bravado about the work they do. Whether it’s to impress somebody or what, I don’t know. But they say, oh yeah, we deal with this. You know, handling it not as seriously as it needs to be. I know on the job, they do and they have to. But then like a macho reaction at the Gaslight Tavern or something like that talking about what they’re doing. That bothers me because it leaves a wrong impression with the public. And it’s certainly not the way we act onsite.
Franklin: I guess I’d like to maybe rephrase that question. Did you see like maybe a level of—or rise of kind of the fatigue of workers, maybe thinking that anti-nuclear folks or that there was a new public perception that this was really unsafe or that there was really an imminent danger at Hanford? Do you think that weighed on—did that weigh on you, or did that weigh on anybody else?
Lawrence: Well, I think there was a sense on their part that there was an overreaction, that people were, in a way, paranoid and exaggerating the risk. They knew the risk. The people who work here know the risk. But they also know the precautions, so they can balance it out. And consequently, they felt like there was an overreaction. But even before Chernobyl occurred, there was an event that put the Site under somewhat of a microscope and an intense scrutiny, and that would have been, I believe it was September of 1985. Now, Chernobyl happened in April of ’86; this was September of 1985 on a Sunday, The Spokesman Review newspaper in Spokane came out with a multiday series on what they called the downwinders. Basically, they were interviewing and writing stories about an area across the Columbia River in Eltopia, Mesa, where farmers had experienced or felt they had experienced undue health effects—a number of health effects and cancers, and even some wildlife—some of their livestock being born with—there was reports of double heads and the like. And this was a major news piece done by a reporter called Karen Dorn Steele, and quite frankly she did an excellent job of researching this and writing it up. And I—you know, this is the first any of us had heard about this. That was on a Sunday-Monday. So, again, trying to engage on this topic, that Thursday, just several days after it had come out, we had a public meeting over at the Edwin Markham Middle School in Eltopia, across the river, with the public to say, we’re here. What are your concerns? This is—let us tell you what we’ve been able to measure and monitor, and you tell us what your concerns are. And I had some people from Battelle who—we put out an annual monitoring report saying, here are the releases, here are the quantities, here’s how they compare with standards and the like. It was somewhat emotional. You know, people are worried about their health and people dying of cancer and the like. But we also knew that we, in our numbers—we weren’t showing anything that should have resulted in something like that. During that meeting, one of the farmers who had been prominently noted in the article, his name was Tom Bailey, he actually got up and said, well, okay, we’re not saying that you’re doing that to us now, or that you’re intentionally doing anything now. But what happened in the past? What happened back in the ‘50s? When he said that, I realized that, although we had monitoring reports going back to the Manhattan Project—here’s what people were measuring and monitoring and releasing—most of those had been classified secret. And they had never been declassified. It wasn’t malicious; it’s just not a simple process to declassify a document. But I knew because of the extent of time involved, they could be. So, I then at that meeting said, you know, if you want to know, we can go back, we can review and declassify those documents and make them available so you can actually see what was being done. That seemed to both surprise but also satisfy. So we came back and started the process of declassifying monitoring reports going back to the mid-1940s. That is a time-consuming and expensive process. But we were doing it. And we were keeping the public—I used to have monthly press availabilities at the Federal Building and we’d talk about that. But we didn’t really have the first batch of documents, which was 19,000 pages deep, ready to release until February. Now, one thing I’d like to make very clear and to get on the record: we’re in the process of doing that—time-consuming and expensive—but in January, one month before we completed and released the documents, a Freedom of Information request was filed for those documents by an environmental group. I’m not certain of who it is, so I won’t say who it was. But it was an environmental group, filed a Freedom of Information request. And we said, wait a minute. We are releasing these; it’ll be ready next month—the first batch. The reason I raise that is because subsequently, to this day, I hear from time to time people say, you released those documents—they were forced out of you by the Freedom of Information request. And I say, that is just not true. We had—if you go and check the record, we had committed to doing that a long time before. Again, getting back to credibility—it was easy to make that charge. In fact, I had National Geographic call me about ten years ago checking a story and that specific point. Because they didn’t know if it was right or not and they were able to research it and confirm it. But anyway, we were able to release those documents. But when those documents came out—and this was a mistake on my part—there was a lot of information there, but where was the understanding? Where was the, if you want to call it, education of the public, so they could understand what they were reading? And very quickly, it was found that one of the monitoring reports from 1949 had talked about something called the Green Run, where fuel that had been cooled for shorter than normal, so there were radioactive elements in it, was dissolved and more radioactivity went up, intentionally, through the stack. Some of the background as to why that was done had to be deleted—because it was still classified. When this document—when that report was found and the Green Run was discussed, there was speculation that it was associated with human experimentation: let’s release it and see what happens to the public when it hits them. That was not the case at all. In fact, I knew from reading the documents, they had delayed the Green Run because unfavorable weather conditions that they thought might be harmful to the public. But nonetheless, since certain portions had to be deleted because of classification, we couldn’t really explain it to people. And that created quite an uproar. It’s normal and naturally you would expect people to think you’re trying to intentionally harm the public or experiment on the public. Ultimately, what we decided to do was that, even though we could not tell the public the intent of the Green Run, congressmen and senators from Washington and Oregon, by purpose of their position, have clearance and can be told. So I went back to Washington, DC with a person here from the lab and in a classified conference room in the rotunda of the US Capitol, we had the entire delegations from Washington and Oregon there, and we were able to explain to them the classified reason why the experiment was done and why it was still classified today. Tom Foley, who was later to become the Speaker of the House, from Spokane, more or less led the group. He appreciated it, but he pushed back. He says, I’ve got to have more to tell the public than that. I have to be able to tell them whether we know, but we can’t tell you. You’ve got to give me a little bit to tell them as to why it’s so classified. So I was able to get on the phone, again, back to the department, talk to them about it. And ultimately we were able to explain that the reason it was done was to allow the US government to improve their methods for determining and detecting what the Soviet Union was doing with their production program. Ultimately, it became known, if you measure the iodine and the cesium, you could cut back and see what they’re producing. And the reason it was still classified was that we were still, back in 1986, using that technique for nuclear non-proliferation detection around the world. So it’s since been declassified, but that was the reason. I felt that was a good use of our government and our representatives to represent the people and be able to explain to the people what was going on. But ultimately that whole—all those documents led us to create something called the Northwest Citizens Forum for Defense Waste, which was 25 individuals picked from a broad cross-section: academia, industry, church leaders—to be given the information and to be briefed on the information and ask and have answers provided for any questions they have. So they could act as the public’s representatives on what was being done. And that ultimately turned into all of the citizens’ groups that are formed at the DOE sites now. Where you have—here it’s called the HAB, the Hanford Advisory Board. But it was the first ever citizens’ group to oversee and look at what was going on at the DOE sites.
Franklin: Great. Thank you for that. That’s really illuminating. Wasn’t it still a calculated risk, though? Sorry, the Green Run, the actual action itself. Certainly there’s still, I think, in the mind of a lot of people—even though it may have been check the release to see how much the Soviets were releasing, there still is a real calculated risk, though. Or do you think that there’s still a calculated risk there—that there could have been some environmental or human population damage resulting from a higher-than-average—or kind of breaking protocol that was set to release that much contaminate?
Lawrence: Well, based on what I was able to look at and the rationale and how it was done, they were doing it at levels such that it would be a fraction of what the public was allowed to be exposed to. Even with that higher amount. It would just be a fraction. And that’s why when weather conditions weren’t right, and they felt it would rise above that, they didn’t do it. There are always risks. And were the standards that they were a fraction of, were they right, were they wrong, were they conservative, were they not strong enough? I mean, hindsight, you can go back and ask all those questions. But based upon the knowledge that they had at the time, they were being conservative. That also happened to be at the time when we were doing atmospheric testing at the Nevada Test Site. And you’re setting off nuclear bombs that people are going out and watching, you know, maybe 20 miles away. I’m not saying that’s right, and we know now it was wrong. But it was a fraction of the exposure that might have existed there.
Franklin: Right. I get—yes. That’s very true and that’s a good point. I guess it just—the only thing that still strikes, at least in my mind, as a difference is that they’re informing the public about the nuclear bombs so people can go and watch them. Whereas the Green Run was kind of this—I think that maybe—
Lawrence: Yeah, it was secret. No.
Franklin: It came out after the fact. And it was like, what else could these guys be hiding? Because, like you said, there was already that level of mistrust there.
Lawrence: Yeah.
Franklin: It just seems like that event can never really shake that level of mistrust in some ways with some people.
Lawrence: In hindsight, that’s true, but it was a very different time. A very different time.
Franklin: Of course. That’s just an interesting legacy. So, thank you for covering Chernobyl so much. I just have one more question. What role did Hanford play in assisting the Soviets—Hanford and Battelle play in assisting the Soviets with Chernobyl? Wasn’t there a team—
Lawrence: None at the time.
Franklin: --that went over?
Lawrence: None at the time. The Soviets didn’t ask for any. Ultimately, and actually when I came back to the Tri-Cities in 1999 and eventually started working for the Pacific Northwest National Lab, under my responsibility was the team we had at Chernobyl helping to build the new sarcophagus, the confinement structure, that now has been completed and rolled over the destroyed reactor. And I’ve been to Chernobyl a number of times and visited on that project. So we were involved in that. But I don’t recall us being asked to provide any assistance or having provided any assistance at that point in time.
Franklin: I was wondering—I’d like to—Chernobyl made me think of another incident, maybe hop back in time real quick and get your perceptions on that. You weren’t here, but I know you were still working in the nuclear industry, and I’m wondering maybe if you’re going to guess what I’m going to ask about, but I’m wondering, in the late ‘70s, the Three Mile Island scare. I’m wondering if you—because you were not here at the time of Three Mile Island, right, you would have been back east. But I’m wondering if you could talk about the legacy of that incident and how that affected people’s perceptions of nuclear—
Lawrence: Oh, it affected everybody’s perceptions of nuclear because—everyone in the nuclear industry had gotten a little sloppy, implying an accident cannot happen, it will not happen. You know, we’ve got all these precautions; the risk is so small, they’re non-existent. Well, nothing is non-existent. Everything is a risk, and if enough things go wrong, yes, you can have a problem. And they certainly had it there. Much more serious than they ever expected it to be. But in hindsight, the fact of the matter is, the systems all worked to contain it. There were never any releases harmful to the public. There was never a single fatality or anything associated with the Three Mile Island accident. I can remember exactly where I was when I heard about it. I was getting ready to go take a run at lunchtime in the AEC—or it would have been a DOE at that time—building. And someone said, hey, did you hear they had some reactor incident going on up in Pennsylvania? You know, it started then and several days later I was getting calls from good friends who we were godparents of their child who lived in Hershey saying, should we evacuate? And I said, follow what the governor says. I really don’t have any firsthand knowledge, but it really did shake people’s fears, because it led people to say, you said it couldn’t happen and it did. And that’s always a problem.
Franklin: That’s such a tough issue of framing, though, right? Because you can either say, well, it could happen but we have really good safeguards so it probably won’t, which leaves open the door in people’s minds to something happening. Or you can say, well, it won’t, we’ve got this under control and it won’t happen. How do you frame—framing disaster seems to be a very tricky subject. Or framing the possibility of disaster.
Lawrence: Yeah. In part, because you can say, just looking at risk and probability, you can say you’re more likely to be hit by lightning than to die from this. And you’re willing to accept one but not the other. It’s what people are associated with. And if they think, I don’t have to deal with that, I don’t even want to deal with that minimal risk. I just don’t want to do it. That’s understandable; it’s part of human nature.
Franklin: It kind of comes to, we see this a lot in current day in dealing with—well, won’t go into that. But there seems to be a—there’s these fact-based arguments but they can’t always counter the emotion-based arguments. And a lot of the response to nuclear seems, in some cases to be emotionally-based and not fact—and immune, almost inoculated against the factual side of it. Which seems to bother many who have a lot of intimate knowledge, a lot of people who worked at Hanford who know the risks can’t ever seem to communicate that to the critics. I wonder if you could expand on that at all, being someone who would have been trying to communicate that to critics of Hanford. And how you’ve dealt with that fact-versus-emotion in your career.
Lawrence: Well you see it—you still see it today. Fukushima is an excellent example of that. Assist you with the nuclear accident first. That tidal wave hits, completely washes over, and the plant loses all power. Now, most importantly that was an avoidable accident. Even as hugely severe as a tsunami was, if they just had have had the secondary generators higher and separated more from the plant, they wouldn’t have lost power, and the reactors would have been fine. In this country, we have that requirement. They didn’t have it there. So that reactor accident, which was catastrophic, it was devastating, could have been prevented if rules that we have here had have been used there. But the other thing—and this is more to the point you made—18,000 people were killed by the tsunami, by the flood, by all of the devastation caused by the tsunami. None were caused by the nuclear accident. And yet all of the attention is on the nuclear accident. And it’s not like, oh, but there’ll be 18,000 in the future—there won’t. You know, looking at the numbers, it’s hard to say if there’ll be any. And people are evacuated now, when perhaps they don’t even need to be, but it’s out of the fear of whatever’s left there. And consequently, because of that, it’s causing stress that have led to heart attacks and have led to fatalities. Are they caused by the nuke—they’re not caused by radiation, but they’re caused by fear of radiation or caused by fear of the displacement. So how do you put that in perspective, where as a nuclear accident has gotten all the attention, but a tsunami that killed 18,000 people, it’s sort of like, well, that’s an act of nature? And so, I really don’t know how to balance that. I do know that on NOVA last month, they had a very good show about that. Because nuclear is a carbon-free source of baseload electricity, and if we’re going to deal with climate change, I know I believe and many people believe nuclear has to be part of the solution.
Franklin: Yeah, I would personally agree with you. I wondered—so, moving past Chernobyl then, you mentioned that as kind of a major—you know, it definitely is a major event in regards to people’s perceptions of Hanford. And you mentioned in ’88 this—awash in plutonium. How did it play out after that? What was the drawdown like? What happened in the community when that—when it was realized that Hanford was—the mission was going to change?
Lawrence: Well, you know, there was fear, because Hanford—the Tri-Cities over time, going back to the ‘50s and ‘60s had gone through booms and busts. And whenever Hanford production was up, the community was good; whenever it was down, homes were for sale, property values dropped and all the rest. So there was a feel, that was going to continue. And if N Reactor was shutting down, PUREX was down, it was going to happen to have a devastating effect on the economy again. Of course, what also happened at the same time was the commitment to the cleanup mission and the negotiation in signing the Tri-Party Agreement, which led to the cleanup mission here, which has continued and kept levels and funding levels right up to where they were and actually higher than in the production days. Maybe not employment necessarily, but it’s close. But also the Tri-Cities has significantly diversified from Hanford. Still very much—we get through $3 billion a year from the federal government between the Site and the national lab in this community, and that’s got huge benefits. But we’ve diversified quite a bit. But, getting to the Tri-Party Agreement, that was a direct result of a legal decision in Tennessee in 1985 that said that Department of Energy sites had to comply with national and state environmental rules. Up until that time, it had been assumed that the Atomic Energy Act, that the department operated under absolved us from that, or we did not have to do that. When that ruling came down, ultimately, it led to getting together with federal regulators in the form of the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, and state regulators in the form of the Department of Ecology, to find out, okay, where are we in violation, what do we need to change, and how do we do that? You don’t do it instantaneously. Which, obviously, is clear. And that led to the negotiation and the ultimate signing in May of—May 15th of 1989 of the Tri-Party Agreement. But that has provided a rather steady employment, funding, and—you know, I realize it’s taking longer than people thought, it’s costing more than people thought. And fortunately, it’s not an urgent—it’s not the type of crisis where something has to be done immediately or here’s the catastrophic result. It’s a problem in slow motion that the main thing you want to do is get the solution right the first time. You don’t want to go hot with the Vit Plant and then find out it doesn’t work. Because you’ll never—you won’t get around to it again. So let’s make sure we’ve got it right. It’s been an enduring process, and I’m very pleased and proud of the enduring capabilities of the Tri-Party Agreement.
Franklin: And what was your role in the negotiation and signing of the Tri-Party Agreement?
Lawrence: Well, we—the Richland Operations Office had the responsibility and role of negotiating with EPA Region 10 and the Department of Ecology for what the cleanup agreement would look like and what it would entail. And we kept Washington, DC informed of what we were doing and we’d get feedback from them. But it was our main responsibility to do that. Initially a person by the name of Jerry White and then ultimately Ron Izatt who worked for me as division directors had that responsibility of negotiating. And they would brief me every other day and we would get involved. From time to time, I would have discussions with the head of ecology who was Chris Gregoire, who subsequently became governor of the state, on issues that they would rise to our level. Or with Robie Russell, who was the head of EPA regionally, on issues that would come up. But we eventually worked out, basically, the agreement: this would be done and this was the timeframe for doing it. Then it came time to saying, okay, this is what we’ve got. It was in December of 1978 when we had pretty much wrapped everything up.
Franklin: Sorry—’88?
Lawrence: I’m sorry. ’88, yes, I’m sorry. December of ’88. So I went over to Lacey near Olympia where Ecology is located, to meet with Chris Gregoire and her team, and I had Ron Izatt and a lawyer from our team, to talk about what we were going to do. And at that meeting—it was a Friday afternoon—they said, okay, what we want to do now is we want to take this to a court and have a judge bless it, make it law: this is what has to be done. And we couldn’t go along with that, and the reason was that the lawyer for the federal government is the Department of Justice. And anytime you go to court as a US government agency, the Department of Justice represents you. They do not believe in friendly settlements. They will fight everything. I don’t mean that to be critical; that’s just the approach they take. And I said to her, I said, Chris, if you insist on taking this to court, we, the Department of Energy and I, lose all ability to deal with this, and it goes into the hands of lawyers who get paid to fight it. And you’re going to win. You’ve got the law on your side. But it’s going to be two, three years from now at great expense. I said, why don’t we just sign it as an agreement, shake hands on it, and you wait for us to violate it, and then take us to court. And she—we went back and forth on that issue. EPA, by the way, had stepped back and said, if you two can reach agreement, we’ll go along with anything that you say. Because they knew we had the tough issues. And so finally, you know, she said, no, we need it in court. These were her instructions, or this is where the governor wanted to go. And I said, well, Chris, can we take this to the governor? And, fortunately, through my tenure here, I had wonderful relations, a great respect for Governor Booth Gardner, who was the governor at that time. And she said, sure, we can take it to him. Subsequently, the following Friday I went over by myself with her and we met with Governor Gardner in his office in Olympia in the state capitol. And I went through the message of, you know, I don’t have the authority to sign this in court. If it goes to court, Justice will fight it, you’ll win, but it will be two years from now or whatever. Didn’t sway the governor. You know, it was clear: no, we want this—we want the law behind it and make it in a court of law. I must have said the same thing three times. Always slightly different. Maybe I warmed him, I don’t know what. But finally the governor looked at Chris and said, well, Chris, could you live with it as an agreement until if and when they fail to live up to it and then go to court? And she said, you know, Governor, if you can, I can. And the governor says, okay, that’s what we’ll do. And so it was an act of faith and it worked for a long time before it ended up in court. But we would not have had the Tri-Party Agreement when we did in the manner in which we did without his willingness and her willingness to concede on that point and let us move on with it.
Franklin: And so when the Tri-Party Agreement was established, what did that lay out for the future of Hanford?
Lawrence: Basically, it took the entire Site and all the areas in which we were in non-compliance, whether it was currently operating sites—even though the plant wasn’t operating, there were still facilities that were operating that fell under the state, or old sites which fell under EPA. All of those things, and when they would be cleaned up, the schedule and process for doing it. And that’s what it laid out. It also laid out, like, the ability to modify the agreement as you went forward. Because the simple fact was, we were operating with nowhere near the degree of knowledge and specificity you would need to have hard-and-fast deadlines. And the other thing was, we didn’t know, and we still don’t know today, what the funding will be year to year. Okay, or problems that will come up. But there was a process in there to move with it and to let it happen. And that was, I think, one of the best features of the Tri-Party Agreement. And it required parties to act in good faith. And I’m pleased it did.
Franklin: Excellent. Was there anything in there about any of the history at Hanford or preserving any of the historic activity at Hanford, whether—keeping buildings there or documenting the history in some way, or saving equipment or anything used in the process?
Lawrence: Not really, no. I mean, this was all compliance. This was an enforcement order. But we did make sure that B Reactor was going to be one of the last things to be—actually, originally, they wanted all of the reactors out on the Site by the rivers to be decontaminated as best they could, and then they wanted to dig under the reactors, bring in the big crawlers they use at Cape Canaveral to move missiles, put it under there, lift up the block, and take it to the center of the Site. And I thought, oh, my good—and that was to be done early in the process. And we said, let’s move that ‘til about 25 years from now. Of course, subsequently they’ve learned how to cocoon and maybe that’ll be found to be good enough. But, I mean, that was—we didn’t have the level of specificity or knowledge or information that you need to do a good cleanup then as we do now.
Franklin: I know that the B Reactor Museum Association was founded in the early ‘90s, but were there whispers then when you were signing that agreement or afterwards about saving B Reactor or saving something onsite as kind of a testament to the production at Hanford?
Lawrence: There very well may have been. I just—I wasn’t cognizant of it.
Franklin: Sure. So when did you leave working at the Richland office?
Lawrence: I left in July of 1990.
Franklin: Oh, okay, so you were—and why did you leave? Where did you go after?
Lawrence: Well, in part, I went to work for a company in Colorado that was doing cleanup work. But I was only there less than a year when the state department offered me a diplomatic post in Vienna, Austria. Because that was right after the first Gulf War, when they discovered that the Iraqis had a clandestine nuclear program, and they wanted the International Atomic Energy Agency, who was supposed to monitor things like that, to become stronger and more efficient and effective. And the State Department decided that they wanted a person with technical knowledge and ability but who also had had some international experience, which I had in the ‘70s under a Carter program doing international negotiations. So they called me up and I went to Vienna, then, to do that. I left here, one, because the managers’ authorities had been greatly, greatly reduced.
Franklin: Was that a result of the Tri-Party Agreement, or just from the shift or production to cleanup?
Lawrence: In part, it was due to the Tri-Party Agreement in that as we were negotiating the Tri-Party Agreement—we had the responsibility for doing that here, but kept Washington informed of our activities and getting their agreement as we went along. And right after those meetings that I told you about with Chris Gregoire and Governor Gardner, that was in December. In January of that year, a new Secretary of Energy was coming in. Admiral Watkins had been appointed to be the Secretary of Energy. So he was transitioning in, and there was an acting secretary. Her name was Donna Fitzpatrick, who was interacting with him as this transition occurred. Acting Secretary Fitzpatrick—they all knew what we were doing here. But as it happens, the agreement was formally signed in May 15th, 1989. But three months prior to that—what would that have been, February—is when—you have to give a three-month notice before you do something like that, for public comment and the like. As it turns out, everyone was so pleased with coming to agreement that the announcement of agreement was made in the rotunda of the Capitol in Washington, DC. Governor Gardner was there, I was there, representatives of DC and the Department were there, EPA were there, and it was announced we had reached agreement and it would be signed in three months in May. You know, after the formal comment period and any changes that had to occur. Well, in the normal question-and-answer period that went on, with that announcement, the State said, this is going to be commit the government to be spending $25 billion for the cleanup of Hanford. Now, it just so happened that the very next day was Admiral Watkins’ first day as Secretary of Energy. During that first day, he was to meet with all of the site managers, including myself. That morning, when it appeared in the paper that Washington State says it’s committed to paying $25 billion—whatever that means—the Office of Management and Budget, which, evidently had been left in the dark—I don’t know. I had no responsibility to inform them. They called him up and said, what in the world’s going on over there? What are you doing committing us to $25 billion? We go into the meeting with the new secretary. And he proceeded to just chew me up and chew me down as to, this is the worst thing we’ve ever done, how could we be so bad and stupid, and all this other stuff. And I just sat there, and—you know, you can’t push back, really. You just think—and unfortunately, the former acting secretary, Donna Fitzpatrick was sitting next to him. She knew all about it, but she couldn’t do anything. And it really just set a very bad tone with the secretary. Subsequently, however, as the kudos started coming in about what a good agreement this was and how it showed good cooperation and compliance by the Department, Admiral Watkins was very happy to take the credit for the Tri-Party Agreement. But life was a little uncomfortable out here. And I decided then I was going to be leaving. But I didn’t want to leave in the first year, because I wanted to make sure the Tri-Party Agreement got off to a good start. So, subsequently when I did leave, a lot of it was about the fact that it just wasn’t the same job. And quite frankly, a very important tenet of any management job is never accept responsibility that you don’t have the authority to fulfill. If you don’t have the authority, but have the responsibility, it just doesn’t work. And I didn’t, and I left.
Franklin: Interesting. How did you come back to the area?
Lawrence: That’s an interesting story as well. After I left Vienna in 1985, I was hired by—
Franklin: Sorry, you mean 1995.
Lawrence: ’95, I’m sorry, yeah, I have my years mixed. 1995. I went to work for a company called BNFL, which stands for British Nuclear Fuels, Limited. And they had bought a company in Los Alamos, New Mexico and they asked me to be president of it. I was running the company, and then they subsequently asked me to move back to their Washington, DC headquarters for their US operations as the chief operating officer, which I did. But that was also the same time when BNFL had gotten the contract to design the Vitrification Plant for the Hanford Site. And they had brought in engineers and managers from the UK to head up that project here in the Tri-Cities. So, I’ve gone back to Washington, DC as the chief operating officer of BNFL, Inc., which is the US component. And shortly—not so long after it—I was there less than a year—the manager of the project in Richland came back. And they had signed an agreement of what they were going to do and the government was going along with it. It was basically, for $6.5 billion they would build and operate the plant and process the first so many million gallons of waste, for $6.5 billion. When that manager came back, he indicated—he said, you know—he’s British; I’m not going to do a British accent—but he said, you know, I really—I’m not fitting in well with the community. I just don’t understand those people out there. I don’t fit in well with the community. We need somebody out there who understands things. Well, I love this community. I know this community. They were very, very good to me and my family when we were here. So I raised my hand and said, I know those people. This was our biggest project by far for our company, I’d be willing to go out and head up the project. And so subsequently, I came out to head up the Vit Plant. Within a week of getting here, I had to go and report to the new Office of River Protection, which had responsibility for it, what the status was of our cost estimates. I had only been here a week, so they give me the numbers. And I asked the—are they aware of this? Yeah, they’re aware of this. So I went in and, oh, all hell broke loose. Because the number—it had risen. It was higher than 6.5. And Dick French, who was the head of the project, rightly so, says, I can’t—this is terrible. Your first report—and it’s over budget already. And I knew Dick, and I understood his position. And basically, I said, let me go back and find out what’s going on. I was told you were on board with this. You obviously are not. Let me find out. I subsequently found out that there had been an arbitrary 20% cut in their estimates, thinking they were just going to drive things harder and shave things off and make it cheaper. And I had a—obviously, I had a major problem with this. Because in the beginning, you don’t shave back. You have contingency that’s built in and you work off. It doesn’t work the other way. And so I’d moved back here, we bought a house, I’m running the—and this project is going downhill quick. What was worse was that I tried to tell BNFL, we need to go to the Department and say, this number, $6.5 billion, for the plant and operations of it is not going to work. We need to renegotiate. We need to do something different. And I got nothing but pushback. We would not do this. And I was even—I said, you know, if we don’t do something, we’re going to be fired. And they said, they can’t fire us. They’re not going to fire us. And I said, I’m sorry, I said, I can’t continue to operate like that. So I resigned. Resigned from the project. Didn’t have another job, but I figured, I’ll find something. But I can’t continue with this. And within two months, Secretary Richardson had fired BNFL. Fortunately, a couple months after that, Battelle and Pacific Northwest National Lab hired me to run their nuclear programs. That’s how I came back, and that’s how I spent my first two years back. As managing a dying project and then transitioning to a new job.
Franklin: And how long did you work at PNNL?
Lawrence: Well, I worked from 2000 up until 2008. And during that period, I had responsibility—I was the associate lab director for energy. But in the latter part of that timeframe, I was also deputy lab director for facilities and was responsible for the putting together and funding and getting approved the new—they called it a consolidated lab—facilities that are just north of Horn Rapids Road and two private facilities that are on the campus. And then Battelle asked if I’d be willing to lead a team to manage the national nuclear lab in the United Kingdom. They had put together a team with two other companies to do that. And I said I’d be willing to do that. I had spent time in Europe already. And I went over and subsequently we won the contract in the early 2009. So in 2009 and ’10, I was the director of the national nuclear lab in the UK. And then I retired and came back and retired here in West Richland.
Franklin: Wow, great. Well, thank you so much, Mike. Is there anything that we haven’t covered that you’d like to talk about?
Lawrence: Well, I’d like to get on record that I’ve been very, very fortunate in my life to hold some very interesting positions and to work for some phenomenal people. But the job that I enjoyed the most was as manager of the Richland Operations Office. There was a spirit, a camaraderie, a support, a community spirit that I felt there that I’ve just—as much as I’ve enjoyed my other jobs, nothing quite as good as that. It was really, really enjoyable, and aside from my wife and family, probably there was nothing better that had ever happened to us than to move to this area and be involved in these activities. I’ve really enjoyed it.
Franklin: Great. Well, thank you so much. Thank you for coming in today.
Lawrence: Okay, very good. Thank you.
Franklin: All right, yeah.
Lawrence: Thanks.
Franklin: Yeah. That was a great--
View interview on Youtube.
Victor Vargas: We’re rolling.
Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history interview with Stephanie Janick?
Stephanie Janicek: Janicek.
Franklin: Janicek.
Janicek: Just like it’s spelled.
Franklin: Okay, Janicek. On January 24th, 2017. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Stephanie about her experiences growing up in Richland and working at the Hanford Site. And for the record, can you state and spell your full name for us?
Janicek: Stephanie Anne Dawson Janicek. Stephanie is S-T-E-P-H-A-N-I-E. Anne, A-N-N-E. Dawson, D-A-W-S-O-N. Janicek, J-A-N-I-C-E-K.
Franklin: Great. So tell me how and why you first came to Richland.
Janicek: My family came to Richland in 1949 when I was seven years old and I was in the first grade. My father had been a Montgomery Ward’s manager in the ‘40s and he managed stores all over the state of Washington. And he was so successful that they wanted to promote him to a regional position where he’d be traveling a lot, and he said I don’t want to do that. So he and another Ward’s manager who decided to be a silent partner talked to officials in Richland and decided that they were going to be the first store to open in Uptown Richland. The area had been set aside, there were no buildings; it was just empty lot. And the downtown area was too small and crowded, so they wanted to develop Uptown as sort of an outdoor mall, if you will. Dawson Richards was the first store built and opened. And it opened in June of 1949.
Franklin: What was your father’s name?
Janicek: Grover Dawson.
Franklin: And was Richards the silent partner?
Janicek: Jim Richards was the silent partner. He owned an orange grove and walnut trees in California, and so he was down there. They owned the store 50/50 for many years until my brother bought out Mr. Richards. And he would come up occasionally to see how things were going. But Dad was doing a great job, and everything was going well.
Franklin: So tell me more about Dawson Richards store. What kinds of products did it sell?
Janicek: Dawson Richards started out as a men and boys clothing store. And they had a little logo of a man wearing a suit and a hat and a little boy with a cap and a coat, because boys wore coats in the old days, you know, when they went to church. It said Dad and Lad. That was one of the early symbols of the store. And so it was a really interesting store, because my father wanted to cater to all the men in the area, most of whom worked at Hanford, regardless of their station in life. And so, for instance, he had two lines of suits; the expensive suits were made by Kuppenheimer and the less expensive were made by Timely. He had two lines of shoes. The good shoes—or the more expensive shoes, rather, were Florsheim’s, and he had Winthrop shoes for the everyday guys. And he did the same with sweaters and pants and shirts and neckties and pajamas and socks and everything you can think of. He also had—because there was almost nothing. Everybody had to go to Seattle or Spokane or maybe Yakima—I don’t know what was in Yakima in those days—to get their clothing. And especially the managers at Hanford. So they were tickled to death that they had a store that they could shop at and be very finely-clothed. And he—my dad—specialized in, oh, talls and shorts and stouts. He catered to every single size, and if he didn’t have your size, he would get it for you. And I remember one of the signs in the store said, OshKosh, because my father carried OshKosh B’gosh overalls. He really wanted to have clothing for everyone. Regardless of their station in life. And it became a wonderful gathering place. People would just come in to talk. My father was very outgoing, and we would have gatherings of high school kids, because he also carried letterman jackets, letterman sweaters. He sold the chenille letters and numbers for the cheerleader and song leader outfits. When Christ the King opened their Catholic school for kids, the students wore uniforms, and my father sold, at very deep discounts, the corduroy pants and white shirts and navy sweaters that the boys wore at the school. He really wanted to provide whatever the community needed and it worked out quite well.
Franklin: Okay, great. So there wasn’t—were there any men’s stores or stores of a similar type in Pasco and Kennewick at the time?
Janicek: There was—I don’t know how old the Sid Lanter’s store was in Kennewick; I think that was probably there most of the time. I don’t know if it preceded Dawson Richard’s or not. There was a small men’s store in downtown Richland. I might be able to remember the name of it later on. But just at this moment, it is—oh, was it something like Harvey’s or—I don’t recall. But my father’s was such a good sized store that he had wonderful variety. He had Pendleton woolen shirts and jackets, and he had Jantzen’s sweaters and swimsuits. Carried a lot of name brands that people were comfortable with.
Franklin: And you said that was the first store in the Uptown area?
Janicek: Yes, it was. And the next store that opened was a sporting goods store right next to Dawson Richard’s and it was originally called Frank Barry, which was the name of the owner. And a few years later that was sold and it became BB&M Sporting Goods, which was owned by three gentlemen with the last names of B and B and M. And then some years later they moved up the street. Dawson Richards was on the Jadwin side of Uptown Richland, and they moved farther up the street. I don’t know—is there a—I don’t think there’s a BB&M now, is there? No, it’s gone. Okay.
Franklin: I’ve only been here a year, so—
Janicek: Oh, okay.
Franklin: My memory is—
Janicek: Okay.
Franklin: I don’t have a long institutional memory.
Janicek: And you know, if we had time, and I’m sure we don’t, I could walk you around the entire Uptown area and tell you most of the stores that originally were there. The other oldest store was the Spudnuts shop. God bless them, they’re still there.
Franklin: Yes, they are.
Janicek: And still the same family owns it.
Franklin: And still very delicious.
Janicek: Yes, yes.
Franklin: So the Uptown was the first commercial—major commercial district in Richland, right?
Janicek: Yes, it was. And because they had wonderful, big parking lots all the way around the stores, people could just park and walk all the way around the square and get everything they needed. We had Stanfield florists and Parker hardware, and banks, and there was once a grocery store there, we had a theater—we had—everything you needed, you could get somewhere. And several shoe stores, jewelry, china and silverware—just—they just filled in everything that a person would need so that nobody had to go to Spokane or Seattle to shop anymore. Unless they really wanted to.
Franklin: How long did your family own Dawson Richards?
Janicek: Let me think. My father sold to his manager, his long-term manager, George Anderson, and George’s family. They bought out my father in the early ‘70s. And the store actually closed—ironically, the store closed in 1999 on its 50th anniversary.
Franklin: So it was open for exactly 50 years.
Janicek: Yes. And the gentleman who bought it—it’s now a much smaller store. The gentleman who bought it retained the Dawson Richard’s name, which tickled me to death, and he still sells tuxedos and letterman sweaters and jackets. And he also rents out tuxedos for weddings.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Janicek: Then there were years when my father bought out the building—oh, I don’t know, bought or rented—the building next to Dawson Richard’s and they opened a women’s department called Lady Dawson. And so from inside Dawson Richard’s, you could just walk through to the ladies’ department. That was successful for a number of years. Eventually, they closed the boys’ department and then they closed the women’s department, and in the end, Dawson Richards was just men’s clothing.
Franklin: Was that, probably, just because of competition from larger department stores?
