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Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Post-1943 Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Robert Bauman
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Bob Bush
Location
The location of the interview
Washington State University Tri-Cities
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p><strong>Northwest Public Television | Bush_Bob</strong></p>
<p>Robert Bauman: I’m going to have you start just by saying your name, first.</p>
<p>Robert Bush: Okay, my name is Bob Bush.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Bauman: You said your parents were here during the war. When did they come out?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Bauman: Okay. And what part of Idaho?</p>
<p>Bush: Twin Falls, Idaho. Where I graduated from high school.</p>
<p>Bauman: Okay. What were your first impressions upon arriving in the Tri-Cities?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Bauman: So you said you had a trailer. Where was--</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Bauman: And how long did you live there then?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Bauman: [LAUGHTER] And was this in Richland then, the apartment?</p>
<p>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]</p>
<p>Bauman: So you did work at various places then?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Bauman: What timeframe would that have been you were out?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Bauman: Was your wife working at the Hanford Site as well?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Bauman: Yeah. Obviously, Hanford, a site where security was prominent--</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Bauman: Great. Did you have special security clearance to work at Hanford at the time?</p>
<p>Bush: Which?</p>
<p>Bauman: Any special security clearance?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Bauman: You mentioned riding a bus out to work.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Bauman: You mentioned different contractors you worked for over the years--</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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--</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Bauman: Yeah. Do you remember any special community events, parades, any of those sorts of things during the '50s and '60s?</p>
<p>Bush: Community events?</p>
<p>Bauman: Yeah.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Bauman: So did all employees have those, either the pencil or--</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Bauman: I want to change gears just a little bit. President Kennedy visited the site in 1963.</p>
<p>Bush: Yep, 1963.</p>
<p>Bauman: I was wondering--</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Bauman: Do you remember any other special events with dignitaries like that? Or other--</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Bauman: I wonder, what was the most challenging part of your job working at the Hanford site?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Bush: Oh, what?</p>
<p>Bauman: Coal fires?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Bauman: Well, Bob, I'd like to thank you very much for coming and talking to us today. I really appreciate it.</p>
<p>Bush: It's been my pleasure.</p>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:02:19
Bit Rate/Frequency
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256kbps
Hanford Sites
Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview
200 Area
300 Area
B Reactor
700 Area
N Reactor
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site
1951-1977
Years on Hanford Site
Years on the Hanford Site, if any.
1951-1977
Names Mentioned
Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community.
Ed Peddicord
Tom Leddy
Glen Lee
Original Format
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mov
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Bob Bush
Description
An account of the resource
Bob Bush moved to the Tri-Cities in 1951 to work on the Hanford Site.
An interview conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Mission Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy.
Creator
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Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Date
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07-17-2013
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item.
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video/mov
Date Modified
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2017-13-11: Metadata v1 created – [A.H.]
Provenance
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The Hanford Oral History Project operates under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who are the primary contractors for the US Department of Energy's curatorial services relating to the Hanford site. This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to this US Department of Energy collection.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Hanford Site (Wash.)
Pasco (Wash.)
Richland (Wash.)
1955
200 Area
300 Area
700 Area
703 Building
B Reactor
Battelle
Cat
Cold War
Dam
Desert
DuPont
Energy Northwest
F Area
FBI
General Electric
H Area
HAMMER
Hanford
Henry Kaiser
Hunting
Kennedy
Kennewick
N Reactor
Park
PUREX
River
Savannah River
School
Street
supplies
War
Westinghouse
-
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https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F6e943532e002ba8d078e11a4e7f75958.mp4
ec42f85d52e2ce276b6305ce36a4e155
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
O' Reagan, Douglas
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Carson, David
Location
The location of the interview
Washington State University - Tri Cities
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p>Douglas O’Reagan: Okay. To start us off, will you please pronounce and spell your name for us?</p>
<p>David Carson: Hi. My name is David Carson, D-A-V-I-D, C-A-R-S-O-N.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Okay, thank you. My name is Douglas O’Reagan. I’m conducting an oral history interview here on April 29<sup>th</sup>, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus on Washington State University Tri-Cities. I’ll be speaking with Mr. Carson about his experiences working on the Hanford Site and living in the Tri-Cities community. Well, thanks for being here. Could you tell us first just a little bit about your life leading up to either moving into the Tri-Cities or starting working at Hanford?</p>
<p>Carson: I was born here in Richland at Kadlec in May of 1958. Grew up here, went through all the Richland schools—Spalding and Carmichael, and—I can still call it Col High because I went there then. Went off to college, met my wife. We were biology majors, and about the time that we graduated and were looking for jobs, Battelle, who at the time had a huge biology program, they lost most all their contracts. So that just evaporated. My wife managed to get on with Battelle a couple months after we were married. But it took me over six months before I finally got a break and got hired on at N Reactor as an operator. My--</p>
<p>O’Reagan: And that would have been ’81?</p>
<p>Carson: That was in March of 1981. My parents had moved here in the spring of 1951 with my brother and sister. I was a 16-year mistake, so they’re a lot older. But they moved here in ’51. They lived in the trailer camp up north. My brother and sister went to Ball Elementary, for example. In ’53 they were able to buy a ranch house on Cedar Street, and that’s where I grew up. My dad was a fireman. Eventually became a lieutenant and then a captain. My mom was a secretary and then executive secretary. She was one of the very first certified professional secretaries onsite, and did a great deal to spread that program and bring skills and professionalism throughout all of her parts of the work. For years, she worked here—for over 35 years, a couple years longer than my dad, actually. So I’m about as Richland-born-and-bred and Hanford-centered as you could hope to ask for. When I got hired on at N Reactor, I started—as so many people in operations did—back in the fuels department. We called it back, because it was in the back part of the building. It was both the front and the back of the process. So back there, we made up the charges of reactor fuel for charging into the reactor. After that went in, the old fuel was discharged. We also took care of that out in the storage basin. So that was—I started in late March ’81, I was in fuels for six months. I always knew that I wanted to move up into the control room. So after six months, in September of ’81, I moved up front to reactor operations, not fuels operations. Started out as—everyone was referred to sort of shorthand as paygrade. A plain reactor operator was a Grade 18. So I was a Grade 18. That’s where you begin learning the basics of the job. You learn how to take building patrol and what all the readings mean and how to take them correctly. Because you have to go around the whole building twice a shift and check on running equipment, take readings, make sure things aren’t breaking or whatever. Then you start learning more of the jobs, from housekeeping—there were some specialized parts of that. Doing laundry—there was specialized parts to that, because it was—you were dealing with radioactive clothing, so contamination control, you learn that a lot. All the different functions during charge/discharge. This was the time, in the early part of the Reagan Administration when they changed over to once again producing weapons-grade plutonium. It was called the 6% program. Weapons-grade plutonium is judged on how much plutonium-240 has grown into it. If you have more than 6%--PU-240 is a big neutron absorber, so it does not create a nuclear explosive as well. It poisons reactions. So the less of that you have, the less you have to work to separate it out and get just the PU-239 that you want. So changing to the 6% program meant that they were doing charge/discharges a little more than twice as often. Plus, a lot of the maintenance had been let go. For many years they’d been in power only, since the end of the Nixon Administration. And that was something of a coup, to let in startup just to produce electricity through the Hanford Generating Project number 1 that was run by Washington Public Power Supply System. We sent our steam to them over across the fence. We didn’t have anything to do with that, except send steam, get back water. So there was a lot of upgrades going on throughout the whole reactor plant. The reactor plant—we called it the power side, where the steam that we made as we cooled off the primary loop was used to drive turbines that drove the primary pumps that circulated the water. A lot of that equipment was also repaired, upgraded. It took a while to really get up on plane and start operating smoothly again. A lot of operators came in right around within a year or so of the time I did, and four or five reactor-operator certification classes’ worth. They would take about 15 people at a time, and you would run through about a year-long program to learn everything from fundamentals, which was basic math, basic chemistry, basic nuclear science, up through the specifics of the systems in the reactor and how they interacted, how you operated them safely, what you didn’t want to do, what you did do, the reasons behind all that. It got pretty complex. You had to take three tests to become certified. First, after the first couple sessions of classroom training, they would pull us off our shifts. We worked a four-shift rotating shift at the time. Pulled us off our shifts, put us on day shift in the classroom for chunks of time. We’d go back when there were outages, because they needed bodies. When you finished your first couple of sessions of classroom training, there was the written exam, which is called the eight-hour. And it really is. It was almost 50 pages. I finished it in about six-and-a-half hours. I used up an entire pen. Just as I was finishing writing the essay on the last page, the pen died. And I looked at it—it was clear, and there was no ink left. So after you passed your eight-hour, you got a bump. You were then called a Grade 21, and a lot more of your training was real-time in the control room. You would sit on consoles with the other operators, and they would help guide you. You’d get some hands-on time. You’d learn more about that part of the job. After several months, and some more classroom training, you had an examination called the demo, where one of the instructors would come over and they would walk you around the control room and just start asking questions. Your job was to answer the questions, point at stuff, look things up in books—prove that you knew where it all was, what it all meant, what it all did. When you passed your demo, then you went into the final, more intensive part of classroom training to get ready for your oral board. Pass the eight-hour, pass the demo, train some more, then you sat an oral board, in which there were people from operations, engineering, nuclear safety, training, and sometimes somebody else would sit in. I don’t know why, but they did. So once you passed your oral board, you were considered certified—a Grade 23. But you still didn’t get turned loose yet. You still had to have guided time in the control room. You had to do a certain number of evolutions. You had to do so many startups, so many shutdowns, be in on so many scrams, do a little of this and a little of that, until your shift manager, after watching you and talking to the other operators, figured you were ready. So then, one day they say, okay, you’re free and clear. And your certificate went up on the wall with your name on it saying that you were a certified reactor operator, and you got thrown in. And then you really started to learn the job. Because all this stuff was suddenly no longer even partially theory. It was all real.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: How many reactor operators were there at a time, roughly, who were licensed?</p>
<p>Carson: It went up and down. Each shift was required to have at least four in the control room when you were operating. Typically, during this time in the ‘80s, every shift had seven or eight certified operators, and as many as a dozen Grade 18s—the ones who didn’t want to get into the certification program, who did other stuff around the plant. Because there was always stuff to do, if nothing else—housekeeping, stocking the laundry, and sweeping the floors. We had a schedule that came up every month and you rotated through different jobs in the control room. At the N control room, there was three major parts. There was a nuclear console, where you actually ran the reactor itself. We manually controlled the rod positions and manually monitored the power level and the flux where the neutron cloud was going up or down in the reactor. You wanted to keep that still and stable. You didn’t want it to cycle, because that can get—create stresses, if one part of the reactor’s really hot while this one back here is cold, it stresses—increases the fatigue and the chances for the failure of something. So you wanted to keep it nice and steady. We had instrumentation. We had—the only computer display we had was of temperatures. That was probably the main one, and the charts that showed how the neutron flux was changing. You wanted to keep all the lines straight. There was two of you, and you rotated on the nuke console every two hours—two hours on, two hours off. You’d get breaks and stuff while you were off. The double-A console controlled all of the primary loop and its interface with the secondary loop. That’s where you controlled the drive turbine speeds that drove the primary pumps to circulate the coolant. That’s where you controlled the primary loop pressure, the level of it, the emergency backup stuff—you were responsible for that. So you had this whole corner of the control room and panels that were your responsibility. The third part controlled the secondary loop—that’s the side—the primary loop went into the tubes of heat exchangers and it boiled the water on the shell of the heat exchanger—the steam generators. So that steam went up into the steam header. A lot of it went over to WPPSS. Some of it went down to drive our turbines. We also had a turbine generator of our own in the boiler building that was our onsite power source. You took care of the secondary loop there—its level, its pressure, the way it was. There was also a lot of other things that that operator did—rupture monitoring was at that panel, because N Reactor did not have a containment; it had a confinement. It was designed in 1958, went critical in ’63. They didn’t build—I guess they couldn’t at the time yet—build a full containment to keep everything in. It was designed that if there was a tube rupture and you had a big burst of superheated steam, that would vent. So we had to keep our primary loop really, really clean. And that’s what the rupture monitor was. If you saw signs that the fuel element in one of the 1,003 process tubes was beginning to release uranium into the water, you’d shut down and push that tube right away. There was also a system specifically for cooling the graphite. N Reactor, like the other old Hanford reactors, was called graphite-moderated. It used very pure graphite in a big block with complex passages through it. The neutrons, when they would leave the fissioned uranium atom, would go out and bounce around in that graphite before they found their way back into fuel, slowed way down, so that they could cause another fission. Modern power reactors use the water, the coolant, as a moderator. We used the solid graphite. We had a system to cool that specifically. So that operator took care of that. Also, the gas system, we circulated helium through the core when we’re operating, because at full power, 4,000 megawatts thermal, the temperature in the center of the core was 600, 700, 800 degrees in places, Fahrenheit. Pure graphite—you don’t want any air or water, anything that’s going to react with it at those temperatures. So we used the helium—you had to control that, too. And there’s other miscellaneous stuff, but you had to learn all of this, and you learned all of the classroom stuff, but just like anything, you really learned by doing, where it becomes second nature. The wonderful part about working it in was my shift—I was a little unusual in that I was assigned to one shift at the beginning, C shift, and I stayed on that shift my whole nine years there. Other people would move around, sometimes involuntarily. But I managed to stay on C shift all the time. It’s such a wonder and a joy when you can become that tight of a team to where you knew exactly how any individual’s going to react in a given situation. You don’t even need full words to communicate. We would have entire conversations in acronyms and shorthand. And we—stuff happened and we would ride it out and just—scary as heck, but—when it was over, you knew that the team had just really done its work like it’s supposed to. So that was always—that was a good feeling.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Could you give us an example of one of these acronym exchanges?</p>
<p>Carson: Oh. Oh, it’s— What’s the HPIP delta P? 18. Okay, we need that up to 50. So—I’ve lost a lot of that.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Sure.</p>
<p>Carson: But as in any installation, every piece has a name. It has typically an official name that meets a standard of naming from an engineering organization, it has the name that it’s normally referred to as, and it has an acronym. Sometimes it might have an even shorter shorthand name that your crew comes up with that you all know what it is, but you also know all the others as well. In a situation where something has begun to get out of line, out of normal--it’s not a crisis, but it’s something that you have to pay attention to and deal with right away—you need to transfer information as quickly and as clearly as possible. And that was how that was done, with shorthand acronyms that everyone knew exactly what you were saying; they could anticipate what you were about to say. So you could get other people to take particular actions absolutely as quickly as possible, and they could get you, by what they said back, to do your actions properly.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Could you walk us through a one specific scram or other sort of stressful event?</p>
<p>Carson: I was there in the control room one night when—I believe it was thunderstorms hit a main distribution power line—a 230-kilovolt lines coming from the dams—that happened to be online as our offsite power. Lightning hit one of those transmission lines and caused a power surge that tripped open the breakers at the substation. Offsite power was called A bus. Onsite power was B bus. You needed them active and separated up from 13.8-kilovolt where it came into the reactor, all the way down to 12-volt DC instrument power. You couldn’t have any connection between those two, because that could conceivably cause a fault that would stop the reactor from scramming if it needed to. So they powered everything, but some things were powered more by one bus or one by another. This is one of the main things that we trained for, was a power loss. Of course, if you lose one of your electrical buses, that’s one of the automatic reactor scram trips—there was 23 of them. So the reactor scrammed, and everything’s going along about like you’d expect for a power loss from one bus. Everything’s already prepared and set up to take the proper actions automatically, so you have to monitor those and adjust as necessary. Then all of a sudden, there was some kind of electrical fault in our B bus, our onsite power, which was still online. It tripped off. It was B bus—I believe I’m saying this right—B bus powered the lights in the control room. So you knew if those lights went on, you’d lost B bus as well. Now, if you lost both buses at the same time, that was an automatic trip onto emergency cooling, which for N Reactor was very large, high-pressured diesel pumps would pump water. Valves would open at the inlet and outlet of the reactor and it would change to a once-through. We had a series of water tanks with demin[eralized] water, filtered water and sanitary water. And then through some mechanisms, it would trip all the way to river water. If it was known that if you ever tripped over onto emergency cooling, the thermal shock—because the water was kept hot, but it wasn’t as hot as the reactor—the thermal shock could basically destroy the reactor. And that would be over. Nothing you could do at that point as far as keeping the reactor as an operating reactor in the future. So luckily, A bus had actually come back online just seconds before B bus went off. Then B bus came back, so the lights came back on, and then we lost A bus again. Because the whole BPA network was still having ripples and things. And then it came back up and then we lost B bus again. So when each of these things is happening, there’s stuff you have to do, depending on what it was. We’re running back and forth, trying to do that, and it got really tense. But all that training, you stopped really thinking—just all the training in your brainstem took over and you started doing what you needed to do and communicating in just those short, almost little digital blips of information so that everyone knew what you were doing, and you knew what they were doing and you knew what everybody had to do and that they were doing it. So things got pretty terse in the control room right there. As the buses kept coming up and down, it would reset off hundreds of enunciators and we didn’t have time to try and figure out what the overall cause was; we were just still fighting to keep the reactor from tripping on to emergency cooling. So eventually, we got both buses back and stable and we could continue with our—then it became just a regular post-scram shutdown. The cool-down of the reactor, changing things to work slightly different ways here and there throughout the plant. Then you sit back and giggle and get the shakes a little bit. Everybody talked real loud and real fast for a while, you know? [LAUGHTER] So—just some stressful things like that. Any unexpected scram made you a little tense, a little puckery. Because you didn’t know what happened. We had big CRT monitors mounted up by the nuclear and the double-A console that were tied into an electronic alarm system that they would record all of the enunciators. There were—I think I heard the number once—it was 1,400 different enunciators in the control room. When one of those went off, it sent a signal to this alarm system that put the ID of them in a buffer memory. They would display up in the CRTs. Well, when you scram, you got 400 enunciators within two or three seconds. So all you could see on the screen was the first eight or so. So you didn’t know what was going on. You just had to deal with what you were supposed to do and trust that no further catastrophe was going to happen, and just be ready for it if it did. When the reactor was running smoothly, we called it at equilibrium, when we had not changed power by more than 5% in 72 hours. That was sometimes hard to keep your focus, because all the lines are running straight on the charts, and it’s graveyard, nobody wants to talk, and you’ve all told all your stories a dozen times, and nothing much to say. So you’re sitting, waiting, watching. So like the quote about war, hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. Not as terror-filled as they might be, because we were trained and experienced in most stuff. Sometimes—there was always the possibility that sometimes something could happen that was really untoward, really out of the way, that could be really dangerous, really a disaster.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: How much of working in the control room was sort of judgment or sort of work of art as opposed to a sort of objective do-the-next-thing?</p>
<p>Carson: Actually quite a bit of it. One of the things that you developed as you gained experience as an operator—we called it getting stick time. When you started getting enough hours on a console and really starting to figure out how everything actually did work, you developed a feel, just from watching how all the different parts of the console you were on interacted. You got a feel if something was maybe not right, if something started looking a little jittery or a little bit out of its normal range that you wanted. Then you’d have to figure out, what little tweak can I make? Because everything was running in automatic, but you could always make small corrections. What little tweak could I make, given what I know about that that’s going on, that would make it better? And you developed what I always called a touch. Because you didn’t just go up and start twisting stuff. You really—with some instruments, some controllers—some control loops more than others—you didn’t want to put any very large change into it at all, because it was so sensitive. In the action that that controller would take, the input back to, say, the primary loop from changing the speed of one of the makeup injection pumps could just suddenly—if you did too much by accident, you could scram the reactor. Or you could cause it to lose pressure, which would scram the reactor another way. So getting to really develop that unconscious feel, similar to the way that when you’re driving and you pull into a parking lot or a real narrow street, you can actually feel with your body where the corners of your fenders are. It’s developing that kind of feel for a huge complex machine that was really what brought you into being a really good, competent operator. Some folks had it on some systems more than others. The older operators who’d been at it forever, it was just completely unconscious with them. That was just the way they did things was smooth and easy, and you don’t just jump in and start fiddling with stuff. You always think it through before you touch anything. And then when you touch it, you touch it very gently and make the changes as slow and small as you can to get the result that you want.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: So you worked there through the closing of N Reactor, is that right?</p>
<p>Carson: Yes.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: How much did that change over the course, before you got to the closing? Was it—job change a lot over that time?</p>
<p>Carson: While we were still operating—regular operation—it didn’t change that much. Some new things were put in, but overall they didn’t really affect us much. You had to deal with failures. For example, when the reactor was operating, the water circulated through five steam generator cells. We had six, so one was always out of service for maintenance or repairs or whatever, and you operated with five. Well, one of the cells was undergoing a total refit—a total reconditioning. And then another one of the cells, the primary pump developed some problems that were going to require a rebuild. So the decision was made to go ahead and operate at a reduced power level with only four cells online. That took a lot of adjustments. They had to come up with temporary limits that we had to learn and follow. Some of the procedures changed slightly for that temporary period to take into account the fact that you had a lower capacity and a lower rate of heat removal. So just dealing with a change like that, and then that begins to feel normal. And then they bring another cell back online. So you’re back to the way it was that used to be normal, but you have to kind of reset yourself to working that way. Limits were really the main thing we paid attention to as we were operating. All of the nuclear industry—and N Reactor, certainly, they really drilled this into us—it operates in defense of depth. You don’t ever have just a single barrier to something causing an accident. I called it a box-in-a-box-in-a-box-in-a-box-in-a-box. There’s the actual strength of the machine, at what pressures or temperatures will it break because the materials just physically can’t take it. So that’s your outermost limit that you never, ever, ever got close to. Inside of that was your technical specifications that protected this outer box. Inside the technical specifications were the process standards that protected the technical specification limits. Inside the process standards were your operating limits that protect—you never wanted to break a process standard, because you’d have to have an investigation and figure out why that happened and everything. And sometimes there were even special limits inside the operating limits that were even more restrictive. So those limits changed over time, but that was just part of the job. You had to get used to the new ways things were, and just live with it, because that’s the way it was. They taught us why the change was made, and what it meant, and that this was the new limits here and here and here. That’s the kind of stuff we went through during our continuous training. After you’re certified, the training cycle had all the operators, shift by shift, when they would roll around on dayshift, you would have training days. And every two years, you went through the entire certification curriculum again, from fundamentals through reactor operations, through system interactions—all of it, every two years. We had to take a recertification exam every quarter. So every three months you had a job jeopardy examination to keep on top of stuff. So that’s how all that was communicated to us and incorporated into the way we worked and the way things were operated and handled. As we got past the Chernobyl accident, some people knew right away, that was the death knell for N. A lot of us were still optimistic that the differences were so clear and plain and could be explained, and we could continue. They had plans for upgrading some of our equipment to allow the reactor to run for another 20 years, they said. [SIGH] Didn’t turn out that way. So much political fire came down on all of the DoE complex, but Hanford especially. I don’t know if you remember, at the time, we had a senator who was 100% anti-Hanford. I spoke at the time when South Carolina had three senators and we had one. Because he worked as hard as he could to send all the work, all the waste, all the everything to Savannah River, so that it wouldn’t be at Hanford. I’m just griping now, but—it ended up, it was January 7<sup>th</sup>, 1997 at 07:31 that the reactor was shut down for the last time. It was going to be for an upgrade. They were going to put in a control room habitability system that did actually get put in, and it worked. It was for a time if there was ever a large release from the reactor, we could have sealed up the control room and lived on recirculated air and supplies for up to two weeks. They put that in. There was another big upgrade. Because of the hydrogen bubble that developed inside the reactor at Three Mile Island from water being split by high temperatures and the presence of metal into hydrogen and oxygen. And the hydrogen formed a big bubble that could have—in very, very small circumstances—could have ignited or exploded. They were worried about hydrogen inside the reactor and power buildings at N. So they were putting in a hydrogen mitigation system that would have been able to take all of the hydrogen evolved from the entire quantity of water in the primary loop. If it all split and turned into hydrogen and oxygen, this system could have recombined the hydrogen and taken away the explosive potential. So we all hoped that, yeah, we were going to get these upgrades and we’d be able to start up again and keep going for a while longer. But we never did. So the people who could leave right away did. But the end of ’97, we’d lost a lot of the real sharp engineers and some of the top people in operations. And then as the years went on, and became more and more clear that there was no future for the reactor, more and more people drifted away. I eventually, in late ’89, I took a temporary upgrade to write layup procedures for the reactor. At the time, they were going to keep it in—well, it went through a whole series. It was going to be on cold standby, where the fuel would still be in the reactor; we would still recirculate the loop, but we wouldn’t operate. We would just maintain it ready to operate if we needed it. Then it was going to turn to dry standby, where the reactor would be defueled and we would circulate dry pure air through all of the piping throughout the plant to keep the corrosion away so that if we needed to restart, we could refuel and restart. So that was one of the big procedures that I took the upgrade to write, was the whole valve lineup to establish that flow path from the 24-inch primary and secondary loop main valves, all the way down to the ¼ inch instrument root valves. I had to find every single one and lay out how they were going to be opened, in what sequence. I also wrote a bunch of other procedures. That’s where I first started learning how to write procedures. But at the end of the six months, they did not want to keep me on there permanent, doing that. And I sure didn’t want to go back to operations, which was by that time two years after the reactor had been shut down, almost three. I could just feel the IQ dribble out my ears, because you can only sweep the same floor so many times. Once the reactor was defueled, there wasn’t a whole lot of anything to do.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: How many people were still on doing that kind of work?</p>
<p>Carson: Probably about half the number that we’d had at the peak days. Because you didn’t need as many operators to do what we were doing. So people were going to various places. A lot of people went from there over to the K Basins, to deal with the stored fuel. Some of them are still there, dealing, now, just with the sludge. It just—there was no sense in trying to stay there where I was comfortable. So that’s when I got a job with Tank Farms, writing procedures. So I did that for four years.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Was that something that you actively thought—you enjoyed the procedure writing, or was that just another--?</p>