Janicek: Yes, we knew when Columbia Center was built that there would start to be more competition. Just a lot of people were going over to Columbia Center and while they were there they did all of their shopping. So a lot of people made a point of coming to Dawson Richard’s for one reason or another, but not necessarily for kids’ clothes.
Franklin: Ah, it stopped being the destination in terms—
Janicek: Correct.
Franklin: Because there was now competition.
Janicek: Yes, yes, yes.
Franklin: Whatever part of Richland that is.
Janicek: Yes. My dad had a policy of hiring as many high school kids as he could to sweep the floors, giftwrap at Christmas and Father’s Day and special events. So it was a really interesting gathering place not only for high school kids, but also they would come home from college and come back to see everybody. You know, if you wanted to see who’s who. And my father’s birthday was on Christmas Eve. And so everybody would come back and anybody who had ever worked at the store and not goofed up too badly, he would hire them just for two weeks. And they would see each other, and it was—and everybody came to see who’s home from college. And they would stand around and sing Happy Birthday during the day, and he’d have cake and punch in the backroom. It was very celebratory. Just lots of fun. A lot of fun to work at Dawson Richard’s or to just hang out there. The girls came in to get the chenille letters and numbers for their pep club and cheerleader outfits. People came in whether they bought anything or not. And he didn’t care, because he just loved people. It was a fun place to grow up.
Franklin: Did anything change in terms of the store, Uptown, or—when Richland became a private—yeah, a privately-owned city?
Janicek: Not specifically that I can think of. I was in high school at the time, and I remember that Richland became a Model US City. We had a day at Richland High School where a number of the seniors shadowed a Richland official for a day. So we had somebody shadowing the mayor and each of the city council members and the fire chief and the police chief and the city engineer and all of that. And went to—I was the city librarian for a day. And we all went to the city council meeting, in celebration of Richland becoming an independent city. And the other thing that I remember is that we were able to buy our house. Because always we rented. Richland was very much subsidized by the government. We had free garbage and free utilities and—I don’t know if the phone was free, but—just a lot of things that they took care of for us in the good old days.
Franklin: Right. But you said they—do you think the attitude was more celebratory, or did the people miss some of those amenities that had been provided for?
Janicek: I’m sure that people missed some of the amenities and realized it was going to cost them more money to live than it used to. But they—I think they also appreciated having choices. Originally, when we came, you can’t live in Richland unless you had a job, because everybody rented their house from the government. If you didn’t have a job, you left. So if people went to jail or were alcoholics and just didn’t—excuse me—[COUGH]—didn’t measure up, then they were booted out of town. So there were a lot more choices for people. We—old Richland, no one had a garage, because the city—the government didn’t build garages; they just built houses. And so nobody had an attic. Nobody had grandparents living there. It was all young families. Which was interesting way to grow up. I’m sorry. [COUGH]
Franklin: It’s okay, and there’s water right next to you, too.
Janicek: Oh, splendid. I didn’t even see it.
Franklin: What other kinds of civic activities or business activities was your father involved in?
Janicek: Well, as I said, he started out with being on the city council and being elected mayor, because he was very outgoing and because of his experiences as a store manager for Montgomery Ward’s, he was kind of a natural leader. So he was involved for a few years with what later became United Way. He got on the school board in about 1951, and he was there for 13 or 14 years. The people on the school board kind of took turns being the president, but he got involved in a lot of school things. He was a co-founder of the Bomber Boosters. He was instrumental in the first and the second remodeling of Richland High School and the building of the Dawald Gym. And he was one of the schoolboard members who advocated for building Hanford High School, which was very controversial, because a lot of people just wanted all their kids to grow up as Richland Bombers. That was kind of a sacred thing to be in the old days. It was sort of like, those other people, they have to go to Hanford. But that worked out. Hanford was an unusual school, because it was high school, junior high, and grade school—all 12 grades, well, plus kindergarten. Then later, when Sacajawea was torn down and rebuilt up in the Richland Village, then they removed the grade school from Hanford. And then Chief Jo Junior High School had been closed for a number of years, and they remodeled it and reopened it. And then moved the junior high kids out of—I don’t think—I think Hanford is just high school now, and all the junior high kids are back in either Chief Jo or Carmichael, which is what it was when I was growing up. So he was mostly involved in things having to do with kids and families. He sponsored a Little League baseball team, he sponsored and after-high school basketball league for young men who lived and worked around the Tri-Cities, and—what else did he do? Oh, his business sponsored all of the broadcasts of the Richland Bomber football and basketball games. He was very close friends with all of the coaches at Richland High School. In the old days, when the Richland Bombers went to the state basketball tournament, they were driven in cars. And so my dad and the coaches would put a couple of boys in the back of the car and drive over to Seattle. It was a four days, double-elimination, huge tournament at the Hec Edmundson Pavilion at the UW campus. So, he got to know all of the players as well as the coaches. Just loved that—more of getting to know everybody in the community. He just was that kind of guy. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Okay. Well, that’s great. So tell me about growing up in the government town of Richland and what kind of—what your impressions were when you first moved—
Janicek: My earliest impressions—we lived in south Richland for the first year and a half. We lived in an F House, which is a single-family two-story. And our street was only one block long—Atkins. My first recollection is that there were no garages, so everybody parked in the street. But everybody—families only had one car. The men didn’t drive to work at Hanford; there were buses that came through. There were three shifts, so Hanford was running 24 hours a day. There were three shifts: the day shift, the evening shift, and the overnight shift or graveyard. So the buses would come through and pick up the workers at corners and guys would all be there with their metal lunch pails and you’d see them going off. And then they’d come back, I don’t know, nine or ten hours later and drop them off, because it was quite a drive to Hanford. So the family car stayed at home, but a lot of them—and most of the mothers stayed at home. Very few women worked; some of them worked at Hanford or in some of the businesses, but most of them didn’t. And a lot of them didn’t drive. So the cars just sat there all day and were only used after Dad came home from work, or to go shopping on Saturday, or to go to church on Sunday. There were a lot of churches in the community, which I thought was kind of interesting. Lots of denominations. My family was Episcopalian, and it was a few years before we got our own church, and so the Richland Lutheran church let us have our services in the basement of their church. So our services were on folding metal chairs with little kneeling pads on the cement floor. It was a little chilly, but it was very kind of them to let us do that until we had our own church. But there were—and we had a lot of Protestant churches called Central United Protestant, Southside United Protestant, Westside United Protestant. But actually, if you asked someone or looked carefully, one of them was more Methodist, one of them was more Presbyterian; some of them, I didn’t know what they were. They weren’t in my neighborhood and I didn’t know kids that went to them until I got to high school. It was a very insular community in a lot of ways. You knew all the kids in your neighborhood, and all the kids in your school, which was—they were neighborhood schools. If you went to church, and most people did, you knew the kids that were in your church. But as a young child, we had no idea what everybody’s father did. We knew that most of them worked at Hanford, but we had no idea whether the father was a truck driver or a manager or a clerk or a—you know, scientist. That was beyond us. We never asked, and nobody ever talked about it. So, the kids in my class—when my class graduated in 1960, there were about 417 of us. And for the most part, if you didn’t ask, you didn’t really know what the other parents did. I knew most of the business community and a lot of those people had kids. People that owned the stores, and groceries and gas stations. One of my best friends in high school was the step-daughter of the man who managed the Desert Inn, which is now the Hanford House. It was neat to sleep over at her house, because she lived in the hotel. [LAUGHTER] And you could swim in the pool, and you had all your meals in the hotel dining room.
Franklin: Oh, wow.
Janicek: It was really different. Most of the time, there was no public transportation. There were a few years when there was a city bus, and I don’t know—I was young; I was maybe fourth grade, fifth grade, and I remember taking the bus in the summertime to the city library. And I would sit and read books all day in the library, and then I would come home at dinner time. It was one of the things I loved to do, because I was a very bookish person. And then one year, they stopped having the buses. I don’t know whether they—and it only cost—I don’t remember if they were free, or they cost a dime or something, but it was certainly not restrictive in any way. That was fun. I remember just—even as a pretty young kid—that the Richland Community House on George Washington Way had pool tables in the back for the adults, but every Friday night they had square dancing for the kids. So all the kids would go and learn to square dance. There were a number of callers and you’d be there for a couple of hours. That was a really fun community thing to do, and that was a way to meet people who didn’t live in your neighborhood or didn’t go to your school. The town was full of young families with young children. I think the only older people who were there were either highly skilled technical men who came with their wives and either they didn’t have children or the children had already left home before they moved to Richland. Then some of the older couples, the man was in management. A few of the older couples, the women were scientists or engineers or technologists. There were some, you know—we now are learning—some highly skilled women out there that kind of disappeared into the woodwork. Nobody knew anything about them. One of the curious things that I did not realize for many years is how—I don’t know what to say. Almost everybody in the community when I was growing up was—I hate to say it—but they were white. And I didn’t know any—I didn’t know any, any blacks, any Asians, any—well, there was one Hispanic family that went to my high school, two girl cousins, that were in my class in grade school. And then I guess they must have moved to another part of town, because then I didn’t ever see them in junior high or high school. There were a few black families that I got to know, partly because they would shop in my father’s store, and partly because—when I went to Chief Jo Junior High, the PE classes were separate: girls’ PE and boys’ PE, and they had a big curtain they drew down the middle of the gymnasium so that we wouldn’t see each other in our shorts or whatever it was. But there would be a six-week session where we danced. And we all learned how to waltz and, I don’t know, whatever the jitterbug had evolved to in the ‘40s—or in the ‘50s, rather. That’s when Fats Domino and Chubby Checker were coming out, and eventually Elvis. So we were all learning to do the twist and all those things—they were fast and loud. And that was fun, because if you had that in PE for six weeks, you learned how to do that stuff, and you didn’t feel like such a dorky wallflower. There was one boy in my PE class who was black. And so when it was time for the dancing, everybody would choose their partners. And I was the tallest girl in the school and wore glasses until the ninth grade when I was the first person to get contact lenses. But anyway, so he and I were usually left close to the end of who choses who for a dance partner. Which was perfectly fine with me. I didn’t care. I didn’t have any prejudices, any reasons to feel any different about him than about anybody else in the class. And he was actually polite and nice and, you know, dressed nicely and cleaned up. He didn’t talk much; I think he was probably more shy and scared than I was. But it was an interesting experience, because—it was fine with me, you know? We danced, talked a little bit. But it was the only time I ever saw him. I didn’t—I don’t think we had any classes together. So I didn’t run into him very often.
Franklin: Did he go to the school with you?
Janicek: Oh, yeah, he went to Chief Jo. Well, you have to remember that when I first moved to Richland, there was Camp Hanford that was a military camp north of town. And there was a—at one time Richland had the largest trailer park in the country. And I’ve forgotten now—I think it was 50,000 trailers. I think, for the most part, those trailers didn’t have kitchens or bathrooms, because people ate in—maybe they did. I don’t remember, because I wasn’t in them. But they had big mess halls where people ate and they fed—I mean, they had constant food. They were either cooking or cleaning up all the time because they couldn’t feed everybody at once. And then they had bathhouses in among the trailer camp where people—just kind of like when you go to an RV park, you go to the toilets and sinks and showers. And I don’t know—maybe some of the larger trailers had those things. But I know there were small trailers that didn’t. They looked like campers, with no plumbing and—I don’t even know what they did for lighting. But between the military and the construction workers who lived north of town, there were some black families. And so I have no idea what that fella’s family did. But then we had the Brown family. When I was in junior high and high school, we had two basketball stars. And basketball was as big at Richland High School as it was in the state of Indiana. [LAUGHTER] We were Hoosiers West, maybe, I don’t know. But Norris Brown and his younger brother, CW Brown, were outstanding basketball players. They played on the Richland basketball teams, and they were among those basketball players that my parents and the coaches drove to Seattle for the tournament every year. They were the nicest guys. Now, the—I don’t think there were any black girls in Richland at that time, but there were a lot of black people who lived in Pasco. And so they did their socializing, I think, with people who lived in Pasco. And I didn’t know for many years that Kennewick was a—I don’t know, they call it, now they call it a sundowner town, that all the blacks had to be out by the time the sun went down. Had no idea! But there was a place where kids went to dance on the weekends and it was called Hi-Spot. And they would advertise on the radio, and everybody listened to the radio. That’s how you found out what all the popular music was. And so they would advertise: everybody come to Hi-Spot for dancing and—I don’t know. I never went, so I don’t know, but I’m guessing maybe they had light refreshments there. Anyway, everybody was invited to come. So, Norris and CW Brown went with girlfriends who I’m assuming were from Pasco, and they were thrown out because it was after dark, and this was in Kennewick. Richland was horrified. I mean, number one, we had no idea that Kennewick had these laws. And number two, these guys were our heroes. They were winning basketball games for us, and they, number three, they were extremely nice and polite and good students and—you know, there was absolutely no reason that you wouldn’t want to have them at a teenage gathering. I think—and this is only my person opinion—but I think that that’s where a good deal of the Richland/Kennewick rivalry started. Because the Richland people were so incensed that our heroes were thrown out of town. And that was in the late ‘50s. Let’s see. CW was one or two years ahead of me—two, I think. So that would have been, like, I don’t know, ’56, ’57, ’58. And Norris had graduated, but CW was on the team that in March of 1958 won the state basketball championship, which was just the hugest thing that had happened to Richland, probably since the beginning of time. It was just a really big thrill. And I was at that tournament, and I was at that game. And it was the biggest thing that had happened to me, too. I was so excited for my team. Because always the state had been dominated by all of the Seattle and Tacoma teams, for the most part, and sometimes a couple from Spokane. And so poor little old Richland that was stuck out in the desert and nobody knew about Richland in particular and nobody wanted to go there. [LAUGHTER] What are these kids doing in our sacred basketball tournament? And we won the whole thing. And that was just very exciting. And CW Brown was on that team. Another member of that team was John Meyers. John Meyers was this—he was built like a Douglas fir. He was just big all over—tall and large. And he was the star of my dad’s Little League baseball team. His father was the assistant manager. And he regularly hit homeruns and broke the bat. Regularly. I used to go to a lot of the Little League games, and that was really fun to watch. John Meyers was a star on the basketball and football teams at Richland High School. He played at least two sports—I’m not sure about baseball—but at least he played two sports at the University of Washington where he went for four years, and then he was drafted into the NFL. He played most of his career for the Philadelphia Eagles. So we had a local celebrity. One of several local celebrities that we had. So that was a really—I just loved following sports, and then, I, myself became a Washington Husky. Went with them to the Rose Bowl which John Meyers played in, in January of 1961. And then I ended up marrying a guy from Notre Dame, and so we’re big football fans. [LAUGHTER] We’ve had Seahawks tickets for 19 years. [LAUGHTER] Just was destined to be, I guess.
Franklin: Yeah. What do you remember about civil defense in the Tri-Cities? Do you remember going through defense drills at school?
Janicek: What I remember—there are two different aspects that I remember. When I was—most of the time, after the first year-and-a-half of living in south Richland and going to Lewis and Clark, we moved to north Richland and I went to Jefferson grade school, and then Chief Jo Junior High and Richland High School, which we always called Col High, and most of us in our hearts, it’s still Col High and not Richland. But we would have air raid drills maybe once a month at Jefferson. And we would—every class would march out into the hallway where we would lie down on the floor next to the wall. We would lie absolutely flat on our stomachs with our head resting on one arm, and I think maybe that was partly to protect our eyes. And then the other hand behind our necks to protect our spinal cord, I guess. I’m not sure that would have done any good if the Russians had actually bombed us. Because we truly believed that there was a good chance that we were going to be bombed by the Russians. We truly did. And so those were serious, civil defense drills.
Franklin: You mean we as in you believed the Russians would bomb America, or Hanford specifically?
Janicek: Well, we thought that the Russians would bomb America, but that Hanford was a really good target. Because of—by then it was known that we were creating the plutonium for bombs and all of the nuclear activities going on out there. And we thought that, if Russia really wanted to take over the world, that they would want to take out all of the nuclear facilities so that we wouldn’t be able to fight back or build up our defenses to eventually fight back. The other thing I remember—excuse me—[COUGH]—about civil defense is that every so often, we would have drills where every neighborhood was told where to go, get in your car and drive out into the desert to get out of town, get away from Hanford. And they would have those—I don’t remember—maybe once a year. I don’t think we had them more often than that. But you were always cautioned to keep your gas tank at least half full, because there wouldn’t be time to go fill up if we all had to evacuate town. Now, I suspect that there was a second reason for those drills, and that is in case anything went wrong and something blew up at Hanford, like Chernobyl. We had an inordinate amount of faith in our government and our scientists and engineers and our leaders at Hanford, and believed they would keep us safe. And Hanford actually has an amazing safety record. Very few things went wrong and caused any difficulties. But I suspect that if something had happened at Hanford, that those evacuation routes would have—and those evacuation routes were marked for a number of years. Eventually the signs all disappeared. But you knew where your neighborhood was supposed to drive to.
Franklin: Interesting. Where was your neighborhood supposed to drive to, do you remember?
Janicek: Well, it was long before I was old enough to drive a car: I was in grade school. And I didn’t even know where I was when I was out of town. I didn’t know which way was up, down, or west, or south. I’m guessing, since we lived on McMurray in north Richland, we probably went west.
Franklin: Ah. And when we moved up to north Richland, did you also live in an alphabet house, or did you—
Janicek: Yes, we lived in a Q house. The houses on McMurray were all Qs and Rs. And they were all three-bedroom, one-story houses with a full basement, whereas the old houses—the old alphabet houses, As and Fs and many of the others—had a half-basement and then a three- or four-foot high wall in the basement of cement blocks, and then there was dirt behind that. And then some people, after they bought their homes, would dig out—it was called digging out—the basement. But we had a full basement, and really nice backyard.
Franklin: And is that the house that your parents bought when Richland—
Janicek: We were living in that house and then bought it, yes, when Richland sold. One of the tough things about living in Richland is that there was no air conditioning. The houses had swamp coolers, which also were called squirrel cages. They were great, big, huge things that attached to a window and made a lot of noise. It sounded like metal blades going around, very noisy, and water ran through them to cool the air. Well, that made the houses not—it didn’t cool the houses that much, but it made them very humid. So, sometimes, you forgot you were living in a desert or a semi-arid desert, because it was very humid along with the heat, and very uncomfortable. But my father’s store had refrigerated air conditioning. It was one of the first buildings to have that. I’m guessing that the hospital and—well, no, the hospital used to be little funny buildings. I’m guessing maybe the hotel had it, and maybe some restaurants. But, yeah, that was another reason that people liked Dawson Richards, because it was cool inside on hot days. [LAUGHTER] But that was difficult. And we had a lot of summers when the temperature was over 100 degrees. And, like now, we had some winters when it got down far below freezing, down to -10 or even 0 a couple of times. One of the other interesting weather things about living in Richland in the olden days is when you had the big dust storms, or the termination winds as some people called them, you would have great big huge clumps of sagebrush flying through town about five to ten feet off the ground. And one time, a sagebrush—I have never seen this since—a sagebrush as big as a Volkswagen lodged in front of our front door, and we couldn’t get in and out our front door. Because it had blown in and was kind of stuck to the doorknob and whatever we had around the front door. And we couldn’t budge it. We couldn’t grab a big enough piece, or reach in far enough to grab one of the main stems or limbs of the sagebrush to pull it out. So we’d all have to run around and go in and out the back door. But the worst part of the winds, or one of the worst parts, was the dust, because it got in your eyes. And people were starting to get contact lenses. And that was just absolutely murderous, to have all that dust blowing in your eyes and getting behind your contacts. And people would go around with tears running down their faces from--[LAUGHTER]—from how painful the dust was in their eyes. And people wore sunglasses day and night to try and protect their eyes. Of course, as Richland built up and got more civilized and more of the empty lots became houses with yards and grass and trees and flowers, then the dust was not as thick as it used to be. Some of the dust storms were blinding. They were like blizzards. Oh, and that reminds me. My first winter in Richland, the winter of ’49-’50, we had a blizzard that was so bad they would not let any children leave the school until their parents came and picked them up. Well, the dads worked at Hanford and travelled by bus, so it was a while before—I imagine they probably let them go home early to get their kids. I don’t know that, but I’m guessing. And we would all be waiting at the school until the parents showed up. It was not a problem for my parents, because I’m sure in a blizzard they weren’t selling any clothing, so they just came and picked us up. But it was really bad. I just read—the old Richland Bombers have an online Sandstorm. The Sandstorm was the school newspaper, and we have an online Sandstorm that comes out every single day of the year. And it mentions birthdays and anniversaries of people—married classmates—and announces deaths of classmates and also of favorite teachers. Somebody in the online Sandstorm only a day or two ago wrote about—and I never heard this story before, so I do not know if it’s truly true—but wrote about a father who came and picked up his little boy at school during the blizzard, and didn’t have a car. And so they were walking home and they got lost in the blizzard and were found frozen to death the next day. I had never heard that before, but I could believe that, because you could not see anything. Absolutely. It was dreadful. I remember that. I have a real good visual memory, and I remember exactly what that looked like. It was fearful.
Franklin: Wow.
Janicek: Yup.
Franklin: Wow.
Janicek: Yup.
Franklin: So you said you graduated in 1960.
Janicek: Yes.
Franklin: And then later on you came back to Hanford?
Janicek: Yes, I went to University of Washington for four years. And I developed this passion for Afghanistan. So I decided the only way—and I had spent a summer in Europe and did all of that and had a good time. But I don’t know why, I really wanted to go to Afghanistan. I had studied about it, I had written reports, read books. So I joined the Peace Corps and I said, don’t send me any place but Afghanistan. Well, in those days, you took all the tests and if they decide you were qualified—they’d never had anybody ask for Afghanistan, but they had programs in Afghanistan. So I went through Peace Corps training for three months and then went to Afghanistan. And I taught English in a girls’ high school. While I was there, I met and married my husband, who was from New York and Notre Dame, and I never would have met him if I’d stayed in Richland or even in the state of Washington. So we had this very unusual Afghan wedding that was written about in the paper last year when we celebrated our 50th anniversary. So we came back and he went to graduate school at Purdue. So we lived in Indiana from ’66 to ’78, twelve years. And our three children were born there. And then we lived in Indiana. His parents were in New York and mine were in Washington, and the kids never knew any of their relatives, they never got—and we said, well, this isn’t good. So we want to go one way or the other. There were a lot of reasons why we didn’t want to live on Long Island. It was overcrowded with traffic and polluted air and polluted water, and just a lot of reasons it didn’t appeal to us. So we came out to visit my parents, and my husband interviewed at Hanford and got two job offers. So we ended up moving to Richland in 1978. So for marrying a guy from New York who you met in Afghanistan, I never would have thought that my children would graduate from my high school. But they did. So we had three little Richland Bombers in the family besides their mom.
Franklin: And where did you live when you came back to Richland?
Janicek: When we came back, we moved into an A house on Thayer. And it was an A house—that’s the two-story duplex—but it had been converted by the previous owner into a one-family house. So we had more bedrooms and more living space and an unusual-shaped yard, and lived on Thayer, a half a block from Van Giesen.
Franklin: What did you and your husband do at Hanford? Because you said you—
Janicek: Well, he’s a mechanical engineer. So he started out doing mechanical engineering things. He was involved in robotics. He spent most of his career in the Tank Farms and was a design authority for a number of years before he retired. I began as a tech editor. Became a tech writer editor, and then had several stints as a manager of editors and word processors. And we were producing all of the huge reports coming out of Hanford, mostly reporting on cleanup. Cleaning up spills in the ground, cleaning up buildings—goodness. I worked on documents that were 6,000 pages long. Mostly online editing. When—at the height of the publications flurry at Hanford, we had 100 employees in our department. About 50 editors and about 50 word processors. But as time went on, the editors started editing online, and then we didn’t need word processors. Originally we would edit with a red pen, and then the word processors would type in all of our changes. But that morphed into just editing online. I absolutely loved my job. For 27 years, I worked with engineers and scientists and technical people. I felt like it brought me closer to my husband, because I had no technical background at all. But I had very good communication skills and had studied three other languages, and so I have a lot of good ideas about how English should be spoken and written. And really enjoyed doing that for 27 years.
Franklin: 27 years. So then you retired in 2005?
Janicek: No, I retired—he went to work in ’78; I went to work in ’80. So I retired December 2007.
Franklin: Okay. And how many different contractors did you work for?
Janicek: Well, when I originally came, we both worked for Rockwell. And in fact I worked on the Rockwell proposal when their contract was up. And that was a fascinating experience, because I got to work with national vice presidents of Rockwell. We spent the last three months at a secret facility in Downy, California putting the proposal together. I got to walk through a mockup of the shuttle—the space shuttle that they had built. Oh, now I forgot the question.
Franklin: The different contractors.
Janicek: Oh, yes, yes, yes. So after Rockwell ended up—it was a political thing, and Rockwell lost that contract. The contract went to Westinghouse and Boeing. Westinghouse was already here, but they won the larger contract that Rockwell had. And then the computer functions, including the editing and the graphics and all of the communication things were given to Boeing as a subcontractor to Westinghouse. So then my second employer was Boeing Computer Services. And then the next eight years or so later, the contract was up again, and that was when they went to about 13 different contractors, half of them inside the wall so to speak, and half of them outside. And at that time I went to work for—my job was still the same, and all of my management was the same, but it was just a different name on the paychecks for the company that owned us, and that was Lockheed Martin. And I was still working for Lockheed Martin when I retired.
Franklin: How had Richland changed from when you had graduated to when you came back and began to work for Hanford?
Janicek: Well, first of all, when I came back, a lot of the business had moved to Columbia Center, and there were empty buildings, and aging businesses in downtown Richland. It had spread out a lot in all directions. People were living in West Richland and in South Richland and in North Richland and all over the place. And that’s just Richland. I mean, Kennewick grew enormously; Pasco has grown enormously. So I had to kind of get used to driving and living in a much bigger city. And I have to laugh at myself, because even today, I mostly drive—I have it in my mind, a skeleton of the roads that I used when we lived here, when I first got my driver’s license in high school and drove around the Tri-Cities. And I kind of stick to those roads, because they’re the ones I know the best, and you know, they’re my old favorites. But one of the things I noticed is that a lot of people moved into the Tri-Cities who didn’t necessarily work for Hanford. And so you didn’t have that little small town, we’re-all-in-this-together feeling. You know, when people first came to Richland to work at Hanford, as I said, there were no grandparents, no relatives. We all kind of stuck together because nobody knew anybody; we all came as strangers and we came from all over the country. And so there was a real closeness. And I see that in the older classes that write into the online Richland Bomber Sandstorm every day, the alumni newsletter. By the time my kids were in high school and graduating, a lot of that closeness was gone. You didn’t know everybody in your neighborhood; you didn’t know everybody in your church if you went to church; you didn’t know all the kids in your classroom; you didn’t necessarily know the parents; you didn’t know whether your friends had younger or older brothers and sisters. It just was a lot more socially scattered, I would call it. One of the things I’m pleased about is there’s a lot more diversity in the Tri-Cities now. You have people from all parts of the world, all races, colors, creeds, religions. Which is really good. I have to laugh at my kids, because we made sure they grew up without any prejudices. They have had friends—they’re all adults now in their 40s. They have had friends of all different colors, races, and creeds. It tickles me to death that we succeeded in raising them that way, because it’s only right. What else is different about the Tri-Cities? Well, every day I open the paper and I read about businesses I didn’t know were there. All the years I worked at Hanford, I didn’t have time to go driving around and shopping and looking around. So I—there are dozens and dozens of restaurants I’ve never been to. One of the things that really confuses me is, because the Tri-Cities has grown so rapidly, there are many, many, many neighborhoods that I’ve never heard of the street names before. And when I hear about something being on a certain street, I have no idea where that street is. I have to get out the phone book and hope I can find it on the map. And I’ve also noticed that there are—in the old days, there was a lot more respect for Hanford than there is now. There are a lot of people in the Tri-Cities who are very anti-Hanford. They think either it’s evil or—well, it’s dangerous. That’s always true. We had—when I lived—when I worked at Hanford, we had a really good safety culture. We had safety drills, we knew what all the different sirens meant, whether they meant shelter-in-place or get out and run for your life. What’s going on and what are you supposed to do about it. I think some of that safety culture is lost, because the people who lived and worked here forever have been laid off or have retired or moved on one way or another. We don’t have that close confidence anymore that we’re all doing the right thing for the right reasons, and keeping each other safe. Some of that has been lost, and I see sometimes that people—new hires come in—and I saw this when I was working there—that sometimes new hires would come in, and they wouldn’t take safety as seriously as we thought they should. And, you know, once in a while somebody does something careless that gets them in trouble. There were very strict rules, and I edited a lot of those safety documents about procedures: how you did things, how you had to do things, double-checks and triple-checks on things that sometimes people kind of rolled their eyes and thought, oh, yeah, here we go. But in fact, those things kept you safe if you followed them correctly.
Franklin: It only takes one accident to—
Janicek: Yes.
Franklin: Do you think that that record of safety or the view of safety and the approach to safety changed as Hanford’s mission changed from one of production to a little more kind of opaque mission of cleanup?
Janicek: I don’t think so, because the people actually involved in the cleanup or, like me, I was reading about all of the dangers in all of the cleanup as I was editing the documents. I think that a lot of us were always impressed with how dangerous it could be and how close we were to somebody goofing up and causing an accident. And certainly, I think right before we came here was when they had the McCluskey incident where Harold McCluskey was badly exposed. It’s just astounding to me how well they were able to clean him up and keep him alive and how long he lived, and he actually died of a condition that he had before the accident ever happened. And that actually boosted my confidence that they were doing all the right things. I’ve been in buildings—I had a Q clearance for a while—I’ve been in building that were very restricted and—not passwords, but keypads and patrol and safety people and intelligence people and all kinds of things to try and prevent terrible things from happening. Whether it was just luck or whether it was good management, those things, for the most part, didn’t happen. I mean, Harold McCluskey was the only one—there have been some accidents where people have fallen and died or have been badly injured. Or I remember one time when they were cutting into a pipe that they didn’t—either they didn’t have the correct information or they didn’t take it seriously. And they cut into this pipe that was supposed to be empty and harmless, and it was full of hot burning steam. It hit these two guys right in the face. I don’t remember if they lived or not; I’m suspecting maybe they didn’t. But I’ve—that was a few years ago when—I just don’t remember now. Many of us have always been aware of the potential for accidents. Sometimes people coming in from other places, if they didn’t work in dangerous situations before, they had to adjust their thinking or they might get in trouble if they—every once in a while, either a person or a company self-reports that we screwed up and didn’t do something right. And they don’t do that often enough. I mean, we have whistleblowers with personal issues, and we have whistleblowers with true concerns and who have honestly seen something that needs to be corrected. I’m sure it’s very difficult to keep all of that in mind. We recently toured B Reactor, which was a fascinating experience. When you look at that huge, big thing and all of those fuel rods. And if you think about what little, innocent thing could have happened or some switch accidentally flipped and what it could have caused. You know, we all remember Chernobyl. I worked—I was in a volunteer group called the Hanford Family that was formed when they were shutting down N Reactor and it was about the same time that Chernobyl happened. A lot of people were really scared and concerned that the same thing could happen at Hanford. So I became their editor and communications person for this group. And one of the things I did was research and interview an expert and find out why it couldn’t happen here. And one of the things was the difference between boiling water reactors, BWR, and pressurized water reactors, PWR. And what they did at Chernobyl, you couldn’t do here. The reactor would not let you do it or it would shut down. And how these guys had overridden their own safety controls. Again, they didn’t take safety seriously enough or they didn’t understand the principles behind what they were doing and what they were causing. It was a terribly frightening time. But I published this lovely three-fold pink brochure about why Chernobyl can’t happen here, what’s different about our reactors from—and then we were just down to N Reactor and the power reactor, the Hanford Generating Station at Energy Northwest. It was an interesting experience to learn that stuff and to put it in language that regular people could understand and to hand it out at functions. We went to a fair in Yakima; we had a couple of things—big—I don’t know—exhibitions or shows that occurred in the Tri-Cities, and we had our little booth and handed out our information and told people about why that couldn’t happen here. That was an interesting experience. For a non-technical person, I appreciated getting information and putting it into a form that regular folks who didn’t work at Hanford or have any technical background could understand. I have no idea how effective the brochure was. But it was interesting to do.
Franklin: Interesting. Did you do any other public relations work when you—at your job at Hanford? Or was that a—
Janicek: Well, most of the time, I was editing big reports. I started after a very short period—I worked for several years with the BWIP project—Basalt Waste Isolation Project. That was the concept where we were going to bury the waste deep in the basalt. I first edited and then managed the editors who edited the environmental restoration—no, environmental assessment document and the—oh, goodness. Now I’ve forgotten what it was called. Two different versions, one of them was six volumes long about how we were going to safely contain the waste, and some of it had to do with Nevada, which has since [LAUGHTER] In fact, a lot of the waste was going to go to Nevada, and Nevada shut that off. I did have a very interesting experience. I was on a national committee that worked with DOE orders and directives. It had to do with information management, because Hanford and the other government facilities that did things nuclear had to send copies of their reports to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where they were kept and managed by the government. Some of them were classified and some were not. Most were not. This group would get together sometimes once a year, sometimes two or three times, and go over the DOE directives and bring them up to date on how to manage all this information. And I ended up writing parts of a DOE directive and editing other parts. I think you can still get those online. And I can open that up and see my very own words there. It kind of tickles me to see that. That was a really interesting project. And I got to go see—I got to go to Bethesda, Maryland and see where all of the energy reactors, like the one that we have at Energy Northwest—how they have to report in—I don’t know—I think every hour to let them know that everything’s all right. And I got to sit at this huge, big console where all of these Hanford and Oak Ridge and Argonne in Illinois and WIPP project in New Mexico and the Nevada Test Site and—anywhere there was a reactor, all the lights flashing and the buttons and the hourly reporting in. They actually monitor that to be sure that nothing—there are not going to be any surprises or any Chernobyls. That was kind of an interesting thing to see.
Franklin: Oh, cool.
Janicek: It was.
Franklin: Is there anything that I haven’t asked you about that you’d like to talk about in your interview?
Janicek: Oh, I remember the Columbia River floods. Before we had all the dams and maybe even before the dikes were built—I’m not sure when they were built. The year before we moved to Richland, I lived—we lived in Vancouver, Washington. And there was a little community on the floodplain between Vancouver and Portland on the Columbia River called Vanport. When the river flooded, the spring of ’48, the water came up—maybe to the roof lines of those—it was low income housing and I suspect it was for guys who had just gotten out of World War II and were trying to build their lives and they had young families. The flooding was—it was just really terrible. I remember that and the pictures, partly because my father was one of many people who volunteered to patrol against looting. They would go out at night in motorboats. And he had a pistol that he kept for years. [LAUGHTER] We knew where it was hidden, but we never told our folks that we knew. [LAUGHTER] And we never touched it. Because they had to evacuate everybody, of course. And I have no idea whether people died or were injured during that flooding. But one of the memorable aspects of it was that there was a Jantzen Knitting Mill in that same area. And Jantzen’s old logo was of a woman in a one-piece bathing suit and a swimming cap diving. And she was—it was a huge sign and it was on top of the Jantzen building, and when the flooding came, the Jantzen Knitting Mills flooded and she looked like she was diving into the water in the flood. It was just really cool! [LAUGHTER] It was a picture they showed all over the United States. So then the next year, we came to Richland in the spring of ’49 and people were all talking about the ’48 flood and how bad it was. But I remember a couple of floods that were just about as bad after we moved here. At that time, the only way to get between Richland and Kennewick was on what we called the old river road, which goes through Columbia Park now. And so that road completely flooded. You couldn’t get through there. So leaving Richland, you would have to drive south over the hills and there were just—I don’t know, farm roads, probably—and go all the way around to get to south Kennewick and then come back into Kennewick. And even worse if you had to go to Pasco. Because the flooding really messed things up. And then some of those river floods would pick up a lot of trees and limbs from the shoreline, as the—and they would have rattlesnakes on them. For some reason, because of how the Columbia River turns when it gets to what was then called Riverside Park and is now called Howard Amon, a lot of those trees and tree limbs would lodge into the bank and all of the sudden we had rattlesnakes all over the park. So that was kind of interesting. [LAUGHTER] Scary! Opportunity for people to go out and see snakes or capture snakes or get rid of them, because rattlesnakes are serious business. But that was one of the things I remember about some of the problems with climate that we had in the good old days.
Franklin: The good old days.
Janicek: Oh, goodness. What else do I remember?
Franklin: Did you go to any of the Atomic Frontier Days?
Janicek: Oh! Yes! Well, especially after we moved to McMurray and I was going to Jefferson School, because Jefferson was right across from the Uptown area and I walked that area every day, knew it very well. And we would have parades for Atomic Frontier Days on George Washington Way. And in the really old days, when there was still a Camp Hanford in North Richland, that parade included—I remember a huge, big—I think it was called Red Dog—looked like a missile or a rocket or something. And then there were some smaller rockets, weapons. And they would haul them through town as part of the parade. And that was kind of fun and interesting to see, because my dad didn’t work at Hanford and wasn’t involved with the military. So that was all new to me and fascinating to see. They had a beard-growing contest. I think the Richland Atomic Frontier Days were usually in August and all the guys would grow beards for the month of August, and they had—I don’t know, some things for kids to do and things for adults to do, and clowns and a few floats. You know, you always had a Miss Atomic Frontier Days, which later became Miss Tri-Cities. That was a rather special event that happened. People would go by and throw candy on all the kids—kids would be there with their tricycles. We would decorate our tricycles with crepe paper strips, or put playing cards in the wheels so they would go click, click, click when the wheel went around and decorate. Sometimes they would decorate up the wagons and put wagons behind the tricycles. So we’d have a lot of tricycles and some bicycles lining the streets of George Washington Way as the parade went by. That was a fun thing to do.
Franklin: Neat.
Janicek: Yeah.
Franklin: Well, Stephanie, thank you so much for talking with us today and sharing your stories about growing up in Richland and working at Hanford. They were wonderfully detailed and I really appreciate it.
Janicek: Oh, well, thank you. I love to think back to the old days and just reading the online Sandstorm everyday kind of tweaks my memory and—old teachers and old friends, and like to pass these things on to my kids who grew up in such a different time and they don’t understand about being afraid the Russians were going to bomb you. [LAUGHTER] Some of the other things that went on that led to me being who I am today and led to Richland being what it is today. And I enjoy talking about it, and I realize that because of my father’s position, not as part of Hanford, but very much as a part of a community, that I have a lot of great memories. Because I’m fortunate to have a good memory, I still remember a lot of people’s names, a lot of businesses’ names, a lot of things that went on. When my father was on the school board, there was a little town and school at Mattawa, which—and those people served—that was when they were building Priest Rapids Dam and Wanapum Dam. So the school board, once a year, would get special, special, special permission to drive—they probably were escorted—to drive through the Hanford Site and go out to Mattawa and they would have one school board session that the teachers and the parents could attend who lived at Mattawa because they had no way of getting in to town for it, and that was part of the Richland School District. Now, today, Mattawa’s completely gone. I mean, everybody left and the buildings are pretty much all gone and doesn’t exist anymore. But I always thought that was very nice and very thoughtful that they arranged to be able to go out there once a year to meet with the staff and the families and see—address their concerns for educating the kids.
Franklin: Yeah. Neat. Interesting. Well, thank you.
Janicek: Welcome.
Franklin: Okay.
Vargas: That it? All right.
View interview on Youtube.
Northwest Public Television | Hansen_Edith
Woman one: Always ready.
Man one: [INAUDIBLE]
[LAUGHTER]
Woman one: Sounds like my father-in-law.
Woman two: [LAUGHTER] We won’t go there, then.
Woman one: [LAUGHTER]
Robert Bauman: All right?
Man one: Nothing wrong in there. Feel free.
Bauman: All right. Okay. We're going to get started if that's okay. Can we start by having you say your name first and spell it for us?
Edith Hansen: Oh. Right now?
Bauman: Yes. Yeah.
Hansen: My name is Edith Hansen, and E-D-I-T-H, H-A-N-S-E-N.
Bauman: Okay. Thank you. And today's date is August 28 of 2013. And we're doing this interview on the campus of Washington State University--
Hansen: I'm a little hard hearing.
Bauman: Okay. Should I scoot closer? Yeah?
Man one: Yeah, absolutely.
Bauman: Okay. I'll scoot closer, if that's all right. How's that? Is this going to be better? Are you going to be better--?
Hansen: Yeah.
Bauman: Okay, great. So let's start by just having you talk about your family and how and when they came to the area here.
Hansen: Well, I wanted to start back--[LAUGHTER]
Bauman: Go ahead.
Hansen: And in 1875, this was nothing but a cattle range. And there were just--nobody lived here, just a person who had a lot of cattle. And he was the postmaster for the whole area. And in 1878, Ben Rosencrance bought him out, or bought out the area around the mouth of the Yakima River. And he was a stock man, too. And he bought the 16 sections at $0.50 an acre. In 1883, the Northern Pacific Railroad completed their line from Spokane to Ainsworth. And Ainsworth was what they called Pasco at that time. Now the Federal Homestead laws were established in 1888. Now Ben and his wife married on November the 3rd, 1880, in Pendleton. And their honeymoon was the ride from Pendleton to the ranch.
Bauman: [LAUGHTER]
Hansen: And they operated a stock ranch. And if they wanted any groceries, they had to go to Walla Walla for store. Coffee they bought in 50-pound sacks. And they went about once a year. And fabric was $0.05 a yard, and they bought it by the bolt. [LAUGHTER] And the missus--that was her honeymoon. [LAUGHTER] And there was no house. I don't know just what kind of a structure they lived in, but it was pretty minimum. And she never saw another white woman for six months. Now he--when that law went through, the Federal Homestead law went through, he filed for 1,700 acres. And he had timber claims and mineral claims. And [LAUGHTER] he just signed up for everything. Well, one man was unhappy with him and didn't think that that was fair because there was no timber in this area. And so he rode his horse over to Walla Walla to protest. [LAUGHTER] Well, Rosencrance found out that he was going over there and report him to the authorities because there was no forest--there wasn't no trees. So they went down to the river, and they dug up a bunch of willows and transplanted them. [LAUGHTER] And I don't know what kind of a housing arrangement they had, but it wasn't much. But they moved it up there and put those willow trees in there. [LAUGHTER] And they called that their forest. Anyway. [LAUGHTER] Oh, she washed clothes and draped them over the sagebrush. [LAUGHTER] They didn't have any clothes lines or anything. And so but anyway, they were set for when the authorities came down to see their forest, they could see the willow trees. And I never did hear just what kind of housing they had. But it was pretty minimum. Now after they'd been here a while, she said they should have a school. And she talked Mr. and Mrs. Harry Van Horn to come and homestead. And they picked out some land that they didn't build, or they gave it to them. I don't know. But anyway, she talked them into coming here because Mrs. Van Horn was a school teacher. And she thought there should be a school teacher in this area. And she was paid $1 a day to be a teacher. And the kids all came of their own expense, either with a wagon or a sled. In the wintertime they used a sled and came to her house. And they would bring their own chair or stool--whatever they were going to sit on [LAUGHTER] because she didn't have things for them to sit on while she was teaching them. Let's see. Oh, in 1883, the railroad was building the railroad bridge across the Columbia. And they had a lot of people here come in for construction of this bridge. It was a pretty big deal to put this bridge clear across the Columbia. And they were noted for gambling and saloons. And Pasco got a really bad reputation. [LAUGHTER] My mother's grandfather over in Germany heard about it. [LAUGHTER] And they didn't want him to raise his family near that Pasco [LAUGHTER] wild town. And now there was a family, and that was Amy and Alex McNeil. And they came in 1883, and they wanted to build a house with lumber. And they had to go to Bickleton to get lumber. There was nobody selling house lumber. But they built their house. And what they did were they were panning for gold. And by this time now, they could buy groceries in Ainsworth or Pasco--I mean all one place. But they didn't have to go to Walla Walla for their groceries anymore. Now the Clements came in early, too. That was an early family. And their daughter was married to a Bauer, and he died. But that's when the Clements settled in this area. Let's see. Oh, the post office was established in Richland in 1905. And in 1903, the Timmermans came here. And there was a--Walter Timmerman is the one who ran the ferry from Pasco to Richland. And his father and his uncle came and helped him set up the line over. So they had a ferry at that time. And they had rates to ride on the ferry. If you had sheep, they were $0.01 a sheep. [LAUGHTER] If you were having pack animals, they were $0.25 for a ride. If a person road on a horse, that was $0.50 from Pasco to Richland. And then a team in a wagon or a buggy was $1. And then later on they had automobiles and trucks. And they were $1 each. Now those were some of the earliest families that settled in this area. Now my grandfather Bremer was living in Seattle. And the only work he could get in Seattle was down on the waterfront. And so every morning, he would get up and go down to the waterfront and hope that somebody was unloading a ship or loading a ship. And that's where all the men were. And my grandfather quite often got work because he was a big man and strong. And that's what they wanted to load these ships up or to unload them. But he hated that rain. And standing in that rain, sometimes for quite a while before somebody chose him to work for them, was real disgusting. And so he read in the newspaper that there was a man over in Kennewick, and he wanted his family, who were living in Seattle. They had a wagon. They had a team and eight children. And they advertised for a driver. Now there was a really bad winter that winter. And there was no highway. And of course, there were no restaurants and no cafes or anything built along the way. And so they had the eight children in this wagon. And of course I imagine some of those older boys probably were walking because [LAUGHTER] I don't know that the team could handle everybody in the wagon. But anyway--and they had to stop and cook their meals for those kids and themselves. So Grandpa said he would do that. He wanted to see what was over here in eastern Washington. And so they started off. And he didn't keep a diary, or didn't write down just what they did every day. But the winter had been really bad. And the snow was melting, and it was making streams across the trail. And so they would have to stop and shovel in dirt so they could get the wagon through. And then once in a while there were trees that were down. And they had to cut limbs off and drag those tree limbs and get the road clear so they could get that wagon through. I don’t know how--it would've been interesting if he could have told us how long it took them. But you know, you have to feed those kids three times a day and then fixing the road on your way over--it wasn't easy. And then when he got up to the pass and he came over the pass, all the area around Ellensburg and that area, the farmers were out, and they were farming. And the sun was shining, and they were getting ready for crops and things. He said, this is heaven. [LAUGHTER] He's never going back to Seattle! [LAUGHTER] And things went much better once they got over the hill. And they got that family delivered to Kennewick. And then he got a hold of his wife, probably--I don't know whether they had telephones or not. But maybe they just wrote. But anyway, he got hold of her and said, you're going to buy tickets on the railroad, and you're coming in to Kennewick, and I'll pick you up in Kennewick. So then they came to Kennewick. And about that time, Rosencrance, the man who had bought all that land, he wanted to get some irrigation going because he knew this was good land and all he needed was water. So he put in the water wheel. And that was in 1894 that they built that water wheel. And Grandpa got a job on finishing it up. It was in construction when he arrived. But he worked to finish it up and then get the water--I don't believe I put down how much. But anyway--oh, what happened to my pictures that I brought?
Bauman: Oh, they're right here. I'll bring them. Oh, it’s okay.
Hansen: Thank you. Hmm. Now you've probably all seen the picture of the water wheel. That was the first irrigation in this area. And well, this is the original picture. And my mom had that. And a lot of people borrowed that, and they've enlarged it. And they're all over. You've probably seen a half a dozen pictures. But the people, when they enlarged it, they took all the people off. And I have here a list of all the people who are standing on this bridge. And by that time, my grandmother and her kids were all standing on the bridge. It was 16 feet wide and 32 feet high. And it had a capacity of 320 gallons per revolution. And so it dipped down in the water and get this 320 gallons and lift it up to the top and then put it into a ditch. And the ditch would take it to the farmers that were going to use it.
Bauman: And where was the water wheel?
Hansen: Now they quit being in the lady's house for school. There were more people moving into town--moving into the area and buying farms. And so they built a school. And it was located out--well, now the highway from Kennewick to Richland, just before you get the turnoff to Richland, it was in that area. And my mom went to that school. And they had school from October ‘til March because the kids worked in the fields the rest of the time. But they could be spared during the winter months. And if they got any kids that were graduating from 7th or 8th grade, then the school—I mean the state would send tests from Olympia. And they had to take those tests and see if they'd learned at this little country school enough to be ready for high school. Now about this time, there was a Thad Grosscup, who was a lawyer in Seattle. And somehow, he found out that this was really good country and good farming country. And so he was a lawyer for big railroads over there in Seattle and he had quite a bit of money. He bought 1,800 acres. It's about eight or nine miles out of Richland. And he wanted to build a canal. And I don't know who built that dam, whether he built that dam or whether—but anyway, the dam created the water to go in the ditch. And so he had people out there building this ditch because he wanted to irrigate those 1,800 acres. And my grandfather and his boys went out to make this ditch and to help with it--get this farm going. And my mother went to cook for the people that were working on this place--the farm. Now the railroad bridge was finished in 1889. And before that--before 1889, they didn't have a way to get the railroad cars from the Pasco area across the Columbia. And so they used a steam ferry. They'd run a few cars on the steam ferry, go across the river, put them off, come back and get some more. And so you could see that it was a real aggravation for the railroad [LAUGHTER] to move a whole train that way, but they did it. But then they finally got that bridge finished. And then they could run the cars across the Columbia. And that was a big deal. Now about this time, there were so many farmers coming in and buying up land, and, well, all along. And we were in Yakima County at this time. And Yakima County said, we're getting too big--too many people. And so we're going to divide it. And so they broke off a piece on the lower end here. And they were going to—they kind of thought of Benton. But they said they couldn't do that because the post office said, you can't--well, it was Benton for a couple of months. We became Benton County, and then they tried--anyway, the state said you couldn't have, because they had another section, and it was too close. And they said you couldn't name it that. But anyway, they had quite a time. They named it three different times. But it finally became Benton County. Let's see. Oh, in 1907, they decided that this was a good place to raise pheasants and quail. And so they brought in starters and turned them loose. And nobody was supposed to shoot them in 1907. But in 1908, they said there'd be foul for them to shoot. Now 1907 was the first automobile in the area. And the population had doubled. And they had more kids in the school. So they put in a second floor in the schoolhouse. In 1908, they got telephone service. In 1909, that was the first Richland Bank. And in 1912, they built the new high school. Now Amon came in about this time. And he bought most of the land from Rosencrance. Rosencrance had been running cattle and stuff. And Rosencrance is the one that built the big wheel and started the irrigation. And when that irrigation got started, why, then people came in to farm. And finally in 1905, they decided they could call it Benton County. [LAUGHTER] They had quite a time on the name. And there was a man named Raditz. And my grandfather was Bremer, and they built a hotel in Richland. And it had 20 rooms, and it was 30 by 60 foot. And they had a feed stable and a hardware store, and a post office was in the grocery store. And they bought bonds for a new schoolhouse. And the river traffic was lively. And they had daily service from Kennewick to Priest Rapids. Let's see. Amon bought Rosencrance out and sold ranches and stuff. And--oh, wrote my notes in a hurry and can't even read my notes.
Bauman: It's okay.
Hansen: [LAUGHTER] Anyway, Richland was growing. And I have a picture here of Richland about that time. And this was the John Dam Grocery store. And this was Murray's Hardware store. And this was Van’s, which was a confectionary--sold pop and ice cream in a little store. Now let's see. I think when Amon bought out Rosencrance, that was the end of the water wheel. They didn't use it after that. Amon, he went for gas pumps. I think I read we got our telephone in 1908, and the Richland Bank in '10. I think I read that. Now in 1915, oh, my dad came in here from Iowa. And of course, he wanted to farm and wanted to be with farms. So he got a job out at the Grosscup's ranch. Grosscup was the lawyer over in Seattle. And he had a son, but he wasn't a farmer. He came over here and lived [LAUGHTER] kind of to keep him out of his father's hair in Seattle. [LAUGHTER] But anyway, my dad got a job with him. And so he wasn't too long till he was managing the work crew that were farming out there. And Mom—they had asked her when they got the ditch built and all this farming under control, they asked her to stay on as cook. So she was the cook, and they built quite a large house for all the employees that were working with them. Thad and his family had a nice home. And Thad didn't do any farming. He just kind of--he was there. [LAUGHTER] He was out of the hair of the people in Seattle. But my dad was running the farm, and my mom was cooking for all these. And they got married. And they lived on in the big building. They had quite a few people working for them--working there. Now my dad worked for Grosscup for a number of years. And then he finally bought a piece of property. He bought, I think it was 60 acres. And then he started farming for himself. He took the lower 60 acres. And Grosscup was selling off to other farmers, too. He sold several pieces. Now I think that that was the things that I thought might be interesting to bring you up to when there were more people in Richland.
Bauman: [LAUGHTER] Right. Can I ask you, what kind of crops did your father grow on his land?
Hansen: Well, he raised hay. And that shows them putting the hay in the haystacks. And that's the way they did it. And they had these great big haystacks. And there were quite a few herds of sheep up the valley--oh, Lind or up in there. And they would take their sheep in the summer to the forest. And they could let them run in the forest. But in the wintertime, they would come down and bargain for the hay. And they would bring their herd in, and they would feed it right out of the haystack. And I don't know how my mother did it, but my mother could figure out how many tons of hay there was in a stack, so many feet long and so high, with an oval top. And they'd been in there. The hay had been sitting all winter, you know. And then they'd bring the sheep in there and feed them. And then you got the fertilizer on your land, too, because they'd eat the hay and leave the fertilizer on the land. It worked real well. And then when your hay was all gone, they'd go to another neighbor and buy his hay, and the same thing--they feed it there. So that's what a haystack looked like. And now my dad was from Iowa. So he had to raise corn. And he raised corn for his chickens. And you can see that the corn really did well. And then later, when asparagus came into this country, why, then he plowed up a lot of his land and put it into asparagus. We had 16 acres of asparagus. Now almost everybody in Richland had asparagus. But they had an acre or an acre and a half. And dad had 16 acres. But anyway, he'd go down to Kennewick and get some fellows that didn't have work and bring them out. And Mom would feed them. [LAUGHTER] And they would work for him through the asparagus season. Now you know we have good-looking buses now. And now this is the kind of bus that we had for when I started the school. I started in 1930 going to school. And this is the kind of buses we had.
Bauman: And where was the school? Where was the school?
Hansen: In Richland. We all came to Richland. And I think I have some pictures. Oh, this is a picture--this was when my mom was going to school. And this is the entire Richland school at the time my mom was going to school. And there was a vessel got frozen into the ice. And it was wintertime, and they couldn't get it out. And so the teacher thought it'd be a good trip for the school. And so this was the whole school. And you can see some of them are little, and some of them are big. And that's my mom in the plaid coat. [LAUGHTER] But that was their day tour. Now, I don't have a date on this. But my dad's brother is on here, and my mother's brother is on here. And this was the Richland baseball team. And this man bought land from Grosscup, and he lived across the street from us. And we knew everybody in Richland.
Bauman: [LAUGHTER]
Hansen: Now, this is the school that I went to school in. This is Richland, and eight grades in this building. Now this picture, this shows the Methodist church. And this is the grade school, and this is the high school. And you can see, we didn't have fancy streets at that time. This was my graduating class, class of '42. Now there's 12 pictures. But two--the picture was taken before we graduated. When we actually graduated, there were 12 in my graduating class. Now this was the high school. And this was everybody that was in the high school at that time, and I don't see a date on there. But I think probably in the '30s, maybe '40s. Now and this is another one. And this was 1940. And this is the whole Richland school. And that were the things that I thought might be interesting. Now did you have some questions you were going to ask me?
Bauman: I do, yeah. I wanted to ask you about the school--going to school in Richland. What was it like going to school in Richland? And do you remember any teachers in particular?
Hansen: Oh, yeah. I should have brought the picture with the teachers.
[LAUGHTER]
Hansen: We had eight people in our building. And the eighth-grade teacher was the principal. So that was the staff. The complete staff was eight when I went to school.
Bauman: What about churches? What church did you go to?
Hansen: I showed you the picture of the Methodist church, and that was the big church. We were Lutherans, and we had a little bitty church. And [LAUGHTER] they were teaching--having the minister in German and things in connection with the church in German. But my mom just really worked it over with my grandfather. [LAUGHTER] She said, you ought to be teaching in English. And then the kids would get something out of it because they were getting English in school. And but anyway, it was a tiny church. And I really think the Catholics all went to Kennewick. And I think that that's about what we had in the way of churches.
Bauman: I asked you about your farm. Did you have electricity on the farm or a telephone?
Hansen: We got electricity in 1938. Before that, we had carbide. Do you know carbide?
Bauman: Mm-mm.
Hansen: Well, it's a gas. My dad went down to Kennewick. And the man said, now, don't let anybody touch this but you. You need to do this. [LAUGHTER] And my mother run it all the time. But you put this product in water, and it created a gas. And we had three bedrooms upstairs. So we had three gas deals up there. And we had a light in the living room and the dining room that was with the gas. [LAUGHTER] But they didn't think a woman could handle the—[LAUGHTER] But they didn't know my dad. My dad was a farmer. He wasn't [LAUGHTER] a gas man. Mom took over the gas. But in 1938, the electricity came in. And that was wonderful. We started off with, we bought a refrigerator. And then we had, of course, the electric lights. And then we got other appliances after that.
Bauman: And what about a telephone? Did you have a telephone at all?
Hansen: [LAUGHTER] Well, they put in a telephone back many, many years ago. But when my dad would want to call—make a phone, there would be some neighbor women visiting on the telephone. And he got so mad, he took it out.
[LAUGHTER]
Hansen: We only had it for a year, I think. And he got so mad at the women visiting on the telephone [LAUGHTER] that we never had a telephone until later on, my older sister had problems. And she moved in with her two children. And of course, she put in a telephone, so that they had it. That would have been in the '40s.
Bauman: Uh-huh. And when you were growing up on the farm, did you have any particular chores or responsibilities?
Hansen: Oh, we all--when we hayed, we all hayed. Mom ran the team. And well, Dad mowed it and got it raked into shocks. And then when it was the way he wanted it to be in the haystack, he'd give it a few days to cure in this shock. And then we would bring the team out. And Mom ran the team. Mom had the team. And dad would put his fork in the shock and put it on the sled. And then we kids, 7 and 8, we had our own little rake. And if he didn't get all of the little pieces picked up, we would pick them up and put them on the sled, too. And then Mom would drive it to the haystack. And Dad would crawl up on the top of the stack. And Mom ran the derrick--ran the team--hooked the team up to there. And then there were chains on this sled, and they would, when she ran the derrick, the chains would come up together. And then they'd swing it up there on the top of the haystack. And then when Dad got it just where he'd want it, then he would call her to stop the team. And then we kids would pull the--there was a rope came down. And when he got it where he wanted it, then we'd pull on that rope. And then the chains would come off and it would drop on the top of the stack. And then we'd go get another load--another load, another load. [LAUGHTER] And then, of course, we fed the chickens and took care of the chickens. And we had turkeys. I mean, we'd just have ten or 12 turkeys and just let them run loose.
Bauman: Do you remember any community events--picnics, special community celebrations or gatherings at all?
Hansen: Well, there was the Grange in town. And a lot of people went to the Grange. But my dad was not much of a joiner. And so he didn't ever join the Grange. But we had friends that would come. And we would go up to the dam when they were fishing. And he would spear fish. And then we'd can the salmon. And we bought an old house. I think it was built in about 1902 or '04--something like that. Wasn't much of a house. But anyway, one of the first things they did was they built a great big concrete porch. And Mom bought a piano for the girls to learn to play the piano. And we had a lot of dances at our house. The porch was wide enough and long enough you could get three square dances going--circles going on the porch. And the piano was in the living room. And we opened the door so they could hear the music. And then they did other dances, too and played cards--lots of cards. Had neighbors in lots of times for cards.
Bauman: Now you graduated high school in 1942? You graduated high school in 1942? Is that correct?
Hansen: Yeah.
Bauman: And then the Federal government came in the following year to build the--
Hansen: Yeah. We hadn't heard one word about it. But I guess they'd already picked the location. But anyway, when we graduated, we didn't know anything about the Project. And so it was when we went to college that we got letters. And it was at Valentine's Day when all the farmers got--the farmers were out there preparing their land, making ditches, planting stuff when they got the notices to move out. And that was a real jolt when they moved the people out. But my dad didn't have to move because he lived eight miles out. And that was the Grosscup Ranch. And Grosscup was the lawyer from Seattle. He had it all worked out. And [LAUGHTER] they said it would take them too long to go through the rigmarole that the lawyer would put them through. So they just left that, and anybody that had bought land from him got to stay.
Bauman: And so your parents stayed there on their land through the war and all that?
Hansen: Yeah.
Bauman: And where were you in college?
Hansen: I went to college in Ellensburg to be a teacher. And I graduated--well, I didn't graduate. They had lost so many teachers in the Army that they would take us at three years. So I went out to teach at three years of college. And then I would go back summer school to finish up. So I got my degree. But the war was over by the time I got my degree.
Bauman: And how long did your family stay on their farm?
Hansen: Lyle? When did we sell the farm?
Lyle: Well, [INAUDIBLE], early '70s, I think--early to mid '70s.
Hansen: What did he say?
Bauman: He said, early to mid '70s--1970.
Hansen: Well, [LAUGHTER] I was the seller.
[LAUGHTER]
Hansen: But I didn't even remember what--but anyway, Dad got bad and died. And Mary moved in with her kids and took care of Mom. And then my mom had to go to a nursing home. Mary had stayed for a couple of years. That was my older sister. Anyway, we finally decided that [LAUGHTER] my husband and my sister's husband had to keep going down and things kept going wrong with it. And so we talked my sister into moving into town--the third sister. And we sold it.
Bauman: Who were some of the people who lived nearest you? Who were some of your neighbors when you were growing up?
Hansen: Well now, I pointed out, the McCarthys. They lived right straight across from us. Now they just bought a little place. They must have had five or ten acres. But my dad had about 60, didn't he, Lyle?
Lyle: Yeah, that's what you said.
Hansen: Anyway, he really farmed. But McCarthy was kind of retired. The Grosscups--they lived on their place for quite a while. And he became a county commissioner, I think. He wasn't a farmer. But he knew a lot of people. And they sold a big piece of land to--well, they sold off several pieces of land. Anyway--
Bauman: So how would you describe Richland as a place to grow up?
Hansen: Oh, it was great. Yeah. We had a real good time. And we knew everybody. Anyway, when the farmers had to leave, a lot of them were really upset. I mean, they had put money into their homes and built their farms up. And they had asparagus planted. And they had cherries planted and everything, and they had to leave it all. And they looked for farms, but farms were pretty hard to come by. An awful lot of people were unhappy. But they thought it'd be nice if we could get together and see our old neighbors. So we arranged with Prosser. Would Prosser let us use their park as a get-together? So for several years, anybody who had lived in Richland could come to up there. And they sent out letters so people could visit with their old neighbors and tell about their new farms. But they were all over the state of Washington, and some went in to Oregon. But anyway--
Lyle: Mom, tell them about--
Hansen: --after four or five years going to Prosser, Richland decided that it'd be okay for us to come down and stay in one of their parks. And so then we had these get-togethers. And in fact, we still meet. But now [LAUGHTER] we're down to about eight.
Bauman: Yeah. I spoke with Bob Fletcher.
Hansen: Oh, you talked to Bob?
Bauman: Yeah. And he talked about you getting together, yeah. Did you have a--
Lyle: That's what I was going to bring up.
Bauman: Oh, okay.
Lyle: That it was still going on.
Bauman: Right.
Lyle: Old Richland.
Bauman: Yeah.
Hansen: Yeah. I see Bob once in a while.
Bauman: Yeah. I want to thank you very much for coming today. I really appreciate it, for coming and sharing your memories. Thank you.
Hansen: Did you have any other questions you wanted?
Bauman: I think I'm good. Do you have anything else you want to add--anything--
Hansen: Well, that's all the notes. I made those notes this morning. And [LAUGHTER] I didn't get everything in.
Bauman: Well, thank you very much.
Hansen: But I mean, I think probably my family is about the only one, you know, way back.
Bauman: Yeah.
Hansen: Because my mother was only about four years old when they came from Seattle. But there were a lot of people came in the '30s. And then there were a lot came in the '40s, too.
Robert Franklin: Victor, are we ready?
Victor Vargas: We’re ready.
Franklin: Okay. My name is Robert Franklin. I’m conducting an oral history interview with Ruth Lorraine Fer—
Lorraine Ferqueron: Ferqueron.
Franklin: Ferqueron. Thank you, Lorraine. On October 18th, 2016. The interview is being conducting on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Lorraine about her experiences growing up in the Richland area and the forced evacuation in 1943. For the record, can you state and spell your full name for us?
Ferqueron: My name is Ruth Lorraine Ferqueron. It’s R-U-T-H L-O-R-R-A-I-N-E F-E-R-Q-U-E-R-O-N.
Franklin: Great. Thank you. So, let’s start at the beginning. When and where were you born?
Ferqueron: Pasco, Washington at Lady of Lourdes, May 7th, 1931. Those days, they kept the mother and the baby for ten days. So I came to Richland when I was ten days old.
Franklin: And where in Richland did your family live?
Ferqueron: Well we had—during the time, we had three different farms. One was out by basically where Battelle is now. I can’t really tell you exactly because I don’t have any points to base it from except the river.
Franklin: Sure, but somewhere where the Battelle campus is now, okay.
Ferqueron: Mm-hmm. Actually, that area was called Fruitdale when I was little.
Franklin: Mm-hmm. I’ve seen that on some—
Ferqueron: You’ve seen the Fruitdale?
Franklin: --On some maps.
Ferqueron: Yeah.
Franklin: Some early maps—like ‘30s and ’40s maps. So you said your family had three farms—three acres?
Ferqueron: No.
Franklin: Three areas that they farmed.
Ferqueron: Three areas of farms.
Franklin: Three areas of farms. So one’s in Fruitdale, or PNNL campus.
Ferqueron: Yeah, but I was very young when that was going on. And then we moved in to—closer to Richland and had a farm up below where Tagaris is now.
Franklin: Okay.
Ferqueron: And then the last one was out on—is it Wellsian Way that goes—not Wellsian, the road that goes to West Richland.
Franklin: Van Giesen?
Ferqueron: Below the Tri-City Court Club was—we had 118 acres there.
Franklin: Is that Van Giesen?
Ferqueron: Huh?
Franklin: That goes to—is it Van Giesen that goes to—
Ferqueron: Yeah, Van Giesen.
Franklin: Yeah.
Ferqueron: Right below the Tri-City Court Club.
Franklin: Okay.
Ferqueron: We had that until 1943, when we were forced out.
Franklin: Can you describe your memory of that event?
Ferqueron: That day? Yeah. I remember it. I was 12. These two men came to the door and told my father that they had declared eminent domain and they were taking the land. We had I think it was about three weeks to get out. There was seven of us children.
Franklin: Wow.
Ferqueron: We had a dairy farm there—well, my parents did, of course. I think we had 27 cows that Dad had to sell for five dollars apiece.
Franklin: And I imagine that was pennies on the dollar.
Ferqueron: Yeah. Well, yes. And then we were given—Dad was given—everyone was given, I think, $5,000 for their property, no matter what size or anything. That was actually owed to the bank, so we never—my father and mother didn’t have any money. And we moved to Finley.
Franklin: And then what did your parents—what did your family do in Finley?
Ferqueron: Well, Dad did a lot of trucking and we had a small farm there.
Franklin: But more like a truck farm?
Ferqueron: Yeah, well, we had peppermint.
Franklin: Okay.
Ferqueron: And asparagus. We had, I think, three cows that Dad kept. Two or three cows. My brother could tell you that more than I could. And we raised asparagus.
Franklin: And how long did that go on, did your parents do that?
Ferqueron: Until I was 15. We moved to the Richland Wye.
Franklin: And why did your parents moved to the Richland Wye?
Ferqueron: Dad went into working in construction. We left the farm and farming. We took one cow and moved to the Richland Wye—what’s now the Richland Wye.
Franklin: Your favorite cow?
Ferqueron: Yeah, probably. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Did he work for Hanford, or in—
Ferqueron: No, no.
Franklin: Okay.
Ferqueron: The only one in our family that worked for Hanford that I’m aware of is my grandfather. My grandfather had a farm here. His name was Augustus Long. He was the ditch back rider. A ditch back rider is someone who rides the irrigation ditches and checks it out and makes sure everything’s going fine. Started doing that on horseback. And then, I guess, the irrigation district or somebody bought him this truck to ride it in. After they took him off—took his land, he went to court, actually, and they paid him off.
Franklin: Hmm.
Ferqueron: Because they had to, to keep—it was all secret, you know. Everything at Hanford—nobody knew what was going on, even the people that worked there. He went to work for them for a short time, just to show them where everything was. He knew all the county—all the boundaries, and all the lines and where everything was. So he worked for them for a while—short time. Then he moved to Grandview.
Franklin: Did he receive more money in the settlement because he took them to court?
Ferqueron: No, no.
Franklin: No?
Ferqueron: No.
Franklin: He just had to go through the extra step.
Ferqueron: Yeah, he got extra because he worked for them for that short time. And then because he got as far as the court in Spokane, and they paid him off. In other words, they bribed him out of it.
Franklin: Oh, so, but did he receive more money in the end for going to court?
Ferqueron: Yeah, he probably did. I have no idea how much, but he probably did, yeah.
Franklin: Sure. And how long—do you know approximately how long he worked for the government—for Hanford?
Ferqueron: Oh, it was a matter of two or three months, probably.
Franklin: Oh, okay, so not too significant.
Ferqueron: Yeah, I don’t really remember, but it wasn’t long.
Franklin: But he was part of that transition, though, right? Kind of showing them the lay of the land.
Ferqueron: Yeah, he said the hardest thing he ever had to do was cut off the water to all those farms, and they just—
Franklin: Watch them die.
Ferqueron: Watch them die. And bulldozed under—they were actually bulldozed.
Franklin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, many of them were.
Ferqueron: That’s why—I hear people today say, well, it was a sand pile when we got here. Well, of course it was.
Franklin: Yeah. That helps erase that evidence of human habitation.
Ferqueron: Oh, yeah.
Franklin: And make sure people don’t want to come back.
Ferqueron: Right.
Franklin: Wow, that’s really—so your father—or your grandfather was the only person that worked for—
Ferqueron: Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s true, because—it was a very traumatic thing, because one day I had my complete family here. And three weeks later, they were scattered all over the state.
Franklin: Mm.
Ferqueron: And I lost—I could walk from our house to grandpa’s house. And then they went up to Grandview, I mean, and we just didn’t get to see them as often.
Franklin: Right, right, because of the—not as much—farther distance, not as good of roads.
Ferqueron: Well, eventually, he moved back to Benton City and had a farm up there. But in those days, going from where we lived in Finley to Benton City was quite a trip.
Franklin: I bet. I bet that would have been an all-day affair.
Ferqueron: Yeah. My mother told me when they were children to go to Kennewick to shop, it was all day, because they had a horse and a wagon.
Franklin: Oh, wow.
Ferqueron: They went to Kennewick and back and it was an all-day trip.
Franklin: So when do your parents and grandparents—when did your family come to the Richland area?
Ferqueron: Yeah. My great-grandparents came here just about the turn of the century. But as far as I can figure, about 1900. Maybe a little earlier. And my great-grandfather farmed the area somewhere between where WinCo is now and the Yakima River.
Franklin: Okay. And then did they—when they came, were there already—was there already irrigation piping here? Was there an irrigation district?
Ferqueron: I don’t remember—I mean, I don’t really know. I never was told. My grandparents and my mother and her siblings came—let’s see, she was born in 1905 in Nebraska, and she was three when they came here.
Franklin: So in 1908.
Ferqueron: 1908, yeah.
Franklin: Okay. I know there were irrigation lines—
Ferqueron: And there was irrigation then.