<p>Carson: Actually, yes. I’ve always loved writing. For a long time, I desperately wanted to be a writer, a fiction writer or a science writer. And I just never was able to do it. I got a small number of rejection letters from various magazines. Once I started writing for a living, doing procedures, it just knocked all hope of ever writing fiction right out of me. But I enjoyed the process; I’ve always enjoyed figuring stuff out. When I came to Tank Farms, the procedures were horrible. There are standards and—even at that time, it was just coming out of DoE order on how the qualities of procedure has to have—the requirements that it has to meet, in terms of how it’s written, how the data is presented, how things are phrased. So when I came into Tank Farm Procedures, once I got my feet on the ground, I kind of pushed, and we did a complete overhaul of the entire Tank Farms Procedures system. Getting all of the several hundred—I think 740 procedures—getting them all rewritten to current standards. I developed, for the first time at Tank Farms, a standard compliant alarm response procedure. There’s procedures for everything, including when—I talked about all the enunciators in the control room. We had big, thick books of enunciator response guides that told you what tripped it, when it would reset, what it meant, and what you had to do. When 500 go off at once, you’re just doing your trained-in post-scram actions that you know what to do. You don’t look at each individual one. At Tank Farms, they had alarm response procedures, but for a whole facility, the book might be this thick, because anything that happened, the only response was notify management. It was quite a culture shock to go down to Tank Farms, because at N, you needed a college degree of some kind just to get in the door. It was a really fast crowd. Really smart. Even the guys that stayed back in fuels, most of them were really sharp. So we operated at a really high level, had a really high level of in-depth training. Tank Farms, not so much. So I had to get over that culture shock, and then begin to teach the folks that I was writing these procedures for why they’re changing, and what it meant for them, and why it was better to do it this way. So eventually, we did. We were the first group to use electronic photography in procedures. We were the first group to have all of our procedures computerized. And we worked hard and it came out really well. I learned that I really enjoy that process of figuring things out and then of using my writing skills to convey that in the best way possible. I really enjoyed that. After four years at Tank Farms Procedures, a new facility was being built, the 200 Area Effluent Treatment Facility. So I transferred from Tank Farms to the ETF. In part, because they had stuck in a manager that no one got along with. The man was not very—ahem—socially apt. We’ll just leave it at that. I went over to ETF and started developing their procedures as the facility was still being built. That’s where I got laid off. 1995, there was a big layoff by Westinghouse. I got the boot there. So for the next two years—it took me six months to get any kind of job again. And then I was—Fluor Hanford had come in—Fluor Daniels. They had their own built-in temporary company to supply temporary work. So I bounced in and out with that temporary company several times on the canister storage building, a little bit at Tank Farms. And then finally the head of Fluor Northwest just said, we’re done with all these temporary people, because it’s too hard to deal with the temporary company. Just hire them all in. So ’97, I got hired in. And then I got made over into a nuclear safety hazard analyst. That has been my main bread and butter. Hazard analysis, which is a very specific discipline in the nuclear industry, working on safety basis documents, which is the—safety basis defines what you can do and how you can do it, and what you can and can’t do. So the nuclear safety people developed that, the customer—DoE RL—approves it, and that’s what you live by. So we—first we draw the coloring book, then we make sure that everyone colors inside the lines. That’s nuclear safety’s job. Hazard analysis is a part of that, because before you do anything new, or if you’re going to change anything that you’re doing that’s approved now, you have to have a very deliberate process of analyzing all the hazards, figuring out how bad the hazard is, what it could cause, how bad that effect could be—if it’s a real accident or if it’s a no, never mind, that’s already covered by other controls, do the new analysis you need to do, create new controls for it, and get those instituted so that everything is still inside the box.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: When you were working on the Tank Farms, do you think those procedures were just left over from a time when people just didn’t care as much about—</p>
<p>Carson: Yes. Very much so. I guess I skipped ahead. I talked about the culture shock moving to Tank Farms. At N, we had great training, we had really good procedures that were very well thought out and well developed and well proved. We had a deep understanding of all of our limits, why they were there, what it meant if you violated one in a certain way. All that was just ingrained to us. So you did things by the procedure, you lived inside the limits, you knew why, you knew how. There was no problem. Everybody just worked that way. Tank Farms had for years been kind of a dumping ground of the people who couldn’t make it elsewhere. The only lower step was the laundry. And I worked a little bit with some tank farm operators that, shortly after I got there, got transferred to the laundry because they couldn’t make it at Tank Farms. The whole organizational philosophy was the smart guys know what they’re doing, just shut up and do what they tell you, even if it isn’t written down. Don’t worry about that, that’s just for show. Their procedures were—in one case, it was a page-long paragraph that was one sentence. I don’t think it even had a verb. It was like telling a story, and didn’t have any specifics. Nobody understood them. They all hated them, because they were all like that. We changed that; we made it better. The culture shock was coming from a place like N, where, like I said, we were a fast crowd, we were really dialed in, we really knew what was what, to Tank Farms, where there were still people working there—great operators, they really knew their job, they knew what to do—but they couldn’t read. They had a special dispensation to have their requal exams every year orally. Because they couldn’t read. They couldn’t read valve tags. So people would go out with them and tell them what was what. They knew exactly what to do; they were good operators. But that kind of difference in level really caught me short for a while. It took me a while to change my mind to realize that—okay, they want to do a good job, too, no matter how cranky they seem. So don’t look down on them, don’t ride a high horse. Just—they’re people like you, let them to do the job. And it worked out, it did. I made some friends there and we did some good stuff. I helped a lot of them out where I could, explaining things. I think I’ve forgotten what the question was. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>O’Reagan: I was just sort of exploring this different or maybe changing priorities about the environment or waste control over time and over different parts of Hanford. It seems like they’re—</p>
<p>Carson: Oh, yeah, okay.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: We’re really interested in safety and such at N Reactor and having these great procedures, but maybe the less sexy parts of it were not as fully developed yet.</p>
<p>Carson: Yeah. This is an example I think that illustrates that. We were among the first to really start taking control of our low-level waste. Every place you come out of a zone, there’s what’s called a step-off pad, where you undress in sequence. You take the outermost stuff off, and you step on one pad, then you take the inner stuff off and step on the next one, so that you’re leaving all of the contamination behind. There were rad boxes sitting there, and so for things like your tape and your surgeon’s gloves, would all get thrown in the rad box. That’s what most of our low-level waste was. That kind of stuff. Nobody used to pay much attention to it; it was just something that you toted down to this room, and then you threw it on a truck and somebody took it somewhere and threw it away. They really started working at following the latest directions for how to properly deal with and account for all of the waste: low-level, higher level waste—anything. Getting the accountability, getting the proper labeling, understanding the proper limits for what could be certain types of waste. We really had that ground into us. And we really griped about it, because we were filling out data sheets and filling out labels and other labels and other labels and double and triple wrapping the boxes and labeling the wrappings as we put them on, and doing all this stuff. The one time I ever had to go down to the burial ground—it’s funny, some jobs some people would catch all the time. You might be there for years and there was things you never got to do because you were never assigned to do them. One of those was taking our low-level waste boxes to the burial ground and throwing them out of the truck into the trench. So we had spent all this time doing all this accounting, doing all this labeling, making sure the packaging was all okay and everything was very carefully set up and everything. And we get to the disposal trench in 200 West Area. So we’re carefully—you’re not supposed to damage the box—it’s a cardboard box inside of a couple plastic bags. You’re not supposed to damage it. We’re just taking them and dropping them over the side out of the back of a truck. And here comes a truck from somewhere in West Area, one of the construction things going on or something. A dump truck with wood and broken plaster and glass and a few rad boxes and stuff. They just wave him up there, and the dump truck backs up and just—pbbt—dumps, and drives away. No paperwork, no nothing. I don’t know what was behind it; maybe there were reasons it was like that. But that was just a contrast that really griped me. But they did a good job at N of explaining why the way we were doing things had to change. Why the new way was actually better, what it meant for stopping releases to the environment, reducing them. Things you should do to lower your impact, lower the amount of waste. That’s where I first really started getting it, and it slowly moved into other places so that things were much more accounted for and controlled. These days, it’s very controlled, it’s very different. It’s much more secure. Nobody uses those rad boxes anymore. The only place I ever see them is in rad update training every year. Everything’s in certified drums. It’s treated certain ways. It’s all measured and accounted for, and inspected before it goes to its final burial to make sure that there is nothing in there that isn’t supposed to be. There’s a whole entire facility in West Area that’s devoted to doing that. Waste Receipt And Processing, WRAP. They get in drums of waste from all over the site, and they do NDA on them to find out how radioactive they are and what kind of radioactive stuff is in them. They X-ray them. If necessary, they will open them up, take everything out, sort it out, so that the stuff that isn’t supposed to be there is out, and then repackage them properly. So everything is very concentrated on making sure that any waste products, whether radioactive or chemical or even domestic waste, is handled and treated properly. And that has really exhibited a standard growth curve. Because when I first started in the ‘80s, there was a lot of resistance, both kind of social and institutional, and among the groups. But the people who understood it just kept pushing, kept pushing, kept getting the message out. Gradually, you saw the same kind of acceptance go up like that, like a normal growth curve. That’s just the way things are done now. So that part’s a lot better. I never really experienced any untoward activities. We were never told to go dump stuff in a hidden place. We were never told to dispose of something in an unapproved way. But a lot of the stuff that we were around wasn’t as controlled or properly packaged or set up as it would be today. That’s all to the good. You used to be able to go just about everywhere and there would be contaminated patches. A lot of those have been cleaned up. People no longer are allowed to just stick something out here and just put a rope around it and call it an accumulation area. There’s very high degree of control and accountability. The job I’m in now with Central Plateau Surveillance and Maintenance, they have a responsibility for all the old retired facilities, the old canyon buildings. And there’s a lot of auxiliary buildings around those and a lot of waste sites and old cribs and trenches. Most of what they do is repeatedly inspecting all that stuff, making sure that anything that’s present is properly in place, that it’s allowed to be there, that they know what it is, that nothing’s going wrong. So that’s all really a lot better. In all of society and all of industry, things are much safer now. People understand chemical hazards especially. We used to be able to go get stuff out of the tool crib that isn’t even allowed to be sold anymore, because it’s carcinogenic. But there, it was an electric cleaner called Swish that was mostly carbon tetrachloride. And you could just get a spray can of it and go and clean things off with it, or kill spiders. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>O’Reagan: So I’d love to come back to this, but just to make sure we get to it before we run too long on time, could we step back to your childhood in Richland--</p>
<p>Carson: Sure.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: --and what it was like growing up in Richland? Could you tell us a bit about that?</p>
<p>Carson: Well. Virtually everyone I know, their folks worked in the Area. They never talked about what went on what there or what they did. My dad talked about some fire department stuff sometimes.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Was that the fire department on the site or just—</p>
<p>Carson: The Hanford Fire Department, yeah. Nobody ever really knew what was going on out there. The closed-mouth, closed-city—you know. I always thought it was amazing. Very early in the morning, my mom would drive me to a baby-sitter down in south Richland. And I always thought it was amazing, she could look out to the northwest and she would tell me which plant was running. I didn’t know they were reactors; I didn’t know what it meant. But she could look at the steam plumes, because even though they weren’t modern reactors with cooling towers, they still had retention ponds before the water went back in the river, and those would steam. She could just look at tell me which plant was running. And I always thought that was amazing. We had a fairly—at least in my experience anyway, as a middle class, my folks were both working, lived in a nice neighborhood up near Spalding School. We had a very safe, nice environment to grow up in, a good childhood. Just a lot of playing in the street, going over and playing in the playgrounds. You go to school, you have all your friends there, and you go do stuff. Not a lot different than most places, but—I loved then, and I still do, and unless you grow up in a place like here, you don’t get the chance to just walk in the desert, way away from anything where it’s really quiet, and you got all the sagebrush that just smells so good. And you just walk way out there somewhere, and no trees around, and just sky and desert and total silence. That’s something you really only get growing up here and somewhere very like this. Everybody knew about the Area, but never talked about it. I do remember, I was in first grade, I believe, when the Mobile Whole Body Counter came to Spalding. They gave us some tours of it, and they said that some people were going to get to go through it after school. Well, I thought it would be really neat. I think what they were probably doing was running some of the teachers through it, just as environmental sampling, really. This was in—this would have been ’64, around there. About ten years after the Green Run, when there weren’t huge releases like that, but there were still some releases going on, a lot of monitoring. I waited around after school for an hour, hoping to get to run through this. They would bring people in and 20 minutes later they’d come out. I got in trouble because I was so late walking back to my babysitter’s after school because of that. But where else is something like that going to happen? The Hanford Science Center was a pretty special place. To us, it was like just an everyday thing—doesn’t everyone have a neat science museum like this? But, no, they don’t. It was no longer—I was born in 1958. So the city was no longer run by GE. But there were still people—and they were still indulged by the city government—who, if a light bulb went out, they would call up the way that they used to call GE up to come and change it. For a while, that still kind of went on, somehow. I remember the air raid siren tests. On the last—in the last week of the month, I don’t remember what day it always was. But I always remember getting kind of scared about that. There’s nothing like that sound of—Richland had three, then two, then one—of air raid sirens going off. And at that age—eight, nine—I was starting to realize what that meant. That if that ever went off for real, it was all over. It was a big deal, a really big deal, to have to go to Kennewick or Pasco, because there was only the Blue Bridge, which wasn’t the Blue Bridge then. It was green and it was called the New Bridge. And then there was that horrible frightening old green bridge that was taken out. So if you had to go to Pasco, you had to go to and through Kennewick, and then go over one of those bridges. The highway between Richland and Kennewick was—I can still remember when it was just one lane each way. There was actually a stop light at George Washington Way, because the highway came in and curved and there was a stop light at G Way before it went up to the bypass part. Right there at that intersection is where the Rose Bowl was. Everybody knew the Rose Bowl, the sewage treatment plant. Great way to be introduced to a town when you’re first coming into it. As far as I know, it was a fairly normal childhood. My friends and I, we did all the normal things. When the hydroplane races started, there was a couple weeks in the summer where all anybody wanted to do was play hydroplanes. So everybody would have their own little scraps of wood they made into a hydroplane, and you’d drag it behind your bike in the street. Or turn on a hose and set it in the gutter and go make a dam to make a big puddle you could run it through like a boat. Day sleeper signs. Everybody—almost everybody worked a rotating shift—ABCD, where you rotate, at the time, from swing shift to days to graveyard<a>[EM1]</a> . My dad worked a rotating shift for 17 years. Once I started it, I understood how bad it had been for him when I was young, when I was little. But you’d walk around, and in the windows, in houses, “day sleeper.” You just understood that probably most of your friends were going to live in a house just like yours if you lived in one of the Alphabet House districts. A lot of my friends had the same or very slightly different models of ranch house all up in that area. So you knew exactly where the bathroom was, you knew where the kitchen was, you knew where the light switches were, because they were all the same. That’s probably somewhat different. There were virtually no African Americans in Richland. In elementary school, I think there was two—there was a boy my age, and his sister who was a little younger. Caused me some problems, because he slapped me around one day after school, and that affected my attitude for a long time. But because there were almost no black people in Richland, I had no idea what they were like or anything. My parents, a lot of their friends were conventionally racist at the time—it would be very racist now. But at the time it was just conventional. And because there were so few of them, they all knew each other because they had their own community that they would get together. I just thought that it was natural that every black person in the world knew every other one. Because they would always say, hi, how are you, and talk to each other like they knew each other. I thought that was normal. So I don’t know how common that is across all of the US, but it was certainly true here. Because Kennewick was a restricted city, Richland was mostly a city for somewhat upper level workers at Hanford, Pasco—East Pasco was where most of the African American people and the Hispanic immigrants went. It was always used as a term of horror—oh my god, we have to go by East Pasco. I’ve been there, now. It’s people with houses and neighborhoods and kids and dogs. At the time, it was just hell to be—this horrible thing. So I just—I grew up with that. Everybody knew the same things about everything, and believed the same way. That was really about it.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Was going to college when you first sort of left this bubble, if you will?</p>
<p>Carson: Yeah. I went to Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, which—I grew up in the Lutheran Church. Really white. Going to PLU wasn’t really all that far outside the bubble. There was a little bit, because there was a very large contingent of Taiwanese kids going to school there. I tried to be all friendly and stuff—it was my first experience with the fact that other people can dislike you, too. So that was a problem. But that was—it was a good experience. It was being away from here, seeing some different things, the way different people lived. Met my wife. So that was a really good thing. But at the time, even though growing up here, I still didn’t really know a lot about Hanford or the nuclear industry, I knew a little more than when I was a kid—but not really that much. So I had no real good arguments or rebuttals for the people who—there in the mid ‘70s were already rabidly, no nukes, no nukes. Get rid of Hanford. Clean it up and throw it away. So that was kind of frustrating. There was one thing I was glad when I got hired on out here, I finally had a chance to learn all this stuff. Other stuff growing up here really is just things based on being here in this area. The place to go if you were going to go ride motorcycles or shoot your bow and arrow or pellet guns or whatever, you went down behind the cemetery along the Yakima River in Richland.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Oh yeah.</p>
<p>Carson: Later on that became a place to go when people would go have keggers or wanted to go smoke or make out or whatever, that was a popular place. I never got invited to do any of those things, so I was only ever down there with my motorcycle. I do remember, as I moved into high school, I started to understand the feeling of isolation that Richland had. Because we had been not really a closed, secret city like a lot of the ones in the Soviet Union were, but just like a cloak of invisibility over all we did here. Nobody ever really knew much about us. I was there when Richard Nixon flew in to authorize Fast Flux Test Facility. He had flown into Walla Walla on Air Force One, because at the time to the Pasco airport couldn’t service a plane that large. And then took the Air Force One helicopter and they landed in front of the PNL sandcastle and chopped down a couple trees. I’ll always remember that, because it came down and just—limbs were flying all over the place. He stood—something you wouldn’t see anymore. He was all by himself. He didn’t have a retinue behind him, around him. The Secret Service was sort of out there, but they weren’t really a visible presence. He just went and stood on the steps and addressed people and talked about stuff and announced FFTF and what was going to go on and everything. That night on the CBS News, Walter Cronkite talked about how Richard Nixon made a stop in Walla Walla and then flew to Alaska to meet with the Japanese emperor. It was his first trip to the United States since World War II. Mentioned nothing at all about what happened here, which was really far more important than a very minor diplomatic meeting that lasted two hours or something. I then did start thinking about, and I noticed a lot of that isolation. People around here just got used to never being paid attention to, to never having anyone know where they were or what went on here. So a lot of worlds kind of shrunk down to just here. You just—your church, your softball league, your friends, the hydroplane races, and that was the extent of life. So I am glad that things have really expanded out and the diversification that first started being talked about in the ‘70s has really taken hold, and so much more is done here now than just relying, almost 100%, on money from Hanford. I think if there was another bust—another one of the endless boom and bust cycles that Hanford has had over the years—if there was another big bust at Hanford, I think the Tri-Cities could probably pull through it—Tri-Cities and surrounding areas—could pull through it really very well.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Mm-hmm.</p>
<p>Carson: So that’s a big difference from growing up here, is the fact that now we’re somebody. We’re a known quantity, we’re actually a desired destination for many different reasons. We’re known for many different things. Not just, oh, all that secret stuff that nobody knows about.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: I understand you volunteered at the CREHST Museum for a while. What was important to you about the history of the area that got you to do that?</p>
<p>Carson: The fact that I was—that was in the six months that I was first laid off. I was trying to get contract writer work. That necessitated my becoming a business and getting a business license. So I ended up starting my own little computer consulting business. Because I did that, I heard from a friend of a friend who worked at CREHST that they were having computer problems. So I went down and I volunteered. I said, hey, I’ll be glad to come through and try and clean stuff and help you. And then in talking with the director, Gwen Leth—she started asking questions and found out all the other stuff I could do. So she really wanted me, and so I started working there at CREHST. They were fairly newly open, and I rewrote some of the displays, because they were not well-written. They had errors and they weren’t interesting. So I did that. I wrote an article for a magazine about CREHST—by request—that never got published. I helped with the computers, helped with some of their equipment. I just did stuff for Gwen. I was the publisher of their paper newsletter for several years. They would send me this stuff to do, and I’d put it all together into desktop publishing and did that. So that was fun, they were great people. I learned a lot about community education and what it meant and what it could be. I got to see all the neat behind-the-scenes stuff that is always the coolest thing about anything. The people there were just so wonderful that when I went back to work, I still kept in touch doing things like the newsletter, and then when I got laid off again, I would just go down and start back down there. Volunteer sometimes 40 hours a week, sometimes just a couple days. Whatever was happening that I could do, depending on what was going on with my daughter and stuff like that. So I had desperately missed the Hanford Science Center. I talked about that earlier, that it was such a great place to go, especially as I learned more and then could see more of what was actually being told me at the science center. But then when it closed down, I desperately missed having that there. Because I wanted to take my daughter to it, I wanted to keep doing it. I had volunteered to do some stuff at the science center, just before it closed when it was still in the Federal Building. So being able to help resurrect a lot of that, keep it going there at CREHST, and even provide input on what they were going to show next and things. And seeing how all of that was coming together and the efforts that they made to really reach out to the community and continue the education and the keeping the history. And keeping the artifacts alive and just being able to go in there and wander through anytime I wanted was just really great. And the REACH center is a fabulous, wonderful place. But at the time I was working at CREHST, CREHST was still going to be the lead, and they had plans for a facility about the same size down on Columbia Point that the REACH part of it was going to be a small part of the CREHST Museum. Turned out the other way. But CREHST—even just the efforts that people made to make it come about, the people that got together behind the scenes and worked with DoE, worked with the community to get funding, worked just to make things happen like moving the building of the FFTF Visitors Center from out there down to where it is now. That’s what that building is. The below-stairs part was new, but the superstructure is the old FF Visitors Center. So getting that to happen was not simple, was not easy, wasn’t cheap. But they kept at it and they did it. So that kind of dedication inspired me to do more along that line, like this.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Okay. Well there are always questions I don’t know to ask. Interesting incidents, or themes you wanted to talk about or anything like that that comes to mind that you thought might be worth mentioning.</p>
<p>Carson: In terms of work, or in terms of growing up here, or just anything?</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Either or both.</p>
<p>Carson: One of the things I did at N Reactor was I became one of the designated evacuation bus drivers. At the time, because facilities were manned around the clock, and it was 43-and-a-half miles from my driveway to the N Reactor parking lot—a long ways out there—you had to have some way to evacuate everyone that was there, in case there was an actual big accident. On regular dayshift, all of the buses that brought everybody from town were all there. But there were, parked off on the side, a couple of the old, old buses that were there strictly to be evacuation buses. They didn’t have enough drivers to have one on every shift to make sure that was covered, so they just enlisted operators. We got special training in how to drive the old buses and stuff. So on weekend dayshifts or sometimes on swing shift, and even on graveyard a few times, if everything, all the work was caught up, there was nothing going on, we would go out and practice driving. Just drive around all over. So I got to see a lot of the Area that’s really not terrifically accessible now. Because, man, those buses will go a lot of places. They love a gravel road. Drove all over, saw the Hanford Bank. Drove down, found the big boat ramp between F Area and H Area where the Hanford patrol would put their tactical boat in and out, and also where a lot of bald eagles like to hang out in the winter. Drove out to—way out by Vernita Bridge to the old warehouse, the stone warehouse that’s out there—drove out there, and drove around that. Got out and looked at it. At the time, they still had part of the old highway, the old two-road highway that led down the valley and over to Hanford and White Bluffs and serviced all the farms and everything around there. We drove on this dirt road around B Area, and then all of the sudden, here’s a beautiful paved road where the lines are bright and clear and the pavement is not cracked. So we just kept on driving. That was an exciting find.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Were these evacuation plans pretty well founded already when you got there?</p>
<p>Carson: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you had—in case of an emergency, you had an assignment to come and grab an emergency response card. There were holders of these in the control room. Everybody was supposed to go run in there and grab one and do what it said. Just one thing, whether it was shutting down some equipment, or going and closing something up, or something. You go and do that job, come back, if you’re done then you go and get on the evacuation bus and it will leave when everybody’s accounted for. So the whole evacuation thing had been practiced and set in place for years and years. Luckily we never had to do it, except in a drill. Oh. One of the funny things—one of the first times, it was just us three or four operators going out for a practice drive without the instructor or anything. It was a really hot summer’s day on the weekend. Those buses didn’t have air conditioning. [LAUGHTER] They did have eyebrow vents—one above the driver and one above the door. And we’re driving along and all the windows are open and it’s just too hot. So one of the other guys on my shift, operator, he gets up and he says, I’m going to open these vents. And he reaches up—I was driving—and he reached up above me and opened that one. Air started coming in. And all of the sudden—he opens this one—and there was a big bird’s nest inside that vent. And the way he was, he pulled it and it went right in his face. [LAUGHTER] There was just this explosion of straw and feathers and dried bird poop and stuff. We all tried really hard not to laugh at him, but—[LAUGHTER] he even laughed at himself, so. That was another thing. I remember when Uptown sat kind of alone. There wasn’t really anything built up around it yet. The big Mormon church had been built across the street, but there was nothing else out around it. And over now where that Exxon station and the Fire & Water store and the restaurant and where Hastings is, none of that was there. There was a couple of old wooden shacks. No idea what they were. But one night, it was a fall night, and we went because my dad was there as part of the fire department. There was some kind of—I don’t know—maybe a fire prevention week celebration or something. They were going to burn the shacks down to show what it looks like when the fire department puts out a fire. So my dad was part of that. And there were hundreds and hundreds of people standing in the Uptown parking lot, watching as they set these two shacks on fire. They let them burn for quite a long time, then they came out and put them out, and there was a lot of ooh, ahh. That’s a fairly early thing. One thing that happened through the ‘60s that I took for granted and then didn’t realize when it stopped until several years later—there were all kinds of traveling exhibitions that did come through here from NASA or the Army or the Navy or the Air Force. They would come and bring an exhibit and set up like in the Uptown parking lot or somewhere. They would be there for a day or two and give their spiel and you could go into their trailers and see what they had. Then they would pack up and move on to somewhere else. There were a lot of those. One that I wish I would have done, but at the time I didn’t think it was important—the X-37 Dyna-Soar—it was a first lifting body design for a recovery vehicle, or an early design for a space shuttle in the ‘60s—to go right around the Gemini program. It was eventually going to become a part of the Army’s or Air Force’s manned space laboratory program that never got off the ground. And they brought the vehicle around on a big trailer with a little trailer museum to talk about it and stuff, and I wish I would have gone to see that. But I was too busy doing something else that I thought was more important. So all kinds of stuff like that would come through. There was always—Griggs brought in a lot of these little, cheap tawdry little traveling exhibits and things. Bonnie and Clyde’s death car showed up there on a trailer when I was a kid. Right after the movie had come out and I was just really fascinated by the whole gangster thing. So of course I made my mom and dad go all the way over to Pasco to Griggs to see that. One I felt bad about then and I still feel bad—they had a dolphin that was in like a ten-foot above ground swimming pool, just barely moving. You paid $0.50 to see that, and I just felt bad. And just the kind of stuff that doesn’t really happen anymore. There was a lot of that still. Because the Tri-Cities, I think, moved into the ‘60s a little more slowly than other places.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Well, this has all been fascinating. I know our battery starts running out around this point.</p>
<p>Carson: Okay.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: So I guess we’ll have to wrap up now. But it really has been great.</p>
<p>Carson: Great.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: So thanks a lot.</p>
<p>Carson: You’re very, very welcome, and I would be happy to come back and talk more about other things. Anything you’d like to ask questions about.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Fantastic, thanks a lot.</p>
<p>Carson: Great. Thank you.</p>
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<p> <a>[EM1]</a></p>
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Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:35:12
Bit Rate/Frequency
Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio)
248 kbps
Hanford Sites
Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview
N Reactor
200 Area
200 West Area
F Area
H Area
B Area
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site
1958-2016
Years on Hanford Site
Years on the Hanford Site, if any.