Franklin: --at that time.
Ferqueron: Yeah.
Franklin: 1900 is a little—
Ferqueron: A little early.
Franklin: A little early. Did your—
Ferqueron: But—
Franklin: Oh, sorry.
Ferqueron: They had the Yakima River. So they had a water supply and they--
Franklin: Right.
Ferqueron: I know you’ve probably heard about the Rosencrans and the water wheel they had here on the river?
Franklin: No, no, tell me about that.
Ferqueron: Well, I don’t really know much about it, but there are pictures of it available somewhere.
Franklin: Okay. I’ll have to look at—
Ferqueron: The Rosencrans family had that.
Franklin: Okay. Great. Thank you.
Ferqueron: And that was—that was probably the start of the irrigation right there. Around that time.
Franklin: Right. From the research I’ve done, it shows that kind of later in 1906, 1908, the White Bluffs Irrigation Company and the Hanford Irrigation Company, which were formed by kind of collected capital on the west side of the state laid down the irrigation piping, bought the land—
Ferqueron: Miles and miles of it, yeah.
Franklin: Right. And then sold the land to people, and then people would have to pay monthly irrigation bills.
Ferqueron: Right.
Franklin: Whether they used the water or not. It was kind of a scheme to make a bunch of money.
Ferqueron: Well, it’s still that way.
Franklin: Right, it is. But I’ve always been kind of interested about the pre—because it sounds like there were smaller attempts by families at creating some irrigation tunnels and ditches.
Ferqueron: I don’t know if there’s anybody still living that would know.
Franklin: Yeah, it’s—the nature of the history is—physically the evidence has been wiped off the map.
Ferqueron: Yeah. Oh, yeah. That was wiped out with the bulldozers and everything—that was all—
Franklin: So your great-grandparents that came, that would have been your father’s side?
Ferqueron: My mother’s.
Franklin: Your mother, oh, so then your mother was born in Nebraska?
Ferqueron: My father, on my Sloppy side of the family, I don’t really know when they came. But my father was born in Prosser—well, AmaRosa district outside of Prosser—in 1905.
Franklin: Okay.
Ferqueron: He was the third baby born in Benton County.
Franklin: Wow.
Ferqueron: Well, you know, years ago—before 1905, there was no Benton County. It was Yakima County.
Franklin: Yup.
Ferqueron: Then they divided it, and Dad was born after it was made a county.
Franklin: Interesting.
Ferqueron: I don’t know exactly where they came from. They did live here in Richland for a number of years because my mother and father went to school from first grade to, I believe, fifth. And then his family moved away. And then he came back in his 20s and went to work for John Weidle and Thad Grosscup. There’s streets named after them in West Richland.
Franklin: John Weidle and who?
Ferqueron: Thad Grosscup.
Franklin: Oh, yeah, Grosscup.
Ferqueron: Yeah. Yeah, I knew both of those men.
Franklin: Okay.
Ferqueron: He was working in wheat fields all over here and Idaho and everything. And anyway, my parents married here in 1930.
Franklin: In Richland?
Ferqueron: Oh, actually, married in Kennewick because the old Methodist church in Kennewick on Kennewick Avenue.
Franklin: Oh, right. And then how did your parents meet?
Ferqueron: In school.
Franklin: Oh, in school. Well, right, first through fifth. But how did they reconnect later—I mean, were they both in Richland at the same time, or—
Ferqueron: Yeah, he came back to work for Thad--
Franklin: Well, right.
Ferqueron: --in what is now West Richland. And mom worked for John Dam. You know, John Dam Plaza?
Franklin: Yup.
Ferqueron: Named after him. Well, she worked for John for—right out of high school. She graduated in the old high school here in 1922, and went to work for John Dam.
Franklin: And what did she do?
Ferqueron: And Dad was in and out of the—she was a clerk.
Franklin: Oh, in—
Ferqueron: In his store, mm-hm.
Franklin: Oh, at his store.
Ferqueron: Yeah. Well, John Dam had a—well, it was like a department store. He sold everything. He was also our unofficial banker.
Franklin: As many storekeepers often were in those days.
Ferqueron: Well, he gave credits through the winter to the farmers and then they would pay it off in the fall with the crops.
Franklin: Right, yeah, no, that’s a—
Ferqueron: An old—
Franklin: A long-standing tradition in agriculture.
Ferqueron: Yeah. A lost tradition now.
Franklin: Yes. Although, sadly, sometimes, abused and—like the sharecropping system of the South. But usually not quite so much here, luckily. So graduated from Richland. Okay, wow. So you said you grew up—you lived in three different farms here.
Ferqueron: Yeah. And went to school here in Richland at what is now Lewis and Clark.
Franklin: Went to school at Lewis and Clark. Okay. And how come your parents moved so much in the 12 years between the three different farms? Do you know why they--?
Ferqueron: You know, I really don’t remember. Some of the farms—two of the farms were rented. So that might have been why. He found a better place. There was a time when we moved away from Richland. We lived in Corfu, which does not exist now.
Franklin: In where, sorry?
Ferqueron: Corfu. It’s right across the mountain from White Bluffs.
Franklin: Could you—
Ferqueron: Right out of Othello.
Franklin: Could you spell that for me?
Ferqueron: Corfu, C-O-R-F-U.
Franklin: Oh, okay. I would not have spelled it that way. Thank you.
Ferqueron: And as far as we know, my sister was the only person ever born there. My mother was a postmaster there. All the outlying farmers would come in and get their mail there.
Franklin: Mm. Do you know if there was a store there, or was it just a—
Ferqueron: Yes, there was a store, but it was gone. It was abandoned. Actually, Corfu was founded, I think, for the railroad workers.
Franklin: Oh.
Ferqueron: To have a place to stay. And we lived in—it was a hotel, and we lived on the second floor, and, well, part of the time on the first floor. And my mother was postmaster.
Franklin: Interesting. Was it a functioning hotel at that point?
Ferqueron: No. No, we were the only residents in there.
Franklin: Only residents there. Oh, wow.
Ferqueron: We had lots of room.
Franklin: So it was really just the postal designation to deliver mail at that point. And was that—
Ferqueron: We had a lot of sheep herders go through.
Franklin: Oh, I would imagine. Interesting.
Ferqueron: I don’t know if you know about the sheep herds that went through. They were—oh, about four of five thousand sheep per herd, you know.
Franklin: Right, and it was often—
Ferqueron: They would go up, and go across Grand Coulee Dam before it was closed to them.
Franklin: And it was often—I don’t know if it was this far north, but often sheep herders were Basque men? People from the Basque region? Do you know of—
Ferqueron: I just remembered, when my father was in his early teens, he was a sheep herder for a summer or two.
Franklin: Oh, really?
Ferqueron: Yeah.
Franklin: Wow, that’s really—in the same area?
Ferqueron: Yeah, mm-hmm.
Franklin: Is Corfu—was that where part of the Hanford reservation extends over?
Ferqueron: You know, I don’t know if it goes that far or not. I doubt it, but I don’t know.
Franklin: Okay.
Ferqueron: I know people are surprised when I tell them that there’s ice caves up there.
Franklin: Really?
Ferqueron: Yeah, the White Bluffs range there. Yeah. We used to go into those ice caves, and the people in Corfu and another little town up there used to keep their meat and stuff in there.
Franklin: Wow.
Ferqueron: Refrigeration, yeah.
Franklin: Yeah, that was a very prized thing before electric refrigeration.
Ferqueron: Well, it’s been there since the Ice Age.
Franklin: Wow, that’s really interesting.
Ferqueron: Yeah.
Franklin: What was the other little town?
Ferqueron: You know, I just don’t remember now.
Franklin: That’s okay. So your parents—your mother worked for John Dam for a time, your father was kind of a wheat farmer—
Ferqueron: Yeah, and—
Franklin: Then they settled down and lived in these three different farms. Now, the last one you lived in in Richland, that was one that your parents had bought?
Ferqueron: They were buying it.
Franklin: Yeah--or they were buying it, they had a mortgage on it.
Ferqueron: Yeah, they did pay quite a bit on it when we lost it. But we lost—they just lost all of that.
Franklin: Right.
Ferqueron: So.
Franklin: And it was a cattle ranch?
Ferqueron: It was a dairy farm, yeah.
Franklin: Dairy farm, sorry.
Ferqueron: Yeah. As far as I remember, we had about 27 cows. We had a huge pasture. Dad rented out pasture land to horses, too.
Franklin: Mm. Was that irrigated pasture, or--?
Ferqueron: No.
Franklin: Oh, just for—
Ferqueron: It had a pond, but—
Franklin: Oh, it had a pond, okay.
Ferqueron: I only remember that, because I was sliding around on it one time on the ice and went through the ice and cut my ankle open.
Franklin: Oh, wow.
Ferqueron: That’s why I remember it.
Franklin: So tell me about growing up in kind of this small agricultural town—
Ferqueron: Well, it’s—
Franklin: And your childhood and school and friends.
Ferqueron: Well, everybody knew you, and I was related to half the town, because I had--two uncles had places here, and at least one aunt and her husband. Well, I always say, it was so small in town that if I did anything wrong, my father knew about it in about 30 seconds, because—[LAUGHTER]—the whole town would call him and tell him, you know? But it was just a really easy-going good time.
Franklin: How did the Depression affect your family? Did it affect the town?
Ferqueron: Well, about like anybody else, except we had meat, because we had cows, we had pigs, we had chickens. Mom would buy a bunch of little chicks every year. We grew—my mother canned everything. We had lots of food. Clothes and everything, that was a little bit of a problem because of the money. But we did pretty good because—and I don’t remember ever being hungry. Well, I had the kind of parents that if there was food, we got it first anyway.
Franklin: Right. So you might not have known at the time—
Ferqueron: I don’t remember it being an unhappy time at all.
Franklin: Interesting.
Ferqueron: But now I realize how much I learned from my mother of how to get by cheaply. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Yeah! Did you ever go to Hanford or White Bluffs at all? Did you know anybody at Hanford?
Ferqueron: Oh, yeah. We went through there. I did know them, but now—except for one teacher and I can’t remember his name—and he also taught at Kennewick later. I had him for a teacher there. That was 65 years ago that I graduated. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Of course, of course. A lot of focus is on—especially recently with the creation of the National Park and some of these stories of White Bluffs and Hanford are becoming more well-known, but Richland is also a community that was—
Ferqueron: Yeah.
Franklin: --displaced by the—
Ferqueron: We were very affected by it. I mean, a very emotional thing. There was one man that when they told him he had to get out, he died later that day of a heart attack. Now, whether or not he had a heart attack coming on, who knows? But he did die of a heart attack. Well, that hit us all pretty hard. And then having to say goodbye to my grandparents, and my cousins, and aunts and uncles—
Franklin: Have you ever been to any of the—I know they had the Hanford-White Bluffs reunions—were Richland people ever included in those?
Ferqueron: I don’t know about—we never were included as far as I know with Hanford and White Bluffs, but we had our own. It was called the Old Timers’ Picnic.
Franklin: Old Timers’ Picnic, okay.
Ferqueron: And you could not come to that unless you were here prior to 1943. I remember one occasion there, I was living in the south at the time, in South Carolina—came out for vacation. I was 36 years old, and I’m sitting at this table, and Mrs. John Dam, who had not seen me since I was a child, came up to me and said, you must be Edith Long’s little girl. And she patted me on the head like I was a little child. I’ll never forget it. I could not believe she remembered me all that time.
Franklin: Wow.
Ferqueron: That was shortly before she died.
Franklin: Wow, that’s something.
Ferqueron: She was in her 90s then.
Franklin: Wow. Yeah, memories are funny that way, huh?
Ferqueron: Yeah.
Franklin: I mean, some things we remember crystal clear, and others kind of seem to get fuzzy.
Ferqueron: Just the other day, someone asked me, well, who was John Dam? And its kind of surprised me, because I just assumed everybody knew who he was.
Franklin: Right.
Ferqueron: And he was county commissioner, too.
Franklin: Yeah. How much of—do you live in Richland now?
Ferqueron: I live at the Richland Wye, yes.
Franklin: Okay. How did you feel coming back to the Richland Wye and seeing this different town that had been—
Ferqueron: Yeah.
Franklin: --created, and this kind of suburban landscape that had been placed over what had once been farmland. How did that make you feel when you came back?
Ferqueron: Well, it made me—it was not a good thing. Bad memories. Losing—my dad’s losing his farm that he’d worked so many years and everything for—it basically shortened his life some.
[TELEPHONE RINGS]
Ferqueron: Oh!
Franklin: Oh, it’s okay.
Ferqueron: Well, it means I got to take a pill.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Ferqueron: So I need my bag over there.
Franklin: Oh, sure. Emma, can you grab that? And then we have water right here for you.
Ferqueron: Yeah. I forgot about it. I would have turned it off.
Emma Rice: This bag?
Franklin: Believe me, it’s all right.
Ferqueron: Well, if I don’t, I might forget it.
Franklin: Right, no, believe me, it’s—
Ferqueron: You know, when you’re 85, you’ve got to be careful.
Rice: No, you—[LAUGHTER] You’re good.
Ferqueron: I’ve got water here. I’ll be fine.
Rice: Oh, okay.
Ferqueron: But it was also a little complicated, because living at the Richland Wye, we had one time and Richland had another time. It was an hour’s difference between us.
Franklin: Huh? Really?
Ferqueron: Yes. Yes, Richland city proper—property was on—an hour ahead of us.
Franklin: Huh! Oh, is that—that must be before they—
Ferqueron: That’s before the government gave out—
Franklin: --firmed up the time zones, right?
Ferqueron: Yeah.
Franklin: Interesting. That’s very—that I had not heard at all.
Ferqueron: We wanted to go to Richland to a movie, we had to go at a different time.
Franklin: [LAUGHTER] Is there any—I’ve heard there’s still a few buildings in Richland left from the pre-’43 days.
Ferqueron: Yeah, there’s a few houses. The Carlson house as far as I know is still here. And John Dam’s store, I think, is still here. Down there, off of Lee, where they have that roundabout with the metal tree?
Franklin: Yeah.
Ferqueron: His store stood in right there somewhere. I’m pretty sure that building is still there.
Franklin: Oh, really?
Ferqueron: But I’m not positive to that at all.
Franklin: Of course.
Ferqueron: It would be on the corner of Lee and Jadwin.
Franklin: Okay.
Ferqueron: But everything has changed so much. And then there’s—across the street, on Lee going into the park, on the left-hand side, I’m pretty sure that’s an original building. Well, maybe not original to Richland, but it was in Richland before Hanford. It was, I think, a bar. And something else, because I remember going in there and asking Dad for a dime so that the six of us—at the time there was just six of us—could buy some candy. And for a dime, we got a whole bagful.
Franklin: Wow.
Ferqueron: And I remember the butcher—George Gress was his name. Had a butcher shop. He was German, and he made these wonderful sausages that were ready to eat. Us kids would go down and stand in front of his store and look in the window at it. Ha! He had such a good heart. And we’d send our youngest brother in because he was so cute—in to see George. And he—Dean, my brother—would come out with sausage hung around his neck. [LAUGHTER] And we’d all have some sausage. I don’t know if my parents ever found out about that or not. If they had, they’d have put a stop to it.
Franklin: Right, right. What was—I gather that a lot of the street names were changed when the government came in.
Ferqueron: Oh, yes.
Franklin: And what was—you mentioned the John Dam store was on Lee and Jadwin, so I imagine there were streets there.
Ferqueron: It is now. I don’t know that there was a—if there was, I don’t remember it.
Franklin: Okay.
Ferqueron: Yeah. I would go down there to cash—I was old enough to go and cash the dairy checks that Dad got for his milk and stuff.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Ferqueron: And instead of him coming in to do it, or my mother—when I was at school I’d go and cash them there. But I don’t remember there being any streets.
Franklin: Okay. Do you—I know Howard Amon Park was there before the—
Ferqueron: Oh, yeah.
Franklin: So do you have any memories of Howard Amon Park?
Ferqueron: Oh [LAUGHTER] yes. Well, first of all it wasn’t quite as large now. But Howard, as far as I know, gave that—he died before I was born, but I knew all the other Amons.
Franklin: Sure.
Ferqueron: But I think he gave them the lease on that land for eternity as a park. And that concrete gate they have down there, I remember that as being larger, but of course I was a child, you know, so maybe it wasn’t larger. But no, the one story I remember about that was our class had an Easter egg hunt down there one year. I was one of the tallest in the class, so I could find all the Easter eggs. They were real eggs. [LAUGHTER] I had a small washpan full. [LAUGHTER] And the teacher asked me if I’d share them with the children. And I said, oh, yeah, glad to! Because we had a farm and we had 500 chickens laying eggs, you know? And I did not want to take home a bunch of boiled eggs to my mother. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Right, you were probably eating enough eggs.
Ferqueron: But what I really remember is the winter of the egg hunt, got a chocolate bunny about this high. And I got that bunny. So I didn’t care about the eggs, I won that chocolate bunny. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Right! Can you talk a little bit about going to school in Richland and kind of just—
Ferqueron: Yeah.
Franklin: You know, the teachers and the kinds of subjects you learned and the classes taught and just kind of how that experience was for you?
Ferqueron: Well, it was just really average, except there wasn’t anywhere near as many of us, of course. One of my teachers was Miss Carlson, who was a friend of my mother’s. Now, when I came into the Kennewick School District, I had gone to school the first year in Corfu. We had a two-room schoolhouse, and I was the entire elementary school. I was the only student in the elementary school.
Franklin: Who—
Ferqueron: And there was three high school students. And our teacher was a high school teacher, and he didn’t know what to do with me.
Franklin: Okay.
Ferqueron: So he read me stories all day long. Whenever he got a chance, he’d read me stories and teach me a little bit. So when I came to Richland, I was very far behind.
Franklin: Right.
Ferqueron: And Miss Carlson got one of the other students to spend a couple hours with me in the library to catch me up. So I caught up to the third grade, and then from then on, it was pretty easy. Pretty good.
Franklin: Who was the—so you went to a four-person school in Corfu—
Ferqueron: Yeah. Well, actually, the second year in Corfu, it was five, because my brother joined me in the elementary school. We doubled our elementary school.
Franklin: Doubled the elementary school. Were your family religious at all? Did they attend church in Richland or Corfu?
Ferqueron: No, no, we didn’t. But my mother was a religious person, and we got some there. Now, I don’t remember going to church there.
Franklin: Mm.
Ferqueron: Of course, later on, I did. We all—and my parents decided that the seven of us could choose our own religions. So they didn’t push us in any particular direction. But my father ended up a Catholic.
Franklin: Okay.
Ferqueron: And my mother was baptized in the Baptist church. And I go to a Baptist church.
Franklin: That’s very—I don’t know—very progressive kind of stance on education—or on Christianity—on religion for that time period. Because so many preexisting—
Ferqueron: Well, they were always very strong. I never heard my parents say “if” you get out of high school; it was always “when” you get out—“when” you graduate. I had one brother who didn’t, but he had some vision problems, and he went into the Air Force and finished in the Air Force. So we’re all graduates. And I have a couple—a brother that’s a graduate of—I guess Washington. I’m not sure. He did it—he was in the Army, so he had some education in Berlin, El Paso, Texas, wherever he could get it.
Franklin: Right, sure.
Ferqueron: But education was always pushed in our family.
Franklin: Oh, that’s great.
Ferqueron: Yeah.
Franklin: I mean, it’s so fundamental for success later in life.
Ferqueron: Right. Well, it’s really the reason we left Corfu and went back to Richland, is because, obviously, my brother and I were not learning anything in Corfu. We were just not. And the teacher was not a good teacher. So they pulled us out and we came down here to—because of us getting education.
Franklin: Right. Are you—where are you—you said you had seven brothers and—or you’re of seven--?
Ferqueron: I’m the oldest of seven.
Franklin: You’re the oldest of seven, okay.
Ferqueron: I have five brothers and one sister.
Franklin: So I can imagine, then, that they—staying in Corfu, they would be looking at kind of a legacy of not so good edu—you know.
Ferqueron: Right. Yeah.
Franklin: Yeah, that makes a lot of—and how close are you all in age? Are you fairly close in age?
Ferqueron: Well, let’s see. Yeah, we are, except for two of them. There’s me, and 18-19 months later is my brother, Verne, whom you’ve already interviewed. Then there’s Roy, who’s another year, year-and-a-half. And Lorne is a year, and then my sister comes a year after Lorne. And then there’s Dean and then five years after Dean—surprise, there’s Dale. [LAUGHTER] So that’s how we run. All pretty close.
Franklin: Right. Most families have at least one surprise.
Ferqueron: Yeah.
Franklin: What did your mother do in this time, you know—did she work on the farm with your father?
Ferqueron: Oh, yeah. She did until she became allergic to the sun.
Franklin: Oh! There’s a lot of sun here.
Ferqueron: But most of her time was spent either with us children, or she was canning. She had a garden. Of course our garden was quite large. And then the farm was alfalfa and dairy. But we had a big garden.
Franklin: Did she or your father ever take any cash work before the government came? You know, any kind of off-the-farm jobs or anything?
Ferqueron: No. Well, yeah, wait. When the war came, we were still on the farm, and Dad went to work at Big Pasco. You heard of Big Pasco?
Franklin: Yeah, the holding—the supply depot.
Ferqueron: Right, supplies for the Army. He worked there for a short while—maybe a year. I don’t remember how long. I do remember why he quit. He had a major that was a 90-day wonder, they used to call them. He’d been an officer for 90 days. And anyway, he and Dad got into it over something, and Dad says, well, I quit. And he said, well, you can’t quit, because you’re working for the Army. You’re frozen in the job. And Dad said, well, that’s just tough, and walked off. Two days later, this officer and a sergeant showed up at our house and was going to take Dad off to the Army. Well, he was 35. Dad just lined us kids up in the yard and said, these are my six kids, and there’s a seventh one on the way. I am a farmer, so therefore I’m deferred. And I remember the major getting terribly angry, and the sergeant actually drug him back to the Jeep. He was so angry! And as they were driving away,Dad said, oh and by the way, I have an ulcer. Which the Army wouldn’t touch him with an ulcer. I remember that so clearly because it was absolutely hilarious. Well, that was my father, the way he did things.
Franklin: Is there anything else you would like to say about Richland before the war that I haven’t asked you about?
Ferqueron: Well, I remember the day that Pearl Harbor happened.
Franklin: Oh, okay, yeah.
Ferqueron: I was listening to the radio in the house, and my mother was outside talking to somebody, some lady. And I heard the announcement that Pearl Harbor had been bombed, and so I went outside and I asked my mother, where’s Pearl Harbor? And she said, in Hawai’i. And I told her what happened, and I’ll never forget her remark. She said, thank God my boys are little. And that’s about all I remember about that.
Franklin: That’s—
Ferqueron: That particular day.
Franklin: Yeah, that’s very searing.
Ferqueron: But I had uncles who ended up in the war and all that kind of stuff. No, I don’t remember an awful lot about it.
Franklin: Sure, sure.
Ferqueron: Well, I do remember, they had a rubber drive. And we had a rubber—we had a tire swing in our yard that Dad had put up for us. And us kids, we scoured that farm for rubber and metal for the defense, you know? We were getting ready to cut the tire down, and Dad made us stop. He said, no, you’ve given enough. He said, you’re not giving up your swing.
Franklin: Aw.
Ferqueron: I do remember that.
Franklin: That’s really sweet.
Ferqueron: Yeah.
Franklin: Did things economically start to improve for your family during the war?
Ferqueron: They did, when the war come, yeah, yeah.
Franklin: Until, of course, the evacuation.
Ferqueron: Right.
Franklin: I kind of already asked you about how coming back made you feel. When you look at Hanford and its kind of legacy, you must have an interesting—you have a different perspective from most people that came here during the war.
Ferqueron: Yeah.
Franklin: I wonder if you could talk about—
Ferqueron: Sometimes I’m resentful because of what happened with my parents and what they lost—what we all lost, everybody who ever lived here. But then again, you just kind of live with it. But I do get upset when people don’t want to talk about anything but Hanford. I want them to remember there was something here 200 years before. Because we had Indians here. We had woolly mammoths walking up and down the Columbia River, for heaven’s sake. And what about the Indian history? I don’t hear much about Indian history.
Franklin: No, that’s a good question.
Ferqueron: There was Indians living up there!
Franklin: Right. Did you ever have—did you ever meet any Wanapum or Yakama people?
Ferqueron: I never met a Wanapum until years later—in fact, about five or six years ago. But I did know some Yakamas, but not while I was living in Richland.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Ferqueron: Yeah.
Franklin: Yeah, that’s—several groups of people have been alienated from the land here.
Ferqueron: Right, yeah. Oh, the Indians—they were done really rotten.
Franklin: Yeah, yes they were.
Ferqueron: Long before we were. I never could figure out—
Franklin: I teach—
Ferqueron: Why do we call Indians savages when our people were really the savages? Stealing their land and everything.
Franklin: Yes, and indiscriminately killing them.
Ferqueron: Yes, that’s how I—well, our admiration of President Roosevelt went into the dumper when Hanford happened.
Franklin: Really?
Ferqueron: Yeah, there were a lot of people mad at him, because—I never did see it—but I’ve been told many times that there was a letter written by Roosevelt, saying that we could have the land back at the price they paid for it when they were through with it. Well, when the time came, and the government left here, he said, no, he’d never written it.
Franklin: Mm.
Ferqueron: And nobody could ever prove it. But I just heard about it; I never did see it.
Franklin: When you—can you describe about when you and your family found out about the atomic bombs dropped, that one of them was—part of that was produced at Hanford, and Hanford’s connection to that. How did that—
Ferqueron: Well, it was kind of a shock to even realize it was something as powerful as that. But the day that we found out was when Dad came home with a newspaper, and it was in there. And he said, well, now we finally know what they were doing out there and why they were doing it.
Franklin: Did that change anyone’s feelings about what had happened, or—
Ferqueron: I don’t—
Franklin: Or not?
Ferqueron: Some people it did. I went to a funeral a few years ago for one of the Richland—for Eddie Supplee’s wedding. It was quite a family of Supplees here. They were still bitter. He was very bitter before he died. I talked to him not long before he died and he was very bitter about Hanford, and it had been so many years. So it was a lot of people with a lot of resentment.
Franklin: Did you ever connect—do you know if there’s much connection between the displaced peoples of Hanford who later resettled and then the so-called down-winders, people that were affected later by releases from Hanford? Do you know if there was ever any talk between those two groups?
Ferqueron: No, not that I know of. Not that I’m aware of. I know one thing—when the construction workers came in—of course, they spilled out all over, because there was over 30,000 of them—
Franklin: Yeah huge influx.
Ferqueron: And they were settling all over in Kennewick and everywhere. Some of them were not a good class of people. You know, they were—I met a few of them, and they were pretty bad. But when everybody left Richland, they left the cream of the crop. We got some really great people in. We got a lot of good scientists. We are really quite an area for science and everything.
Franklin: Yeah.
Ferqueron: Yeah.
Franklin: How does that make you—you sound a little—both happy that they’re there, but obviously then there’s this other side of it where—
Ferqueron: Well, I—
Franklin: --had this not happened, that would still be—that your family would still have a place here.
Ferqueron: I’m just the sort of a person—I adjust just very easily. I’ll say, well, this is life; this is the way it’s going. Why—there’s nothing I can do about it so, just enjoy what you have.
Franklin: So you came back to the Wye when you—how old were you when your parents—
Ferqueron: I was 15 when we first came to the Wye, and I’m still living in the same house.
Franklin: Oh, in the house that had been—
Ferqueron: Yeah!
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Ferqueron: Well, it was down on Columbia Park Trail. At the time it was Columbia Drive, but it set right almost on the road. In the Flood of ’48 or whatever that year was—it was about that far from our front door.
Franklin: Wow.
Ferqueron: But my dad moved it up on a little hill. And, yeah, I’m still living in that house.
Franklin: You are still living in that house.
Ferqueron: Uh-huh, yeah. I still own it.
Franklin: So the house from—
Ferqueron: The house that we moved from Finley to Richland Wye in was a two—three-room house. There wasn’t enough bedrooms—it was all that we could get at the time. But behind it was a Quonset hut left over from the war.
Franklin: Wow.
Ferqueron: So Dad moved—and Mom moved—my brothers and me out there, because I was 15, and I could be out there at night to—whatever the kids—boys needed, and to keep them from killing one another. You know how that is with—[LAUGHTER]—boys.
Franklin: Oh, I know.
Ferqueron: So we slept in the Quonset hut until Dad moved the house up on the hill where it is now, and added to it. And they raised seven kids, and the two of them, and an uncle who stayed with us for a while, in a two-bedroom house, very small house. Bunk beds all over the place, but we made out. And then years later, my brother put a basement in there. He lives in the basement now and I live upstairs.
Franklin: Oh, wow, that’s—
Ferqueron: We both own the house.
Franklin: Neat.
Ferqueron: It’s only about 75 years old. [LAUGHTER] It’s falling down around us, but we’re both in our 80s, so—
Franklin: Was that house brought here during World War II, or does that predate it?
Ferqueron: It was sitting there—I don’t know what the history on it. I know my parents bought it for $1,000—that and the land under it.
Franklin: Wow.
Ferqueron: That’s under it now. Yeah.
Franklin: Wow, that’s really—and so what were your—so you moved back at 15, and then what—you graduated from the—
Ferqueron: Kennewick High.
Franklin: Kennewick High.
Ferqueron: ’49.
Franklin: ’49. And then what did you do?
Ferqueron: It was just a few months later I went in the Navy.
Franklin: Mm.
Ferqueron: So I was in the Navy, and went to Bay Bridge, right out of Baltimore—not Baltimore—yeah, Baltimore for boot camp. And then I went to San Diego for school, and—
Franklin: And what did you do in—
Ferqueron: I was a commissaryman. What I did was—to put it as simple as I can—is I ran a large, very large restaurant. I was a crew boss. There was actually two of us, because it was—our shifts were 18-hour shifts.
Franklin: Wow.
Ferqueron: So, I’d work five days one week and two days the next, and the other girl would take over for the opposite watch. Anyway, it was like running a huge restaurant, except I didn’t have to worry about the menu; that came out of Washington, DC. I did that for two years. Then I got married, and married an engineman from South Carolina. That’s where the Ferqueron name comes from. We traveled around quite a bit for a couple years—well, about four or five years. Had one daughter. And he became an officer—a submarine officer.
Franklin: Mm-hmm.
Ferqueron: In Hawai’i.
Franklin: Oh, wow.
Ferqueron: So I’ve lived in Hawai’i, I’ve lived in California—my daughter was born in California—Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Florida, and Washington. [LAUGHTER] I think I’ve got them all, anyway. That was over a 30-year period.
Franklin: Wow. So when did you come back to the Richland area?
Ferqueron: In 1988—’84. ’84.
Franklin: 1984.
Ferqueron: ’84. My mother had a very mild heart attack, and I sold my house in South Carolina and came out here to take care of her. And just stayed, because she left me the house—me and my brother—the house. And I went to work for churches here in childcare. I worked for five different churches.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Ferqueron: And I retired from doing that, and now I do a lot of volunteer work.
Franklin: So when you left Richland, or the area of Richland, it was kind of this closed town.
Ferqueron: It was very—yeah. And small, compared to today.
Franklin: Right, smaller and also wholly government owned.
Ferqueron: Oh, yes.
Franklin: And when you came back, Richland was, you know—
Ferqueron: Wide open, yeah.
Franklin: Wide open. And then shortly after, production at Hanford ceased.
Ferqueron: Yeah.
Franklin: I’m wondering if you can talk about that a bit, how you felt about that, and kind of watching that legacy of Hanford stop.
Ferqueron: Yeah. Well, I just—I really don’t know how I really felt about it. I just went about my way, and not too concerned. Although I wondered—all of that money and stuff in there and they’re closing it down. You know? And they might have to open it up again at some time. You never know.
Franklin: That’s true.
Ferqueron: I didn’t spend too much worrying about the past.
Franklin: Did you keep in touch with a lot of people from old Richland when you lived around, and--?
Ferqueron: No. They were so scattered that I didn’t—I lost contact with a lot of them, including some relatives.
Franklin: What about when you came back to Richland, did you start to rebuild those relationships again?
Ferqueron: No, uh-unh. No, most of my relationships, even today, are from Kennewick High.
Franklin: Oh, okay, right.
Ferqueron: Yeah, because I have lunch with the people that are still living here. I have lunch with them once a month.
Franklin: Sure. I mean, that makes sense because they weren’t scattered forcibly.
Ferqueron: Right, and the people who went to high school in Richland, we really had nothing to do with, you know.
Franklin: Right, because they were—
Ferqueron: Right, entirely different—
Franklin: Entirely different. And you weren’t welcome in Richland anymore, right? I mean—
Ferqueron: Well, they didn’t understand how we felt about it. How could they understand?
Franklin: Right, right. To them it had been an opportunity.
Ferqueron: Yeah, and they came here, and they thought they built the town up from a sand pile to what it is today. You know?
Franklin: Interesting. Is there anything else that I haven’t asked you about today that you’d like to mention?
Ferqueron: No.
Franklin: Well—
Ferqueron: I do have something I have arguments with people about and that’s why the Richland Wye is called the Richland Wye. They all assume it’s the highway. It’s not. It’s an old Indian trail.
Franklin: Really?
Ferqueron: And the reasons why is because the Yakama tribes would come down from Yakima and camp at the Richland Wye. The Wanapums and the tribes up that way would come down, cross the river, approximately where we cross it now—the Yakima. They would meet the Yakama tribe there; they would go on to Walla Walla for the pow-wows, and that forms the Richland Wye.
Franklin: Oh, interesting. And where did you—
Ferqueron: I used to go to the meetings for the Daughters of Washington State. I didn’t quite qualify—my family didn’t come quite—or I couldn’t prove that they came quite soon enough for me to be a complete Daughter of Washington, but—
Franklin: Right.
Ferqueron: And then our particular section broke up. People started dying off, and—I was quite a bit younger than some of them. This is where I learned more about it.
Franklin: Interesting.
Ferqueron: Yeah. Well, they do have a marker out there now that says heritage trail, but there’s no explanation as to what it is.
Franklin: Oh.
Ferqueron: And I think the Indians should have credit for that! [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: I mean, they certainly had extensive trading and travel networks and that things we—
Ferqueron: Oh, yeah. They did that once every year, I think.
Franklin: Yeah, I believe so.
Ferqueron: So it formed a trail.
Franklin: Yeah, there’s a lot there that we first ignored, and then the interest was in some cases too late for--
Ferqueron: Well, everything is focused on Hanford now. And Battelle and the companies that are here now, and the labs out there, and Battelle. I think all that stuff is great, but to me, I still see a farm out there.
Franklin: Right, right. I mean, how could you not? I mean, you had—you grew up there.
Ferqueron: Right. Well, from ten days old.
Franklin: Right.
Ferqueron: [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Exactly.
Ferqueron: I can still picture my grandfather’s farm just as if it was still there.
Franklin: Well, Lorraine, thank you so much for sharing your experiences with us. It’s been really insightful, and—yeah, I think it’s really important to have a voice of those pre-war communities and that transition period, and how there’s this other narrative of Hanford that sometimes gets lost in the telling of the story.
Ferqueron: Yeah. I don’t want it to get lost. I want those people to be remembered. Because they gave a big sacrifice. That was a huge sacrifice.
Franklin: Yeah, it is.
Ferqueron: Even though it was forced, it was still—there is one other story I heard, and one of the farms here was owned by a woman and her cherries were ready to pick, and they told her she couldn’t pick them. She had to get out first. And this is a story I heard from the time I was 12. She had a shotgun loaded with rock salt. You know what rock salt is?
Franklin: Yeah, yeah.
Ferqueron: Of course. Well, she shot the FBI man. Hurt him pretty bad. And I remember everybody in town was, well, she’s going to go to jail. You shoot an FBI man, you’re going to go to jail. Nothing was ever done, she picked her cherries and moved out.
Franklin: Wow.
Ferqueron: Well, it was too secret; they couldn’t.
Franklin: Right, because if they had taken her to court, that arrest record would be—
Ferqueron: There would be reporters in no time. It would’ve been all over the country in no time at all.
Franklin: To kind of make that go away, right? Wow, that’s really something. That’s a great story.
Ferqueron: Yeah.
Franklin: Well, Lorraine, again, thank you so much. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation today.
Ferqueron: Well, I want to do anything I can to make sure people remember there was a Richland before Hanford started.
Franklin: Yeah, and we’re going to add this oral history right by your brother’s, and so have that as a great—again, thank you for helping expand that—
Ferqueron: The other children in our family are too young, and my brother Roy is so deaf he couldn’t hear you if he tried, and he doesn’t like to think about those times at all. And he was born in Richland.
Franklin: Right.
Ferqueron: But a midwife who later became our grandmother—she married my—she had a farm here in Richland, and she lost her husband in ’35, and my grandmother lost his wife—my grandmother—in ’36. And they farmed alongside one another for many, many years.
[TELEPHONE RINGS]
Ferqueron: And then they got married. After we were all grown. So one day at school, there was a whole bunch of kids there that were just other kids; the next day they were my cousins. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: That’s really something.
Ferqueron: Yeah, it was interesting.
Franklin: Well, again, I can’t thank you enough, Lorraine.
Ferqueron: Oh, well, I’ve enjoyed it, really.
Franklin: Oh, good! Me too. Me too. Okay, so we’ll--
Ferqueron: I wish I remembered more. I was only 12, 13.
Franklin: Well, that gives you enough, though, you know, concrete experiences that you do remember.
Ferqueron: Yeah, there’s a lot of family names that I remember. And, well, like I said, I’ve gone to a couple funerals from there. But those are pretty much gone now. I think it’ll be my family next.
Franklin: Well, hopefully not too soon.
Ferqueron: Oh, no. Well, I just had a heart valve put in, and the doctor told me to—and I’m 85—and the doctor told me to come back--
[VIDEO CUTS]
Northwest Public Television | Bush_Bob
Robert Bauman: I’m going to have you start just by saying your name, first.
Robert Bush: Okay, my name is Bob Bush.
Bauman: My name is Robert Bauman, and we're conducting this interview with Robert, or Bob, Bush on July 17 of 2013. And we're having this interview on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. And we'll be talking with Bob about his experiences working at the Hanford site. And so I'd like to start just by having you talk about how and when you arrived at Hanford. What brought you here?
Bush: Okay. During World War II, I was overseas. My parents were in the area, both of them working. My brother was also here in Pasco High School. When I came home from the service to Southern Idaho, Korean War broke out. Wages were frozen, and so I was looking to better myself. And I applied by mail. I was interviewed by telephone. And I came up here in 1951 to the accounting department, General Electric Company. They were the sole contractor. And for 15 years, in construction and engineering accounting, which was separate from plant operations at that time. And from there, my accounting career followed its path through several successive contractors. From GE to ITT, Atlantic Richfield, to Rockwell, and finally with Westinghouse. When I retired, I was with Westinghouse for one month.
Bauman: You said your parents were here during the war. When did they come out?
Bush: It was '43. 1943 and '44, my mother worked for the original postmaster of Richland, Ed Peddicord. And my dad was a carpenter. Built some of the first government houses called the Letter Homes. They were here about two years, I think. And then they went back to Idaho, I believe.
Bauman: Okay. And what part of Idaho?
Bush: Twin Falls, Idaho. Where I graduated from high school.
Bauman: Okay. What were your first impressions upon arriving in the Tri-Cities?
Bush: That's kind of interesting, Bob. Because I came up ahead of my wife and two--year-and-a-half old, and three-and-a-half-year-old sons. About two weeks ahead of them. And so I found a Liberty trailers to rent—the housing was nonexistent. And I found a Liberty trailer, which means it had no running water, no bathroom. It was like a camping trailer, basically. I sent for them. A brother-in-law who had graduated from high school went directly into the Korean War. He drove them up as far as Huntington. I went on a bus to Huntington and met them, came back. And as we came onto the Umatilla side, and I said, that's Washington. Well, there was no green and everybody was disappointed. But that's the first impression. I mean, there wasn't a bridge over the river in Umatilla. It was a ferry. So you drove around the horn at Wallula. Things were just really different.
Bauman: So you said you had a trailer. Where was--
Bush: In Pasco on a front yard of an old pioneer home, where Lewis Street crosses 10th. That was the end on Lewis Street at 10th. And from there west was called Indiana. And there was about three homes on there. And it just quit. And roughly across from the present day Pasco School Administration Building, which was a Sears building. Across the street there was where this home was. I mean, things have just—in the whole area—have changed so much.
Bauman: And how long did you live there then?
Bush: Until I was called for housing in Richland, which was six months. That was in June, no air conditioning. And finally got into an apartment building, a one-bedroom before with two little boys that slept in the same crib. It was still, basically, wartime conditions. Weren't any appliances for sale and you had to stand in line to get a refrigerator. It was a different world. But we were young, so we could take it.
Bauman: [LAUGHTER] And was this in Richland then, the apartment?
Bush: No, that was in Pasco. After that trailer, that was only about two weeks. And then we want into this apartment, the one-bedroom. Then we moved next door to a two-bedroom in a five-plex. And then in December, six months later, I got the first--I got a housing call from the housing office in Richland, which sat where the present day police station sits. And the lady offered me—she said, you could have it Saturday. It was a prefab. It had already been worn and pulled out. And I kind of hesitated. I said, I've already got something in Pasco. Well, she said, I could let you have a brand new apartment. That apartment was brand new. It was so clean. My wife, who was very fastidious, she didn't even have to clean cupboards. And the apartments have now been torn down by Kadlec for that newest building. And in fact, this morning I just went by and took a picture of Goethals Street, which is vacated. And it was quite a pleasant move to come out of a trailer into—a non-air-conditioned cinder block building apartment into a nice, brand new apartment with air conditioning, full basement, and close to work. And at that time, my office was downtown in the so-called 700 Area, which is basically where the Federal Building is--where the Bank of America is was the police station. And that's Knight Street, I believe. From there north to Swift, and from Jadwin west to Stevens where the Tastee Freeze was, that was the 700 Area confines. Probably about 22 buildings in there. The original thing prior to computers, everything was manual bookkeeping or accounting with ledgers. And they came out with a McBee Keysort cards, and it was called electronic data processing. It was spaghetti wire with holes in the boards, that type of thing. That building had to be a special airlock building. And that's the Spencer Kenney Building beside the Gesa Building. That building is built especially to house equipment. And they just went from there. And I moved around my office. And after 15 years, I went into what they call operations. I was onsite services, which—did that for 17 years. And that was probably the better part of--second better job that I had, I guess. The transportation and everything, onsite support services. The whole point there. That job took me all over the plant. I established inventories. I took some of the first inventories of construction workers' supplies and tools and shop equipment, rolling stock. My name was Mud. They thought so much of me they gave me a desk in the corner of a big lunchroom. [LAUGHTER]
Bauman: So you did work at various places then?
Bush: Yes. Well, yes. My very first location was in North Richland, then called North Richland Camp, where the bus lot was--the maintenance shops. I'm trying to establish a point up there—what's over there today? There's a big sand dune on your left going by the automotive shops, past the bus lot, where the bus lot was. Opposite that sand dune on the other side of Stevens was a bunch of one-story temporary buildings. That was North Richland Camp. And that's where my first accounting job was there for two or three years. I had been there—I came there in June. And in January of '52, had 22 people along in my department that I worked in. I was a junior clerk at that time. Took me four years to get onto the management roles, but I did. But anyhow, in that room they came in there six months later. After I'd only been here six months, AEC, predecessor to the OA. The AEC has taken over more management, more responsibility. So we're going to be laying off a lot of people. I had only been here six months. And so others grabbed straws and went different places. I always said either I was too ignorant or lucky, I don't know what. But I just sat still and it panned out for the better. I didn't get laid off. I moved from there. But I went downtown to the 703 Building, which stood where the Federal Building is now. There's a building to the rear that the city owns called 703. That was the fourth wing. 703 was the frame construction, the three floors. And the later years, they added a fourth wing out of block building. Made it more permanent. That's why it's still standing today. Now, that was my second location. And then I got on the management role in '55, which meant I went exempt and no more pay for overtime. And went out to White Bluffs site—town site, and that's where the minor construction was located. Minor construction, it's the construction people that are specially trained in SWP, radiological construction work, as opposed to run-of-the-mill construction. And they're the ones that had never had any accounting at all for any equipment, supplies, materials or otherwise. And that's where I had the lunchroom office experience. It so happened that they established--I brought an inventory procedure and established that first inventory during a strike. We had to cut government-owned tool boxes. But still, the workers thought they were private. And we had to cut locks in order to take inventory. And then we feared for our lives when they came back. Pretty rough day sometimes.
Bauman: What timeframe would that have been you were out?
Bush: That was 1955 to '56. A couple of years there, and then another person took over from there and I went into budgeting at that point, from accounting to budgeting. And I did that for--until 1963. And then I moved out to the so-called bus lot, which it was. 105 buses and all that. And I was out there for 17 pleasant years, budgeting, billing rate—Because we were the supplier of all plant services. So we had billing rates to the reactors, and the separations, and the fuel prep, and--whoever. The AEC, everything. We billed them, just as if we were like plumbing jobs. And that I enjoyed. That was probably my most productive period. And from similar work to that, I moved over—Let’s see, I was around when the Federal Building was built, but I didn't get into it. That was built in '69. I didn't get down there until 1980. Went down there a couple of years. And then they moved us out to Hanford Square where Battelle Boulevard intersection is. And I was there--I retired from that location in 1977. My wife and I retired the same week. I've been retired 26 years now at the end of this month.
Bauman: Was your wife working at the Hanford Site as well?
Bush: She worked after the kids were grown, like most stay-at-home moms do. She stayed until the daughter was of age, and then she went to work for a credit union, which was the government credit union, which was merged later on with Gesa. But that was an interesting job. They worked two hours a day, three days a week. Because it was all hand done, no mechanization. And then she got a job offer from the department in the central stores and purchasing department. She worked there eight years. In 1986, the income tax law changed a lot of things for all of us, effective in 1987. It meant that partial vesting was--IRS has to rule on all things like that. And that meant that if you had 10 years to vest pensions, once you pass the 50% point, whatever the vesting period is, then you were partially vested. And so she had 8 years out of 10. So she got 80%. But she had only worked eight years, so it wasn't a very large accumulation. Because I got my full. Of course, I'd been here 37 years I think it was, however that works out. 36.
Bauman: I want to go back and ask you—when you were talking earlier about that period in '55, '56 when you were working out at White Bluffs town site. You mentioned radiological construction?
Bush: Oh, that—those construction workers worked under what they called SWP, Special Work Permit, which meant radiological. They had to wear--the clothing was called SWP clothing then. Today, they call it something else. But they worked under those conditions, so therefore they were subject to different rules. Whereas, construction workers on brand new construction weren’t then—they didn't have any of that to contend with. But once a plant went operational, it became radiologically SWP. This is not an anti-union thing. It's just a demonstration of how things were in those days. They had some old buses that--the original buses in town were called Green Hornets. And they were small. They had chrome bars that went right across the middle of your back. And for 35 miles, that was not very comfortable. When they got the newer buses that you see today, like Greyhound has for instance, they relegated those to the construction workers at White Bluffs. Well, since GE guys worked up at White Bluffs, we had to ride those, too. So all the office workers in the warehouse--GE employees rode one bus. The electricians rode another bus. Pipe fitters rode another bus, even though there were only two or three of them. It was really a segmented-type thing. As close to anything radiological that I came to when I conducting one of those physical inventories—we would be out--all of the construction materials were stored outdoors on the ground. I mean, like stainless steel. 308 stainless steel was pretty high-priced stuff. But the sheets were stored outside on pallets. Well, one sheet is worth thousands and thousands of dollars. So we had to lay down on the ground and count the sheets to do the inventory. This one day—the only time I came close to any contamination, we went back and boarded the buses that evening from White Bluffs. And we saw the guys on the dock there chipping with a chisel and hammer. That meant they were chipping out flakes of contamination. So we asked what was going on. They said, well, we're next door to F and H Areas. And F Area had coughed out something they said. And so I said, well, my crew was outside today on the ground. And if they coughed out because all the--some construction workers could drive their cars. That's the only people. Plant operations people all had to ride buses. No parking lots. So anyhow, those cars were all impounded. Had tape around them. They couldn't go home. And some of the guys, they had to take off their shoes, leave them, and be issued safety shoes in lieu of it. And I said, well, we were on the ground, too. So they proceeded to take us all off the bus and surveyed us with a wand. And they only found a few flakes on our back. And so we were allowed to go home. But that's as close as I ever came to getting contaminated. It's still scary.
Bauman: Yeah. Obviously, Hanford, a site where security was prominent--
Bush: Very tight security, yeah. I was telling the young lady here that across the roadway on Stevens, as you near the 300 Area, there was a real wide barricade, probably eight lanes that you had to go through. And everybody had to stop, including buses. And the guard would get on the bus, walk down the aisle, and check every badge. And at that time, AEC had their own security airplanes. That was the purpose of the Richland Airport was for AEC security in the beginning. They had a couple Piper Cub-type airplanes. And one day we're on a bus going out to work in the morning. And all of a sudden, a plane just zoomed on by. Somebody had run the barricade. The plane goes out, lands in front of them, stops them, and that's how they got apprehended. Another incident of security, yeah, that's the subject? Many years later now, after 1963, and I'm in the transportation assignment. Airspace was off limits to all airplanes over Hanford because they had army artillery guarding it in the Cold War and all that. And a private plane had violated the space. And the AEC planes had forced it down. And once they're down, they can't ever take off. So after a week or so, they sent a lowboy trailer out there, loaded the small airplane on it, proceeded to come down what's the highway and now Stevens. And down where Stevens today, 240 and all that intersection is, there was only two lanes on the road then, not six. But at that juncture there, there was a blinking light. And they had to turn right to go to the Richland Airport. And this guy, the truck driver pulling this low-boy, he had never pulled an airplane before. And he didn't allow for that pull. Well, that blinking light clipped off a wing. And then he got time off. It was not really his fault, that pilot in the beginning. But there's a lot of—I guess full of interesting stories like that on security.
Bauman: Great. Did you have special security clearance to work at Hanford at the time?
Bush: Which?
Bauman: Any special security clearance?
Bush: Oh, yeah. I had Q clearance, which there's one higher than that, that's top secret. But Q clearance meant you could go into any and all areas. And because the nature of my job, I had that my whole time I was out there. Once you have it, they would tend not to take it away from you because it's quite expensive investigation to get it in the first place. I might mention something interesting in that regard. When I first came to work in 1951, why, the PSQ is Personnel Security Questionnaire. And it's about 25 pages long. And you had to memorize it, because every five years, you had to update it. Well anyhow, I filled that out, and you give references. And I have, in the Twin Falls area, a farmer that had been a neighbor farmer in Nebraska, where I was born, to my parents. I gave him as a reference because he had known me all my life. And that would be higher points. About a year or two later--I guess probably a year later I had gone back down to Twin Falls to visit the in-laws and I went and saw this farmer, family friend. The first thing he said to me, Bobby, what in the world did you do? [LAUGHTER] The FBI had come out to his farm and piled on the questions. And I hadn't told him ahead of time I'd given a reference. So they really did very, very tight security. It's probably tighter than it was when I was in the Air Corps.
Bauman: You mentioned riding a bus out to work.
Bush: Yeah, everybody rode it, except those few construction workers in that minor construction area. They were permitted their cars. I don't know why, but no one else drove cars on the plant. Everybody rode on the bus. The bus fare was--of course, it was subsidized. It was a plant operation, like anything else is. To make the liability insurance legal, they charged a nickel each way on the bus, which later on got changed to a dollar or something. But many of the years, we'd ride the bus 30, 35, or 40 miles to work for a nickel. The nickel was just to make it legal. From those old green buses, they came up with some--I forget what they're called. More like Greyhound buses. And then in 1963, the year I went out to the transportation, they bought a fleet of Flxibles. And that's F-L-X. There's no E in it. That's the same kind of flat-nosed bus that the bus lines used today. And they were coaches, not buses. They had storage underneath. And so we had quite a suggestion system on the plant. And you would get monetary award or mention. And somebody said, well, instead of running mail carrier cars delivering mail to all the stops on the whole plant, load the mail onto the now available storage bins on these buses. And that was a pretty good suggestion award, monetarily, to somebody. And they did that. Took it out to a central mail station out there, and then dispatched it.
Bauman: You mentioned different contractors you worked for over the years--
Bush: Uh-huh. The story behind that for the record is that General Elec--well, DuPont built the plant. That's who my dad worked for. And GE came in '46, I believe. And they were here until the group I was in--they phased out in groups. I was the last group to go out. [COUGH] Excuse me, in 196--'66. When the GE phased out, they had a dollar a year contract. Like Henry Kaiser and rest of them did during the war, for the good of the country. But they trained an awful lot of people in the infancy field of nuclear engineering. General Electric trained all those people here and then they opened up the turnkey operations in San Jose and Japan. But anyhow, AEC was still AEC at that point. And then, their wise decision--instead of one contractor, they would have nine. And so there were--the reactors was one. Separation plant was another. Fuel preparation at 300 Area was another. The laboratories, which is today basically Battelle. Site services. The company doctors formed a foundation called Hanford Environmental Health Foundation, which is the MDs that gave the annual exams. And the computer end, it was now getting into the infancy of that, computer sciences corps, we had the first contracts on that. So all together, there were nine contractors. And the portion that I was with went to ITT. They bid, came in and bid. I helped conduct tours of the facility for the bidders. Because I knew all about it and knew the ins and outs on some of the monetary parts that their accounting people would have questions on. We'd walk through shops and all that. Well, anyhow, ITT got the site support--site services. And we had that for five years. And austerity set in in the '70s. Well, '70. They said, we got to get site services' budget down to less than $10 million. And it probably was 13 or 14, I don't remember now. So my boss and another analyst, like myself, sequestered--talk about sequester. We sequestered ourselves in the then new Federal Building for about a week. Almost 20 hours a day, whittling and whittling and working on a budget. And there was only one conclusion. We had to cut everything in half. Went through all that sweat. Went up with our president, Tom Leddy, went upstairs to an AEC finance office, presented our whole case. And the man turns around and says, well, it doesn't make any difference, Tom. Your contract's not renewed anyhow. And so now, Atlantic Richfield, an existing contractor for 200 Areas, somehow the separations plant contractor that is an oil company owned, can all of a sudden manage a site service. And so they did absorb us. But politics were still around in those days. And there were three of us analysts. One had got transferred by ITT up to the new line--newly established Distant Early Warning Line from Russia up to Alaska. So that left two of us. And we waited around. We waited around and never got an offer. And they said, no, we can do it all without you. We don't need you. How come it took so many people anyhow? On a Friday afternoon, the man that I did budgets for saw me in a restroom. He said, you got an offer yet? I said, no, no. I'm working under the table with somebody else. Well, he says, if they don't hire you, I'm going to hire you. And so he went downtown, and about 4 o'clock, I got a call from the man that told me they didn't need us. Said they'd been kind of thinking. So I went over Atlantic Richfield under those. [AUDIO CUTS OUT] And so I'm not mad, not knocking—knocking them, that's just the way things were. And then Rockwell came to town. When they laid off everybody on B-2, I'm trying to think of other--in the community, something might be of interest for the history project. Back into the '50s. Those same green buses, they had, oh, four or five of them that ran in town like a modified transit system. I don't think they had that many riders, but it did. And also, the plant buses ran what they called shuttle routes. And those buses went into Richland on probably six routes and drove around the neighborhoods and picked up workers on the three shifts. And that's why up in the ranch house district, there was the bypass you'll see between homes. The pathways that go clear through lots. Blocks were so long that they had to provide a quicker route to the bus stops. Now, those rides were free because they were shuttle buses. When you got out to the bus lot, you paid your nickel, or a pass, whatever it was.
Bauman: I wanted to ask you about accounting in terms of equipment practices. Were there a lot of changes during the time you worked at the Hanford site? Computer technology come in and change things?
Bush: Oh, yeah. For sure. In the beginning, as I mentioned earlier, all accounting was open ledgers and hand posted. Adding machine tapes at the end of the day trying to balance them all out. And we had that until--let's see. 1970s—I think it was 1977, we got our very first taste of it. Every other desk in a group of about 20 people in cost accounting that I was in. There was cost accounting, general accounting, and so on, property management. But anyhow, we had about 20 people. Every other desk had a monitor. Well, they referred to them as a computer. But they were just the monitor. And down at the end of our building was one printer. And everything was on floppy disk. Every program was on a floppy disk. Nothing was built-in because it was just the infancy. The big computers were down in the Federal Building. And a sub-basement below the basement was specially built for that. But back to our office. Across the hall from us, we had two small computers that are--to me, they're about the size of portable sewing machines. And I can't even remember the names of them because they don't exist today but they were the computer locally. So we wanted to run our work order system, we would phone down to the guy down at the other end of the building, insert the floppy disk from work system and wait. Well, I've got somebody's inventory. You have to wait. Because there's only one place to load up down there. So finally, you would put the floppy disk in. And then, you'd run it, which meant it'd run through it and print. But then you'd have to say, now print it. And they got one printer for the whole building. And so it's pretty interesting. Whereas today, I've got a laptop that I can virtually do everything with. But we graduated from hand posted ledgers right into computers. We didn't have anything in between. All of the reports that came out, came out on--referred to as IBM runs because everything was IBM. It was on paper that's about 18 inches wide with all these little perf marks on it to feed it. And you'd get one report and it would be about that thick. It was not that much information, but it's just so much printing. It's even hard to remember after 26 years how antiquated that is compared to today. But prior to that, it wasn't even the PCs. They called everything a PC. Or, was PC compatible. Because prior to that, the only electronic data processing nickname was spaghetti wire. I'm not very conversant in it, but it was some kind of a board that had a bunch of holes in it. They put wires in it and that went to certain things. But all it did was sort things. It didn't actually calculate them.
Bauman: I wanted to ask you a little bit more about the community of Richland. What was that like in the 1950s? I know it was a government--
Bush: In the town? I guess I didn't cover that area. Everything—all houses were owned by government. We rented them. My wife and I and family, we came after the days of free everything. When the coal was free--all the furnaces were coal fed. Some people would convert them later on to oil. But anyhow, they were coal burning. However you got the coal, whether it was government days or you bought the coal from the courtyard, which is down at the end of what's now Wellsian Way. There was a coal yard where that lumber yard is. And that's why those railroad tracks that are abandoned and rundown, that's where the coal cars came in. And I can add something a little bit later about coal cars and the plant. But anyhow, we rented from the government. For example, that brand new apartment that I mentioned moving onto first was a two-bedroom, full basement. Steam heated because--I'll digress a little bit. All the downtown 700 Area, including the Catholic church, central church, the hospital, all 700 Area, including those new apartments, and all downtown shopping area were steam heated by a steam plant, which was located where the back door of the post office is today in that small parking lot. And that one plant furnished steam for everything. Well, back to this new apartment. The steam pipes ran through this full basement. And our kids played—there wasn't any yards. There was just apartments. And they would play in the basement because they were quite small. But they can remember today the pop, pop, pop in those steam pipes. And the rent for that two-bedroom apartment was higher than any other house in town. It was $77 a month. And the reason it was $77 instead of $70 was because it included $7 for electricity. Nobody had electricity meters yet. Even in that new place. So when they did put in electricity meters in all homes later, which had to be—during that time, the year we were there, which is December '51 to December of '52, sometime in that period of time they put the meters in. They took off $7 off the rent because now we're going to pay—and their theory is it was $5 for a one-bedroom place, whatever it was. $7 for a two-bedroom and $10 for a three-bedroom for electricity in those days. And nobody had electric heat, of course. And then, later on they put in water meters. And again, they had to come into your home, invade your home, and put in something. So it was strictly government prior to—well, another—and when I lived in the rental, if something went wrong with the plumbing, they would send out a plumber, but you paid for it, though. But later on when I went to the tall two-story, three-bedroom duplex houses, or called A houses, that was our first house after that apartment. And as I remember, I think the rent was--they had rent districts with low, medium, and high in the more desirable parts of town. And we were on Hop Street across from uptown district where Hunt Street is and Jefferson Park. And I think our rent for that was like $47 because it was not a brand new apartment. And later on, we—I was on the housing list. And you applied and months or years later, you'd rotate up to move into a nicer place or a different location. But in the meantime, up came an F house, which is a two-story single family, kind of a Cape Cod-looking type of house. And that came up on the housing list. However, the caveat was that you had to cash out the present owner who had made some improvements. He had converted the coal to oil, they put in a clothesline, which nobody had clotheslines, and something else. So cashed him out for—I believe it was $750. And if I do that, I could have it, so I did. We lived in that place for 19 years. Our daughter grew up there and got married out of that home. And that's the only home she ever knew. [LAUGHTER] And we were there until 1977 when the real estate market in Richland was—this is community wide. The housing prices were moving 18% a year, about 1.5% a month. And I thought well, I don't need to be setting still. I mean, if I cash out here, and went on. So we sold that home. I listed it. Calder, my father, was very ill. We were going to Spokane. I listed it. A man came by, looked it out. What were you asking? I said, oh, about 17. He shook his head. And I said, too high? He says, no, 27,000. [LAUGHTER] Just to show you how bad things were. And so it sold right away. What are you going to do now? And I said, well. Would you want to try a mobile home? I know a jewel. And in those days, real estate men did not sell mobile homes. But this couple had bought their first house from him, or something. And it was somebody retiring out of postal, wanted to go back to Montana. Never smoked in it, never had any pets in it, no kids. It was the Cadillac of mobile homes. We were there two years, but that was long enough. Then we moved into the house that I'm still in. I'm widowed now for five years. The house we're in now, we've lived in that longer than in any other place. [LAUGHTER] But the community just has changed so drastically. South Richland. People say today they live in South Richland. We lived in South Richland, which was south of the downtown shopping district to the Yakima Bridge. That was South Richland. What is now South Richland out there was Kennewick Highlands. So it depends on who you're talking to today.
Bauman: Yeah. Do you remember any special community events, parades, any of those sorts of things during the '50s and '60s?
Bush: Community events?
Bauman: Yeah.
Bush: Yep. Back in GE days, they had Atomic Frontier Days. And they were a big thing. Had beauty queens in it, rode in the float, and all that. Down at the—[COUGH] excuse me. For Atomic Frontier Days down at the lower end of Lee Boulevard, which is still the same shape today. They set up booths all on there. And it was a really big event. Before we had the hydro races even. People look back fondly on that. Talking about community, again, my mother, I said, worked for the post office, which—it stood on the corner of Knight Street, where it touches George Washington Way. There's some kind of a lawyer office building there today. And the old post office is the Knights of Columbus building on the bypass highway. But she would have to take the mail and go over to where the Red Lion Motel is today, at the Desert Inn, a frame building, winged out basically the same. And that was referred to as the transient quarters. And that was for upper management that were going through and it wasn't really a public motel, per se. But she would have mail for these big wigs over there. So she would have to go over there and have a badge to even go in the front door of that Desert Inn. Talking about badges, something humorous on that. We didn't wear things around our neck in the beginning because it was like a little pocket-sized bill fold. It was a little black bill that had your pass, your badge in it. And at every building you went into, you just pulled it out, flashed it to the guard. It usually was a lady security employee. There were guards in the building, but the person on the desk was a security clerk. But you'd just automatically—you’d open it like that and flag and put it back in your pocket. Every building you went into. Downtown, 700 Area, that first building I've referred to. One day I went into a restaurant and I just did that automatically [LAUGHTER] because it's just so automatic. Then they graduated to having the thing around your neck. And then also, if you worked in the outer areas, you had to wear a radiation badge in addition to your security badge. There was two types and one of them was a flat. And I don't know the difference. One's for beta and one's for alpha. I don't know. And one of them was a pencil shaped. And that's what they called it. And the other one was a flat badge, which was carried in something around your neck. And in all the areas I worked, and the places I described laying on the ground that happened and all that, my RAMs, they call it, never accumulated in my working life to be a danger. I had some, of course. Everybody does in the background. But I never accumulated to a danger point. There were people, some smart aleck people that would take their badge and hold it over a source at work so they could get some time off. Because if you got--what was the phrase? Anyhow, if they got contaminated, they put them on a beefsteak diet. And they stayed home. And they come every day and took a urine sample and all that stuff. But they had a life of riley. So that was nice. But the guys got canned that did that. But they would purposely expose their pencil so they could stay home.
Bauman: So did all employees have those, either the pencil or--
Bush: Only those that worked in reactor and separations areas, yeah. I mentioned these departments. Actually, the first department is Fuel Preparations Department, FPD. The present—the 300 Area--most of the buildings have now been torn down that you don't even see them there. But the north half roughly was fuels preparation department headed for the reactors. They took uranium and encapsulated it in cans, like can of peas in just so many words. And the south half of that 300 Area was a laboratory area, the predecessor of Battelle. So the fuel was prepared there. And it was machined and canned and sent as nickname slugs to the reactors. Then, the reactors loaded into all those little tubes. And then from the reactors, they come out the backside into those cooling pods and all that. And transported in casks to the 200 Areas, which are the separated area, separations. And the reactor area on the face side was not that dangerous. The 200 Areas only work on what they called the canyons, PUREX and REDOX, and those kind of buildings. But those cells were very, very hot. But you had to be measured no matter where you were. One of our site services was a decontamination laundry, called the laundry. And all clothing--I mentioned to you before SWP. Well, SWP, radiologic exposure employees wore whites. Carpenters and truck drivers and all that that didn't work around reactors wore blues. And so they were sorted. And we had different billing rates for that laundry because the blues only had to be laundered and dried. Whereas the others had to be laundered, dried, and decontaminated, checked in separate washing machines. And then workers wore—in the beginning, wore World War II-style gas masks for our air supply before they invented a moon-type suit. [LAUGHTER] But they wore gas masks. And the mask would come back to this mask station, which was part of the laundry. And they took the masks, and they'd take away the cartridge. They'd put the mask in dishwasher machines, in racks. That's how they would wash them. And then they would get them a new filter and package them up. Sanitize them and package them up like medical supplies would be in. I can't think of any other unusual operation out there like that.
Bauman: I want to change gears just a little bit. President Kennedy visited the site in 1963.
Bush: Yep, 1963.
Bauman: I was wondering--
Bush: When they did that, they let all the schools out. And for the first time, non-workers were allowed to go in cars out there. It was a grand traffic jam, but it was quite a deal. And he landed his Air Force plane up at Moses Lake—at Larson airbase at Ephrata, whichever you want to call it. And then helicoptered. And of course, like it is today, there were three or four helicopters. And you don't know which one he's on and all that bit. And here, everyone is gathered out the N Reactor area, which is a dual-purpose reactor. They captured the heat from the reactor, put it through a pipe through a fence to the predecessor to Energy Northwest, which was called Whoops. This was a big deal, a dual-purpose reactor. And N stood for new reactor, really. Anyhow, he comes in and they got a low-boy trailer. They fixed up down in the shops where I worked—my office was. And then built a podium just precisely for the President with him emblem and the whole bit. So I was privy to get to see some things like that. But anyhow, that was the stage. And it was a long low-boy, so it accommodated all the senators and all the local—Sam Volpentest, the guy credited with HAMMER, those type of people. Glen Lee from the Tri-City Herald, you name it. So the helicopter comes in, blows dust over everybody. But anyhow, my wife and kids and all schools were brought out there. And I don't know how many thousand people were out there in the desert. And you could see President Kennedy. He got up on the stage. You get close enough, you could get pictures. Then, that same year in November, he got assassinated. So that was a busy year.
Bauman: Do you remember any other special events with dignitaries like that? Or other--
Bush: Well, I could go way back to World War II. I wasn't here, but I have a family connection on it. All over United States, they had war bond drives for various reasons to help. Build a ship, build an airplane. The one that happened here is not the only one. But they took so much money out of all the paycheck of Hanford workers, which included my dad as a carpenter. And the money they collected bought the B-17 Bomber, which was named Day's Pay. And that bomber—they had a bomber out here, a B-17, so that people could see it, but it wasn't the same one. On the Richland High School wall there's a mural. And that's a rendition by a famous artist of Day's Pay in formation. And so I can say that my parents contributed to that. And that's the story behind that one bomber. Every worker out there, construction or operations, they donated a day's pay.
Bauman: I wonder, what was the most challenging part of your job working at the Hanford site?
Bush: As an accounting person, my most challenging part was learning government-ese. [LAUGHTER] How to deal. And in that vein, that took a long time. But once you learn it, there is a way in the US government, period. As I'm sure there is in certain corporations. Later on, when I mentioned that I went down to the federal building for my--finally got located in that building, there was another fellow and I were old timers in accounting. And that year, they had five college grads, accounting grads come in. They hired five at one time. And they ran them by Marv and I for exposure. This is how things are done. This is how the contacts are. And our basic job was to squire these young fellows around and introduce them to certain counterparts and now DOE. Now, this is how you make appointments with them. This is what you do. This is what you never do. And likewise, with senior management. And it paid off because of those five, all four of them became managers or supervisors, and one of them became my manager within two years. Today, that same man is the comptroller at Savannah River Plant. [LAUGHTER] And so I like to feel that I contributed to them being—partially to them being successful. And so that's a reward. But probably the most difficult thing coming from a private—I worked for Colorado Mill and Elevator, which means I worked at a flour mill district office as a bookkeeper. And that's a small town deal in Twin Falls. To come to work for the government where some of your family despises you because you work for the government, but you had to fight that as well as learn how the government operates.
Bauman: You mentioned earlier, you were talking about coal being used for heat in Richland. You also said you wanted to talk about coal fires going up at the site.
Bush: Oh, what?
Bauman: Coal fires?
Bush: Oh, yeah. Interestingly, the midway power station, substation at midway, is one of the reasons they built Hanford where they did because the Grand Coulee Dam had just been completed and an electricity producer—a major producer. And they put the midway substation down there. That basically was built to furnish huge amounts of power to Hanford, for the reactors, everything. Which in total—because I processed vouchers, I know it was 32 megs. Which today doesn't sound like much, but the whole plant bill was 32 megs when everything was operating. But if the power were interrupted, they had to have a backup. So every area had a huge diesel-powered--like water pumps, where they could pump the water from the river instead of by electrically. They had to be able to pump it because it was critical. Because all the water for the whole plant was taken in at intake water plants near the reactors along the river. The 200 Area water is piped to them in a huge line as raw water until it gets to their place. The backup is these coal-fired steam plants, is what I was trying to say. It got about 30-some cars of coal a day rolled through Richland past the cemetery. In the beginning, the railroad came down from the north, from Vantage area down along the Columbia River. There's a railroad bridge across the river, Beverly I think it is. And it came down to below the 100-B Reactor area. That's where the line ended. And then a plant had its own railway incidentally. It had a 285 mile-long rail line, high line and low line. Then, they built--in 1950, the year before I came, they built the line that we see today that comes from Columbia Center into Richland, by the cemetery. And it ends at the old bus lot area, where that railroad car Columbia Center into Richland, by the cemetery. And it ends at the old bus lot area, where that railroad car rebuilding outfit is now, there is a roundhouse that it's rectangular in shape. But some 30 cars of coal a day came in here to supply because those plants were—they actually operated the steam plants. They didn't start them up from cold. They just ran constantly.
Bauman: I wonder if you could provide sort of an overall assessment of how Hanford was as a place to work. What was it like as a place to work?