1981-1997
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with David Carson
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Subject
The topic of the resource
Richland (Wash.)
Hanford (Wash.)
Hanford Site (Wash.)
Hanford Reach (Wash.)
Hanford Nuclear Site (Wash.)
Nuclear waste disposal
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2016-4-29
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item.
Date Modified
Date on which the resource was changed.
2016-07-29: Metadata v1 created – [RG]
Description
An account of the resource
An interview with David Carson conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Mission Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy.
200 Area
200 West Area
B Area
Chernobyl Nuclear Accident
Effluent Treatment Facility
F Area
H Area
K-Basins
N Reactor
Richland (Wash.)
Secrecy
Washington Public Power Supply System (WOOPS)
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https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Ff3d85bde00e86e0c74863a946d82d95d.jpg
afffa7c79551d98dda0f88b751d2c406
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F8b04b9ce1b21e1ea75e4060d99aac9f3.mp4
50f96b20387d4d3089b3a6aceecfbccc
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Post-1943 Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Robert Bauman
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Leroy Noga
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX145880437">
<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><strong><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Northwest Public Television | </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span class="SpellingError SCX145880437">Noga_Leroy</span></span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"><br /></span></strong></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Leroy Noga</span>: Leroy Noga. But I usually go by Lee all the time.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Robert Bauman</span>: And your last name is N-O-G-A?</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: N-O-G-A, yeah.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: Okay. All right. My name's Robert Bauman. Today's date is October 15</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span class="NormalTextRun SCX145880437">th</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> of 2013. And we're conducting this interview on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. So let's start if we could just by having you talk about how and why you came to Hanford. When that happened, what brought you here?</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: Well, I had hired--in the state of Minnesota. And they painted a picture of all the pine trees and everything, and several of us come out here in 1955. So I drove out here--it was January in '55. And from Spokane to here—it was at night and it was foggy where you could cut it with a knife. I couldn't even see the white line on the side, hardly. Anyway, I stayed at the Desert Motel in Richland. And next morning, got in the car and I see all this stuff that looked like I was on the moon or something. Sage brush. Where's all the pine trees, you know? I couldn't believe it. Everybody's got a picture of Washington with the beautiful pine trees and everything. [LAUGHTER] Including us from Minnesota. Anyway, so then of course I hired in with GE. And stayed in the dorm, men's dorm. And that was another shocker because I'm a ballroom dancer and used to going to several ballrooms in Minneapolis. Big ones--the Prom, the </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Marigold. And I would always never have a problem to pick up a woman--a nice looking woman to dance with. And here everything was--the women were afraid to go out. They stayed in the dorm and there wasn't anybody to dance with. I was very disappointed and I thought, as soon as I get enough money, I'm leaving town, and I'm going on. I was single at the time, of course</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">. But then I went to work in K A</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">rea and K-West. Around suddenly and after I got to see the area a little bit. Of course, I'm from Minnesota, land of the ten-thousand lakes--we actually got a lot more than that. But here it was rivers, and I was unfamiliar with rivers. But after I got acquainted just a little bit, and found out how the hunting was--very good duck hunting and pheasant hunting at the time. I thought, hey, this isn't so bad. And then I tried the river fishing, which was quite different. And that wasn't so bad either. I was able to catch fish. And then I did dance with a local girl that said, well Lee, just stick it out a little while. It kind of grows on you. And I still remember that statement, and I'm still here—</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: [LAUGHTER]</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: --after all this time. And I wouldn't move. Of course the area has changed a lot.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: Mm-hmm.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: And we had dust storms then. A couple of us bachelors, we stayed in a Bower Day House. And after one dust storm, I think we had about a half of inch of dust on the floor the next day. And that was typical. They weren't too well built, as far as keeping the dust out. And I can remember another time there living in the same house where we had a big snowstorm and then we got a chinook after that, chinook wind. Which we used to get a lot of those warm chinook winds, of course. And I remember the water had melted so fast, that the water had washed a full six pack right in front of our house. And I thought, well that's nice. [LAUGHTER] And anyway, as far as--you were going to ask me some questions.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: Yeah. Well I going to--about how long were you in the dorms then? And then how long did you live in the Bower Day House?</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: Well, I was in the dorms--gee, that that's going way back. I don't remember. Maybe a year a year or maybe a little longer. I remember I missed a piano, because I used to play the piano. And I rented a piano and put it downstairs in a dorm. It was kind of something you don't usually do. But I did it anyway and played. And we ate breakfast every morning at the </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Mart which is now the Davidson B</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">uilding, I think it is--right there across from the post office.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: Oh, okay.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: Big mart, everybody was eating there.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: What was Richland like as a community in the 1950s?</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: Well, everybody kept their doors open. Never locked them. It was a government town so it was very safe. With no crime like there is now. You remember the officers’ club and stuff out the area where they had--well the government tried to keep us here, and so they had big functions out there. Dances and name performers out there. And I was out there a few times--out here in north Richland. The government, of course, didn't want us to quit. And some of us stuck it out, like myself. And I worked for ten years for GE and then GE pulled out. And that's something that really irritates me to this day because--I don't know if--you probably don't want to televise this, but </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">anyway,</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> I think that was timed. The government always has these contractors come in and then they change. And</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">I was</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">—</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">t</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">hey had a ten</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">yea</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">r contract to be vested. But they</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> had an age clause. Y</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">ou had to be 28 years old and I </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">was a one month away from</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> that. </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">So I either had to go back </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">east and work for GE back there—</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">but I had a family of f</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">our now. And of course I didn't </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">want to go back there and leave my famil</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">y here. So I didn't get vested. </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">And then different companies come. And Westinghouse, and on, and on. And every time I really had a nice job</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">—I </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">really loved it--a different company would come in. I had to change com</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">panies or I had to change jobs. </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">I finally got tired of it and I quit. And I started my own business. And I might mention this--whil</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">e having my own </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">business, I did security systems, and fire systems, and stuff like that. And I was the f</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">irst company that installed the </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">first secur</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">ity system out here in the 300 A</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">rea. It was ultrasonic</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> over the fuel rod of the pool. </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">And so I thought that was something that maybe someone else didn't do out here, related to the area.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: Right. </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">And so what year was that then? Roughly around the time period that you quit and started your own business?</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: Well, it had to be after ten</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> years</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">. I quit—</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">I don't remember just exactly what year I quit o</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">ut here. I worked for Battelle. </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">And then I think Westinghouse come in. I think that's when I quit. Rather than cha</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">nge companies again, I just got </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">tired of it.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Mm-hmm.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Yeah--</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Let's go back--</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">if it's okay</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> to go back a little bit. You mentioned your first job was to K-West.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Yeah.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">So what sort of job was it? What sort of work were you doing then?</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Well I was instrumentation, of course. And did all the instrumentation out there. It was a very--</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">I liked it because it </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">was such a variety of different instrumentation. And then some of the reall</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">y nasty work we had to do as an </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">instrument person was go on the rear face with the water dripping down. All dress</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">ed up in rain gear, gloves, and </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">everything double, you know. And the radiation was so intense back there tha</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">t you could only spend about 15 </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">minutes, 20 minutes, or something. And you were back there to replace these </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">bad thermal temperature devices on the rear face. </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">I didn't really like the working in the reactors too much. And I tried to get into the 300</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> A</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">rea labs, which I finally was </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">able to do. They didn't like to let us go out there in areas, but I finally made it. And then we--</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">in the 300 A</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">rea that </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">was very interesting, too. Because there we got the moon rocks and we an</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">alyzed those. And I worked with </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">chemical engineers and whatever to get the right instrumentation. Whatever they ne</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">eded to put that stuff together </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">so they could do what they want. It was interesting work.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Yeah, right.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">We had</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> what they called multi-channel analyzers</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> at that time. We didn't have computers yet. It was</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">—the computer </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">age was just starting.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">If we can go back again to talking about working on the rear face of the reactor. Yo</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">u said, you could</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> only be there for </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">about 15 or 20 minutes. Was that only 15, 20 minutes that day, and then you couldn't go back in again that day?</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Yeah, you were burned out for--well I can't remember the period. You were b</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">urned out. You couldn't go back </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">there for maybe a month.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: Wow. </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">And so I assume y</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">ou had some sort of dos</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">imeter, or badge, or something like that?</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: Yeah, you</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> had pencils and stuff.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Mm-hmm.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Mm-hmm. Which they read when you came off the rear face.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Were there ever any times working there that you had an overexposure, or anything like th</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">at? Or any of your coworkers, </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">or anything along those lines?</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Well, I was never overexposed, I don't believe. I think there probably were some incidences but--</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">None that you were--</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">No.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: Okay</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">They were pretty careful--</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">radiation monitoring</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> were pretty careful to always</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> check the time and they always </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">read the dosimeters. And that was pretty well adhered to.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">And then you said you move</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">d to the labs. Is that the 300 A</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">rea, or--</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Yes.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">And you worked there for several years, or--</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: Yeah, I worked there for—I don’t know—eight</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> years or so, maybe. And then when I quit, I came back as the--</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">I quit for, I think 12 years,</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> when I had my own business.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Mm-hmm.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">And then I came back as a manual writer. It was an engineer</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">’</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">s title. I f</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">orget the glorified name I got. [LAUGHTER] </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">But it was a manual w</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">riter writing procedures N </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">R</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">eactor. Instrument procedures for the--</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">because I was an </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">instrument person. It was an ideal task for me, as an engineer to write the test procedures for</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> instrumentation. For the instrument people there at N</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> R</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">eactor.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">And which company was that, for then? Which contractor that--</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: Phew. UNC.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: Oh, okay</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">My mind isn't very good as far as old stuff because--</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">That's good.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: I just remember the stuff—</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">lucky to remember the stuff today.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">One of the events--sort of big events in this period--President Kennedy came to visit in 1963. Where you working</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">at--</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Kennedy?</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Yeah. President Kennedy.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">I remember that.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Were </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">you on-site? Did you see</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> him?</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Oh</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> yeah.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">I was wondering if you could talk about that at all and describe your memory of that.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Well</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> I just remember that he was here and I saw him. That's about all I remember</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> about it. Yeah. That was quite </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">an event.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Do you remember anything about the day at all, or--</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: Well, e</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">verybody was just really happy and pleased that he came. He was pretty well loved, you know--</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">as a man. </span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">I wonder--you mentioned earlier--some of the security at Hanford and obviously</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> it was a place that emphasized </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">security, secrecy. Did that--in what ways did that impact your work at all? T</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">he sort of focus on security or </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">secrecy?</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Well</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> I don't know h</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">ow far you want to digress from—</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">wherever I want to go?</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Wherever you want to go</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">, yeah</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Well talking about security brings up something that I thought I'd mention. And that </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">is after I got to work there at </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">GE for a</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">while, and talking with regional monitoring people, and stuff like that. Th</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">ey got to know me, and I got to </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">know them, and they found out that</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> I was interested in old cars—antique cars. </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">So one of them told me about--there's an old Chevrolet cab convertible out </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">there in the boonies. Somewhere </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">between H Area and F A</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">rea. And I said, oh really? And I thought the guy was</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> just</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> blow</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">ing wind maybe. I didn't really </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">believe him at the time. But then I got still interested. I got to talking to him an</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">d maybe another monitoring guy, </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">and it sounded like </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">there really was one out there. </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">So I looked into it further and I thought, well if there is, how do I get it? How can I ge</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">t it? So I talked to Purchasing </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">and Purchasing says, well you'll have to bid on it. And I said, can I bit on it? And if</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> so, I don't even know if I can </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">find it. I said, is there a</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> minimum that I can bid for it? </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">No, no min</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">imum. Just fill out the papers. </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">So I bid a minimum of $25. And I got a security clearance to go off the road. B</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">ecause this was just out in the </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">boonies. No roads, just out in the sage brush to look for it. Somewhere </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">between H A</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">rea and Rattlesnake. </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">So I asked a friend of mine who had a Jeep if he'd go out there with me. And we used his Jeep and</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> we hooked a </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">trailer behind, and off we went. We got permission to go out there. A</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">nd we drove around quite a bit. </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">And we finally found it. And we winched it on. And then I thought, well now I wonder if I</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> can</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">get a title for this thing from the state? [LAUGHTER] </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">But being the contract from the government, and that I bought it--the state didn't hesitate</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> at all. And I got a title for it. </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">And this is one of the originals from an</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> old homestead out there. You could still see some remains of the </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">homestead. Of course the government</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> went and destroyed everything. </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">And most of the automobiles--I don't know if you know this--but most of the automobiles that were out there, the</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">government made a special attempt to destroy</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> all the</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> engines. They took sledgehammers and busted the engines up.</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">They made special attempts to--so the automobiles would never be used again. I don't know why, but that's what</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">they did.</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">This one somehow escaped. And the engine was still in it. But the head was off of it. But it was still </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">restorable. And </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">I have not restored it yet, after all these years. But now comes a time when I'm tr</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">ying to get somebody interested </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">in it. And if so, restore it and give it to him. Because I don't have that many years</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> left. I'm hoping that somebody </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">might help me a little bit financially to do it. And I would then donate it to whoever.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">But you still have it after all these years?</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">I still have it. Yup. It's been in the garage for all these years.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: Yeah. </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">That's interesting that it was a car from one of the old town si</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">tes—</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">old home sites t</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">here that was still sitting out </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">there.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Yes. </span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">I had not heard that.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Yes. I brought it up because it is a very rare incident. And I think I'm probably</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> the one and only that has done </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">something like this. At least maybe the first one.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: [LAUGHTER] </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Right.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">And I'm also the first one, like I say, to put a security system out here.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Mm-hmm. So thinking back on your years working at Hanford, what were--</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">and maybe you've already talked </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">about this--what were the most challenging aspects of your work there and the </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">most rewarding parts of working </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">at Hanford?</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Well, most challenging? Hmm. Oh</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> you know</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> it was all challenging, rea</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">lly. [LAUGHTER] It was very different. The instrumentation—w</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">hen I first went out there, I was not a technician. I was a trainee--I had to be a trai</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">nee first. And </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">my technician was not all that</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">—</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">didn't seem like he was there that long either. He didn</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">'t know all that much either, I </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">don't think.</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> [LAUGHTER] </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">And I can remember one incident</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> they had an instrument that had mercury in it. We had to be caref</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">ul how you </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">calibr</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">ated it. And it wasn't my fault, because</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> I was just a trainee. But my technician blew th</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">e mercury out. It went all over </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">the control room which was not a big--nobody really appreciated that too much.</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> That was challenging. That was </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">kind of challenging. You had to be very careful, as an instrument person, with wha</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">t you did. And if you worked in </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">the control room, like in--what's the first--the reactor they're making a--</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: B</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> R</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">eactor?</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: B</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> R</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">eactor. If you worked back there at the panel gauges, you had to be very</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> carefully that you didn't bump </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">something</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> because they were</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> very sensitive. Any movement, </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">jar or something--</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">and you could trip the reactor </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">while the reactor was up. And you had to calibrate some of those things while the reactor w</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">as up. You actually </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">had a lot of responsibility there. If you knocked the reactor down--and you could--</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">you didn't hear too many good </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">comments. [LAUGHTER]</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Yeah. How about the most rewarding part of your work in Hanford?</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Well, when I</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">—</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">I don't know. There was a lot of rewarding things. When I came back to work again after a 12 year</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">hiatus, s</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">o to speak, they closed N R</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">eactor down, a</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">nd I had to find another job. There weren't that many</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> jobs available at PUREX</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> because there</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> was a lot of people looking. PUREX</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> had a job </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">fo</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">r a project engineer job. And I </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">interviewed for it and I said, well I'd kind of like this. But I don't think I'm qualified. I said, </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">I'd like to have it, but I'll be </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">honest with you, I don't think I'm qualified. Because I don't have a degree.</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">A chemical degree is what you should have had for that job. But down the sen</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">ior engineer that was doing the </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">hiring--he called me and he said, Lee, you've got the job if you want it. So I thoug</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">ht, what the heck, I'll try it, you know? [LAUGHTER] </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">But I was able to find the niche there where I was needed. And it just so happe</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">ned they were replacing all the </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">electrical main panels, you know--and everything like that. So I was then the p</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">roject engineer for doing that. </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">And the people from Kaiser, who actually came out and did tests and everything--I</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> had to approve everything that </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">t</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">hey wrote up. And from the PUREX</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> standpoint to see if it was safe, and so on, and s</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">o forth. That was rewarding. It was a challenging job. </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">And then from there, I </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">went to </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Kaiser. And there I got a job writing procedures for e</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">lectrical code violations. So I had</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> to w</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">rite procedures to correct all—</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">b</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">ring all the stuff up to code. </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">This was a little bit out of my element</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> because I was an instrument technician. But I</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> just got the code book out and </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">learned </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">quick</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">. And that was rewarding, too.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">I wanted to go back to--</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">I wore a lot different hats out there.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Yeah, right. I want to go back to almost sort of first question I asked you. You s</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">aid you came from Minnesota and </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">you'd heard these</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> sort of stories of Washington S</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">tate, or whatever. What were yo</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">u doing in Minnesota before you </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">came here? And how much--what did you know about the Hanford site itself? D</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">id you know what was being done </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">at the Hanford site, and that sort of thing?</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Well, I guess I should have known more. I really didn't know anything about it</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> pa</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">rticularly. I was just young, I </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">guess. The recruiter came through and it sounded good. The money sounded good. And some of my--</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">I went to </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Dunwoody Institute there. That's where I hired out from in Minneapolis. And some o</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">f the other students also hired </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">in with GE. So I thought it probably was a good thing to do</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> to start out. Good experience. </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">That's actually what I trained for there at Dunwoody was instrumentation. I went there--</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">I tried to go to college, but </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">I didn't have any money really to support myself. And it was even tough to suppo</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">rt myself at Dunwoody because I </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">didn't have no help at all. I had to work part-time every night.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Do you remember how much your first job at Hanford paid? </span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: Oh, boy. [LAUGHTER] I don't. But there was over</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">time, of course. It paid pretty well. Although I've made m</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">ore even before that, one time. </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">It's a little off the subject again. But I worked on the Garrison Dam in North Dakota. And here agai</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">n, I wore a </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">different hat. Me and a buddy of mine, we hired in--we bought a brand new toolb</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">ox, put it a saw in it, hammer, </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">and blah, blah, blah. And hi</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">red in there at the Dam as </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">journeymen carpenters. The union--</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">which is real </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">strong--they'd been needing people so bad that the union official didn't chec</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">k us out, which he should have. </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">And big money. I saved the checks for a long time. We went double-time. Wor</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">ked on Sundays. An astronomical </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">amount of money. But then we got greedy because we heard they were making </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">even more on the outlet side. I </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">think I worked on the inlet side, </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">and we when on the outlet side. </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Well, I worked there about two weeks an</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">d then union guy got wise and</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> we had to quit. I can't remember but I it was a couple of hundred dollar</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">s a week, which was pretty good </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">money at that time. I don't remember.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">You talked earlier about finding the car, and being able to purchase the car, I guess.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Yeah.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: Were there a</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">ny other sort of unique things that happened or things that stand out in your mem</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">ory during your time working at </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Hanford?</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">No, other than </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">meeting a girlfriend out there. [LAUGHTER] </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">I don't know. I worked in almost every are</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">a out there. I worked in all the</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">hundred areas. I worked at PUREX. I </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">worked in 200 A</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">reas</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">, </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">300 A</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">reas. I worked in almost ev</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">ery lab in 300 A</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">rea. I worked in 325, in all of</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> them,</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> 329.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Of all the different places you worked, the different jobs that you had--was there one that you enjoyed the most</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">, t</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">hat was--looking back on it, you'd say it was maybe your favorite job that you had out there?</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">W</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">ell, all the work I did in 300 A</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">rea was very pleasing to me. And of course after</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> that things changed a lot when </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">they start shutting down things. I really did</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> like N </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">R</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">eactor. I will say that. They were the--</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">of all the places I </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">worked, it was like a family</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">. They were the friendliest,</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> nicest bunch of people</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> to work with. Everybody seemed to </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">know everybody, and you know, it was very pleasant.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">So it's a group of people you worked with that made that so enjoyable.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: Yeah. Yeah, the whole N </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">A</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">rea was just--I r</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">eally hated to see that close. It was, l</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">ike I say, like a family.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">So if you look back at your time working at Hanford, overall, how would you assess your experience </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">working in the </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Hanford site?</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Well it--other than what happened to me changing jobs all the time, other than that bitterness--</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">really my </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">employer was the government. And they should be the ones that--</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">I shouldn't—</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">break </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">in service, and all that stuff. </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">You shouldn't have lost it like I did. I lost it when I quit. And then I went back to w</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">ork there again. But that's the </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">bitterness I have.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Mm-hmm</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Which you'll probably leave out of this interview. [LAUGHTER] But other than</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> that</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">, it was a--I'd never tried it really. </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">It </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">was a wealth of experience and rewarding. Like I say, we did interesting thin</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">gs. Counted moon samples and it </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">was very interesting--always. All the experiments we did, it was different. The </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">engineers were always trying to </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">think of something different to do. How to lower the background so that you could </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">count very low background stuff </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">and radiat</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">ion. It was always interesting, always challenging. </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">And then after that when the work there at 300, when I quit and went back, it w</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">asn't fun anymore then. I mean, </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">then things are closing do</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">wn, pretty much. I closed PUREX </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">down. I worked there </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">and then they quit. They closed </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">down. N</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> R</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">eact</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">or closed down. And everything was</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> closing down. That's when the fun stopped, kind of.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Yeah, I was going to ask you then obviously, at some point, the effort shifts fro</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">m production to clean up. And I </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">wondered how that impacted some of the things that you did? Was it that you sa</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">w a lot things shutting down at </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">that point?</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Well</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> after things started shutting down, of course just overall morale went down. And the sense of purpose didn't</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">seem to be there anymore.</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> </span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">I teach a class on the Cold War. And a lot of my students that I teach were bor</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">n after the Cold War ended. And </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">obviously, you were employed at</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> Hanford in the 1950s and 1960</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">s--the height o</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">f the Cold War in many ways. If </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">you were talking to someone who didn't really know much about the Cold War, or was born after it ended</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">—how </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">would you explain or describe Hanford during that time?</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Well</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> let's see. That's a big question. How do I feel about it? Do I approve of ho</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">w the government just took over </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">things and ordered everybody out without any money? Reimbursement until much l</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">ater? How do I feel about that? </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Well</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> I've got mixed emotions about some of that stuff. How do I feel about dro</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">pping the bomb on Hiroshima? We </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">made the stuff and how do I feel about that? I still have probably mixed emotions ab</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">out that, too. But I guess it's </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">something we ha</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">d to do. I have to accept that. </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">One thing I will say, what went on at Hanford could never have happened in the ti</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">me frame that it happened there </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">at Hanford. How they d</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">esigned and built like the PUREX</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> B</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">uilding, for instance. I</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">t's simply amazing. Outstanding </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">workmanship and performance. It's unbelievable</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> almost</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">, w</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">hat happened in that sho</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">rt period of time. And it was a very dedicated workforce. </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Of course we didn't know a lot of what we were doing when we first came out here re</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">ally. But we just did our work. </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">It was interesting. And we all really were dedicated and liked our job.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Is there anything I haven't asked you about yet? Or is there anything else about y</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">our experiences at Hanford that </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">you'd like to talk that you haven't had the chance to talk about yet?</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Gee, I don't know. I h</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">ave a son that still works out—</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">more or less works for Hanford</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">. And he is getting a furlough, </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">maybe </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">today. Because our government’s</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"> shutt</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">ing down. Mixed emotions again. [LAUGHTER] </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">As far as Hanford, like I say, it was a good experience for me. And I'm not sorry I came out here. Not sorry </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">I went </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">to work for Hanford. Lots of good memories. And a lot of my friends, a course </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">though who are gone. I'm one of those hold-outs. [LAUGHTER] </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Yeah, </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">just so many of my friends that hired </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">in when I did, they're no l</span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">onger around. I'm 83 right now, </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">so. Yup, time goes fast.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Well, I want to thank you for coming in today and sharing your memories and experiences. I appreciate it.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX145880437"><span class="TextRun SCX145880437"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Noga</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX145880437">Thank you.</span><span class="EOP SCX145880437"> </span></p>
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Bit Rate/Frequency
Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio)
192 Kbps
Location
The location of the interview
Washington State University - Tri-Cities
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:41:57
Hanford Sites
Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview
K Area
K-West Area
300 Area
H Area
F Area
N Reactor
B Reactor
Plutonium Uranium Extraction Plant (PUREX)
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site
1955-2013
Years on Hanford Site
Years on the Hanford Site, if any.