Bush: It was a great place for me. I came out of an area that was the agriculturally-oriented. And the Korean War started. Wages were frozen, you weren't going to go anywhere. I came up here and I got a new start, like pioneers did. I visualized that's what farming pioneers did the same thing. And it opened up a whole field for me, a big corporate field. And it's just been a great place to work. And it was not dangerous to me. I'm not afraid to drink the water here. I'm asked by a nephew in Hermiston constantly, how do you drink the water? And I said, well, it comes out of the river. How can it come out of the river and that plume’s out there? There's so many false stories around here. But working at Hanford, I think, by and large, almost all employees would tell you the same thing. It was a great place to work. The pay was decent. Maybe you didn't get rich, but it was decent. It's in a nice area to live in. When we came back in the '50s, or in the '40s, and before that even of course, shopping was pretty much nonexistent. They went to Yakima, or Spokane, or Walla Walla. That I didn’t—we didn't experience that too much by 1951 because by that time, the Uptown shopping district was built. And there was a men's store. And there was four women's stores. Because GE was the prime contractor, there was an appliance dealer that handled GE-Hotpoint appliances. We got employee discounts when we worked for GE. We also got 10% gasoline discount when we worked for Atlantic Richfield Hanford. But we just grew with the times. And it's just such an entirely different area now than it was. Just the world is different, too.
Bauman: Is there anything that I haven't asked you about? Is there anything you would like to talk about that we haven't talked about yet?
Bush: Now really, work-wise at Hanford, I think I’ve pretty well-covered it. I'll repeat myself. My first 15 years was construction engineering accounting, which is an entirely different field than operations accounting. Operations accounting concerns itself with the reactors and separations and the site services that support them. But I learned a lot by working at Hanford. My family, three adult children live here, are retired here. My oldest son went on Medicare this year. [LAUGHTER] And that kind of puts you in your place quickly. But it's been a good enough place that they stayed in the area. And of the six granddaughters, grandchildren, four of them are in the area. And that's kind of characteristic with a lot of the Tri-City families. They stay or come back.
Bauman: Well, Bob, I'd like to thank you very much for coming and talking to us today. I really appreciate it.
Bush: It's been my pleasure.
Tom Hungate: Okay.
Robert Franklin: You ready, Tom?
Hungate: Mm-hm.
Franklin: Okay. My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history interview with George Boice on July 15th, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Mr. Boice about his experiences living in Richland. So why don’t we start at the beginning, that’s the best place. When and where were you born?
George Boice: I was born in Ellensburg. A third generation native of the state of Washington. My father and my grandmother were born in Cle Elum.
Franklin: Oh, Wow.
Boice: We came through this—the tribe came through this territory and crossed the White Bluffs ferry in 1885. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Wow.
Boice: And went up to the Kittitas County area. And then we came back later. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: What year were you born?
Boice: ’37.
Franklin: ’37. Did your family work at all at the coal mine in Roslyn?
Boice: Yes. [LAUGHTER] Short answers. My grandmother’s brother, Uncle Tony, was a mine rescue worker up there at Roslyn.
Franklin: Okay.
Boice: You go up to Roslyn, that is interesting. Ever been there?
Franklin: Yes, I have.
Boice: 27 cemeteries. Just neater than all get out. [LAUGHTER] The different ethnic groups up there. They talk about one Fourth of July, the Italians were going to raise the Italian flag in the main street there. Some of the local citizens took a dim view of it. And some wagons were turned on their side and the Winchesters came out, and the sweet little old lady got out there and got everybody calmed down before the shooting started. [LAUGHTER] But the flag didn’t go up. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Wow. So what brought your family down to the Hanford area?
Boice: My—[LAUGHTER] When they started Hanford—Dad was a firefighter in Ellensburg, had been for a few years. And when they set up Hanford, the first thing they did for a fire department was pick up the retired fire chief out of Yakima. Well, he goes around to the local fire departments and starts hydrating citizens. [LAUGHTER] So, Dad came down here in ’43 as the ninth man hired at the Hanford Fire Department. Always claimed that half of them had been canned before he got there. [LAUGHTER] So he went to work in ’43—June of ’43 at Hanford. We were still there at Ellensburg, and we didn’t come down here ‘til summer of ’44.
Franklin: Oh, wow.
Boice: And they were still moving prefabs in, and unloading them with rapid shape.
Franklin: Did your father commute at this time, or did he live on—
Boice: Uh-unh. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Where did he—do you know much about his living quarters or where he lived?
Boice: Yeah, there were barracks.
Franklin: So he lived in the barracks?
Boice: Oh, yes.
Franklin: Okay. Did he come back to visit at all?
Boice: Oh, yeah.
Franklin: Okay.
Boice: Wasn’t but—hell, by the time you get up to the Hanford area, it’s just over the ridge. [LAUGHTER] So he’d come in every couple of weeks.
Franklin: Okay. How many siblings do you have?
Boice: One of each—one brother, one sister.
Franklin: Older, younger?
Boice: Oh, yeah. My brother was born in Kadlec in September of ’45. My sister was—well, they bracket the war. She was born about a month before it started—or right after it started. She was born in December of ’41.
Franklin: Okay.
Boice: And he was born September of ’45.
Franklin: So can you talk a little more about your father’s job at Hanford? What did he—did he talk much about what he did, or—
Boice: [LAUGHTER] Oh, yeah! You know. The place is building up, it’s trying to erupt. You’ve got construction going all directions. Trailer house fires. He talked about them [EMOTIONAL]—how quick people died in them damn trailer houses. They’d go up in a matter of seconds. And there were acres of them. But yeah, it was—And the amount of nothing to do. I mean, you had time to work and then there was really no recreational facilities. He worked at a grocery store for a while in his off hours stocking milk. He said it was not unusual to work a whole shift with a forklift or a handcart walking out of the stack and filling the same slot behind the counter there. We came over twice to visit him at Hanford.
Franklin: Before you moved—
Boice: Yeah.
Franklin: --in ’44. Okay.
Boice: You drive across the Vantage Bridge, and somebody had gone through with a grader and graded out a dirt-slash-gravel road. And we drove around and down, and across the Hanford ferry into Hanford. Because you could get into Hanford; it wasn’t restricted—the town. Everything else was. So getting in and out of Hanford was no trick. Getting out of the surrounding area was. So my mom and I and my grandfather went down there.
Franklin: Wow. And where did you stay? Did you just go for the day?
Boice: Well, we didn’t—when I was there, we didn’t stay. We just went for the day and went home.
Franklin: Okay.
Boice: But Mom talks about going down and staying overnight. [LAUGHTER] She says she was not warned. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Warned about what?
Boice: To keep everything you wanted nailed down.
Franklin: Oh.
Boice: She got up in the morning and somebody stole her girdle. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Wow. So when your family moved in summer of ’44, where did you move to?
Boice: 17-1.
Franklin: 17-1?
Boice: That was the lot number and the house number. It is now 1033 Sanford.
Franklin: Ah.
Boice: It’s on the southwest corner of Sanford and Putnam.
Franklin: Yup. I live right by there.
Boice: We went in there and it was—they had—you can’t describe to people how they had come in there and just dozed the farmland over, staked out streets and planted houses. And hauled them in on trucks and set them down. We were fortunate—I didn’t realize how fortunate it was—in the fact that we had only come about 100 miles or so—we came in a truck. We had our stuff. Mom had her piano. And I can’t tell you how many times women would come up and bang on the door, can I play your piano?
Franklin: Really?
Boice: Strangers off the street. Just because it was there, and it was—so we had all kind of musical stuff. Everybody could play better than Mom could. But we had the piano.
Franklin: Wow.
Boice: And she had her houseplants. It was different. But there was no trees in Richland. There wasn’t three blades of grass! [LAUGHTER] You’d come in, you got a garden hose and a plastic nozzle. You hosed down your lot and it immediately became a slick, slimy mud pile. Great for kids to play in! Man, we could slide in that mud across there—it was really cool! And then when it dried up, why, it reticulated like a picture puzzle. So we’re picking chunks up and stacking them up and building houses. And Mom gets up and she’s just madder than a wet hen, so we had to put the lawn back together. [LAUGHTER] But the hose nozzles were so interesting, because when you had a plastic nozzle, but you couldn’t get anything else. There was a hardware store here, eventually, but they didn’t handle stuff like that. This was a war going on. And the ingenuity that went into lawn sprinklers would just boggle your mind! The cutest one I remember was some guy took a chunk of surgical tubing—he got a bent pipe for an uppensticker. And he stretched his hunk of surgical tubing over the end of it, turned the water on, and it was not efficiently watering his area, but he could flail water all over a half an acre! [LAUGHTER] That was one of the cuter ones. There was also no shade and no air conditioning.
Franklin: Right.
Boice: Coming down in a moving truck, Dad brought his carpenter tools, he brought his bench, and he set to work building an air conditioner. Now, this was the dog-gonedest thing you ever saw. He got some burlap sacks and set out there with scrap lumber in the backyard on his workbench just creating shavings out of boards. Fill these burlap sacks with wood shavings for the pads for his air conditioner. He got a motor out of I-don’t-know-what. It was an appliance motor out of something. And he whittled out this propeller out of a two-by-four. And he cranked this thing up and it sounded like a B-29. [LAUGHTER] But it would blow sort of cool air, which raised the wrath of the neighbors. Number one was the racket he was making. Number two was we had air conditioning. So immediately, guys come out of the woodwork in all directions. Guy next door was a sheet metal worker. He came home with parts to make a much better, more efficient fan that was quieter. [LAUGHTER] So they set to work building him one. [LAUGHTER] We made air conditioners—you come up with a motor, and they would come up with an air conditioner. And we would deliver them on the back of my little red wagon. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Where would you put that? Like, would that just go in the window?
Boice: We put it in a window.
Franklin: Oh, okay. And how would you attach it to the house?
Boice: Ingeniously! Most often, they would just build a rack underneath, a shelf on top, and set it up on top there. A houses, you wanted to put your air conditioner—at least about everybody did—set it at the top of the stairs where it would blow out the upstairs and cool your downstairs. They were reasonably efficient. The one thing about all the homemade air conditioners—very few of them, if any, had a recirculating system. So you had to use fresh water. This had two sides to it. You didn’t crud up your water system with alkali by reusing your water. But you did have to go out there and keep moving your hose where it drained out to water your lawn.
Franklin: [LAUGHTER] Wow. What kind of house did your family move into?
Boice: Well, originally we had a three-bedroom prefab. Prefabs come in three sizes and five colors. And a bunch of very ingenious kids on Halloween 1944 went out and stole the damn street signs. The buses coming back off of swing shift had no earthly idea where they were going. They wandered around town, because all the houses looked alike! [LAUGHTER] Then after a while—oh, let’s see, we moved in in August, and about the following spring—because we started out school at Sacajawea and then at Christmas vacation they changed us to Marcus Whitman. But up there on Longfitt, thereabouts, I was coming home from school and here sits the roof of a prefab right out in the middle of the street. Apparently, this guy was sleeping and a windstorm come along and picked up his whole roof and set it out in the middle of the street. Thereafter they had a crew of carpenters going around fastening the rooves of the prefabs down a little tighter.
Franklin: Because at that time, right, they had flat rooves.
Boice: Flat rooves.
Franklin: Correct? That kind of overhung a bit, something that the wind could really easily—
Boice: Oh, yeah.
Franklin: --grab ahold and pop off. Do you remember when they got the gabled rooves that they all have now?
Boice: No, I don’t, because I was—I think after we left, but I wouldn’t bet heavy money on it. We moved off the prefab in ’45.
Franklin: Okay.
Boice: And into an A house on Swift. I don’t recall when they put the gabled rooves on.
Franklin: Okay. So what did your mom do? Did she work at Hanford at all?
Boice: No.
Franklin: No?
Boice: She was a stay-at-home mom.
Franklin: Stay-at-home mom?
Boice: It was such an interesting place. The buses ran every 30 minutes. No charge, just go out and get on the bus. One of my main jobs was—because there was no mail delivery, everybody in Richland got their mail general delivery. So I’d take the bus, go downtown, get off at the post office, check the mail, go down to the grocery store—and there was only one—that was a brief period, but then there was only one grocery store at that time. And that’s where that ski rental shop is—kayak rental shop on the corner of Lee and GW?
Franklin: Mm-hmm.
Boice: That was the grocery store. The one and only. Shortly thereafter, Safeway opened up on the corner of—southwest corner of Lee and Jadwin. So things picked up. And then there was—they come up with the community center grocery store—whatever you want to call them. There was one at Thayer and Williams, which was the Groceteria. Garmo’s was out there on Stevens and Jadwin—no, Symons and something-or-other. The south end of town was—oh, nuts. He was the one that survived—Campbell’s. Campbell’s grocery store. He specialized in fresh fruit and stuff, and of the whole pile of them, he was the one that really come out of it in good shape. But the fourth one is now the school office, up there by Marcus Whitman. That was a grocery store.
Franklin: Okay.
Boice: But you go down, you do your post office work, and then you go and get your groceries, and if you’re lucky you get ten cents. Next bus home. You know where the Knights of Columbus Hall is out on the bypass?
Franklin: Mm-hmm.
Boice: That used to be—originally that was the Richland post office.
Franklin: Mm-hmm.
Boice: It’s up there at Knight and GW, I think. There wasn’t a whole bunch of shopping centers. The Richland Theater was in existence. The drug store next door to it was there. After a while, the big brown building, which was everything, at that time, when it opened up it was CC Anderson’s. Then there was the dime store, and, oh, we were hot and heavy then. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Can you tell me a little more about your dad’s job? What would a typical day or a typical week look like for someone who worked on the fire department?
Boice: On the fire department, there is no such thing as typical. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Yeah.
Boice: It was wild. In the beginning, they opened up—they were on shifts. Like everything was on day shifts, swing shift, graveyard. In our neighborhood, after my brother was born, we moved down to Swift and McPherson. Dad had come into town by that time. If you go behind the Richland Theater, you look real close, there’s two B houses back there. One of them’s a real B house and the other one ain’t. You look at the B houses over here, and the other one that ain’t is over here. And you look real close at the driveways. That was the original fire station that the City of Richland had going. That was the fire station when Hanford came in. Then they built a fire station on Jadwin in conjunction with the housing building and a couple other things, right across from the 700 Area, which is what they wanted, was coverage on that 700 Area. So that was the downtown fire station. And when they opened that up, why, then Dad came up out of Hanford.
Franklin: Okay.
Boice: He wasn’t too long there, and they opened one up Williams off of Thayer, in behind the Groceteria and a little service station up there with a small satellite fire station. Two trucks and one crew. Dad was there for years and years and years.
Franklin: How long did your dad work for Hanford or the government here?
Boice: Like I say, he came in in ’43 and retired in the early ‘70s.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Boice: Rode her right on through.
Franklin: So what did he do when the community transitioned in ’58?
Boice: They bought him!
Franklin: The City of Richland did?
Boice: Yup, the City of Richland bought the outstanding time and he rolled right over.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Boice: [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: So can you talk a little bit more about growing up here? You said you went to Marcus Whitman and then to—and then what other schools did you go to?
Boice: Well, like I say, there was no shade.
Franklin: Right.
Boice: And very few radio stations. With a good shot you could get in Yakima, Spokane, and Walla Walla, and that was about it. So we sat around in the shade, and my mother read us stories. [LAUGHTER] One of them was a book we picked up in Walla Walla about Sacajawea. She read us the entire story of Sacajawea and the Shoshones and the Lewis and Clark Expedition, et cetera, et cetera. And in ’44, they opened up Sacajawea School. Now, as everybody does, they did their darnedest to convert us kids to saying Sah-CAH-jah-wee-ah. It didn’t take. [LAUGHTER] Because there was already Sacajawea State Park and everybody was using the term Sacajawea. But Sah-CAH-jah-wee-ah—they tried. They gave it their level best. It didn’t take. But the time that they were doing this, Miss Jesson was a teacher there was giving us the thumbnail sketch about Sacajawea. She did a pretty good job—well, you know, she told you what she knew. And she made mention of the fact that she was married to a trapper, but they didn’t know what his name or anything about him. I says, his name was Toussaint Charbonneau. He got her off a wolf man of the minute carriage for a white buffalo robe. My status went up. [LAUGHTER] And the teachers wanted to know where in the cat hair I learned that. Well, Mom read us the book. But I’ve always liked Sacajawea School. Just kind of a kinship. We went—in ’45, they opened up Marcus Whitman. We went there ’45 was all, because when they broke for the summer, we were over by—we moved. By the next fall we were over in the area where I could go to Sacajawea again. But we were going to Marcus Whitman when Roosevelt was shot—died. So that was the event of the time. You watched the transition of one President to another. The flag ceremony—the whole thing—it was interesting for a kid.
Franklin: I bet. What do you remember about during the war years that kind of focus on secrecy and security? How did that affect your life and your family’s life?
Boice: You didn’t talk to nobody about nothing! [LAUGHTER] I mean, that was just the words. You didn’t talk about—if somebody asks you what your dad does, you talk about something else. It was so interesting here in the last year, I think—time goes quicker now. A whole bunch of us from that neighborhood on Swift went to a funeral—this boy’s mother—well, yeah—Bill’s mother’s 100th birthday, after the funeral they had a sit-down dinner. I happened to sit down at the table with the whole kids of the old neighborhood. And we’re talking about all this stuff, and the secrecy, and the ones you watch out for—this girl over here. Yeah. She didn’t share the secrets with the neighbors when they were talking about who’s got butter on sale. They didn’t tell her anymore. She fried her food in butter. So no one would tell her where the butter sales were when it was available. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Was there any mention of the work going on at Hanford at school that you can remember?
Boice: The one thing of what was going on, and it wasn’t the work at Hanford, because nobody talked about that. But when the Japs were sending over the firebombs—
Franklin: Yeah, the balloon bombs.
Boice: Yes. We were told to write no letters, tell nobody, because they didn’t want it to get out how blinking effective they were.
Franklin: Right. The fear of these bombs from the sky—
Boice: They were hitting, and they were working.
Franklin: Yeah.
Boice: You guys are in the right position to find out. But there was a rumor going around that a balloon-loaded Jap had landed out there in the area and they caught him and bundled him up and carted him off before they did any business. Okay, la-di-da-di-da. There’s rumors about one thing and another. And four or five years ago, CNN or one of these, they were talking about the weather balloons. They showed the colored pictures taken out here at Hanford of the balloons landing in the BPA lines and burning up. [LAUGHTER] End of speech, end of story. [LAUGHTER] But I was surprised to find out that something had happened. There was no soldiers attached or anything else, but there was an incident.
Franklin: Yeah, we’ve—there are a couple confirmed reports of—we actually did an oral history with a gentleman whose father had been a patrolman and had seen one of the balloons land and had to chase it down and didn’t realize right away that it was—had explosives attached to it. The others—there’s a couple reports of them touching down onsite. And there was a family that was killed in Idaho where they were picnicking and a balloon came down.
Boice: Idaho or Oregon?
Franklin: I think it was—oh, that’s right, maybe it was Oregon.
Boice: K Falls.
Franklin: Yes.
Boice: You go to the museum in Klamath Falls had the—or when I went through it—I was working down there twenty years ago or so—they had a big display of the family that was picnicking and the kids went to prod on it, and it went off and killed a girl.
Franklin: Yeah. Were there—when you were—so we’re still in the World War II era and we’ll definitely get to the Cold War in a bit—but were there any kind of—what do you remember about like emergency procedures in school? Was there anything special, kind of drills or something during World War II?
Boice: You mean the duck-and-cover?
Franklin: Yeah, that kind of stuff. Was there any duck-and-cover during World War II?
Boice: Oh, yeah, oh, yeah. Of course—my kindergarten days—now, man. Lived across the street from the college there at Ellensburg, and firebombs were to be worried about. But I was covered. I had a bucket full of sand and a shovel, and it was there on the front porch. When the firebomb came through there, I was going to put my sand on it. So we were prepared. God help us if it landed any place else. [LAUGHTER] But the beginning of the war when I was a kid in Ellensburg was so funny, because we were living right across the street from the college and everything was just the standard college. And the war started, and immediately, there’s all these people running around here that can’t count. Hup, two, three, four. Hup, two, three, four. I wasn’t even in kindergarten, and I knew about my ones! [LAUGHTER] And there was—you go across the street and around the corner, and there was this one half basement room where I could stand there and watch the guys play shirts-and-skins basketball. And the next time I looked, here’s a skeleton of a single engine aircraft, and a guy instructing people on how to make dead stick landing. Now, of all the damned things for a four-year-old kid to remember, dead stick landings was what he was talking about. And they had this thing skeletonized where they could show the internal workings of all the aeronautics.
Franklin: Wow.
Boice: But in Richland—oh, yes. Duck-and-cover fire drills. But they never talked about nuclear, because it was yet to be discovered. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Right, right. So Ellensburg then quickly became inundated with—the state college there became a training area?
Boice: Oh, yeah. Just that fast.
Franklin: Wow. In your notes here, I also see you mentioned about the heavy military presence and the olive drab everywhere and the cops in Army uniforms.
Boice: [LAUGHTER] It absolutely was. Richland was strictly OD. I think they only had one bucket of paint. But all the vehicles were olive drab. The buses were, on today’s standards, I’ll call them a three-quarter size school bus painted olive drab. The vehicles were anything they could scrounge up, because I remember two GIs in a ’37 Chev coupe, and I know today some farmer had taken the trunk out and made a pickup box out of it. But they scrounged this thing up someplace, painted it OD, and here’s the MPs running around in a ’37 Chev pickup. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: [LAUGHTER] A homemade pickup?
Boice: Yeah. It was years later that I found out—Dad didn’t say anything about it, and he certainly knew—that it was simple, because the war was going on. Everything was prioritized. But they had unlimited supply of uniforms. So they put the cops in soldiers’ uniforms; the firemen were in Navy uniforms. The firemen stood out and were very easily recognizable, but you couldn’t tell the soldiers and the cops apart, because they all had the same stuff on. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Wow. A couple oral histories we’ve done with people that were children in Richland, a couple of them mentioned their fathers had taken them onsite somewhat clandestinely. Did your father ever take you onsite into a secured area?
Boice: No.
Franklin: Did you ever get access to any of that some way?
Boice: No, I did not go to any secured area.
Franklin: Okay.
Boice: I was raised running in and out of fire stations. To this day, when I go through the door of a fire station, my hands go into my pockets. You’re allowed to touch nothing. Because you leave fingerprints. [LAUGHTER] It’s just a genuine reflex.
Franklin: Yeah! So you said that you went to Sacajawea, then to Marcus Whitman then back to Sacajawea. Then where did you go to high school?
Boice: We went through all of the—I’ll call it the school construction. They couldn’t build schools fast enough in Richland.
Franklin: I bet.
Boice: We had double shifts. Now they have these temporary quarters—whatever you call them. But we had hutments. Sacajawea had six hutments out there. They built the hutments, and then they went to double shifts. So you went to school at 8:00, and at noon they marched out, teacher and all, and our class marched in, and we went home at 4:30 or 5:00, something like that. So we went through all of that, and then in ’49, they opened Carmichael. A brand new junior high school, man, this is cool! And I was in the seventh grade in Carmichael and I are still the proud possessor of ASB cord 001, 1949, Carmichael Junior High School. The first one they ever gave out. [LAUGHTER] And that was neat, to have a real hard-built school. It was—oh, we had class. After three months, we moved to Kennewick. The Kennewick school system—
Franklin: Your family did, or--?
Boice: Yeah!
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Boice: Dad stayed in Richland, but they were selling off. And if you didn’t have priority, the houses went to the guy that was there first. And in that A house, we were in second, so we were not in line to buy the house.
Franklin: Right.
Boice: So, Dad got a piece of property in Kennewick and we moved to Kennewick. And what a school system mess.
Franklin: Why?
Boice: They were behind. They couldn’t get money quick enough. They couldn’t build stuff fast enough. They had the red brick building—forget what it was called. It had been a high school at one time, and they pressed it back into service. It was so overcrowded you couldn’t believe it. But they finally built the high school that’s there now. It opened in ’52, I believe. ’51—yeah, class of ’52 was the first one to graduate—’52 or ’53. Graduated from Erwin S. Black Senior High School. And it was Erwin S. Black Senior High School one year. Because he was the school superintendent, and they built the school—they named the school in his honor because he had gone to bat and made trips back and forth to Washington, DC to cash some money to use for the school system. Then they got in a shooting match with the Tri-City Herald. [LAUGHTER] And Erwin S. Black and the schoolboard got run out of town, and they chiseled his name off the front of the school. But for one year it was E.S. Black.
Franklin: And then it just became Kennewick High School.
Boice: It became Kennewick High School.
Franklin: Can you talk a little bit more about this disagreement between Erwin S. Black and the schoolboard and the Tri-City Herald?
Boice: It was several things. One of them, there was a book—and I can’t recall—Magruder? McGregor? Somebody. It was a history book, and it mentioned communism. And that was brought up and made a big deal. This was back in the McCarthy era.
Franklin: Right.
Boice: That was brought out. And there was a lot of talk—Black was a certified building inspector, and he inspected the construction of the high school. It was said by a lot of people that it wasn’t up to standards; that the concrete wasn’t what it should have been. And I don’t know what the specs were. I wasn’t into concrete work at that time. I have been later. But I know when we were hanging the benches in the ag shop, where you would put a concrete anchor in the wall ordinarily and it would hold, they didn’t there. And they had to through-bolt through the wall to get to things to hang. So there was—and transfer of equipment and stuff—this was swapped for that, and that was swapped for this—and I don’t remember that, and the only guy I know that did know has died. [LAUGHTER] But one of the kids that graduated from Erwin S. Black, one of the few that was in that class, worked with him off and on and was aware of what went on.
Franklin: When you said that there was a book that mentioned communism, did it mention it in a favorable light, or did it just make a mention to communism?
Boice: More or less, it just made a mention.
Franklin: Okay.
Boice: I was on the—oh, we had the open house at the school, and I was one of the tour guides. Yeah, I showed them the book and what it had to say. And I don’t recall anything drastic.
Franklin: So then did you graduate from Kennewick High School?
Boice: No. [LAUGHTER] The military had a hell of a sale. Anybody that enlisted by the first of February got the Korean GI Bill of Rights. And those that enlisted afterwards didn’t. So I drug up in January and joined the Air Force.
Franklin: Oh. Without graduating.
Boice: Without graduating.
Franklin: Okay. Interesting.
Boice: So I served my illustrious military career in a photo lab in Mountain Home, Idaho. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: And how long were you in the Air Force?
Boice: Two years.
Franklin: Two years, and then you were discharged?
Boice: Yes, yup, yup.
Franklin: When you were in school, you mentioned being in school during this McCarthy era, one of the real hot points of the Cold War. Can you talk a little bit about the civil defense procedures and kind of the general feeling of that time as it related to—because I imagine with Hanford so close, and now knowing what was being produced there, that would have been a likely target. It’s a major part of the nuclear weapons stockpile. So can you talk a little bit about that time and just the general feeling?
Boice: Well, you knew what was going to happen—or what they said was gonna happen. It was the duck-and-cover thing. And we had drills. A lot of what they said what was gonna happen—now they talk about getting into water to modulate it. Then, it was one of the things that they didn’t want you to do. Because we had the irrigation ditch that was running right alongside of the schools. But then they didn’t want you to get into it. So, it’s changed. They had the civil defense procedures—Radiant Cleaners, they’re in Kennewick. They had panel delivery cleaner trucks. They were rigged for emergency ambulances. They had fold-down bunks in them; they could handle four people. [LAUGHTER] It was taken serious.
Franklin: Did you feel any particular sense of worry, or did it not seem to really affect you, your daily life or your psychological—
Boice: It never bothered me ‘til years afterwards. When they talked about the Green Run, where they turned a bunch of that stuff loose, just to see what it would do to the citizens and count the drift on it. The people that had—the down-winders, and the people that had the thyroid problems. My sister was one of the first rounds that went to court over that.
Franklin: Really?
Boice: Because she was—we moved into Richland. She had her third birthday in the prefab, when they were still practicing how to build this stuff. And then we moved in on a farm where the alfalfa grew, the cow ate it, gave them milk, and everything was recycled and nothing went over the fence. And so it bothered me, then, that they used us as guinea pigs. But the other hand, they really didn’t know what in the cat hair that they were doing in a lot of cases. The nuclear waste? You’ve heard about the radioactive rabbit turds.
Franklin: I have.
Boice: You have?
Franklin: Yes, I have, but why don’t you mention that?
Boice: I was working with Vitro out here—’72, I think it was. The radioactivity, of course, is settled on the sagebrush. And the rabbits went around eating the leaves, just leaving fat, dumb and happy, and concentrating everything into the rabbit turds. And they were contemplating taking the top six inches of about two or three sections and burying it. Only they couldn’t decide where they had to build the hole. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: When you—you mentioned just a minute ago that you were on a farm, and you had the cows that would have eaten the tainted alfalfa—was your milk ever tested? Or did anyone ever come and--
Boice: Nah. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: test your—Were you ever tested for—or your family, anybody in your family, ever tested for radiation? Because I know that they, at one point, had those Whole Body Counters that they would test—some children in Pasco were tested through those machines?
Boice: You ever been through a Whole Body Counter?
Franklin: I have not been through a Whole Body Counter.
Boice: Depending on where you’re at, there may or may not be a—they’re kind of a joke. Now, when I was working here at Vitro, we went through the Whole Body thing, and they were serious. I mean, before we got cleared out, we went through the chamber, and we were counted. I went to work in South Carolina. They—as far as I was concerned—were very sloppy with their radiation handling and their checking and their radiation monitoring. We had a hand-and-foot monitoring station where we was going in and out of. You stick your hands in and they check it, and your feet were there at the same time. Well, this one time, I come up pretty hot, so I found an RM. I says, that machine gave me a bad reading. Oh, he says, that machine’s no good anyway. Come around to this other one over here and we’ll check you out. Well, if the blinking thing’s no good, why in the cat hair are we using it?! [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: So, just a second ago, you mentioned you were working for Vitro?
Boice: Uh-huh.
Franklin: What is or was Vitro?
Boice: What was Vitro? Okay. Vitro Engineering—and I don’t know how many times the name changed hands. But these guys were the ones that laid out the City of Richland—laid out the Hanford Projects. These were the strictly insiders. There was pictures on a wall of my grade school buddy’s dad, who I remember being a surveyor in Richland there. And these guys—this has gone on forever, and they were a pretty dug-in organization. To the point that they were not really aware that there was a world outside the fence. They’d heard about it, but they weren’t too sure it existed. [LAUGHTER] But I ended up at Vitro, and we did the Tank Farms that they’re having problems with, the hot tanks? We were in on the modification of that farm. We surveyed in there quite a bit. Whenever they show the pictures on TV, they always show you the evaporation facility. They show you that same picture. Warren Wolfe and I—I say Warren and I—it’s a little—our crew brought that up out of the ground, and we modified the tank farm, and we laid out the construction on that building from the ground right through the top.
Franklin: Okay.
Boice: And I was very fortunate, because all my surveying experience to that point was with the railroads and pipelines and longline work. Construction surveying was new to me. And I got throwed in with an old boy that was good at it. [LAUGHTER] And I learned a bunch working with him. And rolled right over, later on, into Hanford, too. We got in on the end of that—[LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Hanford II?
Boice: Yeah.
Franklin: Oh, as--T-O-O. And which building was this that you and Warren Wolfe and your crew built?
Boice: All I remember is the evaporation facility.
Franklin: What was your specific job at Vitro? Were you a surveyor?
Boice: I was a surveyor. I was an instrument man. You get in the hot zones—we got inside the Canyon Building on several different occasions. And you got suited up, and I was instructed very specifically and emphatically to touch nothing, because anything that got crapped up, they kept. And we couldn’t get the instruments crapped up. But that stuff was so hot that the paper—the Rite-in-the-Rain books have got a specific paper there that has pitch in it or something—it attracts radioactivity like a sponge. And when they kept the notes, then one of us would stay inside and the other guy would get out in the clean zone, and we’d have to transcribe all the notes, because that book was so hot that they wouldn’t let it out of the area. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Wow.
Boice: There was some weird stuff going on.
Franklin: Any other—
Boice: Yeah, but there’s some I ain’t gonna talk about. [LAUGHTER] Okay. We came so close to having a nuclear disaster, it wasn’t even funny. We were good. We were awful good. And we were fast. And we were set up out there on an offset, and Rosie the labor foreman come over. Somebody said you needed a shot here for a hole for a penetration into the tank. Man, we whipped that out and figured the pull and what it was gonna take. Swung over there, put a distance and an angle, drove the stake in the ground. I figured that Warren checked it, and away we went. We come back in a week or so, or a few days later, we were back in that same farm. And Rosie comes over there and he says, would you guys check that again? Because these guys was digging a hole there and they’re supposed to hit a tank. And we checked it. And I lied, and Warren swore to it. [LAUGHTER] We forgot we was on a ten-foot offset. So they’re digging clear to one side of this tank, and just good solid dirt. Had we been just half as screwed-up as we were, they would have gone right down the edge of that tank with a core drill. And we’d have had ooey-gooeys all over the place. They talked to us. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Kind of a happy accident, right?
Boice: Yeah, we were—I’ll never forget Warren’s work. He’d come back with the boss and he says, name me one guy in this world ever got through this life being perfect. He says, always pissed me off, he’s a damned carpenter. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: So you went to—you joined the Air Force, you went to Idaho for two years. When you came back—or what did you do after that? Did you come back to Richland after?
Boice: We were living in Kennewick.
Franklin: Living in Kennewick.
Boice: And I was working at the Washington Hardware Store. And this kid—we were working on cars in my buddy’s garage. And this guy comes through and he’s surveying for the Corps. And he talked that they were setting up a photogrammetry section. Well, heck, that’s what I was doing in the service. So, I beat feet over to Walla Walla to sign up to lay out photo mosaics. And they say, we haven’t got enough work for fulltime at that job. Are you a draftsman? No, I are not a draftsman. He says, would you take a job surveying? You bet. I became a surveyor. [LAUGHTER] And we worked from the mouth of the Deschutes River to Lewiston, Idaho. The first thing was the mouth of the Deschutes to McNary Dam—we mapped from the water level to the top of the bluffs by hand.
Franklin: Wow.
Boice: And then we went through, starting in ’58, and we inventoried the railroad. Now, when you inventory a railroad, we inventoried a railroad. Everything they possessed was put down. First, you go through and you measure and put stations—mark station markings on the rails. 80 miles of them. Then you go back and you reference everything the railroad’s got. Ties, spikes, tie plates, rails, joints, joint bars—if the fence moves, how far did it move, from what to what? If the rail changes, if there’s an isolation joint in there, you put that in. When you come to a switch, you measure everything that’s in the switch facility. You go—everything that that railroad has got. You become very, very familiar with railroads. [LAUGHTER] And then we went ahead, and we built railroads clear up to Lewistown. We handled a railroad layout real heavy. When they—are you familiar with the Marmes men?
Franklin: Yes.
Boice: Luck of the draw, I was on that. Because we were the—call it the resident survey crew in that area.
Franklin: Oh.
Boice: And we were babysitting construction. Make sure they got sticks out ahead of them, make sure that things are checked out behind them. They’re putting in a detour, why, check that out. They’re building a bridge, make sure it’s set up right, and check it out when they get done. So, first they call up and they say, there’s a guy down here at the mouth of the Palouse River thinks he hit something, and he wants an elevation on this cave, see where the water’s gonna come when they raise the water behind Lower Monumental, I believe.
Franklin: Yeah, I think that sounds right.
Boice: Is that the dam? So we went down there and run him in an elevation, painted it on the cave face. Happily on our way. Well, they hit pay dirt. [LAUGHTER] They dug up bones. So we were called back. They wanted—because the drillers were in there then doing sub-cell drilling of what’s down there. So we got to come in there and locate their holes so they know where what is. That was interesting. The whole thing. Now that the world has got into this Ice Age floods and stuff, I wish so heavily that I knew then what I know now. Because the layers that they went through were very definitely visible. This thing had been covered in various floods. But it was so interesting, the stuff that they found. Because it became an international incident. One of the coolest cats in the whole joint was Pono the Greek. And Pono run the sluice box. He had been all over the world. When the girls dug everything out, then they took the dirt to Pono, and he washed it down. Pono found thread of somebody’s sewing. Then they found the needle. And that to me was so cool. They had this needle that looked for all the world like a darning needle. How in the blazes they cut that eye in there! This was a really heads-up organization. [LAUGHTER] Interesting. Very interesting.