1955-1960
Names Mentioned
Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community.
Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Leroy Noga
Description
An account of the resource
An interview with Leroy Noga conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Mission Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy.
Creator
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Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Date Modified
Date on which the resource was changed.
2016-06-17: Metadata v1 created – [J.G.]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
10/15/2013
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item.
Format
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video/mp4
Provenance
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The Hanford Oral History Project operates under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who are the primary contractors for the US Department of Energy's curatorial services relating to the Hanford site. This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to this US Department of Energy collection.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Richland (Wash.)
Hanford (Wash.)
Hanford Site (Wash.)
Nuclear instruments & methods
300 Area
B Reactor
F Area
H Area
Hanford (Wash.)
Hunting
K Area
K-West Area
Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963
N Reactor
Plutonium Uranium Extraction Plant (PUREX)
Richland (Wash.)
-
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66652e9837d55e920d43539024b709a9
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F427796f012ecab479d8a74d099f98483.mp4
66caf5583bbb52ba26c7f7cb60a15e08
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Pre-1943 Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area prior to the Manhattan Project
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area prior to the Manhattan Project
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Robert Bauman
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Finley, Catherine
Location
The location of the interview
Washington State University - Tri Cities
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p><strong>Northwest Public Television | Finley_Catherine</strong></p>
<p>Robert Bauman: You ready? Ready to get started?</p>
<p>Catherine Finley: I guess.</p>
<p>Bauman: Okay. My name is Robert Bauman, and I'm conducting an oral history interview with Catherine Borden Finley. And today is July 9, 2013. And the interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. And I will be talking with Catherine Finley about her family's history and about her memories and experiences growing up in White Bluffs. And so maybe we should start. I'll ask you about your family, if you could tell me how and why or when your family came to the area, the White Bluffs area.</p>
<p>Finley: My father, Archie Borden, was born in White Bluffs. And his mother and his father, George Borden, come down from Priest Rapids some way. His father was a government surveyor. And he come down the river and settled in White Bluffs. And Grandma Pete came from Ellensburg. Her grandma [INAUDIBLE]. And they married, and they had the three sons. George Borden made a living by running horses between the river and Gable Mountain, and the army bought them. So let's see. And he drowned in the river when my dad was eight years old in 1906.</p>
<p>Bauman: And--</p>
<p>Finley: Pardon?</p>
<p>Bauman: He operated the ferry at White Bluffs?</p>
<p>Finley: Yes.</p>
<p>Bauman: In addition to running the horses.</p>
<p>Finley: George Borden also owned the ferry, and he had land. He was quite successful for that time. And my mother, she come from South Dakota. And I don't know why they made it up in White Bluffs. But they were married in 1927.</p>
<p>Bauman: And what was your mother's family's name?</p>
<p>Finley: Shanahan. And they had the seven children. And the oldest one just passed away last year. So there's still six of us left. And one of dad's brothers had three children. And we had lots of cousins and not too close together. It was quite sparsely settled, because of the orchards and pastures and things like that. We lived about two miles north of White Bluffs. And we just grew up. We had all sorts of things to do. We had all the animals for pets.</p>
<p>Bauman: What kind of animals did you have?</p>
<p>Finley: Oh, we had horses and cows and sheep and dogs and cats and lots of little banty chickens, which we packed every place. The sheep my dad kept on Locke’s Island and brought them over in the winter so they would lamb on the mainland. The cattle, the cows, stayed on the home place. We rode the cows. [LAUGHTER] I don't know if Dad ever knew that, but we did. [LAUGHTER] And now we also had horses that we rode. And that was not the main entertainment that we had or what kids do, but we spent many hours on the horses and playing with the other animals. And the neighbor kids migrated even though it was like a mile or more to the place, and we had the cousins to play with. And we played with the Indian children when they'd come in twice a year to fish, Johnny and his--I don't know how many. I think there was four or five men in the crew and their wives. And they were great playmates, those Indian boys were.</p>
<p>Bauman: What time of year would that have been?</p>
<p>Finley: They'd come in the spring for the spring salmon run. And they’d come back in the fall for the fall salmon run. And they dried their fish on long racks on the river, on the bar. And their horses were then turned loose on the bar with everybody else's. So we had a lot of fun with them. I think they're gone now.</p>
<p>Bauman: And about how long would they stay in the area during the spring?</p>
<p>Finley: They were there probably like a month, maybe a little longer, whenever the salmon run was that year. And they always had racks and racks of salmon. So it must have been very good fishing. And they fished at night. They had their canoes that they stored in dugout cellars and little wire pots. And they put hot coals in them or burned something, and anyway put them over the canoe, and the fish would come to the light. And they'd dip them. And then they'd bring them all in in the morning, and then the women proceeded to process them. [LAUGHTER] But it was interesting and a lot of fun. And we learned a lot from them. And Johnny was very, very interesting. He was the chief of the--they were Wanapum Indians. And then at the end of the season, then they would go either--sometimes they went on to the Yakima. Apparently they caught another type of fish there, down here at the Horn's Rapid Dam. Otherwise, they went back up to Priest Rapids and lived in their teepees until the dam was built. And they still lived in their teepees. They parked the car in the living room at the house that was built. And as I say, it was very interesting. And then when they closed it all, they went to the Yakima Reservation, or to Toppenish. But we played with--there was many different nationalities of children there, and we not only went to school with them, they were always welcome at home. And we were just as welcome in their home.</p>
<p>Bauman: Do you remember any of the neighbor families or children?</p>
<p>Finley: Oh, yeah, there was Johnson. They didn't have any children. They had a nice dairy. And Killians was a German family. Supplee was a German family. Walkers was a French family. I don't remember what the Goodners were. But they were all very successful in fruit. My dad didn't have any fruit, but he traded sheep for fruit, bartered. And we were very fortunate all during the Depression that that's what happened. So we were never hungry. We didn’t really know--I imagine the folks knew what the Depression was. Us kids didn't. We never had bought toys that I remember. My dad would carve things out of wood, out of mostly bark that come down the river, I don’t know, boats and mangers and whatever happened to be handy. But we could always go down on the bar with him--we never were allowed to go to the river by ourselves--and pick up odd driftwood. And we made animals out of them for some reason and rocks. Rocks made wonderful trucks and cars and just any old thing—corrals to keep all these stick animals in. And we went to school in a four-room schoolhouse. It was a large white building, divided in four rooms. And that was about a little over a mile from where we lived. So in the spring and in the fall when it was still warm, we walked to school. And Mr. Anderson, the school bus driver, would pick us up during the winter when it was cold. And he was a father of Harry Anderson that was quite active in the White Bluffs picnic when it was here.</p>
<p>Bauman: Do you remember any of your teachers from the school?</p>
<p>Finley: Yes, Mrs. Moody. Mrs. Moody, I remember her well. She taught kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade, and sometimes fourth grade, depending on how many children were present. And then my second teacher I had there was a Ms. Smit. And she taught the fourth, depending on who had the most room in the classroom, and fifth and sixth. And the seventh and eighth graders got to go upstairs. They were special. They were really big folks. But then when the government come in, the last year they held school we went for six days a week so we could get the time in because the letters come in early spring, like in February, and not knowing when they would close or however they were going to work it, so we were out of school the first part of May.</p>
<p>Bauman: So you went an extra day to make up for the--</p>
<p>Finley: Yeah, to make up for the school days that we wouldn't be able to go to school.</p>
<p>Bauman: So how old were you at the time, then?</p>
<p>Finley: I was in the--hm, gotta think. Fifth grade when they closed the school. I was a year older because I liked one grade real well. And the sixth grade I spent in Hanford. And then the folks moved and we went to Benton City. But it was fun. It was interesting, like I said. Sometimes I kind of feel sorry for kids that have so much that they didn't have to work for. They weren’t, you know, not denied--but we didn't know we were being denied anything. We didn't know we were supposed to be poor. [LAUGHTER] Or that he didn't have a car. Dad had a car, but he never used it. He rode one of the horses into work. It was just easier, and he could sleep coming home because the horse would come home.</p>
<p>Bauman: Did you place have electricity at all?</p>
<p>Finley: Oh, yes, we had electricity. We had indoor plumbing, until the government moved in and they cut it all off. I mean the plumbing and the water, stopped all the wells and brought our water out to us in 250-gallon wooden barrels every day. In the summer they'd put ice in them so it would be cold. Winter, they'd chip the ice off. Oh, and put us up a nice, new toilet. We really thought that was--an outside toilet with a moon and a star. Now, why that impressed kids, I don't know. But it did.</p>
<p>Bauman: What about a telephone? Did you have a telephone?</p>
<p>Finley: Oh, yeah, we had phones. My grandfather, Grandpa Shanahan, Mama's father, worked for the telephone company, Wilkerson and Brown out of Kennewick, had the telephone company. And then of course, when the government come in, the government had it. My dad was a refrigeration engineer. He made ice for the railroad. And in the summer, they would bring their fruit cars down, and he would pack each end of the car with ice. And they put all their produce and food in the center. And as long as it was moving, there were fans moving in it, and it kept it cold. And that railroad went back to Othello, and the Milwaukee line picked them up.</p>
<p>Bauman: Okay.</p>
<p>Finley: But we got to go on the train. We got to ride in the caboose. If we wanted to go to Seattle, we rode in the caboose. And the brakie took care of us, no trouble at all. Mom would just put us on the train, and by that time, my grandparents had moved to Seattle. And he'd go down to King's Station and take us off, and then put us back on when our visit was over, and we'd come back.</p>
<p>Bauman: Did you get to do that very often?</p>
<p>Finley: We done it probably twice a year. Sometimes we stayed longer. Sometimes it was just a short time.</p>
<p>Bauman: Now, how big was your property?</p>
<p>Finley: I really don't know. We didn't have a large place. The most I think, other than orchard, I think most of the land was kind of leased, because the island, he owned. And the government bought that. But I don't know how much land they had on the mainland. It seemed like an awful lot once in a while.</p>
<p>Bauman: And so in addition to the house that was on your property, were there other buildings on the property as well?</p>
<p>Finley: On the last house we lived in, yes, there was a barn, and there was this two-story house. And there was a large barn and the chicken coop and whatever buildings that would be on a farm. On the other one, there was a barn and a chicken coop. And they called them soldier tracks at that time because they were built for the men coming back from World War I. And there was a house and a barn a chicken coop and a nice, new toilet. That always seemed to be very important. And, well, it wasn't occupied then. Some other person could lease it for the land. I don't know how many acres were in even those places. But in one of Dad's places, it was up, and then there was a flat, and then it dropped on down to the river, to the river bar. And there was a lot of land in that place, as I remember. It looked like a lot of land to a kid.</p>
<p>Bauman: Now again, how many siblings did you have, how many brothers and sisters?</p>
<p>Finley: Seven. I have one brother, and I had five sisters.</p>
<p>Bauman: And were you all born in White Bluffs?</p>
<p>Finley: Mm-hm. Teresa was the last one. She was born in '43, I think.</p>
<p>Bauman: Okay. So we talked about the school. I was wondering about other community events or celebrations.</p>
<p>Finley: Oh, they had the grange hall down in Old Town, which is where the ferry landed. That was where any big gathering was held. It was a bigger building. And we had a theater that run movies. Mr. Anderson, the school bus driver, he also run the theater. And I think he brought a show in probably like once a month for kids and adults. And there was a lot of little school plays. And the high school, there was always the high school. And there was always the ball games. So there was there was a lot to do, as I remember.</p>
<p>Bauman: You mentioned that your father wouldn't let you go down to the river without him there, is that--?</p>
<p>Finley: An adult had to be with us.</p>
<p>Bauman: Did you ever go swimming in the river?</p>
<p>Finley: Oh, yeah. We swam in the river. And he went back and forth across river all the time. He had a boat, and the river was part of living. But Mom always made sure that we didn't go down by ourselves.</p>
<p>In the summertime when the water come up, it come up clear up almost over the whole bar. And it was very swift, because it went through, cut off like an island. There Barrett's Island. And the water flowed through that in the main island, and it was swift. And the river was quite narrow then, because there was no dams on it. And I think Dad always said it went at 12 miles an hour. And there were whirlpools that his dad drowned in, was a whirlpool. And so we were well watched. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Bauman: [LAUGHTER] Sure.</p>
<p>Finley: And we played with the cows. Like I said, we had the cows we rode.</p>
<p>Bauman: You mentioned taking the train to Seattle.</p>
<p>Finley: Mm-hm.</p>
<p>Bauman: Did you go to any of the other communities, Pasco or to [INAUDIBLE]?</p>
<p>Finley: They would go to Yakima. And that's where I was born, and then they took me to White Bluffs. And I don't know why they went to Yakima, because that was about 60. And Pasco must have had the hospital by then. But they didn't have a bridge across it. So they had to ferry there. And I don't know why they didn't. Probably because Benton County wasn't a county at that time. There was a Yakima County, but no Benton County. And that's where they went, and Pasco. And we went to Walla Walla and Prosser, of course. Then by the time I was born, that was a county, so then all the business had to be tended there.</p>
<p>Bauman: We talked a little bit about when the government came in 1943 and the impact it had on the school and the school days, an extra day. I was wondering what memories you have of that. What response did your parents have to being told that they had to leave?</p>
<p>Finley: It was very hard for my dad. Because he had lived there his life. And I think one thing that was bad, they just come in and took the property and said, the next letter, you have 10 days to leave. And nobody knew when that 10 days was there. Some of them got their letters very early. My mom and dad didn't get theirs until they closed the plant. Nobody could go into it. But the fruit farmers had to leave their crops on their trees. And that was very hard on them, and no future, no money, cash in hand, like that they could go out and buy another place. And most of them had just been farmers, so they were spread all over. I mean, they moved wherever they could get a place to live. And it was hard on them. My dad sold sheep and sold most of the cattle, kept a couple of the horses. And he moved to Benton City in '44, I think, we moved there finally. But he worked there. He kept his job there as making ice.</p>
<p>Bauman: Okay.</p>
<p>Finley: Though the train didn't use it for that purpose or transporting food. DuPont used it for the summer months. They had huge, large holes in the ground. They just dug down in rock and covered it with sawdust, put sawdust in it. And you covered it with plastic and put ice in it, and then covered it again. And then in the summer when the plant couldn't produce enough ice for their needs, they dug that up or uncovered it and took it out, it was just like when they put it in there. We watched him do that, going back and forth to Hanford on the bus. Because the bus ran parallel of where they were building this vast hole in the ground. And that was very interesting. Because no kid could understand what they were doing. And at the same part, they were building F area. So we watched that, what you could see of it. You never knew if you were going to get home at night on the school bus for fear they’d dug a trench across the road.</p>
<p>Bauman: You actually stayed there. You were there for several months after they started constructing--</p>
<p>Finley: Yes, oh, yeah, we were there probably a year and a half after--no, we were there longer than that after we got the letter. Like I said, we were the very last ones out there. We left and the gate was--the civilians couldn't go back in then, just the workmen. They had taken out all of Camp Hanford. And all of the construction work was done, or finishing work on the plants that they had started to build. After we left, they built some more. They put H in right down where we lived, tore down everything. They tore down—they put bulldozers through most of the buildings out there, probably to prevent coyotes and rats and whatever else from occupying them.</p>
<p>Bauman: Do you remember what you were told about what was being done out there?</p>
<p>Finley: As I remember the letter, it just said that on such-and-such a day, your land was taken by the government. And no, nobody knew what was going on. And that caused a lot of hard feelings, because they had their share of boys that went to the service. And they weren't allowed back in to see their parents who were working there. Like the Gilhulys, they had the garage. They run the garage. And all of the town people that had businesses, if they had a boy, the boy couldn't come back, which made a lot of hard feelings. And there again, as I said, they took everything, or changed all the housing. They put many families in--they would put two families to a home if there was enough room for two bedrooms, because there was no housing for all of these thousands of people coming in. And we didn't have to share our house, but any house that had been vacated, that's how they utilized them and took down the outbuildings of any barns or sheds or things like that. They were very nice people, the ones that come in. We got to know a lot of them, being kids. It was DuPont that come and took our house. We weren't happy about that.</p>
<p>Bauman: The families that you got to know who came, were they from all over the place?</p>
<p>Finley: Oh, yeah, one family was from Alabama. One was from Louisiana. One was from Boston. And I can remember us kids talking and laughing. We'd laugh at them, because they talked different from us. And we talked different from them to them, too. [LAUGHTER] But they were all nice people.</p>
<p>Bauman: And you mentioned that your father owned the island?</p>
<p>Finley: Yes, mm-hm.</p>
<p>Bauman: And he sold that?</p>
<p>Finley: The government bought that.</p>
<p>Bauman: The government bought it from him. Do you know how much money he received for that?</p>
<p>Finley: No, it wasn’t--I don't know how much they got. First they leased it, and when they knew that it was going to be--I guess; I don't have any other reason--a longer span of time, they bought the island and turned it over to, I think, Fish and Wildlife habitat. It's still there. He was very proud of that island because there was a large Indian cemetery on it. And he guarded that with his life to keep it from being dug. And several times during the night, he'd go. If he saw a bonfire over there, he'd go down to the river and row across it and get them off the island. And also, so they wouldn't set it afire. But he guarded that cemetery with his eye teeth.</p>
<p>Bauman: I just want to go back to the community itself a little bit again. You talked a little bit about the grange, was it?</p>
<p>Finley: The grange, mm-hm.</p>
<p>Bauman: And school. Were there churches that were nearby?</p>
<p>Finley: Oh, yes. There was a Methodist church and a Presbyterian church, a Catholic church. But there was many different religions. There was Seventh Day Adventists. In 1937 I believe it was--I'm not sure about the dates, they brought--and I don't even know how many. I think there was something like 13 families of Mormons in, which was kind of sad. Because they brought them in in August, and they had no time to put wood in or gather wood or canned--only what they could bring. And it was a very long, cold winter. And they did suffer. I mean, us kids thought, oh, they must have been poor. [LAUGHTER] Because they didn't have wood. I can remember my dad going and getting a couple of the men, and we had a flume in the river, which in high water caught all the logs and everything coming down the river. And he took them down there and told him to get what wood they needed to keep from freezing. And that winter, as I said, was very, very cold. And it was a very long winter. It was just kind of unfortunate.</p>
<p>Bauman: Were those families able to stay on?</p>
<p>Finley: Oh, yeah. They, come the next spring, they planted their gardens like everybody else did and went to work for one of the fruit farmers. And most of them didn't leave until the government come in. They were very nice people.</p>
<p>Bauman: The town itself, I was going to ask you, are there any--you mentioned there was a theater. Were there any businesses that you remember at the time?</p>
<p>Finley: Oh, yeah, on one side of the street there was a barber shop and drugstore and a grocery store. And the hotel burned down. I don't know when, but in the '30s, it burned. And then there was a bank and a tavern and a little park where they had the bands and things and a post office and a tavern. They had all the good things in life. A couple of gas stations, the train depot and a creamery, or where everybody took their cream in for the Twin City Creamery to come out and get. They picked it up. And I'm trying to think what else they had--and the coal storage. The coal storage I think was the largest building there. Well, the concrete part’s still standing. They didn't take down, but all around this--or on two sides if it, because one side was next to the railroad, there was packing sheds for fruit. And Dad just filled up huge canyons with ice to ship the fruit. There was a lumber yard there. Really, it was quite complete. And Hanford was also quite complete. They each had a ferry to get back and forth across the ferry. And then there was another ferry up the river, the Wahluke Ferry, which- I'm trying to think of where their end was. I think the Wahluke ended at Burke's Corners, up above the road. And it went to Ephrata. The White Bluffs Ferry went to Othello, the road. And the Hanford Ferry went out what is now the blocks. You could get to Ringgold and all in that area. And there was a road up down the other side of the river. It went from Uncle Matt's place, you could go up to Ringgold.</p>
<p>Bauman: I think you mentioned earlier something about a baseball team, sports, I’m wondering about, for the schools.</p>
<p>Finley: We had baseball teams. They had I think mainly basketball. I don't remember football. But there again, I wouldn't have been interested in that. But they always had music. They had bands. All three of the towns had bands. And yeah, because somebody told me they went to White Bluffs to play baseball one time. So they must have had a team. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Bauman: When you mentioned that when your family did leave, you moved to Benton City?</p>
<p>Finley: Yes.</p>
<p>Bauman: And did your father have sheep and cattle there again?</p>
<p>Finley: No, we had a milk cow for a long time, and then we finally give that up. But we kept the horses. We always had horses. All us kids rode. He did, too. He was a really good horseman. But these weren't-- mostly just us kids' horses. And he just rented pasture for those. We didn't have any land for a long time. We had a building in town and a house, but we didn't have any land. Eventually, he did buy land. And part of the kids still live there. Three of my sisters still live there.</p>
<p>Bauman: So you all grew up, spent the rest of your years [INAUDIBLE].</p>
<p>Finley: Yes, we all stayed together. I'm trying think. I think Veronica is the furthest one away, and she is in Goldendale, so she didn't get too far. One lives in Pendleton. My brother went to--was it Korea or Vietnam? Must have been Korea. That was in the '50s, yeah. And when he come back, he spent his time on different islands. Thank God he didn't--he joined the Navy, and he became a mechanic, an air mechanic. And they put him on the islands. He come back, went to school, went to college, got his degree in education and went back to the South Seas and taught there until he retired. And he's just younger than I am. He bought land and built himself a house up at Chesaw when he come back, which is up by Oroville, I think, and happy as a lark.</p>
<p>Bauman: I was wondering what you think would be important for people to know about what it was like growing up in White Bluffs? What sort of a place it was.</p>
<p>Finley: It was warm. It was a very warm community. The people were your friends. And they helped each other. If somebody needed something, somebody would either share or give or provide for them. And they didn't do it for--just because family needed it at that time. Or if one was sick, somebody was always available to take them to the hospital, which was either Pasco or Yakima. And I think it was just-- and to be happy. The people were happy. There weren't--not too many grouchy ones that I can remember. And to do with what you have. Don't want something more if you can't afford it, I guess, in this day and age. Just be happy with what you have, and work for something better.</p>
<p>Bauman: There's one question I meant to ask you earlier that I'll ask you now, and that is the weather in the area. I know we get high winds and dust storms.</p>
<p>Finley: Yes, there was high—</p>
<p>Bauman: What about growing up? Did that impact your community at all?</p>
<p>Finley: No. The ground wasn't tore up like it is now. So we didn't have the massive--I don't remember the dust storms, let me put it that way. We did have wind. And it was very cold in the winter and very hot in the summer. I mean, it was 120 and nobody thought anything about it. Very few shade trees. So it was hot, but you could always got get a pan of water. Mom used to--the wash tubs that they had then, she'd fill one every day and put it outside and us kids played in it. And I guess we were just used to it, because it didn't seem to bother us. And cold, as I said, the school bus took us to school in the winter because it was cold, and it was a mile or a little more to school. And there was no shelter, no nothing. You just were walking on sand. That's mostly what's out there.</p>
<p>Bauman: Yeah. Do you remember the river ever freezing over at all?</p>
<p>Finley: I don't. I don't remember it freezing. My dad would tell about the river freezing, and that's how they brought their sheep down. They kept them on--I don't know why they took them to the mountains, either, but they took them to pasture in the summer and then wait for the water to freeze to bring them over. And they lambed and sheared before the thaw so they could get them back across the river. Otherwise they had to ferry them or drag them clear down and put them across the bridge that they had then built between Pasco and Kennewick. And that was quite dangerous, he said, because they could only run so many sheep at a time. And it took a long time to put a band of sheep across. I can remember being--we had a cow that got down the outside one time, and she froze, instead of getting in the barn where she belonged. She was a young heifer, and she just didn't know, I guess. But people prepared for it. They knew it was going to be cold. It got cold early in the year. And it stayed that way until March or April. Now, the river didn't stay froze that long. It was just cold. But it wasn't cold enough to keep that river frozen. But they took the horse and everything else across it. I mean, he remembers it. But I remember the freezing out quite far from the bank, but not freezing across where they could put animals on it.</p>
<p>Bauman: Right. Is there anything I haven't asked you about or any family stories or special memories that stand out that--</p>
<p>Finley: [LAUGHTER] What kids do for entertainment?</p>
<p>Bauman: Sure. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Finley: Yeah. [LAUGHTER] We had this real nice family down the road a ways, and they had a mule. That was one of those poor Mormons that didn't know what they were getting into. And they had two boys. And Delores and I decided one day that we would put the mule harness on a horse. We did not know that there was the difference in them. There is. So we took Dolly, the horse, and took her up on the little knoll and hooked her to this wagon. I don't know where us kids got the wagon. Somebody gave it to us. And hooked the horse. We didn't know you were supposed to have shafts or something on this to stop this wagon. Well, she went to barn with this wagon bumping her all the time in the back end. And Dad came out and was quite upset because we had knocked the door off the barn. So we went in. We took Dolly, took her back out to the pasture. And we thought, well, now we've done that, and that was because it was too steep. That hill was too steep. So Mom and Dad had to go to Yakima. And us kids stayed at home, because there was nothing, nobody there to harm us. You know? [LAUGHTER] And we left Randall, my brother. We took this cow, Dolly, and put this mule harness on her. I don't know how. [LAUGHTER] And took her up about a quarter of a mile from the place through an old cut down apple orchard. And when we waved our hands and dropped them down, Randall was supposed to sic the dog on the calf in the barn. Well, Delores didn't make it to the wagon. She put me in first, and that cow went home. When we got home, the wagon did not survive it. And Dad couldn't figure out what was wrong with old Dolly that night. She was so touchy when he went to milk her. [LAUGHTER] We didn't try that again. But there was always two of us, so if one got in trouble, we could share it. One time we took the sheep who were over still on the mainland. And he had a nasty, nasty buck, but he produced good lambs. And there again, we were warned, you don't get in that corral with that buck. Because he actually could have killed a kid, I imagine, if he’d, you know. And Delores and I figured and figured if we got two ropes on him, we could tie him to two different posts in the corral. And then we could ride him. This is a big sucker, nice long wool and everything he had. And we did. Well, finally we wore—anyway, we rode that poor, old buck ‘til he just laid down. And Dad couldn't figure out what was--his name was George-- couldn't figure out what was wrong with George that night, because he just didn't want to eat anything. We never told him until we were grown--and I guess we were both married by that time—what happened to George.</p>
<p>Bauman: Figured it was safe to tell him then.</p>
<p>Finley: He just looked at us and he said, well, that's probably only one of the things you done that I didn't know about, sweetheart. [LAUGHTER] But we created our own fun. And to us, it was not mean or cruel or mischievous, because we knew the cow wouldn't die. She was too ornery. And we finally broke Dolly to ride with a saddle, so that was a little safer, too. We just had fun and grew up. And I don't know what else we done. Spent 13, 14 years there. I must have done something more. We worked hard in the summer. I remember that. Because Mom had to can. She canned the fruit. If somebody butchered--it always surprised me that if somebody in the community butchered, and they had too much meat, then it was spread out. Because there was no way of keeping it. And neighbors got along well that way.</p>
<p>Bauman: So what sorts of work or chores did you do as a young child growing up? What sorts of things did you help out with?</p>
<p>Finley: Oh heck, I could cook a meal by the time I was in the third grade. I learned to make bread, canned. We all canned. That was a whole family project. It wasn't just one person there, because it all had to be done on a cook stove. And somebody had to bring in wood and peel fruit. It had to be continuous. And what else? I remember Mama canning meat one time--twice. And that had to be cooked for six hours. Because it was just a water bath. They didn't have pressure. Later on, I guess, there was pressure cookers. But that's how they cooked it, put it in a wash boiler. And I think it held 12 quarts, the wash boiler did. And they cooked it all day, all day long. And that stove had to be kept burning. So on that day also, if you were canning, you also made bread. Because the oven was hot. And it was busy. It was a busy time. And then in spring, they had to take care of the stock. And the fruit was a little bit earlier than what it is here. It was just like a week earlier. Of course, it ended a week earlier, too. But there was always tomatoes and Mom put up an awful lot of tomatoes and peaches. I can remember that.</p>
<p>Bauman: So you grew a lot of your own--</p>
<p>Finley: Grandma Pete, my dad's mother, was a peach farmer. So they always had peaches. And she also grew a very large garden. Or they would go down to Ringgold and there was the Japanese family there that had a truck farm. You could always get your tomatoes there in quantity.</p>
<p>Bauman: Do you remember what their name was?</p>
<p>Finley: The name of the--</p>
<p>Bauman: Japanese family?</p>
<p>Finley: No, I have no idea. We just went down there and they were wonderful gardeners. They had everything up off the ground. They planted the plants and then they put chicken wire mesh panels over it so that the tomato plant grew up through the mesh and all the tomatoes then were on the wire. They were never on the ground. I always thought that was amazing. And they had corn. They had all vegetables. I just remember the folks buying the cantaloupe and the tomatoes. But they had-- I imagine it was a good sized truck farm. It was to me then. But I don't actually how big it was. And there was always apples. And apricot trees grow wild almost, so there was always plenty of apricots and apples. There was somebody had apple trees that they couldn't use them up. And they just simply shared. They had too much, they shared. It really kind of spoiled people for today. There's a lot I can't understand about today, why people don't get along better. [LAUGHTER] But I'm trying to think what else us kids would do. We played on a pile of gravel. That was our mountain. White Bluffs was very flat. Because the bluffs surrounded the whole river. The river is on our side, but you know. And unless you went to Yakima, there's a very small opening between Rattlesnake and the Bluffs in reality, just enough for the river to flow through. It was quite flat and hot. So you could do most anything. You could swim in the irrigation ditch.</p>
<p>Bauman: Where was the pile of gravel that you--</p>
<p>Finley: What?</p>
<p>Bauman: Where was the pile of gravel that you played on?</p>
<p>Finley: Oh, the pile of gravel? Well, I guess they were going to gravel the road. They never got it done because they just piled this big pile of gravel there across the road from us. Well, for a long time, there was a sign on it. I don't know what the sign said. But there was one on it. [LAUGHTER] But it was sloped on one side, and then you could jump off the steep side, see. Boy, oh boy, we'd run up and jump off and run up and jump off. Daddy come out and says, now you know, Joe's going to get after you for that. Well, Joe didn't see us, so I guess we thought we were safe. It's still out there today, but it isn't near as large as I thought it was. I've been out a couple of times while I worked there in the '50s. I worked out there and drove that same circuit.</p>
<p>Bauman: What part of the site did you work at, what did you--?</p>
<p>Finley: I worked out of 300. I delivered instruments to the areas. So I had to go to each area every day. And I've been there since then also, and the roads are still there if you know where you're going. You can get around pretty good. Now, they're not in top--some of them are still paved.</p>
<p>Bauman: So how long did you work there, then?</p>
<p>Finley: I worked out there two years. And then we had a family, and I didn't go back to work.</p>
<p>Bauman: When is the last time you were out there?</p>
<p>Finley: Oh, let's see. The White Bluffs picnic--I don't quite remember when it stopped. But every year, you could go out there if you went to the picnic. You could drive out there on one afternoon. I think it was Saturday afternoon. And you could go through town. You went through town, and down to the old ferry landing, down to Old Town. And then in later years, if you could, you could go to where your home was. If the roads were there. And I drove out a couple of times to where we lived, because we lived on the river. And the last time I went out, there was this fence and big concrete building there. I knew that's probably the last time I'd see the homestead. They had to build H. But that's all right. It was a good place to live, good place to grow up in. And you learned a lot of things that you didn't know you learned.</p>
<p>Bauman: Well, I want to thank you very much for being willing to come here and share your stories and your memories.</p>
<p>Finley: They've really been terrific. I will try and get some pictures. Can I just call the number on the letter and just bring them in?</p>
<p>Bauman: Absolutely, yeah, sure.</p>
<p>Finley: Because we have them. I just don't know where in the world I've put them. We even have one of Johnny and Daddy, Johnny Buck, the Indian, the chief. He was quite old then. But he would take his kids and tell us in Indian--my dad could speak Indian, or that dialect of Indian. And he'd talk to us in Indian. We never bothered to learn. Isn't that sad?</p>
<p>Bauman: Did your dad know that dialect from having spent a lot of time with them?</p>
<p>Finley: Yes, he grew up there. Johnny, as a young man, worked for his father, George, and the horses. And I don't know, but then after George died, he still come and fished, his tribe. And Dad just grew up with him. They were always part of the neighborhood. You knew they were coming when the fish started to run. And then you watched for them. They had beautiful horses, or I thought, Delores and I thought. The other thing, he had a friend. He was in Yakima. He lived in Yakima. And he would come down. And him and Daddy would visit. And us kids would listen to the stories. And one day, he turned his hands over, and they were white. And I never realized that the man was black. We had no--there was no difference in people. This man was the tallest, blackest Negro. I've seen some from Africa lately that are more recent, but he was a delightful--he was an apple grower, had a large apple orchard in Yakima. And had he not turned those hands over, I, to this day, would have swore he was just like us. And I think that is one that is very important for kids, that there is no difference in people. They're all--the Indians looked the same to me. I don't remember what this man's name was, because he did. Or my mother's parents that were strict Irish. They looked the same. There was no--we even had a Filipino family in there. He was good. He raised raspberries. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Bauman: In White Bluffs?</p>
<p>Finley: Yeah, in White Bluffs, yeah. He raised berries.</p>
<p>Bauman: Do you happen to remember his name at all?</p>
<p>Finley: His name was George--I can't remember his last name. He moved to Benton City. And they still bought berries from him.</p>
<p>Bauman: He moved to Benton City after 1943, after the government--</p>
<p>Finley: Yeah, mm-hm. I remember a lot of people. I mean, Mrs. Barrett, her husband was one of the first railroad men out. He worked for the Union Pacific. And they lived at Wahluke at the time of the Walla Walla massacre. And she'd tell a story. I had a lot of opportunity to learn. And she was a sweet lady. She raised three boys and a daughter. I never remember her husband, but I remember her very, very well. And Russos was another--I don't know what nationality they were, but they all seemed to have something to do with fruit. And there was just a great, big mixture of all types of people and all getting along very, very well.</p>
<p>Bauman: Well, thank you again. I really appreciate you coming in today to share your stories and memories. Thanks very much.</p>
<p>Finley: Well, I thank you. And I hope it turns out halfway decent.</p>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:05:20
Bit Rate/Frequency
Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio)
250 kbps
Hanford Sites
Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview
300 Area
F Area
H Area
Years on Hanford Site
Years on the Hanford Site, if any.
1950s
Names Mentioned
Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community.
Bordern, Archie
Borden, George
Anderson, Harry
Buck, Johnny
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Catherine Finley
Description
An account of the resource
An interview with Catherine Finley conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Mission Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy.
Creator
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Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2013-7-9
Rights
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item.
Date Modified
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2016-06-6: Metadata v1 created – [RG]
Subject
The topic of the resource
Hanford (Wash.)
Hanford Site (Wash.)
Hanford (Wash.)--History--20th century.
300 Area
DuPont
F Area
Fishing
H Area
Horseback riding
White Bluffs Bank (Wash.)
-
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118fe6ae90840ec1411e82c29ac1adf4
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F60c1c02414a925fb0ebfa6b3b6ba31b5.mp4
9918c042c46673ef73b3220ee13b9fb1
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Post-1943 Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Bauman, Robert
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Shea, Bob
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p><strong>Northwest Public Television | Shea_Bob</strong></p>
<p>Robert Bauman: --start. So let's start, first of all, just by having you say your name and spell it for us.</p>
<p>Robert Shea: Okay. Yeah. My name is Bob Shea.</p>
<p>Bauman: And can you get the last name spelling?</p>
<p>Shea: Oh, S-H-E-A.</p>
<p>Bauman: Great. Thank you. And my name is Bob Bauman, and today's date is November 13<sup>th</sup> of 2013, and we're conducting this interview on campus Washington State University, Tri-Cities. So maybe if we could start by having you talk about when you and your family arrived here at Hanford, and talk a little bit about maybe your first impressions of the place.</p>
<p>Shea: Well, my dad came over here in early March of 1943 from Missoula, Montana as a construction carpenter. And then my mother, and brother, and I came here after school was out in 1943 from Missoula, Montana. And we arrived, interestingly, the night of—or the morning, very early morning, of June 20, 1943 in the Pasco train depot there. And the reason I say it's quite interesting, because that day happened to be my dad's birthday, my mom and dad's anniversary, and Father's day. [LAUGHTER] So it was kind of a big day. But about two o'clock in the morning--and I might mention that, to me it was fascinating, because I was ten years old there in June of 1943. And when we arrived at the train depot there in Pasco, it was really in the middle of the night, and there were probably upwards of 2,000 people milling around; military—Army, and of course Navy personnel, I suppose, from the Pasco Navy base, and construction workers. There were little what we would call taco stands today around. Anyway, very interesting, very interesting. Just milling around. So anyway, Dad took us out to, at that time, the Hanford construction town site, which occupied the village area of Hanford, what was Hanford at that time. And in the middle of the night. Dad had brought over a very small trailer house, handmade trailer house. And that's what he'd been living in. And at that time, the trailer court for the Hanford construction workers was very primitive. They had put in most of the wash houses and most of the streets, but there was still a lot to be done. And so anyway, we made do. And to begin with, the trailers just sat out in the sun, so to speak. But it wasn't too long before the government realized that they should maybe put some canopies over the trailers to shield the trailers so they'd be more comfortable in the summertime from the heat of the sun, and keep some of the snow, and ice, and all off during the winter. So they put up canopies. I think the government had the idea that they would not allow anything as far as living quarters in the trailer portion of the Hanford construction site there. But it wasn't too long before they realized, with the number of children and so forth, they were going to have to allow some leeway there, and let the people build small little extensions to the trailer or whatever. And in our case, that was very important, because the trailer the mom and dad had was very small, maybe 21 feet at the most. And so we built a little lean-to establishment behind the trailer, which was very, very comfortable for my brother and I. By the way, my brother's five and a half years older than I am, so he went to work almost immediately. He was, what, 15 and a half, something like that. And he went to work immediately for one of the construction companies in their kitchen. I think he started out as a dish washer. And he worked there, I think, most of the summer of 1943. But at any rate, we had a nice, comfortable, well insulated with all sorts of Celotex that we are able to get--and it was very roomy, and comfortable. It was great. It served us very, very well. So that gets us established there at Hanford, and then of course the rest of the summer, for me, was roaming around, getting acquainted with various things to do, and not to do that I did anyway. And to begin with, the swimming facility—which was very important at that time for the construction workers, as well as the people in the trailer court—was in the river, just over the bank, so to speak, from what was beautiful downtown Hanford, which consisted of one gas station and maybe two little stores. But anyway. But it wasn't too long before they realized that that might not be too good of an idea to have that swimming area down in the river, because some of the fellows, especially--there were a lot of young men there working in construction. And some of them decided that it'd be kind of a challenge to swim across the river, and some of them were getting into trouble. I don't think there were any drownings, but there were some problems. And so it wasn't too long before they went what I call across the highway to the south of the trailer court about, oh, it would've been a good strong mile, I suppose, from the river. And they dug out some beautiful swimming areas, big ponds, with nice berms and all, to hold the water. And then they brought the water in from the river, and flooded those areas, and kept them in good shape. And so we had a nice, sandy bottom, and diving boards, and very, very nice. Very nice. So I've rambled along a little bit. Maybe you have a specific question that has come up or something.</p>
<p>Bauman: You mentioned that you did some things that were okay for you to do, and maybe some things that you weren't supposed to do. Any stories from--that you want to share?</p>
<p>Shea: Well, you know, maybe—well, I don't think of any right off hand. I might mention that—I'm sure I wandered off some, and probably worried Mom and Dad. But everything was wide open. And the good—at least from my point of view as a youngster there—there was never any problem for me as a little kid roaming around. And I I'll get into some of the detail later. But they went into the barracks of the white guys, as well as the barracks of the black fellows. And keep in mind that this is 1943. This is segregation. Right or wrong, good or bad, it was segregated. And there were black barracks. There were white barracks. And there were very, very few black children. But they had kind of a segregated area there in the trailer court for that also. But never any problem. And I spent a lot of time in the black barracks. One of my little sidelights as an entrepreneur out there, a ten-year-old entrepreneur, somewhere I got tied in with the Cloverine Brand Salve people. And I would get these tubes of Cloverine Brand Salve. And I think there are ten or 12 in each carton. And I would go to the black and the white barracks both on Sunday afternoons, and sell that salve. And boy, they just gobbled it up. They loved it. And so I made a few dollars that way. I shined shoes, which was quite--that was quite an activity for kids my age. We had little shoeshine kits. We'd carry them around, and if the guy wanted a shoeshine, $0.25 for a good shoeshine. It was a way to make money, and we enjoyed it. And maybe I'm jumping ahead, but anyway, when school started in the fall, of course, it was during the war. They had a shortage of teachers. They had a shortage of room there at the site to begin with for the school kids. And so we only went to school half-day, which was pretty tough to take as a kid, [LAUGHTER] but we managed to do it. So that gave us a lot of free time for activities, playing or making a few bucks doing whatever. So anyway though, during that summer of '43, got acquainted, and by the end of the summer, the trailer court was in great shape, and it was being added to daily. You might be interested in the--I forget exactly, but for about every 25 or so trailers, there was what we called a wash house, which--in the front of the building, or wash house, there would be an area with washtubs where the ladies could wash clothes. And then immediately across the street there were huge areas to hang clothes. No clothes dryers at that time. And so there were facilities for hanging the clothes and drying the clothes. And there was a lot of good weather, and for the most part, the clothes dried even during the winter. It wasn't too bad. But anyway, the wash house, the laundry facilities were in the front. And then on either side--on one side was the ladies’ toilet facilities, showers, and so forth. Then on the other side, the men had toilets, showers, sinks for shaving and all. And that would accommodate quite a few. And as I recall, it was around 20-25 trailers for each wash house. And of course, people could use any of the wash house facilities anytime they wanted to, if they walked around the trailer court, or whatever. Plus, as far as toilet facilities were concerned, there were portable--what we would call portables today. They were wooden. But they would accommodate people, too, and they had the female and the male outhouses, or portable toilets. And another thing very, very important there, throughout the barracks areas, throughout the whole trailer court, there were many, many water barrels. And that's really what they were. They were wooden barrels. I imagine they were an outgrowth of whiskey barrels of bygone days. But they had wooden barrels supplied with ice and water. Very clean. Everything was clean. And by the way, the portable toilets were kept very, very clean, and taken care of, in great shape. And the water barrels—and all the water barrels had salt distributors. The little distributors of salt would have little pills of salt, if you felt you needed salt. And I might add now that in the trailer court, I don't know how many there were, but for every, I would guess, 100 or so trailers, they had an icehouse, probably a building of 15 feet by 15 feet, something like that, well insulated, and then filled with ice. And the people from the trailer court could go get the ice anytime they wanted, all they wanted. No charge. And you could go and help yourself. Now you might say, well, why ice? Why not just turn the refrigerator on? Well, at that time, there weren't--all the trailers, most of them were very primitive. Very few electric refrigerators or electric heat. And so the ice went into the ice chest, of what we call an ice--a refrigerator that was cooled by ice. So it was great. And that, I might add right here, that that free ice was very important to me, because one way of making some dollars, or making some money as a kid out there--well, I guess I need to back up for a second. Virtually all hot water and heating throughout the whole Hanford town site, that in 1944 consisted of about 52,000 people--but all of the heating of the water, heating of the wash houses, heating of the barracks, and all, was done by steam—steaming. So that meant that there had to be quite a few large steam generating facilities throughout the whole Hanford site there to heat the water to produce the steam. Well, that was coal fired, and most of that coal came from up near Cle Elum. Roslyn was a big coal producing area there. And they would--the train loads of coal were brought in from Roslyn. But the steam plant was important to me because I could go there, and I could borrow a wheelbarrow. And I could take that wheelbarrow to the icehouse. And I could fill it with free ice. Then I could go to the grocery store, and I could buy Coke, or Pepsi, or whatever they happened to have, put it on that ice, and then push it down to where the buses--and I say buses in quote. We can talk about that later, if you like. But when the buses with the construction people would come in from the outer job sites every night for the guys living in the barracks and in the trailer court--and I would sell that Coke or Pepsi that had been on ice to the men. I think I bought it for something like a nickel a bottle. They didn't have cans at that time. A nickel a bottle, and I sold it for a dime. So a pretty good deal.</p>
<p>Bauman: That's a good profit. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Shea: Good profit, good profit. Yeah. So anyway, that tells you about the icehouses. It tells you about the wash houses. And of course those wash houses, it was kind of interesting, because every morning, there would be--it was kind of like an anthill. You’d see the ladies walking over, and the men walking over, and shaving, showering, whatever, taking care of their needs for the morning, there, to begin with. So it was good. The government--or we could say the Corps of Engineers, because the Corps of Engineers really ran Hanford. That was their thing--they bent over backward to help people enjoy to the degree possible the living quarters, and they wanted to keep the people there to work. And so they had a lot of activities for the kids. We had tumbling, and then, as I mentioned, swimming. They had softball and all sorts of things. And of course we could work. The older kids—well, bowling at that time, which it still is to some degree today—bowling was very, very, very widespread throughout the whole country. And there were several bowling alleys there at Hanford. And the older kids, like 14, 15, 16, they didn't do the shoe shining and the selling the pop, and some of these other less important jobs. They were pin setters. Because at that time, you didn't have the automatic pin setters in bowling alleys. So they would go and set pins. And they apparently made good money setting pins and all. Plus, as I mentioned, by the time the kid was 15, they could work in the cafeteria, or what we called mess halls, really. I suppose the mess hall term came in from the military, there. But they were huge dining areas. We'll put it that way. So anyway, I'll stop for a minute, see if you have any questions. I'm kind of rambling here.</p>
<p>Bauman: No, that's all great stuff. You said something about the buses. Do you want to talk about the buses a little more, and describe them a little bit?</p>
<p>Shea: Yeah. Really, the transportation that was provided for the workers from Hanford out to the various areas, and in some cases, I suppose they had to go upwards of 15 miles, maybe 20 miles or so, were kind of glorified cattle cars, really. I mean, for the time, it was good. But they were wooden benches in these—actually, they were semi trailers that had a tractor, a truck tractor, attached. And they would haul, I suppose, 30-40 workers. And the poor guys, during the summer, they'd pull in to where they--kind of the disembarking area there, and those poor guys, I mean their tongues were virtually hanging out, because I mean, they'd come through this very hot ride in this very hot vehicle. And that's why they really sucked up those iced Cokes, and all. So anyway, but that's enough of—Actually, I might add that the grade school aged kids, grades one through eight, they went to school there at Hanford. But the high school age, nine through 12 there, they were transported into Richland for their high school years. And they rode those cattle cars too. They had buses, or anyway, transportation to and from. And it was pretty crude. But they got in.</p>
<p>Bauman: So could you talk about the school a little bit? You went to school at Hanford town site, and could you talk about that a little bit, what that was like?</p>
<p>Shea: The white building that is still out there, kind of shot up and beat up, which was really the Hanford high school, that's where the--they had, I don't know, probably eight, ten, 12 classrooms. And that's where I attended fifth and most of sixth grade, there in that school. But then they also had a many Quonset huts outside the school, immediately adjacent to the school. And they had a lot of classrooms in those Quonset huts, too. So I don't know how many, all told, kids that they would have had in the school. It had to be hundreds, but I don't know how many hundreds. But there were a lot.</p>
<p>Bauman: Was it close enough for you to walk to?</p>
<p>Shea: Oh, yeah. In my case, it was a piece of cake. I only lived about three blocks from--what we would think of today as blocks. And it was real simple. And they named the streets like Egypt, and such as that. I happened to live on Egypt Street--Egypt Street, and I guess it was actually the second block. And the trailer space number was 20. So my address was E 2-20. But now some of the kids, though, that would have been a pretty good hike for them. Some kids, I suppose, had to walk upwards of a good mile. A good mile. And no buses at all at that time for the school kids and all. The teachers, bless their hearts, I'm sure they did the best they could. But they had both morning and afternoon sessions. I imagine by the end of the day, they were pretty tired cookies. But they did as well as they could, and they were well respected, and taken care of. And basically it was the three Rs at that time.</p>
<p>Bauman: Were you morning or afternoon session?</p>
<p>Shea: I forget. At least one year, either the fifth or sixth, it was morning. Because that gave me all afternoon to go. But the second year, or one of the years, I don't remember if it was morning or afternoon. But anyway. And I'm not so sure, I don't remember, it could be that after one semester, they flipped us, also. If you had been going morning, maybe then they switched to afternoon, or vice versa. I'm not sure. I think maybe that happened, in case there was some reason that they thought it was better for the kids to be turned around there.</p>
<p>Bauman: So the high school building was there, and you mentioned a gas station, maybe a couple of grocery stores. Were there a lot of buildings still from the Hanford town site, still there? Or had some of them been torn down?</p>