Franklin: Yeah, that was a very significant archaeological find.
Boice: I’ve got to go back some day and talk to that doctor. At an anniversary of something, we’re down here at Columbia Park, and he was talking and I showed up there with the historical society doing something-or-other. And I talked to him for about five minutes. He mentioned the fact that he wanted to see the guy that painted that elevation. I said, well, you’re looking at him. [LAUGHTER] It was—I got to go talk to him. Because one of the things in their report—they talked that the ditch was dug with a Cat. Now, I ain’t saying they’re wrong, because I didn’t see any digging when I was there. But just—as you’re going up and looking at a hole, and in those days we had looked at a bunch of holes—we were inspectors. They were going behind the soils guys. And it just to me had all the appearance of somebody that dug a ditch with a dragline. And I always figured it was a dragline in there, and somebody said it was a Cat. I don’t totally agree with him. But the bones were so interesting. They said that the one thing about the site was there had been somebody living on it forever. Just, the further down you went, the more primitive they became, ‘til you got past the layer of the Mazama ash, when Crater Lake blew its top. And they went past Mazama ash and suddenly things looked pretty sophisticated. That’s where the needle came from and a few other things. It was neat. I’d have liked to spend more time with them.
Franklin: Yeah. I’m sure you heard about the dam failing and the site flooding after they—because they created the protective dam around the shelter, and that failed and let water in.
Boice: It didn’t fail! The SOB was never built to hold! When they brought us down there to check these drill holes out, the drillers—we had other stuff to do that morning, and we didn’t get down there until 10:00. The driller had a half-a-dozen holes in. I’m talking to this old driller, and he says, they ain’t never gonna keep water out of that thing, because there’s a layer of palm wood down there and it’s gonna leak like a sieve. But they did it anyway. And we’re down there checking on settlement pins and a whole bunch of other stuff when the water’s coming up. But we’re all on the radio, and it’s like a big one-party line—you can hear what’s going on no matter where. And they’re putting in pumps, and the more pumps they put in, the more water they sprayed out, but noting changed. [LAUGHTER] So it’s a lovely fishing pond. But interesting: it was shortly thereafter that I quit the corps and went to Alaska. Within a year-and-a-half, two years, I’m up there doing the same thing, only instead of spotting holes in the ground, we’re spotting oil wells. And sitting in a warm-up shack, talking to a driller, and he made mention of the fact that they had spudded oil wells. Now, when they spud an oil well, they get in there with an oversized auger, like you’re setting telephone poles. And they go down there through the mud and the blood and the crud ‘til they get to solid rock. And then they bring in the drills. And he says, we have yet to spud a well here that we didn’t get palm wood. And that has always sat with me. Now, when they’re talking about global warming—if there has been palm trees growing at the mouth of the Palouse River, and palm trees growing at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, it’s been a lot warmer than people are willing to talk about. [LAUGHTER] Just boggles my mind that there is palm wood in Alaska as well as Marmes Rockshelter.
Franklin: Wow, that’s really interesting. So you were—Marmes, then Alaska. When did you come to work for Vitro at Hanford?
Boice: That was a pretty short season. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: At Hanford, or in Alaska?
Boice: At Vitro. Oh, at Alaska I worked for various contractors. But Vitro—we didn’t philosophically match. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Ah.
Boice: Their minds were all inside the fence. And I’m too antagonistic. [LAUGHTER] If we had a problem—thou shalt not speak bad of Vitro. And we’re laying out penetrations on top of a tank. And they’re all done. Radius and angle—which radius is—and they had them at different stages there, and other people had been doing them. And this tank had been there for quite a—not quite a while, but every once in a while someone would come in and set some more holes, set some more holes. Well, they didn’t continue their circle around—nobody closed the circle. So by the time we get there ‘til the end, we have to figure out by adding up each and every hole all the way around the circle at every different radius to get the dimensions to where we’re at. Where if the guy had closed out his circle, you could have backed him out and been out of there in about a tenth the time. So I happened to make the statement, I said, Vitro drafting strikes again. And I was a marked man. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: How long in total, then, did you work out on the Hanford site?
Boice: Well, in ’56-’57, or ’57-’58, they were doing a lot of military work out there. And we did the roads up Rattlesnake—was in on that. The road up Saddle Mountain. A lot of RADAR sites. You’re aware of the Nike sites on—
Franklin: Yup.
Boice: --the north side of the river over there?
Franklin: Yup.
Boice: Been there, done that. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: So—that wasn’t for Vitro, was that when you were with—
Boice: That was the Corps.
Franklin: Okay.
Boice: And we also did a lot of work up at Moses Lake.
Franklin: Okay.
Boice: All the runway extensions up there, we were in on. They throwed us in the clink. They did not like our very presence.
Franklin: Why?
Boice: Apparently Moses Lake had two different structures. There was the Strategic Air Command structure up there, and there was the Military Air Transport Service. I didn’t know the difference. Les was—we were doing some mapping work. And the three of us were just gonna run some levels out to the next site we were gonna work at. And we took off the BM—benchmark—at the control tower. And we get about two turns out across the flight line there. And a bunch of guys come out, like a changing of the guard or something. Two or three of them stopped to talk to Kirby and George. The other five come out along, and they walked, just formed a circle around me, and they wanted to know if I wanted to go with them. They had submachine guns and a whole bunch of other stuff, and I said, heck, there’s nothing I’d rather do! [LAUGHTER] So they called up Walla Walla and they verified our existence. Then we had to go through security and get badges to—and we’d been working on that thing off-and-on for months. But we just hadn’t stepped in the right zone.
Franklin: Oh, wow.
Boice: [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: They were just kind of waiting for you, then, to—
Boice: Just different—different bunch of stuff.
Franklin: Right. When you were in school in Kennewick, so after the—or even just after the word was out about the Hanford site, after August 6th, 1945, when you were in school, did they teach anything about Hanford history? Was it—
Boice: Go back to August 6th.
Franklin: Okay.
Boice: What a day. [EMOTIONAL] What a wonderful day! I’d been down at the Village Theater—now the Richland Theater. I don’t even remember what was playing. But we came out, [EMOTIONAL] and the bells were ringing. The church down there, they were ringing their bells. And everybody was whooping it up—the war was over! And I’ll never forget, some gal in there alongside the street, she had half a dozen kids with garbage can lids and a parade going, and they’re banging and clanging. And the festivities that the war was over. And then we went back and they came out with the thing and Truman said, It’s the Atomic Bomb, and that’s what we’ve been building. And Mom went over and talked to the lady next door. She mentioned the U-235. And the gal says, they didn’t talk about that, did they? And she’d been keeping files, and her husband had been working on it. And neither of them would ever admit that they knew what the other one was doing. It was that tight. And the security in Richland. The FBI knew everybody in town, because it was not uncommon—it was a regular thing that they would come around and they would talk to you, and ask about him. And then they’d go talk to him and ask about you. It was just—it was what was going on. We didn’t know why. Well, after that—yeah, after it came out what was going on out there, then we knew what was there. But until Truman come out and said, here’s what was going on, we didn’t know.
Franklin: What about V-J Day? Was that a separate kind of a big celebration?
Boice: Yeah.
Franklin: Was that as big as the news of the bomb drop? Or was the bomb drop more of a pivotal moment here in the—
Boice: Well, the V-J Day, the end of the war, was the big day. That’s the celebration that I’ll never forget.
Franklin: Can you talk about it?
Boice: June—you heard about Harry Truman, didn’t you? When he come out to Hanford?
Franklin: No.
Boice: [LAUGHTER] The head of security was a guy by the name of McHale. And Dad worked pretty close with him with the fire department because everything was safety and security and if you had a problem, see McHale. Now, the guy had taken—he was pretty much high up in intelligence—but he had assumed the position of a first sergeant. And Sarge McHale was the guy. No matter what happened, Sarge McHale. Harry Truman did a fantastic job, and made his reputation just going from plant to plant—the Truman Investigating Committee, cutting down waste. And I guess he did a heck of a job. But he come out to Hanford and demanded to be let in.
Franklin: Sorry, was this when he was Vice President or President?
Boice: He was a senator!
Franklin: Senator—Senator Harry Truman. Okay.
Boice: And he comes there and demands to be let in. And of course, the guard says, McHale! And McHale comes over there and meets him head-on. He says, I’m Senator Truman, and I demand to be let in. McHale says, I don’t give a damn if you’re President of the United States; you ain’t coming in here. And he didn’t. Well, years later, and I believe it was when they were dedicating the Elks Club in Pasco, Truman was back up in this area. And he was President. And he come out to Hanford and he looked up McHale. And he said, uh-huh, you son of a bitch, you didn’t think I’d make ‘er, did ya? [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Wow. That’s a great story. [LAUGHTER] But thank you. So after the war was over, was what went on at Hanford taught in school? Was there mention of the work at Hanford that built the bomb? Was that part of the curriculum here in town?
Boice: The local lore.
Franklin: The local lore, but nothing in the school at all?
Boice: Not that I recall.
Franklin: Okay.
Boice: Everything was—there was a terrific amount of pride. The Atomic City, the atomic this, the atomic that. The first barber shop quartet come to town, when GE left—no, DuPont left, GE come in, four guys come in from Schenectady, New York with a barber shop quartet. First ones I ever saw. And they were the Atomic City Four. And the next one were the Nuclear Notes. [LAUGHTER] But there was an atomic pride, all over the area. Then there was the people that thought we should be ashamed of it. That we had built this device that killed a whole bunch of people.
Franklin: Now, were these people in the community? Or people outside?
Boice: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Franklin: And this was right at the time—
Boice: Oh, no, no, no. This is--
Franklin: Later?
Boice: Last week? [LAUGHTER] Last few years ago, yeah.
Franklin: Okay.
Boice: I got my—I’m still behind Hanford.
Franklin: Okay.
Boice: Screwed up and all. Back to Vitro for a little bit. Like I say, they were—the organization that literally purchased and built the city of Richland—now, at that time I was flying, and I was flying out of the Richland airport. And there was an old geezer out there called Norm. Norm flew the bench. He was always on the bench out in front of the airport, there. And if somebody just going up to burn up some hours or play, why, Norm was willing to go along. I saw Norm and I hauled him around and then I went back to work for Vitro. And Pritchard brought this guy through—it was Norm! Norm had been the head of real estate when the entire city of Richland and the whole Hanford Project was bought. He was in charge of it. And he retired and trained his successor, who died. And he trained the next guy, who died. So they had Norm on a retainer. Just to ride dirt on real estate. Quite an interesting character!
Franklin: Yeah, I bet. I think I’d kind of like to return about something we were just talking about a minute ago, where you were talking about people that—especially in the later years that have been critical of Hanford. I’d like to get more of your feelings on that. On how you feel about that, or kind of what part of their argument or their viewpoint that you don’t agree with.
Boice: They were talking about—well, first there was the Richland High School and their bomb insignia. It was felt that they were making a big deal or prideful about this terrible event. And I always go back to a group from Japan that came over and were very critical of Richland for the same thing. And the gentleman who was interviewing them or was talking to them, when they got done, informed them in no uncertain terms, that we were invited very unceremoniously into that war, and we’re sorry if you didn’t like the way we ended it. [LAUGHTER] You get to researching, I’d like to bring up, why didn’t they drop the bomb on Tokyo? Because there was nothing left on Tokyo to injure. If you read about Curt LeMay and the Strategic Air Command and the bombing of Japan, he had eliminated that thing down to—the B-29 was supposed to be a high altitude bomber. And it wasn’t as great at it as it was advertised to be. But they had eliminated the defenses. And they made the B-29 into a low-level trucking company, and they were just hauling stuff over and unloading it. And the firebombing of Tokyo—the movies they showed us in the Air Force was something to behold. I mean, they—it was so much worse than what happened at Nagasaki or Hiroshima, either one. He was told to save two or three targets—clean targets. And when they come over there with the bombs, then they used these clean targets and saw what they could do. Of the four devices—the four nuclear devices, we used—was it four or three in World War II?
Franklin: Are you referring to—
Boice: All but one of them came from Hanford.
Franklin: Yeah.
Boice: The first one at Los Alamos was plutonium. And then Hiroshima was Oak Ridge.
Franklin: Yup.
Boice: And then Nagasaki was plutonium.
Franklin: Yeah.
Boice: But there’s those that—and there were at the time, there was a big discussion on, should we demonstrate to them what this thing could do? And the big argument was, what if it doesn’t do? What if you drop it and it don’t do nothing? [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Interesting. Can you speak to—or do you remember anything about the Civil Rights era in the Tri-Cities?
Boice: [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: There were reports of—you know, it’s known that Kennewick was kind of a sun-down town, and that many minorities were forced to live in East Pasco. And that during the war—
[NEW CLIP]
Franklin: There had been a sizable African American population at Hanford, but that after the war many of them left. So I was wondering if you could speak to the Civil Rights action you might have seen or you might have observed or anything in the Tri-Cities?
Boice: Well, I was up in Lewiston when their civil rights march come through. But it was well-advertised. People knew what was gonna happen. And I was at the hardware store, and there’s a black cement finisher I’d worked with building houses in Pasco. I says, Leroy! You gonna come march on Kennewick? He said, [AFFECTED DIALECT] shee-it. I wantsta live in Kennewick just about as bad as you wantsta live in East Pasco. [LAUGHTER] They had a march on Kennewick—a bunch of people that—I am told, because I was living in Lewiston, and I was in Lewiston at the time. But there’s a group out of Seattle and a group out of Portland come up to Pasco, and they marched across the bridge. They marched down Avenue C, up Washington Street, down Kennewick Avenue. And Kennewick yawned. Nobody particularly cared. They got to the Methodist church, and the groups come out and says, you look hot. Come on in and have some lemonade. They sat down at the church, had lemonade and went home. And that was the civil rights march in Kennewick. But there is—when I was there growing up, there were no blacks in Kennewick. There were blacks in Pasco, and there were no blacks in Richland. With the exception—the guy that run the shoeshine parlor at Ganzel’s barbershop lived in the basement, and they tell me that there was two black porters at the Hanford House. And that was the total black population of Richland.
Franklin: Wow.
Boice: But they were not welcome in Kennewick. It wasn’t that big a deal when I was walking down Kennewick Avenue when a couple of black guys—they were bums, hobos—come walking down Main Street, you might as well say. And a cop pulled up and says, the railroad tracks are two blocks down that way. They go east and west. Either one will get you out of town. And they went to the railroad track. I always figured that the blacks wanted to move to Kennewick because they couldn’t stand to live next to the blacks in Pasco. [LAUGHTER] And if you want to get right down to it, well, all that hooping and hollering they do right now, you go down to Fayette, Mississippi, which is 98.645% black, and all the blacks in Mississippi can live in Fayette and nobody cares. Go down to Van Horn, Texas, which is all Mexicans, and they can all live in Van Horn, Texas, and nobody cares. But you let half a dozen white guys go up in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and they just have yourself a storm. Why, these are a bunch of white separatists! If everybody else can live together, why can’t the whites?
Franklin: Interesting. Some might say they were kind of starting a separatist movement up there, I think—claiming their own territory, and—
Boice: So what?
Franklin: Well, living together communally is often different from claiming that you don’t—aren’t subject to the law, the jurisdiction of the United States.
Boice: Nobody said that they weren’t subject to the law.
Franklin: Well--
Boice: They kept trying to integrate Prudhoe, but he kept getting cold and going home.
Franklin: Oh, in Alaska?
Boice: Yeah!
Franklin: Yeah.
Boice: They had a heck of a time keeping Prudhoe integrated. Because them black people do not like cold weather! [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: I don’t think a lot of people like cold weather.
Boice: It was a big joke when we went down south there, to work at Savannah River. Because—hell, we’d come out of here and it was Thanksgiving. It was cold. We got down there, of course, if you’re traveling you’re gonna get nightshift. We left having the cold weather here at night down there. And I says, that’s okay, you’ll get yours come summertime when it heats up. But surprisingly—and I was really surprised that they didn’t take the hot weather any better than we did. I mean, it was miserably hot, but they were just as big a problem as a rest of us.
Franklin: I imagine it’s quite a bit more humid down there, though, with the—when it gets hot, you know. Because the heat with the humidity is—
Boice: Yeah, it is.
Franklin: --much worse than the dry heat.
Boice: Yeah, yeah.
Franklin: Is there anything that we haven’t talked about that you’d like to mention? Or any question I haven’t asked you that you think I should—
Boice: I don’t know what it would be. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Yeah, we’ve really gone—really jumped all over the place. It’s been great. Anyone else have any questions?
Hungate: No, the only question—you said you’d done some work with the railroad. What railroad?
Boice: Name one. [LAUGHTER]
Hungate: All railroads? Union Pacific, all the different--?
Boice: Yes. Right now they’re talking about the oil trains, and their problems with them tipping over? I wonder how long it’s gonna take them to get to the problem. In the beginning, railroads were 39-foot rails bolted together. Measured mile after mile after mile of it. Then in about, oh, the middle ‘60s—’67, thereabouts, ’66—when they were putting in the SP&S, that’s now the BN—the Burlington Northern on the Washington side. They went with quarter-mile steel. And the first question that we had as surveyors—because you’re constantly working with the expansion and contraction of steel—was how are they going to control that in long rails? Because if you’re working on railroads very long, first thing you realize is do not sit on the joints in a hot day. You get your butt pinched! [LAUGHTER] When those tracks expand. So we brought this up and the first thing they told us was, well, they’ve got special steel and it’s only going to expand sideways. Well, that story lasted about as long as it took when they started putting it together. Because when they started—they’d set up a factory down here, if you’ll call it that. Brought in 39-foot un-punched rail, and just rolled her off, welded her together and ground down the joints and put her in quarter-mile sections. They were very particular when they put it in at the temperature that they laid that down on, where before—you know what a creeper is? Okay, it’s a kind of a hairpin device that you put over the rail so that it will slide less. But in the old days, the 39-foot rail very seldom saw any creepers. When they put that quarter-mile steel together, you saw a lot of creepers. Now they have gone to ribbon rail. They welded the quarter-mile steel together. You drive down to Portland, and you look at that rail, and you’re gonna go a long ways before you see a joint. There at Quinton and Washman’s dip—which don’t mean a thing to you guys—[LAUGHTER] about a mile post from 120-whatever, they have got a creeper on each—alongside of each and every tie. I mean, they were using creepers like they were going out of style. To me, the expansion’s the thing that they got to worry about, but then they should have figured this out because they’re running it. But it’s a factor. You got to factor it in when you’re doing a pipeline, when you’re doing a railroad. When we were doing the pipeline, Maurice Smith of British Petroleum, who was the head pipeline engineer, I had lunch with him. [LAUGHTER] It ain’t like we sit down at a specified lunch—he dropped in at the chow hall I was eating and sat down at our table. So we got to talking about it. And that was the question I brought up, was how are you going to handle the expansion in the steel? And he says—he admitted it was a heck of a problem. And that you got to run as many Ss as you can so that it’ll take up and accordion itself. And when you’ve got a long straight stretch, it’s gonna give you problems. [LAUGHTER] Because it’s gonna go someplace. And that’s the thing that—after they started the quarter-mile steel, a couple of years later, we had a hot summer. The article in the Tri-City Herald called it the long, hot summer, where we had over 90 days of over 90-degree weather. But they were cutting chunks out of that railroad to keep her on the road bed. And at that time, when the SP&S was having these problems, the UP was laughing at them. They said, we tried this stuff in Wyoming. It didn’t work. And they’re using 39-foot stuff, and it was just whistling down the road. But now I see that they’re using the ribbon rail like everybody else. I can’t see how it’s gonna work, but the they’re doing it. [LAUGHTER] It ain’t my role! [LAUGHTER] The other one was the Camas Prairie. And that starts out, oh, about ten miles above Ice Harbor Dam, thereabouts, breaks loose, and goes clear up past Lewiston, up into Grangeville, Idaho. That’s a crazy little river.
Franklin: That’s the one that they filmed that Charles Bronson movie.
Boice: Breakheart Pass?
Franklin: Breakheart Pass, yeah.
Boice: Yeah, that was done up there. You get into railroad history—this area is knee-deep in it. Vollard was the great character in that. He started out with a little portage railroad around Idaho Falls and that area. And then he got the Walla Walla line—I call it the WWWWW&WWW line—Walla Walla, Waitsburg, Washtucna and Washington Wail Woad—which was a money maker. But he ended up getting a lineup from Portland out here. And then when they started building the Northern Pacific, they were building from both ends, and he was hauling Northern Pacific rail over his tracks and taking it out in railroad stock. By the time they got connected over in Montana, he owned a sizable chunk of the railroad. [LAUGHTER] And it was—you get into that railroad history, and it’s just takeover checkers. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Great. Well, thank you so much, George.
Boice: Okay! [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: It was a pleasure talking to you. And, yeah, thanks for coming in today.
Boice: All righty. Write if you find work! [LAUGHTER]
Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin and I’m conducting an oral history interview with Daniel Barnett on July 13th, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Daniel Barnett about his experiences growing up in Richland and working at the Hanford site. So the best place to start, I think, is the beginning. So why don’t you tell me where you were born and what year.
Daniel Barnett: I was born in Aberdeen, Washington in 1938—August 13th.
Franklin: Okay.
Barnett: And when the war started, my dad was working for the Harbor Patrol in Seattle as a patrolman. He heard that they were hiring over here, so he came over here and they hired him almost instantly because he already had the security clearance and everything.
Franklin: Ah.
Barnett: So he called my mom and told her that he had a job over here and to get herself packed, because he was gonna get her. But when she moved here, she couldn’t move to Richland. It wasn’t even on the map at that time. They took it off the map and everything. She had to move to Prosser.
Franklin: Okay.
Barnett: And later on when they finally got a prefab built, we moved into a prefab at 1011 Sanford.
Franklin: Where was your father from? Was he from Washington?
Barnett: He was from Oregon. All my family is from Oregon except for me. My dad said he couldn’t get across the border fast enough.
Franklin: So being from—what drew him to Hanford? Was it the pay?
Barnett: I think so. Well, he was originally—he worked at a plywood plant, then he went to work for Harbor Patrol. He had asthma, which the wet climate apparently irritated. So he had a chance to get over here, so he moved over here.
Franklin: Okay. So the climate played a—
Barnett: Yeah.
Franklin: --big factor and wanted the dry and the sunshine.
Barnett: Well, probably the pay, too, because the pay was good for those times.
Franklin: Right. And how long did your family live in Prosser before you moved?
Barnett: We were there about a year, I think. I don’t remember truthfully—I was only about five when we moved there. And I was there probably about a year. I just vaguely remember moving to Prosser.
Franklin: Right. Okay. And you moved—so you came over in 1944—
Barnett: Yeah.
Franklin: --right? And so you would have moved to Richland in 1944? About there?
Barnett: Oh—I think we actually—Dad came over, I think in ’43. A year later, in ’44 we moved over.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Barnett: Because I remember ’45 when they announced the war—dropping the bomb on Japan, and Mom told Dad when he come home, I know what you’ve been guarding! [LAUGHTER] Because he didn’t even know what he was guarding at the time.
Franklin: Right. Wow. Did your dad talk about his work much? Or maybe [INAUDIBLE]
Barnett: He worked as a patrolman until they sold the town and then he became a painter.
Franklin: A painter?
Barnett: Yeah, he was an artist so then he became a painter and painted the houses and the buildings in Richland. Because when the government owned Richland, if you had a paint job needed done on the house, you called them and they come in and painted it. You didn’t hire somebody from a company to paint it. The government did it.
Franklin: And was he a patrolman onsite the entire time until they sold the town?
Barnett: Yeah, yeah.
Franklin: Okay. Was he assigned to a specific area, or--?
Barnett: No, just general patrol. He talked about patrolling the fences, taking their Jeeps and going down the length of the fences and checking them out, and all that sort of stuff. But just a general patrolman, not any special area.
Franklin: Okay. And you said that your—what did your mother do when she first got here?
Barnett: Oh, she was just a housewife. She eventually went to work as a waitress. And then finally she got on to work at Hanford. She worked with Battelle for about 29 years as a lab tech.
Franklin: Oh, wow. Do you know which lab she worked in?
Barnett: Well, she did—where they did testing on the animals. Though at that time they were testing marijuana on chimpanzees and different types of animals. She did the test work on the meat from the animals.
Franklin: Oh, wow.
Barnett: So I don’t know exactly—it was—again, probably wasn’t supposed to be told, so she didn’t say much about it.
Franklin: Did she have any schooling beyond—
Barnett: Just high school.
Franklin: Just high school. And what about your father, did he--?
Barnett: He was just high school.
Franklin: Just high school as well. Where did your mother waitress at?
Barnett: Well, the first place she had was O’Malley’s Drug Store which now is a—what do you call it? A Tojo Gym? Where they teach different martial arts?
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Barnett: It’s down on Williams, right off of Williams. That’s what it is now.
Franklin: Okay.
Barnett: O’Malley’s Drug Store eventually closed, moved up to Kadlec. And a lady bought it from him, and now she’s down there on George Washington Way.
Franklin: Okay.
Barnett: And right by O’Malley’s Drug Store used to be a Mayfair market. So I sold newspapers out at the lunch halls at Hanford. Sold—well, I don’t remember—but I think it was the Columbia Basin News to start out, because that was the first newspaper of the Tri-Cities, was the Columbia Basin News. Then they bought them out and became the Tri-City Herald. But I remember selling—give you an idea, you can figure out how much time, because I remember one of the headlines was—one of the union leaders had been arrested by the government. And I don’t even remember who it was, it’s been so long ago. But I remember that was one of the headlines of one of the newspapers.
Franklin: What about—do you remember the Richland Villager at all? That was a local paper.
Barnett: Yeah, but it wasn’t very much. It was very small.
Franklin: Okay.
Barnett: I delivered the Seattle P-I.
Franklin: Seattle P-I?
Barnett: Yeah.
Franklin: Okay. And you said your mother started waitressing at Malley? At O’Malley’s or Malley’s?
Barnett: At O’Malley’s.
Franklin: O’Malley’s. And then did she waitress anywhere else in Richland?
Barnett: Not that I know of. From there she went out to Hanford.
Franklin: And that was when pharmacies or drug stores as we know them now, they used to have lunch counters.
Barnett: Yeah, yeah.
Franklin: Right. And so they would go there and they were more of like a café-slash-pharmacy.
Barnett: Yeah. The one up on Thayer, I think it was Densow’s at that time. That had a heyday lunch counter in it, coffee shop. It closed up and now I think it’s just pharmacy.
Franklin: Mm-hmm.
Barnett: But where the south end—what do you call it? You know when you get down here, you sit and try to remember things and you get kind of jumbled up—Salvation Army building is now on Thayer was originally the Mayfair Market.
Franklin: Okay. And what did they sell there?
Barnett: Well, that was the grocery store.
Franklin: Grocery store, okay. Do you remember—so you said you moved into—what was the address on Sanford?
Barnett: 1011 Sanford.
Franklin: And do you remember what kind of prefabricated house it was?
Barnett: It was three-bedroom.
Franklin: Three-bedroom prefab, okay.
Barnett: No, I think it was two-bedroom, because my sister was just a little baby then.
Franklin: Okay. And did you share a room with your sister?
Barnett: Probably with my brother.
Franklin: Oh, so how many siblings—
Barnett: Had three kids. I had an older brother. We were about five years apart.
Franklin: Oh, okay. So an older brother, you, and then a younger sister.
Barnett: Yeah.
Franklin: And then how long did you live at 1011 Sanford?
Barnett: I don’t really remember, but it must have been three or four years, because as soon as they got the A houses built, we had a chance to move into one. And we moved immediately to one. Because we had three kids, and a prefab’s kind of tight for three kids.
Franklin: Yeah, yeah. I live in a two-bedroom prefab. And it’s—with just my wife, and it’s pretty—
Barnett: Well you know why they’re called prefabs.
Franklin: Tell me.
Barnett: They were built by a company, brought in in two sections and then put together. They were prefabricated.
Franklin: Yeah, the prefabricated engineering company out of Portland.
Barnett: And nobody could figure out why they put that little square door in the back other than to throw the garbage out it. I don’t know—have you ever heard of Dupus Boomer?
Franklin: Yes.
Barnett: He made some cartoons about that backdoor.
Franklin: Right, and that the rooves had a tendency to fly away.
Barnett: Yeah.
Franklin: And they had to put—
Barnett: Well, in 1955, they did. They had two of them blow off.
Franklin: Yeah, those are great cartoons.
Barnett: Like “Pa wants a bathtub.” [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: So tell me a little more about growing up in Richland. Which schools did you go to?
Barnett: Well, the first school I went was Carmichael. And that was probably a mile-and-a-half away. We walked to school. Nobody thought anything about it. There wasn’t any buses. There was a bus system in Richland, but it was run by the government. It was a little old bus that you could pick up in two places in Richland to go downtown and go to a movie and come back. But no buses hauled you to school. There was high school buses that hauled people. They picked them up in the Horse Heaven Hills on farms and brought them to Hanford—I mean to Col High—it’s Hanford now. But, no, I walked to school real regular, didn’t think about it, nobody had any panic about walking to school. Everybody did it because it’s normal.
Franklin: And do you remember—so you would have been going to—was it Carmichael—growing up right in the early Cold War. What do you remember about civil defense? Duck-and-cover, air raids.
Barnett: I don’t remember doing that.
Franklin: Really?
Barnett: I don’t know whether we did or not, but I don’t remember doing that.
Franklin: Do you remember knowing what was being made at Hanford? Did you ever have any fear—how real did the Cold War seem to you?
Barnett: Well, the Cold War affected me quite a bit because I was in eight years during the Cold War—in the Air Force.
Franklin: Right.
Barnett: The security was a lot tighter. I mean, there was—you couldn’t go out to Hanford without having your security badge checked. Now you can drive clear to the Area and before you go in the Area have your badge checked.
Franklin: Right.
Barnett: But then, there was a badge check when you got on the buses, the badge check, when you got out to your area, and then again they checked your badges when you left the area.
Franklin: Right.
Barnett: So it was—the security was real tight.
Franklin: Mm-hmm. But what about when you were growing up, when you were a kid in school? Did you ever have any special fear or pride in what was being made at Hanford?
Barnett: Nope. It was—like I said, nobody knew what they were doing out there until they dropped the bomb. Then they found out they’d been protecting part of the atomic bomb.
Franklin: Right.
Barnett: But I had no fears about it. I went down the irrigation ditch—there used to be an irrigation ditch that ran through town that started—it had two, three ponds on Wellsian Way that were the settling ponds for Richland’s water system. And we used to go there and swim in them. One of the ponds they eventually made a juvenile fishing pond. And the irrigation ditch runs from there, clear down to where the hospital is, down in front of the hospital, several ponds down through the hospital and then under—well, through the Uptown district, one of them went through the Uptown district, and one went to the Columbia River. And wasn’t until ’48 that they finally put a pump in there, because in ’48 when they built the dam—they built the dike, rather—the irrigation ditches plugged up. So they had to put up a pump station in so they could pump the water irrigation ditch up into the river. We used to fish in that. We used to go down there and slide down—slide over where the pump was, because it was all slick and slimy. We’d put on an old pair of jeans and go down there and slide into the water. I mean, that’s things kids then. Nowadays they wouldn’t even think about it. My mother told me when I could swim 25 feet, I could go in the river by myself. Mainly because you didn’t go to the river too often in the winter; you went in the summer. And there’s not a place in the Yakima, if you can swim 25 feet, you can’t get back to the shore. So I spent all my—most weekends and spare time at the Yakima River playing around.
Franklin: Wow. What about—maybe you could talk a little bit about the growth of Richland and kind of the building of some of the major hallmarks, like the Uptown and the—
Barnett: Well, the Uptown was built—the rest of it closed up, but originally the Uptown—as you come into Uptown off to the left—that was a big theater. And we used to have a big matinee. The Spudnut’s shop has always been there. I can remember going to the movie on a Saturday and the lineup for the movie—I think it was 20 cents for a movie then. But it was clear past the Spudnut shop. We used to watch the owner there making the Spudnuts while we were waiting to get into the movies.
Franklin: Has that been in its same location--
Barnett: Yeah.
Franklin: --in the mall?
Barnett: Spudnut’s has been there ever since it started. They originally were out there in Kennewick. If you go in there and pick up their menu, they have a little story about where they started. They started out there in the Wye.
Franklin: That’s great. And what else about it? Because Richland kind of developed out towards--
Barnett: Well, Newberry’s was on the other end of the Uptown district. That was kind of a department store type. I think the only one I saw was about 15 years ago, and that was in the Dalles, Oregon. I don’t even know if they exist anymore. The downtown district, every year we had different contests for the kids. They had marble shooting contests and bubblegum blowing contests—all kind of contests to keep the kids’ interest.
Franklin: Right.
Barnett: At that time, the—what is it? The Allied Arts, or was that in the Atomic Frontier Days?
Franklin: Can you talk maybe a little bit about the Atomic Frontier—do you remember going to the parades?
Barnett: Yeah. They had a lot of the old western movie stars come to the Atomic Frontier Days.
Franklin: Like—do you remember any names in particular?
Barnett: No, I don’t. Like I say, a kid doesn’t retain names like that. He hears them and doesn’t retain them. But my dad, apparently, knew a couple of them, so he visited with them. It started out as just a celebration of Hanford and stuff. And then it worked into the Allied Arts show.
Franklin: Okay. And do you remember any particulars of those celebrations, like the parade—the floats, or—
Barnett: Well, there wasn’t any parade. There wasn’t any parade, and where Howard Amon Park is, there used to be a swimming pool. You know where it makes a turnaround? Well, there off to the right there used to be a swimming pool. And right now, they still got the old children’s swimming pool there, but then there was a regular swimming pool in the water. And in 1948 when the big flood came, it filled up full of water and they ended up breaking it up and burying it and building the Howard Prout pool. But we used to go down there and swim just about every day. And we’d go to the other end of the park and pick peaches, because it used to be a peach orchard. Because there were orchards all over town. Where Jason Lee was—the old Jason Lee—that was a cherry orchard. Where Densow is, that was a cherry orchard. Carmichael had an orchard. There was orchards all over town. Because this was an agriculture district at the time the government bought it and moved in.
Franklin: Were you in any clubs or—
Barnett: I was a boy scouts.
Franklin: --organizations? Boy Scouts?
Barnett: Yeah. We had—one that sticks in my mind the most was we had one of our young scouts drowned at the Uptown. That’s the one I mentioned. He went on an inner tube, fell in the water and drowned. That was in ’48. And actually, the water where the hospital was, the irrigation ditch you got there, that was 15-foot deep at that time.
Franklin: Wow.
Barnett: That backed up so much, they—that’s when they built what they called the America Mile, the dike. They called all the earthmovers from Hanford out to Richland to build that dike. Because when they started, the water was lapping over the edge to go into the houses. And they poured that thing in about 24 hours.
Franklin: Wow, that’s amazing.
Barnett: Now, the George Washington Way was closed to all civilian traffic, and these great big earthmovers were just going down the road, 30, 40 miles an hour.
Franklin: Wow. What other kinds of activities did you do in Boy Scouts?
Barnett: Oh, built models. Car models. You whittle them out, put the wheels on them, all that, have races with them. Went on trips. Just normal Boy Scout stuff. Got a little more sophisticated, but just the normal Boy Scout stuff then.
Franklin: Right. And so after you went to Carmichael, did you then go to Richland High?
Barnett: Col High.
Franklin: Col High?
Barnett: [LAUGHTER] It was Col High then.
Franklin: Oh.
Barnett: They changed the name because there was a Col High downstream on the Columbia that had had the name before Richland High was called Col High. So they changed it to Richland High instead of Col High.
Franklin: Oh. But was the mascot always still the—
Barnett: All the bomber.
Franklin: --bombers? Okay. So the Col High Bombers?
Barnett: Yup.
Franklin: Okay. And when did you graduate high school?
Barnett: 1957.
Franklin: And then what did you do?