<p>Shea: I think for the most part, those that had been--were there to begin, they retained them, like a gas station and a couple of small stores. But the Corps of Engineers, I suppose under contract, had--there in the trailer court, there were probably three very large grocery stores. And I remember, I believe at least one large grocery store over in the vicinity of the barracks, where the people out of the barracks could go if they wanted to get food, or maybe some clothing, this type of thing. And of course those stores were well stocked, well stocked, but just jam packed. And so you had, just as everywhere out at Hanford, you had long lines, whether it was a post office, which was general delivery, or stores, or whatever. In fact, some kids made some money standing in line for people. They would go and stand in line for Mrs. Jones at the grocery store, and when Mrs. Jones got her groceries, they'd come over, and naturally the kid had moved up several spaces. So anyway, there were all kinds of interesting things. I'd like to go back just a minute to the dorm--the barracks and the grocery store there, and the mess halls, although they were fantastic. The food was excellent that served the people, and the mess halls provided, if the guys wanted them, lunches to carry out to their worksite, so that they didn't have to prepare them, which would have been pretty tough in the dormitories. But the mess halls served excellent food. And actually, the people from the trailer court were welcome anytime they wanted to go to the mess hall. And I think, if I recall correctly--I don't know about the breakfast and lunch--but the dinners were a great big whopping $0.35 apiece per person. And that was family style, and you could eat all you wanted. Mom, and Dad, and my brother and I went to--I can remember at least two or three times going there for Thanksgiving and/or Christmas dinners. And, oh, excellent food. Excellent. And I'll have to tell you a little story there. The one experience, we went, and of course it was family style. It was just benches to sit on, and wooden tables. I think at Thanksgiving and Christmas, they did put a tablecloth on. But the one time we went, one fellow sitting across from us, obviously living in the barracks or someplace, didn't have his family with him. Anyway, during the time that Mom and Dad and my brother, and I were sitting there having our dinner, he consumed five pies. No meat and potatoes, the only thing he had besides that was coffee. He had five pies. Now these weren't huge pies. But they were pies. And he just took his time. And that's all he had. That was his dinner. And you could do that. It was family style. You could have all you wanted, and just go for it. Well, again, I've been rambling. Can I--</p>
<p>Bauman: Did you and your family eat there fairly regularly, or was there more special occasions that you would go to eat at the mess hall?</p>
<p>Shea: The only times I remember are maybe three or four times there at Thanksgiving or Christmas. There may have been other times. Sunday afternoon, Dad might have taken us over there. I don't really remember that, no. Mom was an excellent cook, and unbelievable what those ladies were able to do with their limited facilities. Again, most of the trailers were very small, very crude. By today's standards, they would have been just shacks. But they did great. However, there were some manufactured trailers, and even with inside toilet facilities and all. But that was very rare there in the trailer court.</p>
<p>Bauman: So you were about ten years old when you were there?</p>
<p>Shea: I was ten in April of 1943, and we got there in June of 1943. So I was ten in two or three months, yeah.</p>
<p>Bauman: So did you have any idea what this big project was, why your dad had come out here to work?</p>
<p>Shea: No. Bob, at that time there were just a handful of people who really knew what was going on. And most of them didn't have a great idea. I mean they'd been told that it was--well, just for an example. A man that I later worked with on the Hanford project, he had come here as an expert in radio communication. And it was he and the crew that he had that put an antenna up on Gable Mountain. And he was told that, okay, this is, of course, super-secret, and one day, we will tell you more. And he said that before B Reactor went online, they came to him and said, okay, now B Reactor is going to go online because of thus, and thus, and thus. And we don't have any idea what it will do, if anything, with the radio communication, radio waves. It may be nothing. But be alert to the fact that, you know, you're the man. And so he said, but when it went online, no problem, no change. But anyway, that was interesting, what he had to say. I don't know if the name Robley Johnson means much to anybody anymore, but he was the official photographer. And he was a young man. And he was all over that place taking photographs and all. And later, I got to know him pretty well in the 1950s, when he had his photography shop here in Richland. And he shared some things that he thought was real interesting. But even he didn't know what they were doing, but so few did. And I suppose the few that did, they'd have said nothing. And of course the old Desert Inn Hotel here in Richland that basically was on the ground there where--what is it, Hanford House, or whatever they call it now? Anyway, it housed a lot of very famous people. But again, most of them were there with code names, now.</p>
<p>Bauman: Do you remember when you found out what was being built out at Hanford?</p>
<p>Shea: Kind of interestingly, in, I guess it was August of 1945, Dad decided he needed a few days off, so we took a vacation. Went over to the Seattle area, actually up to Everett, and then back down to Auburn and visited some people. And as we were going down, I guess, the old 99 Highway, Dad had the radio on, and it said, hey, you know, guess what? Across the mountains at Hanford, this is where the material for the second bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki came from. That's where we learned. So when we got back over here, though, then there was a lot of—all sorts of interesting things brought out. So that's how we found out.</p>
<p>Bauman: So how long did you live in the trailer, then?</p>
<p>Shea: Okay, we lived at the Hanford construction town site there from June 20th of '43 until--I'm not sure of the exact date--late March, 1945. And by that time, they moved everybody out of Hanford, all the barracks, the trailer court, again, anticipating that something could happen, and we would have been downwind from the B Reactor. And so then, yeah, we dispersed. And people--many of the people--were able to move directly into Richland that went to work in operations. They moved directly into Richland. But not everybody. They weren't able to house everybody. My dad went to work in operations from construction there. But we had to find a place, and we wound up in a house with a couple of other families down in what we know as Columbia Park today. Where the gazebo is today, that's where the house was. And so we lived there from end of March until--it was early July, I guess, when we got a house in Richland, and moved into Richland. And the family lived in that house--I mean, Mom and Dad--until in the 90s. So they lived there for better than 50 years.</p>
<p>Bauman: It sounds like, for someone who was ten, 11 years old as you were, that living in the construction camp was quite an adventure in many ways.</p>
<p>Shea: It was. It was a wonderful opportunity. I'm 80 years old, and as I look back on my life, two--we'll call them adventures, or two opportunities, let's put it that way, that I have always praised the Lord that I could enjoy--one, being a kid out there at Hanford, and the other, believe it or not, to be able to go through the United States Marine Corps Boot Camp. That was a great, great opportunity for me. I loved it. In both cases, I loved it. And as a take-off on that question, if you don't mind, that first summer of '43 there, one of the things that I enjoyed the most was going across the river and climbing around, and hiking around the bluffs. I called it my playground. And the thing--they had a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week ferry. That ferry never stopped. It was not a big ferry. It was a tug-pushed barge that would hold four or five automobiles. And it just went back and forth, back and forth. And it didn't cost anything. Again, it was free for the employees. And the kids would go down there, and we'd cross the river, and go hiking on the bluffs, and chase rabbits, and kill rattlesnakes, and had a good time. So that really was great, though. I don't know if you wanted to take time or not on that—I brought a piece of aluminum, though. You know, that's kind of unique. But anyway, it's a piece of aluminum that came off of an airplane. One evening—toward evening, it was five, six, seven o'clock. One of the aircraft from the Naval training center there in Pasco, it was a dive bomber, had come around from the south, and the bluffs, of course, were across the river to the north, at very low altitude. And the engine was sputtering some. And, I mean, pretty obvious it was in trouble. And they were able to clear the bluffs by a couple hundred yards, maybe, 400 or 500 feet. But then it crashed and it burned. And so some of the men went out and got souvenirs. And the instructor and the student pilot were both killed in that crash. But it was unfortunate, but it was kind of interesting that they came through there.</p>
<p>Bauman: And this is when you were living at the camp there?</p>
<p>Shea: Yeah, right. And it just came right over the Hanford site there, the Hanford town site. We didn't see many of the planes from Pasco, there. I suppose a few that we saw came in on a cross-country training flight. But, talking about airplanes, we have to talk about the big airplane yet. We have to talk, I would hope, anyway, about Day's Pay. Now first of all, I want to correct something that--the idea that Day's Pay landed at some airstrip out at—oh, boy, the little town site to the west of Hanford—</p>
<p>Alice: White Bluffs?</p>
<p>Bauman: White Bluffs?</p>
<p>Shea: --White Bluffs. Some would have you to believe that. But Day's Pay, when it came in, when it was flown in, it landed on the highway about a mile west of the school there. It landed, and there was plenty of room. It made a great landing strip: it was straight, and no hills, or whatever. It landed there, and then taxied up to the school, within 100 feet of the school, and parked, cut its engines, and they got out and did their thing. They christened it. There was a lady there that christened it. And they had their ceremony. And then it started up, taxied back to that highway strip, and took off to the west. And so that's where Day's Pay landed and took off. And for those who are not familiar with the Day's Pay thing, the reason it was named Day's Pay is all of the construction workers there at Hanford, building what we know as the Hanford Works, donated a day's pay to buy that B-17 bomber. And so anyway.</p>
<p>Bauman: Yeah. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about when you went to work at Hanford then. When was that, and what sort of work did you do there?</p>
<p>Shea: Can we come back to this other for a minute?</p>
<p>Bauman: Oh, yeah, sure.</p>
<p>Shea: Before we finish it?</p>
<p>Bauman: That’s fine.</p>
<p>Shea: Yeah. Again, praise the Lord, I was able to—right after finishing high school in 1951, and by the way, I graduated from Columbia High School in Richland. Well, it wasn't immediately after that. I had to get healed up from a broken ankle first. But by August of 1951, I was able to go into construction work, and I went to work helping build the 100-C Area, which was right adjacent to 100-B. And so that's where I started my construction work. And I worked there until September of 1952, at which time I started college. And so the rest--the several years after that, then, I would work in the summers, or if I had a real good job, I would work in the summer and maybe a winter quarter, or spring quarter, or whatever, in construction. So, my term, I helped build 100-C, helped build PUREX. And then in the mid-50s, I helped build--I don't know how many thousands of yards of concrete I hauled from the batch plant to the 100-K East and West basins, when they were putting the basins in, which was an excellent job. And I made good money, and was able to go back to school there after about six months. Then after that, after I got my degree, then I went into teaching. But as things would have it, I went to work back at Hanford in 1967. At that time, it was for what they call ITT/FSS. And they had the fire department security and several other responsibilities. And I went to work there for a couple of years. Then after that, actually, I didn't work at what is known as Hanford Works until the BWIP Project. And most people are not aware of what is called the BWIP Project. BWIP, B-W-I-P, stands for Basalt Waste Isolation Project. They were going to at least check on the feasibility of going down into the basalt under the Hanford site, and have storage for nuclear waste in containers. But politics being as it was, that didn't happen. BWIP and several other projects that they were experimenting with throughout the United States, went to Yucca Mountain and died, or at least is still dead. It may come back. But anyway, I went to work on the BWIP, but that didn't last long, because they abandoned that job. And then it wasn't until about 1983 or 1984 that I went back to work at what we'd call the Hanford site. And off and on there, and working on the two commercial sites that—Eventually, in 1996 I retired. So all told, if that's of any interest, I spent about ten years working at what we would call Hanford, in operations or construction.</p>
<p>Bauman: Okay.</p>
<p>Shea: Yeah.</p>
<p>Bauman: Mm-hmm. Of the different sort of jobs and places at Hanford site that you worked, was there a job that was sort of the most rewarding, that you found the most rewarding, enjoyed the most, or one that was sort of the most challenging or difficult?</p>
<p>Shea: Well, going back to August of 1951 there, yeah, I went to work in construction. And I was working through the union driving a truck. I mean I'd had some experience in that during high school. And so I was driving a flatbed truck, and one day I went to the boss, and I said, Charlie, I really appreciate this job. And I said, could I maybe drive a dump truck, or get some experience? Oh, sure, Bob, yeah, we'll fix you right up. So he said, go out--see that Euclid out there? This is a huge—to me, a huge piece of equipment, diesel powered, and it would haul about ten yards of dirt, and all. He said, yeah, go climb on that Euc, and take it over here to this power shovel, and work with them today. And anyway, I went out, to make a long story short, I finally got it started, with some help from some other guys, because I'd never driven diesel before. But this was the largest earth-moving equipment that they had out there at the time. And so I operated the Eucs for about a year, and I loved it. That was the most interesting part, I think, of my construction. And of that work, the most important and most interesting was we—right down to the north from the B Reactor there, we put in a new, I guess they'd call it to siphon, to draw water out of the Columbia River. We had to go about 100 yards out into the river, and built a levee for them to eventually put and lower the pipe--after it was welded, lower the pipe down to the floor of the river. And so hauling dirt out to the end of that, and you had to back the whole way and dump the earth, that it was quite a challenge. So I enjoyed that. But the other very interesting thing really didn't have anything to do with the Hanford site. It did have to do with what we know today as--well, what we knew then as unit number two, which today it's known as, what, Power Northwest?</p>
<p>Bauman: Energy Northwest.</p>
<p>Shea: Energy Northwest. Their number two unit out there, I was the welding inspector on all of the welding, and all for the structural steel that went on top of the reactor building, including the overhead crane. And that was very—I had never done that type of work. I had never walked steel before, and I haven't walked steel since then, and I never will walk steel again. But that was very interesting, very interesting. And it was very important work. And it was all nuclear grade welding. And so it was very fascinating. Even though that wasn't technically connected with the Hanford site, it was on the Hanford site anyway.</p>
<p>Bauman: Sure.</p>
<p>Shea: So it was very good. I don't know if you had--</p>
<p>Bauman: I have a question about when you actually, then, moved to the town of Richland. What was that like? What was Richland like in the late 1940s then?</p>
<p>Shea: Very, very good question. It was very different, and I suppose that was true also of Kennewick and Pasco. It was a melting pot—people from all over the country—which is true at Hanford, too. Very interesting. Lot of people had come up from the South for the construction. Some people came up from the South and all to work in operations. And people like us had come in from Missoula, Montana. They'd come in from all over the country, South Dakota, North Dakota, all over. And it was true at Hanford, and it became true, really, at Richland, too. Many of these people, especially out of the South, had worked at that time—1943, even during the war years—had worked for maybe $1 a day. And they came to Hanford in construction out there, and laborers were making, I think, about $1.10 an hour. This was great. Many people moved into Richland, ourselves included. Mom and Dad had never owned a home. It had always been a rental home in the almost 20 years that they'd been married. They were provided nice houses, all the coal was furnished. They had to pay for their own phone, they had to pay for their own electricity. But I think the water and sewer was provided, all the coal. It was great. It was a new world. It was a new world for a lot of people, including the Sheas. And Dad appreciated it, Mom appreciated it. And they took very good care of things, and I don't think they took advantage of anything. But they enjoyed it. It's kind of interesting, I think—Alice and I share this every once in a while. Along toward '47, '48, in that frame, maybe '49 too, it was not uncommon that a neighbor might come to you in Richland there, and say, well, you know, it's been nice having you as a neighbor, you know, and we wish you well, and all that. We're being reassigned. And you would ask, reassigned? Oh, you're going to go to do a different job. Yeah, I'm getting a different job. Well, as it turned out, several plainclothes FBI agents lived with their families in the city of Richland, there, because at that time they were checking pretty carefully about communists. And of course it wasn't too long after that McCarthy in the US Senate, with McCarthyism there, and all, and the big communist situation there, as far as seeking them out. So that was kind of interesting. And there were, unfortunately, some families, the dad would be approached, and just say, okay, pack up, you're out of here. Your kids aren't behaving as they should be, or maybe they were a drunk. In other words, it was pretty tight, pretty tight. And it was kind of interesting, too, until probably 1950 or maybe even later, there was kind of a police headquarters, which was really government control. But the headquarters there. And they had police officers throughout the city, but nothing real heavy. But if—and this happened to us--if people come out of town would come, relatives from podunk corners, or wherever it was, would come to town. And they'd stop, and they'd say, well here's a police headquarters, we'll check and see where the Sheas live, because we're confused. And they would just be escorted. If they stopped with the police, there, the police would escort them right to our home, and they would say, do you know these folks? And, well, yeah. This is Uncle George, or whoever. Oh, okay, that's fine. You know them. That's good. We weren't sure what the deal was. So we brought them over. So that was kind of interesting.</p>
<p>Bauman: Wow. Yeah. Very tight security.</p>
<p>Shea: Tight security, yeah. Tight security. And I think that lasted pretty much until the mid-50s probably.</p>
<p>Bauman: So, in terms of security, then, when you started working there in the 50s, did you have to have special clearance? Was there training about security, too, when you worked there?</p>
<p>Shea: You had to fill out some paperwork. In construction phase there, it was pretty loose, not much. But in 1955, when I went one summer, when I was off from college, I went to work for what was known at that time J.A. Jones Construction Services. And I was going to be working some in D and DR, and F Areas. And I had to qualify with a Q clearance. So I got a Q clearance there in 1955, and I had it restated later, too. In fact, when I retired I had a Q clearance. Not too many had it at that time. For some reason they'd lowered the standard some. But yeah. So it was tight. It was very tight. And you've probably heard about the aircraft, the patrol aircraft that flew--the main reason for the Richland airport was to accommodate the half dozen Piper Cubs, really, that were constantly doing surveillance work over the Hanford site for, well, all of the 40s, and probably, I would guess, until 1954, '55, or maybe a little bit before that. After the Army moved in, anyway, and there was tighter security there. But the security was tight, yeah. Very tight.</p>
<p>Bauman: Do you have something else you want to get back to that we were talking about before?</p>
<p>Shea: We could go back to Hanford. But I might mention one thing, for anybody that's kind of interested in sports. This is kind of off, but anyway. There at Hanford, and after that, they had a MP, or Military Police Detachment of US Army personnel. And they were--of course, most of them were pretty young men, and all. And they had some good teams, softball teams and all. But a little sidelight, one of the men, one of the MPs, after he got out of the Army, there in late 1945, he went to various colleges around the area, and universities, and tried to get a football scholarship. He’d played a little high school football, and all. And so they all said, well, no, thanks, but we're in pretty good shape. So, okay, well, that's fine. So he decided, well, I'll just go back home. So he went back home to Illinois. And then in 1947, he reappeared in the Rose Bowl, and he was the quarterback for Illinois. And they proceeded to beat UCLA, something like 45 to 14. But his name was Perry Moss. And he'd been a GI MP out at Hanford. So I thought that was kind of interesting. Going back to Hanford, there. I might--two things I might mention that were very significant, and very important, not to me or my family, but I'm sure that many of the guys in the--and some of the guys in the trailer court, probably, some of the fathers, and maybe older boys—they had some excellent baseball leagues out there. Again, black leagues, white leagues. But the baseball field they had out there rivalled any major league ballpark in the nation at that time, other than the seating. There was only seating for about 6,000, I think it was. But the grass was perfect. They maintained it. And lighting was excellent, because most of the games were played at night, when the guys would come in after work. Excellent, though, and a lot of great baseball, a lot of great baseball was played there. And then I guess it would be just absolutely wrong not to mention something about the auditorium, or I guess that's what the main name for the huge building that they put up virtually overnight. That's not quite true. But really, within two or three days, they put up this huge building that they called the auditorium. It had a regulation-size gymnasium floor, and no seating such as that, except around the perimeter. But they had many dances, big dances. They brought the Globetrotter basketball team in. And I'll have to ask Alice to help me with the name of the--what was the band leader?</p>
<p>Alice: Kay Kyser?</p>
<p>Shea: Kay Kyser. Brought Kay Kyser in. And to this day, as far as I know, the grand piano that they brought in for Kay Kyser to use is still in what I know as Carmichael School.</p>
<p>Alice: Chief Joe.</p>
<p>Shea: Huh?</p>
<p>Bauman: Chief Joe—Chief Joseph?</p>
<p>Shea: No. Carmichael.</p>
<p>Alice: Yes, Chief Joe.</p>
<p>Shea: Okay. [LAUGHTER] Anyway, the one on Lee Boulevard at the top of the hill. That building. Anyway. I guess that, unless you have other questions--</p>
<p>Bauman: I was just going to ask you, did you get to attend any of the baseball games, or the auditorium, stuff in the auditorium at all?</p>
<p>Shea: A couple of the baseball games. Since they were at night, Mom and Dad kind of rode herd on me a little bit there. But I did go to a couple of baseball games. And there was one ceremony there, too, that they brought a pilot and maybe one or two of his crew in who had to been taken prisoner by the Japanese. They'd been shot down, and they'd been taken prisoner by the Japanese, but they were able to escape. And so for one of the war bond drives, they brought them in to talk to the people. And they had a big ceremony there, and it was in the evening. And speaking of war bonds, or war savings bonds, and such as that, that was a big thing. That was a big thing there at Hanford, and for the kids as well as the adults. And so it was very well contributed to, really, or bought. A lot of war bonds there. So anyway, that was good, a good way to save money.</p>
<p>Alice: What about seeing the fellow, the gentleman who had been shell shocked, and how they dealt with him?</p>
<p>Shea: Oh. Yeah, that was the only really sad thing that I remember from Hanford days. And then, it was a passing thing. But one evening, near me was all of a sudden a congregation of several of the, we'll call them police officers, there at Hanford had formed a ring around--and I'm talking about ten or 12 of them--around this fairly young man. And as it turned out, he had been in the service, probably in Europe. And he went bonkers. And after—well, excuse me—he had come to Hanford and went to work. But that evening, he kind of went bonkers, and so these police officers just had to kind of slowly move in on him, and get him under control. And I think they cuffed him and took him away. But that was sad, because it was obvious that he thought that these were Germans that he was fighting. These were bad guys, and he was going to get all he could. That was sad, but anyway, those things happen. So I don't know if you have any other questions about Hanford, there, or--oh, excuse me. I just thought of one thing. One wonderful, wonderful thing there at the Hanford town site--well, let me back up. You're probably all aware of the fact that in 1943, when the government moved in, they really took over three little villages: Richland, Hanford, and White Bluffs. And Hanford and White Bluffs are, I think, separated by, what, six miles, or something like that, of highway. But between Hanford and White Bluffs—and I suppose on either end, west of White Bluffs, and east of Hanford, too—orchard, after orchard, after orchard of just wonderful fruit: peaches, big Bing cherries, pears, apricots—wonderful fruit. And we had the opportunity to go out and pick there--during the summer of '43, go out and pick, and get cherries. And another thing, the track houses, the farm houses that had to be abandoned, many of us went out and cut sod out of their lawns, and put the sod around our trailer, and watered it. It was great. It was great. And many of the houses that had been farm houses, they were taken over by the upper military of the Army Corps of Engineers. And they lived there, several guys in a house. But one thing that I understand is that every year the railroad would bring in--excuse me. Unless it was a bad winter and the apricots were frozen, they brought trains in to load up with apricots to send all over the country—LA, Texas, New York, and all, because those were the earliest apricots in the country. And they were wonderful apricots, too. So they hit the market, unless they got frozen off that winter, which I guess was very, very rare. Apparently that area around Hanford and White Bluffs, the air currents, or whatever, during the winter, carried fairly mild air temperature-wise, and so anyway. But that was interesting.</p>
<p>Bauman: So it sounds like a lot of the farm houses were still there, and the crops.</p>
<p>Shea: They eventually—probably in the late 40s—they cut all the orchards down, and so none of them existed. You can see a lot of stumps, but no orchards. And then interestingly, probably by 1948, you'd have never known that there was any barracks, wash houses, nothing. It was completely leveled. And today, it's just a few little asphalt strips that you'd see where the various streets were, and all. But yeah. That's it.</p>
<p>Bauman: So was it just that first summer of '43 that you were able to pick the apricots and cherries and stuff? Just that first summer?</p>
<p>Shea: Yeah. No, I'm sorry. I beg your pardon. No, no. '43 and '44. I beg your pardon. But not '45, because we were out of there by March. But all of that summer of '43 and '44, it was great. And again, I think it's important to remember that virtually all of 1944, that Hanford town site was the fourth largest city in the State of Washington, about 52,000 people, men, women, and children. Yeah. That fruit was wonderful. Bing cherries the size of quarters. Wonderful, wonderful fruit.</p>
<p>Bauman: Well, is there anything you haven't had a chance to talk about yet that you’d like to still, that we haven't been able to talk about yet?</p>
<p>Shea: Let’s see. As it relates to the bond drives, and all, here's a--my mother saved this because my little fat face was in it. But they had what they called <em>The Sage Sentinel</em> newspaper out there, and this is just an example. This is from June of 1944. It just showed some of us kids. They had bought war bonds, and they had a little blurb there about that.</p>
<p>Bauman: Okay. We can probably get this on film.</p>
<p>Shea: Or you might want to make a copy of it, or whatever. You're welcome to, if you'd like.</p>
<p>Bauman: All right. Well, I want to thank you very much for coming today and--</p>
<p>Shea: Well, my pleasure.</p>
<p>Bauman: --sharing your stories and memories.</p>
<p>Shea: My pleasure.</p>
<p>Bauman: I really appreciate it.</p>
<p>Shea: No, it's my pleasure. So thank you.</p>
Location
The location of the interview
Washington State University - Tri Cities
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:14:48
Bit Rate/Frequency
Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio)
230 kbps
Hanford Sites
Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview
B Reactor
100-C Area
100-B Area
D Area
DR Area
F Area
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site
1943-2013
Years on Hanford Site
Years on the Hanford Site, if any.