Barnett: I went in the Air Force. I think about two months after I got out and I went in the Air Force. I already spent 27 months in the National Guards. I got in the National Guards when I was 16, and when I went to sign up for the Air Force, the squadron commander of the National Guards was—he got shook up because he enlisted me when I was 16. [LAUGHTER] So they changed the date on my discharge papers from the National Guards. So according to my discharge papers from the National Guards, I’m 78 right now.
Franklin: Oh.
Barnett: Those days, they did things like that, nobody thought anything about it.
Franklin: Wow, yeah.
Barnett: Because if you were warm they took you into the military then.
Franklin: Right. [LAUGHTER] And what did you—describe your time in the Air Force.
Barnett: Well, of course there was basic training. The first place I went was Westover, Massachusetts—that’s Springfield, Massachusetts. And that was a total culture shock for me, because I grew up in a comparatively small city. And Springfield then had over 100,000 people in it.
Franklin: Right, and I guess, too, at this point you would have completely grown up when Richland was a government—
Barnett: Yup.
Franklin: --still was all government space.
Barnett: Yup, they sold it while I was in the Air Force.
Franklin: Can—actually I guess maybe we can back up a little bit. What strikes you, maybe looking back on that, or—
Barnett: I watched them build the Alphabet Houses. And there wasn’t one or two people on the houses; there was five or six building these houses. And they seemed to go up overnight. One of the things that I don’t know is fact or not, but knowing the government it probably was—is they were supposed to build half basements for a coal fire furnace, a coal bin, and two tubs, and place for a washing machine. The contractors screwed up on some of them and built a full basement. And the government found out about it and made them go back in and seal half the basement with dirt. [LAUGHTER] Typical government.
Franklin: Were your—granted you were a kid at this point, but was your sense—were people happy—
Barnett: Oh yeah!
Franklin: living in a government-controlled and -owned town?
Barnett: Nobody thought anything about it. There was very little crime. Because at that time, there was only about two, three ways to get out of Richland. So there was nobody causing any big deal. And if you got in a whole bunch of trouble—you didn’t live in Richland unless you worked at Hanford. And if your kids got into too much trouble, they told the parents, you calm them down or go find another job. So it was stopped.
Franklin: Right. Did you—was Richland mostly a white community at that time? Right? Were there any other—
Barnett: Yeah, there was—one, I think there was only one black community in Richland—Norris Brown. And I think they lived in Putnam.
Franklin: Okay.
Barnett: I remember we had a basketball game in Sunnyside. And Sunnyside wasn’t gonna let them play on their court. And we told them, fine, we’ll just get up and leave. So we all started to get up and leave and they finally broke it and gave in and let them play on the basketball court.
Franklin: How did you know this family? Did you go to school together?
Barnett: Yeah, I went to school with them.
Franklin: Oh okay, and did you play basketball?
Barnett: No! I’m not a sports—I had my first surgery on my knee when I was about 13, so—
Franklin: Oh, wow.
Barnett: I’ve never played any sports. My sporting then was hunting and fishing.
Franklin: But you kind of heard about this story?
Barnett: Oh, yeah. We all know them. Went to basketball games. Then there was sock hops and at noon they taught dancing in the lunchrooms for kids that wanted to learn how to dance.
Franklin: So do you know what the patriarch of that family would have done at Hanford to be able to earn a place at Hanford? Because mostly from what I’ve heard, mostly African Americans had to live in Pasco.
Barnett: Yeah, because they wouldn’t let them live in Richland—I mean Kennewick.
Franklin: Yeah, in Kennewick. So how did—do you know any particulars as to how that family was able to live in Richland?
Barnett: I think it’s just that the government—that they had to be equal on them, and they just hired them and they went to work out there. I don’t know any particulars on it, but that’s basic what it was.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Barnett: They were in a government town, and there was no way that anybody could refuse—and there was nobody that complained about it.
Franklin: Right.
Barnett: Again, the government controlled it. They said, if you don’t like it, goodbye.
Franklin: Right. And they would—they called the government for pretty much anything you needed on the house, right? For coal?
Barnett: Right. Lightbulbs, chains, coal. But coal was delivered once a—I don’t know whether it was once a month or once a week. But coal was automatically delivered. And like I say, if there was anything major done, you called the housing department. They came in and fixed it.
Franklin: I think sometimes for outsiders looking in, it’s kind of striking to hear about the government completely owning this town and controlling the lives of the people and having that much control on people’s freedoms and responsibility. But from the people I’ve talked to who grow up in Richland, they have very fond memories of it.
Barnett: Yeah, there was no restrictions on the normal freedoms. There was restriction on if your kids got into trouble, because, like I said, the patrol would go up to the person that had the kids that were causing the problem and said you either straighten your kids out or you go and find another job. Which, to me, made common sense. And so it was actually pretty decent.
Franklin: Did you ever get any sense from your parents that they felt, maybe, restricted, not being able to own their own home or do any of their own repairs, or did they just—
Barnett: No, not then. I think—that was just after the Depression—I think they were just happy to be able to get a home.
Franklin: Right. Interesting. Because, you know, for some people looking outside, you could look at that level of government control—because we have these big debates about the role of the government in society today, and it’s kind of interesting to hear about it.
Barnett: Well, there was no control where the government come in and said, you do this and you do that and you do this. As long as you didn’t get into trouble and you did your job, and were a normal person, there was nobody ever complained about it. I remember I was back behind where the Racquet Club is. I was hunting ground squirrels with a .22 one day. And at that time, nobody had any problems with it. And one of the Richland patrol people came and picked me up and brought me back to the patrol station. And he called my dad. My dad come in and he says, what’s wrong? He says, we caught your boy shooting .22s at such-and-such area. He said, well, is he aiming at the road? Said, no. Said, did he shoot it at anybody? Said, no. Then what the hell are you bothering me about? I mean, that’s just how it was in those times. It wasn’t any of this, oh my god, he’s got a gun. It just was normal. Because I had my first rifle when I was about—I must have been about eight years old. And we used to go out and go rabbit hunting.
Franklin: Did you ever spend much time in Kennewick or Pasco—in either of those--?
Barnett: Not really. My wife was born in Pasco.
Franklin: Okay.
Barnett: I never spent much time in it because I had no reason to. I mean, it wasn’t the case of I was afraid to or wary about it—just I had no reason to. All, everything I needed was in Richland or around the Richland area.
Franklin: Why did you first have to get surgery on your knee at 13?
Barnett: Well, my knee locked. I didn’t find out until about 25 years later that the doctor had actually not fixed it. Because what they found out was there was a meniscus cartilage—you know in your knee? And mine was oblong and it had broke in half. And it had slipped between the joint and it had locked my knee so I couldn’t straighten it out. So I’d have to pick it up, lay it across the other leg, and pull it and pop it back out. But that was the first—I was accident prone. I had a radical mastoid when I was about 15. By the time I got out of high school, I probably had 100 stitches in me. I mean, if it happened, I did it and got it happened to me. I was playing baseball, jumped over a fence, and landed on a guard rake with the thongs up—four thongs in one of my foot.
Franklin: Ouch.
Barnett: Weird things like that are always happening to me. One time, when I was in school, I reached up to open a door and a kid slammed it and put my hand through the window, sliced across this way. And I looked at it, bleeding, and I closed it up and went to the nurse’s office. The nurse got all panicky. She called my mom, and I could hear my mom say over the phone real loud, again?! And the nurse must’ve thought she was the hard-heartest old lady there ever was, but my mother was just used to it.
Franklin: Yeah, right.
Barnett: And I didn’t do things out of the way to have it happen, just—if it’s gonna be an odd thing, it happened.
Franklin: Right.
Barnett: So I kind of, like I say, with all this mess I got with my knee now, I call it Young Stupid Male Syndrome, a lot of it. I don’t—I get frustrated with it, because I love to garden and I can’t garden anymore. But I don’t get worried or depressed about it, because it’s there and nothing I can do about it, so just live with it.
Franklin: Right. So jump back ahead now. So you said you moved to Springfield in the Air Force for basic training, and that was—
Barnett: No, I was—San Antonio for basic training, and then to Springfield.
Franklin: And that was a big culture shock.
Barnett: Oh, yeah. I mean, I drove a vehicle and drove into town to haul officers into town. And here is a town with 100,000 people and I’d never been in anything bigger than Richland, Washington. So you can imagine the shock it was, being in that kind of traffic.
Franklin: Right. And then where did you go after that?
Barnett: Well, I was there for about a year-and-a-half, two years. Then I went to Thule, Greenland.
Franklin: Interesting.
Barnett: Top of the world.
Franklin: Yeah. And what were you—was that for the—weren’t there bombers stationed—
Barnett: No, they had the fueling planes there. Yes, they had SAC planes all over the world at that time. But at Thule they had the KC-135s and the KC-97s that were fueling planes.
Franklin: Right.
Barnett: So we were there to support them.
Franklin: And those were there to refuel the—
Barnett: The B-52s.
Franklin: --the B-52s that were carrying weapons in case of--
Barnett: Yup, because there was one from every base in the world in the air 24 hours a day.
Franklin: Right. And can you talk—what was that like, to be in—and was the base separated from any other communities in Greenland, or did you--
Barnett: It was a base of its own. There were no other communities besides Thule, that’s it.
Franklin: And how long were you there?
Barnett: Year.
Franklin: And what was that like?
Barnett: Well, it’s an interesting place to visit, but you don’t want to live there permanently. [LAUGHTER] Let’s put it that way. They have permafrost which is—oh, I guess about two foot down. So in the spring there are all these little beautiful tundra flowers—yellows and whites and all that. And then when they’re gone it’s just green grass and that’s it. And when they went to put a pole in the ground, they put a can—a barrel of oil in the ground, and light the oil, and then dig around that barrel. Because that’s the only way to get down past the permafrost. Because permafrost is almost like concrete.
Franklin: Yes, yeah. I’m from Alaska originally, and so I’m very familiar with permafrost. So after Greenland, where did you go?
Barnett: Went to Mountain Home Air Force Base.
Franklin: And where is that?
Barnett: Idaho, Washington.
Franklin: Oh, okay. So kind of close to--
Barnett: Yeah, out in Mountain Home. They had B-47s then at Mountain Home.
Franklin: Okay.
Barnett: I figured out that they actually phased out B-47s because they were built before the B-52s and they figured the B-47s weren't worth keeping around.
Franklin: And what did you do in the Air Force?
Barnett: I drove. I drove every kind of vehicle you can think of.
Franklin: Oh, really?
Barnett: Yeah. When I moved to Fairchild from Mountain Home, I was trained to tow B-52s in the back, in the hangars.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Barnett: With a five-ton Yuke. Four-wheel drive, five ton, and you had wing walkers on the outside that would guide you, and you would back this thing up, this big B-52 into a hangar.
Franklin: Wow.
Barnett: They would pull it down to a fueling station or whatever.
Franklin: Cool. And then when did you come back to Richland?
Barnett: 1965. I got out to Richland and we moved to--I can't remember the address, but it was on Marshall. We moved to a house on Marshall.
Franklin: Was it an Alphabet House, or was it a--
Barnett: Yeah, it was an Alphabet House. I remember it most because the neighbors had a monkey. And the monkey kept stealing my daughter's candy from her. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: So you said--wait, so by this point you had a family?
Barnett: Yeah, I had--I adopted my oldest boy and I had two children.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Barnett: They were all born at Fairchild.
Franklin: Okay. And a wife, I presume?
Barnett: Yeah.
Franklin: And what did your wife do in Richland?
Barnett: She was just a mother. But we divorced in about '70. And then I remarried.
Franklin: Okay. And what did you do when you came back to Richland?
Barnett: Anything I could. I worked at O'Malley's Drug Store for a while. I worked at his house--O'Malley's house, leveled his backyard. I worked at Walter's Grape Juice, I worked at Bell Furniture, I worked at—at that time, it was originally called the Mart, at that big building right next to the Federal Building. At one time, that was a big--what would you call it? They had a cafeteria and a grocery store and all the other—kind of like Walmart.
Franklin: Right.
Barnett: It was called the Mart at that time. And I worked there in the clippers that they washed the dishes with. And then I went to work for the bowling alley, Atomic Lanes, which was right there where the Jacks and Sons Tavern is. That was a community center and a bowling alley there. And I worked there for about a month, and then they went automatic. So, about that time, I was just about ready to get out—finish high school. And I don't think I had any other job after that, and I went in the Air Force.
Franklin: Oh, so--I'm sorry. When you came back to Richland, what did you do? So in 1965.
Barnett: Oh, I did everything then. You name it, I took a job. Before—I'm sorry, I got it backwards. Before I went in the Air Force, there wasn't many jobs for people in the—who were kids in Richland. And I worked the bowling alley and I worked down at a dry cleaning outfit. But when I come back to Richland, that's when I had all these other jobs. I worked all these other jobs to keep supplied for the family.
Franklin: How had Richland changed in the eight years since you had been gone?
Barnett: Well, the Uptown district had--the Newberry's had left. And there was a Safeway store right next to the theater. Right now I think it's a—I don't know, some kind of a multi shop deal. And both of the stores that were there originally are gone. They're now all antique stores.
Franklin: Right.
Barnett: So it was—when it was built, it was the first big complex for going shopping in Tri-Cities.
Franklin: Right.
Barnett: And after they built that, they built Highlands. And that was another big complex for shopping. So I worked everything I could, and 19--oh, what was it? [SIGH] About '67 or '68, I went to work at Hanford. I finally got on with them. Because I'd been applying at Hanford for three years. And I finally got to work with them. I won't mention how I got to work for them, because to me, it's kind of a ridiculous deal, and I don't know whether it was prejudice or not. Well, I'll go ahead.
Franklin: I was gonna say, now you've got my interest.
Barnett: I was--how I'd shop for a job, I'd go out and fill out an employment application, and I'd just distribute--go out all over town and fill out employment applications. And every week, I'd go back and check them. Well, one time, I was filling out an appointment application, and one of the guys I knew, I met him, and he said, hey, there's a new employment office over there at the new Whitaker School. And you might check it out. So I went over there and checked it out and signed up. And three days later, Hanford called me for a job. And I found out that that originally was a minority employment office.
Franklin: Oh.
Barnett: So I've always had the feeling that somebody didn't look at the records right. They didn't see the C. [LAUGHTER] Because I didn't get hired until I went to there and did an application. Because the government was required to hire a certain number of minority--
Franklin: Right. Well, but you did get hired.
Barnett: Yeah.
Franklin: So what did you do at Hanford?
Barnett: Well, I can say as little as possible, like everybody else. [LAUGHTER] That's a common joke. Of course, it took me about--I couldn't understand it. It took me about three months to get a security clearance. When I was in SAC, I had a Secret clearance. Both my folks worked at Hanford, they had Secret clearance. But it still took me about three months to get a security clearance. And all the time, since I've been on the Air Force, I've lived in Richland, I never could understand the government—why they wasted so much money on a security clearance for me. But when I got out there, I started as a process operator. And started at B Plant. And there was no training at that time. I mean, when you went into a radiation zone, one of the guys that was experienced took you with him. And you dressed like he did, hoping he knew what he was doing, because that's how you dressed. And that's how you learned to dress right. So I started out going into the canyon--I don't know if you knew what the canyons were—okay? We went into the canyons and I helped mixed chemicals in the chemical gallery. And that's where I think I really screwed up my knees, because I can remember—remember, I call it Young Stupid Male Syndrome--I remember throwing a hundred-pound sack of chemicals on my shoulder and going up three flights of stairs with them, rather than wait for the elevator. Young and dumb, indestructible. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: Actually, maybe for those who might be watching this who might not be as familiar with some of this stuff as I am, can you describe the canyon?
Barnett: Well, the canyon was—well, like I say, the building was about 150-foot wide and about 800-foot long. And it was four stories deep and there was just one--the reason they call it canyon was because it was a gigantic canyon. It went the full length of the building, and they had huge cranes that moved different stuff so they could process the atomic waste. Because in B Plant, they process the nuclear waste. They ship it down to B Plant and we go through chemical stuff to separate the strontium and cesium from it. And that would be sent to the encapsulation plant. That was built about—oh, six years after I went to work at B Plant. They closed up after I'd been there for ten years, and I went to work for Encapsulation Building. But the canyon is an immensely big, empty storage building, really what it is. And I don't know how—or what they're gonna do with them now, because there is some radiation there that you wouldn't believe how hot it was. We took samples of radiation behind lead shields, and then they were so hot that they ended up having the crane pick up the samples and dispose of them, because we couldn't move them.
Franklin: Wow. Did you—and so when you came back, your father was no longer working at Hanford, right?
Barnett: Yeah, he was still working at Hanford.
Franklin: Oh, was he still working—so you guys worked at Hanford at the same time.
Barnett: Yeah.
Franklin: Oh, wow, that's really interesting. So can you tell me a little bit more about what a—describe in a little more detail the job of a process operator?
Barnett: Well, real basically, we were what you might call nuclear janitors.
Franklin: Okay.
Barnett: We clean up the messes that pipe fitters or millwrights or electricians made. We process all the chemical--mixed all the chemicals and processed—did all the processing of separating the strontium and cesium from the nuclear waste and ship them to tank farms. And that was basically what our main job was. We had a few major accidents. Now it'd be all over the world, about how bad it was and all that. But we just went about our business cleaning it up and went on our job. None of us got an overdose of radiation. We relied on our radiation monitors and they were good radiation monitors. If we were getting too much, they yanked us out of there real quick. So we didn't even think about it. It wasn't the case of being scared of it or anything else. It's like your hazardous wastes that they got, like coming from the hospital, where they work in an x-ray lab, they throw all the gloves and stuff and that. That's called mixed hazardous waste. Well, you could take a bath in that and not get any radiation on you. But according to what the public knew, those things are really highly radioactive boxes. And I think the biggest problem the government had is they didn't tell the people enough about what was really going on after the war was over.
Franklin: Oh. Really?
Barnett: Yeah, because there would have been less worry about things that were going on then, if they would have known. Because if you don't know anything about radiation, and you hear somebody mentions something is irradiated, you get all panicky about it. The expression for radiation out there was, you get a crap up. You get a crap up, you scrub it off and go about your business. Now, they panic and take you to town and do all that sort of stuff. There, we just scrubbed it off and went about our business.
Franklin: Right.
Barnett: And I never worried about it.
Franklin: Okay. So you said you were a process separator at B Plant. And then you went to the Canyon, and what did you do--
Barnett: Well, I didn't go to the Canyon, I went to 225-B, the Encapsulation Building.
Franklin; 225-B, the Encapsulation Building.
Barnett: That's where they encapsulated the strontium and cesium.
Franklin: Okay.
Barnett: We all did a multitude of jobs. We worked on the cells, processing the strontium and cesium. And we worked behind the cells in mixing chemicals and we worked from when they loaded the chemicals for shipment for a long period of time when they were shipping cesium to the radiation plant for irradiating medical waste. And that ended when the guy was what they called recycling the cesium capsules too much. They get real hot. I mean, temperature-wise. And he was setting it in the water for a period of time and taking it out of water and cooling them off and stashing them back in the water. Well, one of them leaked.
Franklin: Ooh.
Barnett: And so they ended up, the whole place had to have all those capsules moved back. So that was a big fiasco. And again, it wasn't our fault. It was the guy doing the work was stupid enough to not check and see what he was doing.
Franklin: Right.
Barnett: And that's usually what happens with most—any of the radiation. And if you work with radiation, it's not the guy doing the work, it's somebody that's stupid and doesn't check what he's doing, doesn't follow regulations that causes the problem.
Franklin: So did you have any other jobs at Hanford? Or what--
Barnett: I don't know, you ever heard of McCluskey?
Franklin: Yeah.
Barnett: Well, I was over there when we cleaned—for five weeks cleaning up that building.
Franklin: Really?
Barnett: Yeah.
Franklin: Were you there at the time of the accident--
Barnett: No, no.
Franklin: --or part of the cleanup for that?
Barnett: Afterwards. They were trying to clean up the rooms so they could go in there and get things squared away. And we spent five weeks there. And to tell you how screwball the government can be, the last week-and-a-half we were there, we finally told our supervisor, look, all of worked on this radiation for 15, 20 years. We know how to clean it up. Quit telling us what to do. Let us go in there and clean it up and we'll get it cleaned up for you in no time at all. So they took a chance. And what they did is we ragged all along the bottom of the building, and we took water fire extinguishers. Because it's americium, and americium is a powder substance, it floats real easy. But it's water soluble--it'll run down with water. So we went in there and sprayed the walls with it real heavy. Then wiped everything down, moved everything that was movable, bagged it up in plastic bags and moved it out. And inside of a week, we had it down to mask only. Before then, we were wearing three pairs of plastic and cooling air and fresh air.
Franklin: Wow.
Barnett: And we cleaned it up in a week-and-a-half because they didn't want the people that knew what they were doing doing it. And that's the biggest problem with the government: they've always got the bureaucracy up here that knows what's going on, but they never ask the poor guy that’s doing all the work what's going on. I think you've seen that numerous times. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: I think so. [LAUGHTER] Wow, that's really fascinating. So how long total did you work at Hanford?
Barnett: 30 years.
Franklin: 30 years.
Barnett: I had to take a medical retirement in '98.
Franklin: '98. So then you were there, then, kind of from the shift from production to cleanup. Right? The production and shutdown.
Barnett: No, when I left they were just getting ready to start cleaning things up.
Franklin: Okay, so can you maybe talk about the shift from production to shutdown? How did that affect your job?
Barnett: Well, I really didn't get in on any of the cleanup, because I left before they did. But I talked to a number of the guys out there that I worked with that were in the cleanup. The biggest problem they had is they put such a limit on chemicals they could use to do cleanup that they had to use things that they claim were not environmentally safe. They had to void all that--like Tide. They wouldn't even let us use Tide to wash the walls down. Now, you use Tide in washing machines. [LAUGHTER] Come on, give me a break. That's a hazardous chemical? And I guess it took them quite a while to get the thing cleaned up. Because, like I say, they didn't start cleaning it up until after I left.
Franklin: Right. So what did you do in the shutdown era? Like after '87, from '87 to '98? What was your job primarily?
Barnett: They didn't shut down--they shut B Plant down, but they didn't shut 2-and-a-quarter down. 2-and-a-quarter was still processing strontium and cesium.
Franklin: Oh, okay, so then you kept in the waste encapsulation.
Barnett: Yeah.
Franklin: Can you describe a little bit more the process of waste encapsulation?
Barnett: Well, strontium is not soluble--not water soluble. And strontium is. And what they had--they had a special process--I don't know exactly the process. I just know what we did. You would take a mixed chemicals with the cesium and you would dissolve it and then you would heat it up to--I think--800 degrees into a liquid. And then you had a machine we called a tilt-pour which would pour seven capsules at a time full of cesium. And then you'd take these capsules and you'd put a sensoring disc in them to make them airtight. And then you'd weld a cap onto that. That'd be welded by a machine. And most then it was computerized. Then that was decontaminated until it was clean. And then it was put into another capsule, and that capsule was also—put a lid on it, but it was soldered on—welded on. And that was moved into the pool cells. Pool cells are 13-foot deep. What you had is a special hole built into the wall with water that you would shove that capsule through. And then the guy on the other side in the pool cell would grab the capsule and pull it out. And he would go to the pool cell that he's designated to go to, and he would shove it through a hole in the wall. And somebody on the other side would grab it and pull it and then you'd put it into its spot. So it was quite a process. And the fear was--you couldn't get that capsule within five feet of the top. Because if you did, you'd get a high radiation alarm. They’d read millions of rads on those capsules. They were hot, no two ways about it. And one thing I've always wondered is why does cesium glow blue when you turn the lights out?
Franklin: Wow.
Barnett: You turn the lights out in the pool cell, and all these cesium capsules will glow blue. And I've never--I've had somebody say it's something about the speed of light and all that. But I'd like to know the real reason it does that.
Franklin: That sounds kind of strangely beautiful.
Barnett: It was. It's a blue glow all along the bottom. The strontium doesn't. Strontium is not water soluble and it doesn't glow at all. In fact, I got some strontium in me one time when I had a tape when one of the manipulators--I don't know if I didn't mention--all the work was done from the outside with the manipulators. You know what manipulators are.
Franklin: Right, yeah.
Barnett: Okay, and all the capsulation, all of the work was done with manipulators from the outside. And it was amazing what some of those guys could do. They could take a little bottle about so big with a little bitty top and they could pick up that bottle, hold it here, and took up the other--the cap with the lid and put it on it.
Franklin: Wow.
Barnett: I was never that good with it, but there some guys out there who got real expertise with that. It just takes a lot of work to learn to use those things.
Franklin: I bet.
Barnett: That's one reason my hand's tore up--my hand just didn't take it so much.
Franklin: And you said you got strontium on your hand?
Barnett: Yeah, I got--I couldn't handle manipulators good because my hand was falling apart on me. So I took all the decontamination of the manipulator. Because that's--a manipulator has to be pulled after so many--I think it's so many weeks, the Mylar coating on it starts deteriorating. So it has to be pulled, decontaminated, and new Mylar sheath put on it. And I was in there decontaminating one of the manipulators, and one of the—well, they were trying new bands that controlled the grips. And one of them broke and sliced my hand. And I got some strontium in my finger. It was about 700 counts. I wasn't too worried about it. But they took me to town and went on all government roads, documented and everything and brought me back. I couldn't work with radiation for about three months until that thing finally deteriorated--worked out of the body.
Franklin: Wow.
Barnett: But I didn't worry about it. It wasn't enough to do any harm.
Franklin: Wow, that's really--
Barnett: See, that's the difference between working with the stuff and knowing what it does, and not working with the stuff.
Franklin: Right. Right, I've heard a lot of similar things about--
Barnett: It's like chemicals. I'd rather work at a radiation plant than at a chemical plant. Because if you have good radiation monitors, you're not gonna get an overdose of radiation. But with a chemical plant, look what they have out there now. A guy gets a whiff of chemicals, they all go panic about it.
Franklin: Yeah, I see where you're--I see your point. So you said--earlier when you said you would put the cesium in the pools—cesium cans, you couldn't get them too close to something, because they'd get too hot. Sorry--can you--
Barnett: No, it wasn't too close--they're in--oh, it probably was a--well, what would you call it? It was like a cabinet with holes in it. You would drop these in there. And they're spaced out. You couldn't pull them too high.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Barnett: If you pulled them sometimes when you're getting ready to transfer them to the pool cell, they would hydroplane and come up. And if you pulled them too fast, they would come up and you'd get a high radiation alarm. You’d just drop it back down and it'd go off.
Franklin: Oh, okay.
Barnett: That's what it was.
Franklin: I got--okay. I gotcha. So--
Barnett: It only takes one time, you remember not to do that anymore. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: [LAUGHTER] I bet. So even though your area—your work didn't change much when most of the plans ordered to shut down. You still probably worked with a lot of people whose jobs might have changed--
Barnett: Yeah.
Franklin: --during shutdown. Can you talk about that transition between process--?
Barnett: Well, I talked with some of the guys and they were talking about how much work it took to get things cleaned up. Like the area behind the pool cells, that had to be completely decontaminated. And we finally got it down to where it was just one pair and no masks. That took a lot of work. Decontaminating just takes a lot of hand-scrubbing. I mean, it's not a case of, you can put something there and pick it up and get rid of it. You got a scrub a lot of places until it's gone. It takes a lot of work. And I talked to one fella, and he said that they had all the cells that were down to clean—and what they consider clean is no radiation in them. And it is hard for me to believe, because some of those cells were really hot. But I never got a chance on the cleanup.
Franklin: How was--so when Hanford was shifting over, how was this change explained by management, or some of the--how was it conveyed, or how did the community take it?
Barnett: Management never explained anything to anybody. [LAUGHTER] I don't remember hearing the community complaining about anything, because most of the guys worked out there, and they knew what was going on. So there was no big panic about it. It wasn't the case where some guys didn't work here, they were told this was going on and got all excited because they didn’t know what was going on. Most people knew what was going on. So there was no big panic that I remember.
Franklin: Okay.
Barnett: We didn't panic with radiation, because we had good radiation monitors.
Franklin: Right.
Barnett: And that makes a big difference when you're working around radiation.
Franklin: So being in waste encapsulation, how did other events--other nuclear accidents around the country or around the world, like Three Mile Island or Chernobyl, kind of affect how your job or how--
Barnett: It made us see how ridiculous--because Three Mile Island actually worked. It was [UNKNOWN] what it was built for. And the moderation they got--radiation they got was not as much as you get flying from here to Denver City. Because you get more radiation from the sun than you do from—what the people at Three Mile Island got. But they blew it up so big, because so many years the government kept radiation such a secret. And that's the reason there's so much panic whenever they say radiation. Of course, there's been some real bad accidents. That one in Japan—that was a horrible thing. But as far as Hanford goes, most of the people that worked at Hanford don't—I guess they're not working around radiation anymore; it's all chemicals. Because they're getting—they get the chemicals and to me, that's the management's problem. Because they're doing something wrong in taking care of the people. The people are doing what they're told to do. If management is telling them, hey, you got to wear this, and they're not wearing it, then that's their problem—that’s the worker's problem. But when the management doesn't do anything about it, that's their problem—that’s management's problem. And I think from what I've heard and read, most of this is a managerial problem. It's not a case that the worker is going out of his way to ignore any safety concerns.
Franklin: Right. What about the accident in Chernobyl? How did that--did that affect your job, or--
Barnett: Yeah, it affected it because they shut down N Reactor. And N Reactor, up until then, was as safe as any reactor in the country. It had so many safety pieces on it that you could darn near slam a door and make it shut down. But they shut it down because it was something like Chernobyl. And that's where the big effect was.
Franklin: How did--oh, how did security policies change over time? Did they change with the different contractors or in response to different events?
Barnett: No, the security’s main thing was basically the same. You had the security guards at like 200 East—well, they left the security guards that you couldn’t get out to Hanford without a security clearance. But that quit because they had the buses, and that stopped. And they had the security guards checking the buses and stuff as you went through. And then typical government, they started screaming about, oh, we're burning too much gas. We can't afford gas! So we'll shut the buses down. [LAUGHTER] So everybody had to drive out. But the guards at the gate checked your badges, checked your cars. If there was anything in it--you couldn’t take cameras or anything like that out there. If the guard knew you, he checked you out whether he knew you or not, because he had to make sure your wife didn't leave a camera sitting in your backseat you didn't know about.
Franklin: Right.
Barnett: Which happened on occasion.
Franklin: Right, I bet. How did your job change with the different contractors coming in? Did it change much, or did you--
Barnett: Well, every contractor that came in, the engineers thought they were gonna remake the world. They would come up with some plan that they saw on a schematic and say, this is the way we want to do it. And we'd tell them point blank, it won't work. We've tried it that way. And they say, oh yes, it will! So we'd spend $50,000 in parts and stuff to put this together, and then it didn't work. And then they went around, well, why didn't it work? Well. The only one I ever saw that was a decent engineer is when he'd draw up a plan to do something, he would go to the millwrights, he would go to the operators, he'd go to the instrument techs and ask them to look at it and see if there's anything that needs done on it. And he had never had any problems. But these that come straight out of school and thought they could reinvent the world were a pain in the butt to us because they cost money and time.
Franklin: Do you remember who that good engineer was?
Barnett: He left. I don't remember who he was. But he left and went to work for a big company some place.
Franklin: Oh, okay. Do you remember President Nixon's visit in--I think it was 1970 or 1971?
Barnett: I might have. I didn't see him. I don't worry about politics.
Franklin: [LAUGHTER]
Barnett: He didn't do our place any good or any bad. Just a big political statement.
Franklin: How did the Tri-Cities change from when you came back in 1968 until today? What kind of strikes you as major changes?
Barnett: Well, there seem to be more, you might say, petty crimes. There wasn't as much as there was before--there was more than there was before, I should say. But the city maintained its equilibrium about the same, because the people have been here for 20 years, and then they sold the city to the town. There was no big change in the government. The police stayed the same. The biggest change was you had to call a painter if you wanted your house painted. And they sold the houses to the people, and that was the biggest change.
Franklin: How about, though, since—from when you came back in 1968 until today? Has there been any--has the community changed at all?
Barnett: Well, a lot of the businesses have left Richland. They moved out Columbia Center area, or up there in that area. We don't have--you got to go to Columbia Center to find a business. There's a few still there. There's Home Depot and stuff like that down there, Big Lots. But there's not as many as there used to be. And mostly antique shops or stereo shops.
Franklin: Right.
Barnett: But there's always the Spudnut. It's always been there.
Franklin: There is always the Spudnuts, yeah. They're good too. Is there anything else that I haven't asked you about that you'd like to talk about?
Barnett: Well, us kids had different ways of playing that nowadays they would just panic about it. We used to have BB gun fights. We’d put on leather jackets and extra pair of Levi's and a hat and go into these orchards like where Densow's was and we'd have BB gun fights. And you haven't really lived until you've had your butt shot by a BB. [LAUGHTER] But nowadays there'd be some big panic about it that you're gonna shoot an eye out. Well, nobody ever shot an eye out because we made sure that we didn't shoot towards the head. [LAUGHTER] When they were building the houses, that's what was amazing, how fast they put these houses up. It wasn't a week or so to get a house started--it was almost a week and they had the thing almost done. And we used to go to different houses and have clod fights. Things like that that you don't dare do nowadays.
Franklin: When you had what kind of fights?
Barnett: Clod fights. Clodded earth. We'd get behind stuff and throw clods at each other. And the snow then was two, three foot deep. Because I remember building snow forts in my yard three foot high and never have to go to the yard to get snow. So there has been a big change in the weather. And the shelterbelt, that made a big difference, because I remember when we had sandstorms--not dust storms, sandstorms. And my dad would pull his car up in front of the house to keep the sand from blasting the side of the car off--the paint. So there's been big changes. The shelterbelt was one thing the government put in that actually worked. It’s kind of surprising. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: That's great. Is there anything else? Anything else you'd like to talk about?
Barnett: Well, not really. Just that the area behind--you know, in West Richland at that time used to be Heminger City and Enterprise. They were two cities then.
Franklin: Okay, tell me, were those cities that predated the Hanford Project?
Barnett: Yeah.
Franklin: Okay, and how big were there?
Barnett: Oh, they were just little communities. It was just one run into the other. There was one called Enterprise, one was called--what did I just say?
Franklin: Something city.
Barnett: Heminger City.
Franklin: Heminger City.
Barnett: One of the elections went out for voting, they had one of the places that you went to was called Enterprise.
Franklin: And how long did those communities last after Hanford came?
Barnett: Not very long. I can remember Dad going out to the first town—first little town was Heminger City. And that was right where Cline's computer shop is, it was automobile shop there. And those were all owned by one group--one person. I think it was--Herricks was the name. And she had a little taco stand in one of the places. And OK Tire Shop had part of the one building that they sold tires and did car repair out of. So it was a slow change in West Richland. We had a feed store for a while. But Hanford went on strike and our feed store went down the tubes. They used to have what they called parking lot critter sells. People would bring all their animals, little animals that they wanted to sell in cages. And we would sell them for them and get 10% of the interest. It was a pretty good deal, because a lot of people had pet rabbits and stuff like that and they wanted to get rid of them. Usually had them at the un-boat races. You heard of the un-boat races?
Franklin: Why don't you tell me?
Barnett: The un-boat races? You ever heard of them?
Franklin: Why don't you tell me?
Barnett: Well, the un-boat race was you went up to the Horn Rapids Dam, and you put something in. It could not be a boat. It could be a bath tub, it could be inner tubes--it could be anything that you could see above that would float and it could not be called--it was called un-boat race. And there was a prize that they got down towards the bridge that crosses the Yakima there on George Washington Way. Got down about that far, there was a prize who got there first. But they ended up cutting that out because people left too much stuff—garbage alongside the road. They wouldn’t pick it up and take it with them when they were done with it. But that was a lot of fun. We used to stand up on the ridge. Always started about May. And we'd stand there and watch people come down the river on these un-boats. [LAUGHTER]
Franklin: That sounds really fun. Anyone else have anything? Okay, well, Dan, thank you so much for talking to us today. I learned a lot of great stuff about Richland and waste encapsulation. I really appreciate it.
Barnett: Okay.