1951; 1967-?; 1983/1984-1996
Names Mentioned
Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community.
Johnson, Robbley
Moss, Perry
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Bob Shea
Description
An account of the resource
An interview with Bob Shea conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Missasion Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy.
Creator
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Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Date
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2013-11-13
Rights
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item.
Date Modified
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2016-07-21: Metadata v1 created – [RG]
Subject
The topic of the resource
Hanford (Wash.)
Hanford Site (Wash.)
Richland (Wash.)
100-B Area
100-C Area
B Reactor
D and DR Reactors
F Area
Housing
Plutonium Uranium Extraction Plant (PUREX)
Richland (Wash.)
-
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4bdb6633307697446efeebe6eacc1f29
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F5860e0871ce50146e5899a1a69426bcd.mp4
36f3b018f208cb3c25f93d9c8058180e
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Post-1943 Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items.
Oral History
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Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Bauman, Robert
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Stratton, Monte
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p><strong>Northwest Public Television | Stratton_Monte</strong></p>
<p>Camera man: Okay. I say we record.</p>
<p>Robert Bauman: Yep. All right. All right, let's go ahead and get started. Get some of the official stuff out of the way first. My name's Robert Bauman, and I'm conducting an oral history interview with Mr. Monte Stratton. And today's date is July 16 of 2013. Our interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University, Tri-Cities. I’ll be talking with Mr. Stratton about his experiences working at the Hanford site. So first of all, thank you for coming in and letting us talk to you today.</p>
<p>Monte Stratton: Well, first off, you can call me Monte. I like to go by my--</p>
<p>Bauman: Will do.</p>
<p>Stratton: --nickname.</p>
<p>Bauman: All right. Well, Monte, I wonder if you could start by just telling us how and why you came to the Hanford site and when you came here.</p>
<p>Stratton: Well, going back to the early days of my working career, I was at an ammunition plant in Kings Mills, Ohio. This would have been in 1943. And at that time, the war was in its heyday and actually beginning to wind down to some extent. And I had been given a deferment up to that point, because I was at an ammunition plant. But they needed some personnel here at the Hanford site which was being built, and I was interviewed by the person who eventually became the plant manager to start with. That would have been Walt Simon. They were looking for people that had backgrounds similar to mine. I was an amateur radio operator and had some electronic experience. I'm an electrical engineer by profession, and they needed someone with that background for the instrument field. So as I said, I was interviewed and accepted the offer. I came to the Hanford site in February of 1944, and that's when I got started here at Hanford.</p>
<p>Bauman: And what was your very first impressions of the place when you arrived?</p>
<p>Stratton: A long ways from home. [LAUGHTER] I don't recall any particular impressions. I know that I arrived in the wee hours of the morning, came in by train into Pasco. And were met by plant personnel who escorted me over to Richland, and I was given a room in the—trying to recall what—the hotel that was originally in Richland. And I spent a week there and then I was given a room in the last men's dormitory that was built. This was K8. But my first impressions of this place were so different from the East Coast, where I'd grown up. So it took me a while to get used to it. But I soon learned to survive.</p>
<p>Bauman: And so you stayed—you were living in a dorm, a men's dorm at the time then. Could you describe that, like--</p>
<p>Stratton: For--</p>
<p>Bauman: --the size of it, or anything along those lines?</p>
<p>Stratton: There were eight men's dorms here in Richland. And there was a two-story building. I don't think any of them are still around, but they used some of them for facilities afterwards. I was on the second floor, and it was--I don't remember too much about any particulars of the dormitory. At this point, I might mention something about the dust storms that were prevalent in those days. They were called termination winds, and I recall one day I was laying across my bed. This was probably a Sunday afternoon, just resting, left the window open, and one of those termination wind dust storms came up. And when I woke up, I was covered with dust. [LAUGHTER] That was one experience that I had in the early days. Another experience that I had while I was there in the dormitory, and this relates to security—in those days security was very prevalent. There were a lot of security agents assigned here as everybody knows. And one afternoon once again I was laying across my bed and I got this strong knock at the door. When I opened the door the person walked right past me and came over to a radio receiver that I had on the table. And this receiver had a send/receive switch on the front. And he says, we have to put a seal on that. This happened to be the receiver that I'd brought out with me. Being an amateur radio operator, I brought my receiver along. We were taken off the air, of course, during the wartime, but I had my receiver just to listen to whatever was of interest. Well, I had a hard time explaining to this security person that this switch on the front of this receiver did not do any transmitting. That's what he wanted to make sure, that there was no transmitting involved. So I opened it up and let him look in and explained as best I could. Actually, the switch only controlled some external device if you wanted to hook it. But I managed to get past that one.</p>
<p>Bauman: And how long did you live in the dorms then?</p>
<p>Stratton: About one year. As I recall, I was in the dormitory for approximately one year. During that period, I met the person that I ended up marrying. And when I married this person, I moved from the dorm into a house that had been assigned us.</p>
<p>Bauman: And where was the house?</p>
<p>Stratton: The house was a duplex, a B-type house located on Judson Avenue in Richland. And we ended up having two children and we moved out of that B house to where we're presently living, which is an H-type house, [INAUDIBLE].</p>
<p>Bauman: And how did you and your wife meet? Was she working there as well?</p>
<p>Stratton: Oh, now you've asked a nice question. [LAUGHTER] It just so happens that I had a crew of people maintaining doing repair work on some of the instrumentation which I was assigned to. We had a shop in Richland, and one of my personnel was this girl that I became acquainted with affectionately and ended up marrying her. She was one of my, actually one of my workers.</p>
<p>Bauman: And where had she come from to work Hanford?</p>
<p>Stratton: She had come from Denver Ordnance Plant in Denver under similar circumstances that I came. At that time—this is a matter of interest—ammunition plants in different parts of the country had stockpiled their ammunition to the point where they were slowing down. A lot of the plants were either closing or slowing their operations. And the girl that I married had been working at one of the ammunition plants, and she was transferred here to the Hanford plant under very similar circumstances that I was.</p>
<p>Bauman: So, let's talk about the work you did then at Hanford when you first arrived. Could you describe the sort of work activities you were involved in?</p>
<p>Stratton: Well, when I first got here, I was assigned to a shop activity in the 300 Area. It was an instrument shop. And they were maintaining instruments that were being used throughout the project. And after that latter part of 1944, I was transferred to a new shop that had just been built in the 700 Area, an instrument shop. And that's where we were maintaining instruments that were being used throughout the project.</p>
<p>Bauman: Okay. And how long did you end up working at Hanford, and what other sorts of jobs did you have?</p>
<p>Stratton: Oh, I worked at Hanford here until I retired in 1982. I worked in all the different areas, starting at the 300 Area, then to the 700 Area. I was sent out to F Area at the startup of that reactor. And then came back to the 700 Area and was there for several years, and finally was sent out to the B Reactor. The B Reactor started up and operated for a short period of time. Then it was shut down—I don't recall for how long—a year or so maybe. And I was sent out to the B Reactor about that time--or was at B reactor about the time that it started up on its second run of operation.</p>
<p>Bauman: And about when would that have been?</p>
<p>Stratton: I'm guessing, and I was looking at my notes the other day, trying to figure out exactly when that would have been, but I'm guessing around 1949. I could be wrong on that date, but that's approximately.</p>
<p>Bauman: And what was your jobs at B Reactor when you were there?</p>
<p>Stratton: To start with I was actually a mechanic doing maintenance activity. But after being there for a while, I was elevated to a supervisor again. And I worked in B Reactor and several of the other reactors over the years. I went to the K Reactors when they were just being built and followed those from ground up, spent about roughly ten years, either as a supervisor or in maintenance engineering at the K Reactors.</p>
<p>Bauman: So you worked at several different areas then on the site.</p>
<p>Stratton: I did. I sure did. After the K Reactor started slowing down and—I'm trying to recall the date. I think it was 1972 when my work in the K Reactors had gotten to the point where I was no longer needed there. And so I came to the 200 Areas and spent another ten years there in field engineering.</p>
<p>Bauman: So could you maybe explain a little more, what would field engineering entail? Like, what sort of things might you typically do on a work day when you were working in the 200 Areas?</p>
<p>Stratton: Well, for instance in the K Areas, it would be going out and checking on the operation of the equipment, seeing that it's functioning properly and making repairs if they were minor, or otherwise I'd call a mechanic to come and do the repair work. In the 200 Areas, I was doing both field engineering and field inspection for new instrumentations that were being put in place.</p>
<p>Bauman: I want to go back a little bit to you said you first started working in Hanford in 1944. Right?</p>
<p>Stratton: Correct.</p>
<p>Bauman: Did you know what you were working on? Did you know it was--</p>
<p>Stratton: I've been asked that question many times.</p>
<p>Bauman: A lot of times?</p>
<p>Stratton: When did you find out that the—what they were doing here at Hanford? I might say this. My background being an electrical engineer and ham radio as a hobby, I had enough electronic experience in my background to begin to figure out from the instruments that we were using pretty much what was being done here at Hanford. So it took a while before I got all the details, but I started figuring out in the early days what was really happening here.</p>
<p>Bauman: And do you remember when you first heard the news that the war had ended, anything along those lines?</p>
<p>Stratton: I might relate one interesting experience. When they first made an announcement of what was being done here at Hanford, it was just a limited amount of information that was released to the news media. It so happened that my wife and I—this was in 1945—my wife and I were on a vacation trip, and we were at Mount Rainier. And when the news came out, of course, being the closed-mouth person I am, I didn't even say, boo, that I had worked at Hanford. However, my supervisor back in Richland was so afraid that I was going to start talking and say things that I shouldn't about the work that was, that he frantically got hold of me there at the—I think we were at Paradise Inn at the time. He was all concerned that I'd start talking. And I let him know right off the bat that I know not to keep—to keep my mouth shut and not talk—[LAUGHTER] other than what's official or released.</p>
<p>Bauman: So he called you while you were on vacation to make sure you--</p>
<p>Stratton: He called me to make sure that I didn't blab my mouth, something I shouldn't say.</p>
<p>Bauman: So you sort of mentioned a couple of times the security at Hanford, obviously. I wonder, and you lived in the dorms initially and then lived in a house in Richland. So in terms of security, getting onsite to work every day. Did you drive your car? Did you take a bus? How did that work?</p>
<p>Stratton: As I recall, I was using the transportation that was provided, bus transportation. Speaking of security, reminded me of another instance. I might back up a bit here. The people that I had working with me in the 700 Area were available to maintain instruments out on the Hanford Project. We had certain instruments that we would go out and take a look at. So one day I sent one of my personnel out to look at this equipment out in one of the remote areas. And she had a run-in, so to speak with the guards at the gate. She had been doing this job quite a bit, got to know quite a few of the guards at the gate, and she would kid them going through. And this particular day there was a guard at the gate that apparently she had not become acquainted with. And she made—when he asked her something about the equipment that she had—some of the equipment would be taken out for maintenance purposes. He asked her what she was carrying, and she made some remark about it being explosive or something along that nature, which—that was the wrong thing for her to say. And she had quite a hard time explaining herself out of that one. Another instance of security that I can recall—we had some instruments that were manufactured and when they arrived, the meter on the front of the instrument read millirankines. That was a no-no from an information standpoint. We did not want people that were not familiar with what was going on—that was the very early days—what we were actually measuring. And we had to take every one of those instruments out of the case and blank out the word, paint over the word millirankines to keep people who were not privy to the information to be able to read it, know what we were measuring. That gives you an idea of how strict security was in those days.</p>
<p>Bauman: And did you have to have a special security clearance to do the job that you had?</p>
<p>Stratton: I was issued what was called a Q clearance at the time. I think it was the popular security clearance for most people that would have access to classified information.</p>
<p>Bauman: Sure. I want to go back a little bit, again, to that first period during the war when you were living in the dorm. What sorts of entertainment was available on site for all the workers who were living in the dorms? Were there things to do for entertainment?</p>
<p>Stratton: [LAUGHTER] I don't recall too much that I got involved in as far as entertainment is concerned. I was never much of a entertainment type person. I didn't do carousing around like some people did. I don't recall too much in the way of entertainment. I might say took some hikes. Four of us actually climbed up the side of Rattlesnake Mountain. That would've been in the early part of 1944. And on another occasion I got out and hiked up to the top of Badger. But I don't recall too much in the way of entertainment that I got involved in in those days.</p>
<p>Bauman: And you said that you moved to Richland. You and your wife got married and moved to Richland. What was Richland like at the time as a community in the 1940s and the 1950s?</p>
<p>Stratton: Well, in the early 1940s, it was a closed town, of course. And you had to have a reason to be here. I don't remember too much about the details. It just wasn't a lot of interest from my standpoint in the early days.</p>
<p>Bauman: Can you think of any events or significant happenings, things that happened at Hanford while you were working there. I know President Kennedy came in 1963 to visit the N Reactor. I wonder if you were there at that time or any other events that stand out in your mind?</p>
<p>Stratton: I remember going and seeing Kennedy when he came. I was off at a distance. I was working out in the 100 Areas at the time. And I remember going and seeing him at a distance. I'm trying to think of any other events of particular interest. I can't think of anything to mention right at the moment, Bob.</p>
<p>Bauman: Okay. Were there ever any emergencies, fires or anything along those lines that happened while you were working that stand out at all?</p>
<p>Stratton: Gee, I can't think of anything of particular interest at the time, Bob.</p>
<p>Bauman: You worked, so you worked at Hanford basically from 1944 to 1982, right?</p>
<p>Stratton: Right.</p>
<p>Bauman: That's almost 40 years. My math.</p>
<p>Stratton: Almost 40.</p>
<p>Bauman: Long time. You must have seen a fair amount of change take place on the site, in the technology that was used or maybe some of the procedures or policies. I wondered if you could--</p>
<p>Stratton: Probably the biggest change would be in policies—that I can think of. Of course, equipment was updated tremendously over that period of time. And what we started with in the early days was antique by the time I retired. But I think maybe policies were some of the biggest situations that I can relate to.</p>
<p>Bauman: Are there any particular policies or practice that stand out that changed?</p>
<p>Stratton: Nothing that I can relate to right at the moment. I can't think of anything in particular, but—</p>
<p>Bauman: Hanford obviously at some point, it was for years about production and at some point shifted to clean up. Had that started to happen when you were working there?</p>
<p>Stratton: Not really. No. There wasn't a whole lot of that activity. Clean up pretty much started after I retired.</p>
<p>Bauman: I wonder if there's—what you would like future generations, people who never worked at the Hanford site to understand, to know about working at Hanford during World War II and the Cold War era?</p>
<p>Stratton: Well, the thing that some of the people wonder about—we were producing plutonium. Was that a good thing? Well, you have to look at it from the standpoint that the war effort was brought to an end primarily because of the work that we started here with the production of plutonium. It undoubtedly brought the war to an end. That's what the way we have to—the way I would like to look at it.</p>
<p>Bauman: And you said you worked there almost 40 years. There were a lot of people who didn't. The termination winds sent a lot of people packing.</p>
<p>Stratton: Those were—that’s true.</p>
<p>Bauman: You know, what was it that kept you here for almost 40 years?</p>
<p>Stratton: Probably getting married. [LAUGHTER] That would be probably the main reason that we decided to stay and raise a family here. I was working in a field that was of interest to me. Like I mentioned, I was a ham radio operator from way back. And I was in the instrument field and the work that I was doing was of real interest for me. And so I had no particular desire to move away from here. So I think that is one of the things that kept me here. Of course, we started our family and from then on this was home.</p>
<p>Bauman: So overall, how would you describe Hanford as a place to work?</p>
<p>Stratton: Well, for me it worked out to be a very good place. Young people that came along after I'd been here for a few years, like tech grads coming in for a short stay and they wanted to know, do you think this is a good place to try to continue working here? And I would always encourage them to go ahead and apply for employment here at the Hanford Project. Because I think if it was in their field of interest or field of training, that would be a good place for them to work.</p>
<p>Bauman: Is there anything I haven't asked you about that you think would be important to talk about or any special memories or specific memories that you think would be important to talk about?</p>
<p>Stratton: I think you've covered it very nicely. Well, I can't think of anything in particular to add to what we've covered so far.</p>
<p>Bauman: Well, great. I want to thank you, Monte, for coming.</p>
<p>Stratton: Oh, you're sure welcome.</p>
<p>Bauman: I really appreciate it.</p>
<p>Stratton: Only too happy to do what I could to--I don't know whether this will help the cause very much.</p>
<p>Bauman: It's terrific. Yeah. Thank you very much.</p>
<p>Stratton: Oh, you're sure welcome.</p>
Location
The location of the interview
Washington State University - Tri Cities
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:32:27
Bit Rate/Frequency
Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio)
215 kbps
Hanford Sites
Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview
300 area
700 area
F area
B reactor
K area
200 area
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site
1944-2013
Years on Hanford Site
Years on the Hanford Site, if any.
1944-1982
Names Mentioned
Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community.
Kennedy, John F.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Monte Stratton
Description
An account of the resource
An interview with Monte Stratton conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Mission Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy.
Creator
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Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Subject
The topic of the resource
Hanford (Wash.)
Hanford Site (Wash.)
Richland (Wash.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2013-7-16
Rights
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item.
Date Modified
Date on which the resource was changed.
2016-7-1: Metadata v1 created – [RG]
200 Area
300 Area
700 Area
B Reactor
F Area
K Reactor
Kennedy, John Fitzgerald, 1917-1963
N Reactor
Richland (Wash.)
Secrecy
-
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47a083b5b5bc2d33fd1d1c3212976e2d
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fe07a220c8f43ba814c7597fe2fd7b887.mp4
a0765f64d0e3a05cd268b608370736cd
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Post-1943 Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items.
Oral History
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Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Bauman, Robert
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Jackson. Pete
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p>Northwest Public Television | Jackson_Pete</p>
<p>Woman One: Get them all fixed and I’ll submit them, and they would get paid to run.</p>
<p>Man one: And we're about to roll now. Okay. Whenever you are ready.</p>
<p>Robert Bauman: Okay. All right. I think we're ready to get started.</p>
<p>Pete Jackson: Okay.</p>
<p>Bauman: So if we could start first by just having you say your name and spell it for us.</p>
<p>Jackson: My name is Pete Jackson, J-A-C-K-S-O-N.</p>
<p>Bauman: Great. Thank you. My name is Robert Bauman. Today's date is October 30th of 2013, and we're conducting this interview on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. So I wonder if we could start by having you talk about how you came here, what brought you to Hanford, and when you arrived.</p>
<p>Jackson: Well, I came to Hanford after living and growing up in Spokane, and serving in the Navy. I came here February 7, 1951.</p>
<p>Bauman: And what brought you here? Why did you—what brought you to Hanford?</p>
<p>Jackson: Oh, the interviews that we had had at WSU, WSC at that time.</p>
<p>Bauman: So you were a student at Washington State College?</p>
<p>Jackson: Yes.</p>
<p>Bauman: And what were you majoring in?</p>
<p>Jackson: Major was mechanical engineering.</p>
<p>Bauman: Okay. And so what sort of job did you have, then, once you arrived in 1951?</p>
<p>Jackson: Well, I didn't have a clearance. So to wait for the Q clearance took a while. And I was working in a program where they were updating the standards that they use. Down in the old 762 Building.</p>
<p>Bauman: [LAUGHTER] And standards for a what? What sort of standards were they?</p>
<p>Jackson: Oh, standards on how to do various and sundry tasks. I guess that'd be the best way to put it.</p>
<p>Bauman: Did you know much about Hanford before you came here?</p>
<p>Jackson: Oh, not much. You know, I grew up in Spokane, so we were familiar with Hanford. And I spent time in Japan when I was there with the Navy, and did get in and saw the destruction in Nagasaki, which was tremendous. And then after the Navy let me go, I decided to come to WSU and to take up studies.</p>
<p>Bauman: Mm-hm. What were your first impressions of the area, here, when you arrived?</p>
<p>Jackson: [LAUGHTER] Sagebrush, sand, and lots of wind. But I can't remember the facility--I think it was about 7,000 people. But it was interesting.</p>
<p>Bauman: What sort of housing did you have when you first arrived?</p>
<p>Jackson: Well, the housing was dormitory, and I lived in M2, which we called the old men's society. And later, other tech grads were in W21, which was down in the women's section of the dorms on Lee and Stevens, I think it is. Where Albertson's sits right now.</p>
<p>Bauman: So did you know some other people here when you arrived?</p>
<p>Jackson: I knew a few, yes.</p>
<p>Bauman: Other people from WSU?</p>
<p>Jackson: Yes, yes.</p>
<p>Bauman: And then so how long did you stay in the dorms?</p>
<p>Jackson: Well, they opened up the Bower Day housing on Jadwin. And I made myself unpopular with the guy who was renting these, because they wouldn't rent them to any single people. And so after months of talking to him, they finally decided, well, we'll open it up to single people. So four of us guys went into one down there on 1766 Jadwin. And we enjoyed that life much better, because we didn't have to eat out every night, and that sort of thing. We could do some of our own cooking, and see what we wanted to do, and it was good companionship. These were four engineers.</p>
<p>Bauman: Yeah. And how long were you in the Bower Day home, then?</p>
<p>Jackson: Huh. Let's see, I've got to try and remember that. Probably until about 1953. It might have been more than that. I don't recall exactly how long it was.</p>
<p>Bauman: And what was Richland like at the time, as a community?</p>
<p>Jackson: Well, it was just a little small town. There wasn't much of anything to do except work, work, work. And we did a lot of running around, going to Seattle to plays, and stuff like this. And I got into the Desert Ski Club. I was a charter member of that organization, and helped it get established. We had the dorm club, and we had another club called Racketeers. Then, let's see. I got married in 1954--no, '56, and moved into a little B house.</p>
<p>Bauman: And so who were the other gentlemen that you shared the Bower Day home with, do you know?</p>
<p>Jackson: Okay, one was Corwin Bonham, who was a friend from WSU. Let's see. There was a little Japanese fellow, and what was his name? I can't recall.</p>
<p>Bauman: That's all right.</p>
<p>Jackson: And Hal Stievers was the third one. And that's about it. Dick Asai was the Japanese fellow.</p>
<p>Bauman: Hmm. So you mentioned the clubs, the ski club, and--</p>
<p>Jackson: Yes.</p>
<p>Bauman: So were those sort of the primary ways of entertainment?</p>
<p>Jackson: Yeah, right. The dorm club was people who lived in the dorms, and we’d would get together and have dances, and parties, and out-of-town escapes, and what-have-you like that, whereas the ski club was primarily for skiing. The most local spot was Spout Springs down here. We also went to others around in the mountains, and even down as far as Sun Valley.</p>
<p>Bauman: So how did you and your wife meet, then?</p>
<p>Jackson: Well, she was also working here, and was in the dorm. So, she was a secretary.</p>
<p>Bauman: So you mentioned your first job when you came in 1951, before you got your clearance, was updating standards. Once you got your clearance, then, where did you go from there?</p>
<p>Jackson: Oh, they sent me out to a mechanical development group in what they called it that time White Bluffs. And White Bluffs was just some buildings they had thrown together. The only real building there, I think, is a high school which is still there. And we did mechanical development for the 100 Area reactors.</p>
<p>Bauman: So could you describe that a little bit? By mechanical development, sort of what sort of task would that include?</p>
<p>Jackson: Yeah, sure. Well, you know these reactors were not all that old at that time, and so we kept upgrading them with different projects of sorts to make them better, more reliable, safer. And also, one great big job was project 558, I think, was the number of it. And that was to upgrade the power level, which originally was something like 165 megawatts. And when we got through with it, some of the reactors were running over 3,000. So we upped the production substantially by that project, which includes revamping a lot of the components. We put more water through the reactors, and we took—well they have safety systems. The first safety system was horizontal rods, and we had to replace all the horizontal rods, because they went into a thimble through the graphite pile. And so in the process then, we had to take the thimble out, because otherwise they would probably melt down. And then we had to have a seal on these tubes that we put in, and instead of having a round tube, we had an oblong tube. So it would roll along, because the graphite had grown considerably, and to pass through the reactor was getting to the point where some of those rods were difficult to get through. I think there were--I think maybe nine control rods in the pile. I think that was the number. And then we replaced the thimbles that were in the second safety system, which was the vertical safety rods. And they were just a boron poison rod that would drop in from the vertical overhead. And they would just freely drop. And they also had thimbles which had to be removed. These were just an aluminum tube, vertical in the reactor core. And we made, then--because here, we had to move that in the atmosphere as the reactor would escape to the building—we had to make seals on those and I worked a lot on the seals for the vertical safety rods to seal the atmosphere in the reactor from the atmosphere in the building. And there were--I can't remember the number of those—probably some 20 or something like that. And we made seals that would seal the rod even as it fell. And then the third safety system was we built a hopper that would sit around this vertical rod, and it contained boron containing steel balls, like ball bearings. And if something went that far to where you had to drop that, the third safety system was kind of the last. We'd drop those balls into the carbon core. Which, as you can imagine, getting those out was a big chore. And we did work on that process some. C Reactor, when they built that one, they put valves on the bottom of the vertical safety rod openings, so that they could vacuum—I think it was vacuum—the darn balls out of it. They had a vacuum system to vacuum them out, and then a ball separator to catch the real hot ones. Because if—the core was built by pieces of graphite, 4 and 3/8 I think they were, square with this hole in them. And the hole would be for the process tubes. And then the holes coming in from the side were for the horizontal safety rods, and then they had holes down through for verticals, which was for the vertical rods. And the pieces of graphite had one corner cut off, I think it was. And if you dropped the balls into that graphite chamber, some of them would get back into that thing, and maybe the next time you had to vacuum them out, they would just be screaming hot radioactively. So we built a ball separator that you could run these millions of balls through and kick out the hot ones. So there was a lot of work on that one.</p>
<p>Bauman: Yeah, sounds like it.</p>
<p>Jackson: It was a real big project. They did reactor at a time through B, D, F, DR, H, and I think maybe some with C.</p>
<p>Bauman: Hmm. So did you work out at all those different reactors, then, during that process?</p>
<p>Jackson: Yeah, right. Well, yes. We worked on each individual reactor, but we had offices--well, it started out in White Bluffs, and then they built a new building in D, 1703 D. We had offices there.</p>
<p>Bauman: So when you were doing this work at the reactor, did you have to wear special equipment, safety equipment?</p>
<p>Jackson: Oh, yes. Absolutely.</p>
<p>Bauman: What sorts of things did you have to wear?</p>
<p>Jackson: Well, you took off your clothes, your outer clothes, and hang them up. Then you'd put on two pair of white coveralls. You'd put on shoe covers, probably a couple pair of them. And if there was to be anything wet, you'd put rubbers on over the top of that. Then you'd put on a hood fastened under your chin. So we were pretty well covered up, of course with gloves, too—cloth gloves if it was dry work, and rubber gloves over them if it was anything to do with wet.</p>
<p>Bauman: How long of a process was of that? Did that take a little while to--</p>
<p>Jackson: To get dressed?</p>
<p>Bauman: --get dressed, and undressed then when you were done?</p>
<p>Jackson: Well, it would be the same thing as you getting out there and taking off your clothes and putting on a pair of coveralls.</p>
<p>Bauman: Yeah. And I assume you had a dosimeter or something along those lines.</p>
<p>Jackson: Oh, yeah. We always had dosimeters.</p>
<p>Bauman: Mm-hm. Was there ever any time where you or someone else you were working with had exposure above the rates that were recommended?</p>
<p>Jackson: Well, I'm sure there were. I don't remember what my accumulated rate of radiation was.</p>
<p>Bauman: Mm-hm. And so how long did you work on that project, then, at the different reactors? How long?</p>
<p>Jackson: Well, I worked on that 100 Area reactors for probably ten, 12 years. There were different projects for this 558 program, and we did the same changes in all of the reactors.</p>
<p>Bauman: And so what did you do, then? What sort of work did you do once you were finished with that, after the ten to 12 years?</p>
<p>Jackson: Well, I still continued doing various work in the reactor areas, and one of the jobs I had was examining, building, and making the equipment to examine the process tubes. And they would take the process tube out of the reactor and push it out. And it would fall into the basin behind, and we would cut it up into sections. And one little job it was to take the section of this round tube—now it's a round tube, and it has two tracks kind of on the bottom, which holds the front of the uranium capsule so water can flow all the way around it. And I made equipment that would take that process tube and cut it in half, so that you'd just run it through this saw. And then you could lay it down flat, and the area had two curved sections, and then you could examine that. And they did that in the hot cells, in probably the 327 building. So that was some of it. There were other modifications made to the reactors that we were all part of, and we built a lot of underwater examination equipment. And then we would also build equipment to examine the vertical holes that the vertical safety rods operated in. We'd go down there with a TV camera, and record what that was, so we could see what the interior of the unit looked like. And I think we did it also with the horizontal rods. But we did a lot of that. I did a lot of work on the process tubes for B, D, and F, DR, and H. And C were all made of aluminum. And we got into KE and KW, and those process tubes were fabricated of zirconium. So we wanted to examine them, too, to see how they were holding up. And every once in a while, you would get a rupture in this tube, because the uranium slug, as we called it, might open up to the water, and then you'd have a reaction there, and it'd even tend to burn holes through the process tubes. So this examination included that sort of thing to see what those would look like down through the core of the reactor.</p>
<p>Bauman: Wow, hmm. Also, I understand you also worked at PRTR, an N Reactor at some point, as well?</p>
<p>Jackson: Yeah. I moved into 300 Area, and worked on the development of some of that stuff for PRTR, some of the equipment, and what-have-you, like that. I can't remember exactly what all the equipment was. And then we had the examination from PRTR also. PRTR was a water-moderated, heavy-water reactor.</p>
<p>Bauman: And then how about N reactor?</p>
<p>Jackson: I did not work on anything really associated with N--</p>
<p>Bauman: Oh.</p>
<p>Jackson: --except the development of the process tubing for it. And the process tubing was a--oh, I think it was probably about a 3-inch tube of zirconium. And it had about a quarter of an inch wall, if I recall. And we did a lot of testing prior to the startup of the N reactor, wherein we wanted to see what kind of temperature from pressure would react on this. Because for N reactor, the pressure was something like 2,000, 2,500 PSI, and 600 degrees Fahrenheit. So that ran very hot. We examined that tubing, also, when we built the equipment for doing that, and really made various and sundry tests, and then built up a facility for evaluating sections of the new tube to see that at what pressure would it break at what temperature. And I would put these in a special oven that we had in sort of a bomb-proof building. And I put them in a furnace, and I had enclosures on both ends of this tubing, and we could pressurize that tubing up to, oh, in excess of 20,000 PSI, and actually rupture them under conditions of 600 degrees Fahrenheit. And I had that down at 314 Building. And we would do the testing out just through the concrete block wall of this building. And when that thing went off, of course the safety engineer always called me when he heard the boom and the shake. And so he knew when we were doing this, and he was up in—I can't remember the number of that building. But it was right down the main drag in 300 from the vehicle gate. So we would burst this tubing, and sometimes we would put a slot in it, machined slot, so we could see how it burst under condition of wear. And that was a pretty interesting thing, because when it went off, it was a loud bang, like a stick of dynamite going off. And at one time there was a couple of people walking down the road when it went off right beside the road. And all of a sudden this big old capsule went flying up in the air several feet, and then lit down on the wet ground in front of them, and sizzled, and then everything like that. They were real surprised, were these guys. We used that facility for quite some time, and then it was taken by the service. But it was used for all the process tubing in N. I assume it was used in K, also. K east and west.</p>
<p>Bauman: So you had a lot of different, very interesting jobs in Hanford. Several.</p>
<p>Jackson: Yeah. That's why the job was very interesting, because you'd go from one interesting task to another interesting task, and they'd be, perhaps, totally different. And we would work through the design of the apparatus to run that, and then through the installation thereof, and the installation in the reactor, and all. So I worked in C Reactor for that, and the Ks. We had a lot of interesting experiences in K Reactor, because it was also a high-pressure thing. Not as high as N, but it was recirculating--well, maybe it wasn't. No, it was not recirculating the water. The water went right straight through.</p>
<p>Bauman: Is there anything about that work, that K Reactor that really stands out in your mind, anything particular?</p>
<p>Jackson: Well, I did burst testing on that tubing, also. And this tube was--oh, I think it was about an inch and a half in diameter of zirconium, and we would burst those in the same facility. I remember one time, a failure of the fuel element caused a lot of problems. And I don't remember what the heck we did. We had to get this stuff out. Oh, I can't remember what it was. But we got some farmer with some farm equipment, and used his farm equipment to get this thing out of the reactor. I can't quite remember what it all was. But it was interesting. Because there was something very interesting going on. And at this same test facility that I had in H Area, we worked hand in hand with the people from KAPL—Knolls Atomic Power Labs, in Schenectady—for the development of the fuel rods for the Naval submarines. So we did a lot of work for that, and worked hand in hand with these engineers from KAPL. And they kind of thought they were in charge of the thing, and they'd call up and say, well, you've got to shut your reactor down. And I says, I can't shut my reactor down. We'll have to schedule that. So we'd work through a schedule when we would have it shut down, and then they would come out, and we would take the fuel elements out of the test pile. And this was a test hole, went through—horizontally through the center of H Reactor, and ran at about 600 degrees Fahrenheit and 2,250 PSI pressure. So that was a lot of equipment that took a lot of specialized engineering.</p>
<p>Bauman: Of the many different projects you worked on in Hanford, were there some, or one, that were sort of the most rewarding to you, that you really enjoyed the most? And maybe something that was the most challenging?</p>
<p>Jackson: Well, certainly they were all challenging. And I enjoyed them, because it was a task that you individually had. There might be another engineer working with you, but generally it was just a single engineer working on a particular. But the 558 project was a large, large group of people working in the development, and the design, and the whole works. So we worked with all these other people, also, to accomplish that.</p>
<p>Bauman: So how long in total did you work at Hanford? When did you retire?</p>
<p>Jackson: 38 years. I started on the 7th of February in 1951, and I retired, I think it was the end of August in '88.</p>
<p>Bauman: I imagine there are a lot of changes that you saw take place over that time.</p>
<p>Jackson: Oh, definitely, definitely.</p>
<p>Bauman: Even in just how things were done, right?</p>
<p>Jackson: Yeah. And after working in the 100 Areas directly, then I moved into the mechanical development group in the 300 Area, which was project engineering. So we worked on a lot of the projects for the various pieces of equipment that would be put in here, there, and elsewhere. I worked at the 100 Areas, PRTR, FFTF, HSHTSF, I think it was. And all these, and they all had specialized equipment. So there was always a different type of job. It was very challenging. People had never done this sort of task before. So we had pretty much a free rein in how we could do it. The only stipulation was, if something went wrong, don't repeat it.</p>
<p>Bauman: Technology must have changed quite a bit from 1951 to 1988 also.</p>
<p>Jackson: Oh, definitely. Yeah. And the last bit of the work in project engineering was in a lot of the different buildings, building of facilities to test different pieces of equipment, and all. And we had some of those. Oh, I can't remember exactly how old it was. I remember building the firehouse in the K Area, I think it was. And then I helped rebuild the steam plant in the 300 Area. That was an interesting job, because we had a big steam plant to make steam to heat the whole area and what-have-you, the 300 Area. And they went from oil—oh, they went from oil to coal. I think that was it. Or did they go from coal to oil? Well, anyway, we replaced the oil system of heating the furnace, I guess you'd call it, to using coal. And so coal spontaneously combusts. And one night I was called out because the coal hoppers were up on the top of the steam plant, and the coal would go down into it. I was called out because there was fires in the passageway that was providing the coal for the fire. And it was in a vertical pipe. And I couldn't figure that one out, so I came up with the idea to attach hoses to a big storage container that they had out at 327 Building which contained argon. And we used the argon gas to put it into this fire, and it being totally inert, as soon as it hit the fire, it put it out. That was a very interesting one, and that took place very rapidly after we got the argon into the furnace. That really took it out. So we saved the day that day.</p>
<p>Bauman: I want to ask you about, President Kennedy visited Hanford in 1963, at the start of the N Reactor. I wondered if you were there, do you have memories of that?</p>
<p>Jackson: I think I was there. I think so. It was outside, and I think Ronald Reagan was there also. I'm not sure. I remember seeing Ronald Reagan, and probably Kennedy also.</p>
<p>Bauman: From your time working at Hanford, are there any events or incidents that sort of stand out in your mind? Things that happened that were either a little unusual, or just very memorable for some reason or other?</p>
<p>Jackson: Well, I remember one which had to do with my in-reactor loop in the H Area. The fellow who was operating it before I took over—they took something out of this test facility, and had it on a big long-boy. And they spilled water down the street in the reactor area, and we had to repave the street. So that was kind of interesting. [LAUGHTER] Just to cover it up so you couldn't spread the contamination. But there was always a challenge, and that's something that I enjoyed.</p>
<p>Bauman: So I guess, overall, in looking back at your years working at Hanford, how was it as a place to work?</p>
<p>Jackson: Well, it was a very nice place to work. We had pretty much free rein on what we could do. We had our individual jobs. And that was nice. And they could rate you as to how you performed, and how you managed your money for your project—when you came out money-wise in the right position—and also if you came out on your time schedule for it. So I had quite a few different projects doing different jobs in different locations.</p>
<p>Bauman: And is there anything that I haven't asked about yet, about your work at Hanford that you'd like to talk about, that you haven't had a chance to talk about yet?</p>
<p>Jackson: Oh! Well, when I came here, there was an awful lot of people, and the Hanford construction workers, of course, had the big 50,000 people out there in North Richland in barracks. Well, when we came—when I came, they were still in those barracks. If you were married, you have a little trailer that you lived in. The others were dormitories and such there. So there's interesting stories about some of that. You know, how some of the people survived that.</p>
<p>Bauman: Is there anything particular that stands out in your mind, any particular story?</p>
<p>Jackson: Oh, I was not a part of that North Richland area. I was fortunate enough, when I came, to get into the barracks down in the town. And like I say, I went into the men's dormitory, until all the tech grads congregated in W21, which was very nice, because it was a bunch of us guys that, you know, were fresh out of college, and had been for a year or two, and had a lot of mutual interests. I remember building a boat during that time, and we did a lot of water skiing out on the river.</p>
<p>Bauman: Well, I want to thank you very much for coming in today, and sharing your stories, and all the descriptions of the various jobs you worked on. It was very interesting, so thank you very much. I appreciate it.</p>
<p>Jackson: Well, I appreciate, too, the facts of what you're doing. And you know, I think this story ought to be very interesting to see when we get done with the various people. Because there were a lot of us putting in a lot of time and effort to try and make this thing go. And since that time, we're trying to tear it all down, and get rid of all the reactors, and the separations area, which I never worked in the separations area. Now, I don't know. I haven't been out other than to the B Reactor, but I found the B Reactor was very interesting to go to, because I had a distinct familiarity with it.</p>
<p>Bauman: I guess it does bring one more question to mind. I teach a course on the Cold War, and I have actually taken my students out to the B Reactor to see it, and there's always this sort of amazement, at the size of the reactor, and all that. But of course, most of my students were born after the Cold War ended.</p>
<p>Jackson: Yes!</p>
<p>Bauman: So they have no memories of the Cold War.</p>
<p>Jackson: And not very much memories of World War II, and the action we had going on there. I wasn't here during World War II. I came right after, after college.</p>
<p>Bauman: And so I guess the question I have would be, if you were speaking to someone who is too young to have lived through any of the Cold War, how would you describe Hanford in a Cold War to them?</p>
<p>Jackson: Well, definitely the security was a big factor, and we all had two furnaces. We had special badges we wore to get into the various and sundry areas. And you'd leave one area and go to a second, you'd pick up a badge for the second area, and leave the first area badge there, and then when you came back out, you'd get your original badge back. And this was to monitor a lot the radiation exposure that you probably were getting. But it was also secure to make sure that your activity in that particular area was necessary and approved of. You couldn't get into it if you didn't have clearance to each individual area.</p>
<p>Bauman: Right. And would be important for people to know that, yeah.</p>
<p>Jackson: Yeah.</p>
<p>Bauman: Exactly. Well, again, thank you very much for coming in. I really appreciate it.</p>
<p>Jackson: You're very welcome. We did have the buses that we would catch a bus in the morning out on Stevens Drive. They had a big bus station there, and we'd have the big yellow buses, and we'd climb into them, and drive the 35 miles out to work. And the same coming back. You didn't work overtime, because your bus would probably leave without you.</p>
<p>Bauman: And how long did you do that? How long did you take the buses? For most of the time you worked there?</p>
<p>Jackson: Oh, quite a length of time, and then they finally allowed us to bring our own vehicles into the area in general, not the specific area of the 100 Area enclosures, or anything like that. And so we then carpooled. And that was nice, also. But I don't know. I rode the buses for several years, I know that. Probably ten years.</p>
<p>Bauman: All right. Well, thank you. Thanks again.</p>
<p>Jackson: I guess that's about the size of it.</p>
<p>Bauman: It’s good.</p>
Bit Rate/Frequency
Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio)
195 kbps
Location
The location of the interview
Washington State University - Tri Cities
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:42:13
Hanford Sites
Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview
762 Building
100 Area
B Area
D Area
F Area
DR Area
H Area
C Area
1703 D building
327 building
N Reactor
KE Area
K Area
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site
1951-2013
Years on Hanford Site
Years on the Hanford Site, if any.
1951-1988
Names Mentioned
Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community.
Bonham, Corwin
Stievers, Hal
Asai, Dick
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Pete Jackson
Description
An account of the resource
An interview with Pete Jackson conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Mission Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2013-10-30
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item."
Date Modified
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2016-04-22: Metadata v1 created – [RG]
Subject
The topic of the resource
Hanford (Wash.)
Hanford Site (Wash.)
Hanford Nuclear Site (Wash.)
Richland (Wash.)
100 Area
1703 D building
327 building
762 Building
B Area
C Area
D Area
DR Area
F Area
H Area
Hanford (Wash.)
Hanford Nuclear Site (Wash.)
K Area
KE Area
N Reactor
Richland (Wash.)
Secrecy
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F157eb8cc8ada403d8f472d5c48788511.jpg
9d72ff516906fcb85e78925a8663e892
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F0472090f713e05ebf58314e205876e9a.mp4
218d716c6219eb2bb404d57fdee92c83
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Post-1943 Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Robert Bauman
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Bob Bush
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<div class="OutlineElement Ltr SCX194300000">
<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><strong><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Northwest Public Television | </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span class="SpellingError SCX194300000">Bush_Bob</span></span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></strong></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Robert Bauman</span>: I’m going to have you start just by saying your name, first.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Robert Bush</span>: Okay, my name is Bob Bush.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: My name is Robert Bauman,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> and we're conducting this interview with Robert, or Bob, Bush on July 17 of</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">2013. And we're having this interview on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. And we'll be talking</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">with Bob about his experiences working at the Hanford site.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And so I'd like to start just by having you talk about how and when you arrived at Hanford. What brought you</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">here?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">O</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">kay</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">. During World War II, I was overseas. My parents were in the area, both of them working. My brother was</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">also </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">here in Pasco High School. When I came home from the service to Southern Idaho, Korean War</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">broke out. Wages were frozen, and so I was looking to better myself. And I applied by mail. I was interviewed by</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">telephone. And I came up here in 1951</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> to the accounting department, </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">General Electric Company.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">They were the sole contractor.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And for 15 years, in construction and</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> engineering accounting, which wa</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">s separate from plant operations at that time.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And from there, my accounting career followed it</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">s path through several successive</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> contractors. From GE to ITT,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Atlantic Richfield, to Rockwell, and finally with Westinghouse. When I retired, I was with Westinghouse for one</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">month.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">You said your parents were here duri</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ng the war. When did they come out?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">It was '43. 1943 and '44, my mother worked for the orig</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">inal</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> postmaster of Richland, Ed </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span class="SpellingError SCX194300000">Pedd</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span class="SpellingError SCX194300000">icord</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> And my</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">dad was a carpenter. Built some of the first government houses called the Letter Homes. They were here about</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">two years, I think. And then they went back to Idaho, I believe.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Okay</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">. And what part of Idaho?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Twin Falls, Idaho. Where I graduated from high school.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Okay</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">. What were your first impressions upon arriving in the Tri-Cities?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">That's kind of interesting, Bob. Because I came up ahead of my wife and two</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">year-and-a-half old</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> and</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> three-and-a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">-</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">half-year-old sons. About two weeks ahead of them. And so I fou</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">nd a Liberty trailers to rent—t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">he housing was</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">nonexistent. And I found a Liberty trailer, which means it had no running water, no bathroom. It was like a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">camping trailer, basically.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I sent for them. A brother-in-law who had graduated from high school went directly into the Korean War. He drove</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">them up as far as Huntington. I went on a bus to Huntington and met them, came back. And as we came onto the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Umatilla side, and I said, that's Washington. Well, there was no green and everybody was disappointed.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">But t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hat's the first impression. I mean, there wasn't a bridge over the river in Umatilla. It was a ferry. So you drove</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">around the horn at </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span class="SpellingError SCX194300000">Wallula</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">. </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Things were just really different.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">So you</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> said you</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> had a trailer. Where was--</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">In Pasco on a front yard of an old pioneer home, where Lewis Street crosses 10th. That was the end on Lewis</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Street at 10th. And from there west was called Indiana. And there was about t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hree homes on there. And it just quit</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And roughly across from the present day Pasco School Administration Building, which was a Sears building.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Across the street there was where this home was. I mean, things have just</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—in the whole area—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">have changed so</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">much.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And how long did you live there then?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Until I was called for housing in Richland, which was six months. That was in June, no air conditioning. And finally</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">got into an apartment building, a one-bedroom before with two little boys that slept in the same crib. It was still,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">basically, wartime conditions. Weren't any appliances for sale and you had to stand in line to get a </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">refrigerator.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> It</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">was a different world. But we were young, so we could take it.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">[LAUGHTER] </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> was this in Richland then, the apartment?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">No, that was in Pasco. After that trailer, that was only about two weeks. And then we want into </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">his apartment, the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">one-bedroom. Then we moved next do</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">or to a two-bedroom in a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> five-</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span class="SpellingError SCX194300000">plex</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">. And then in December, six months</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">later, I got the first</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I got a housing call from the housing office in Richland, which sat where the present day</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">police station </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">sits. And the lady offered me—s</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">he said, you could have it Saturd</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ay. It was a prefab. It had already been worn</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">and pulled out. And I kind of hesitated. I said, I've already got something in Pasco. Well, she said, I could let you</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">have a brand new apartment.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> That apartment was brand new. It was s</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">o clean. My wife, who was very fastidious, she</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">didn't even have to clean cupboards.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And the apartments hav</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">e now been torn down by Kadlec</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> for that newest building. A</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">nd in fact, this morning I just </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">went by and took a picture of Goethals</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> Street, which is vacated. And it was quite a pleasant</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> move to come out </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">of a trailer into—a non-</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">air-conditioned cinder block building apartment into a nic</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">e, brand new apartment with air </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">conditioning, full basement, and close to work.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And at that time, my office was</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> downtown in the so-called 700 A</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rea, which is basicall</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">y where the F</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ederal B</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">uilding is</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">where the Bank of America is was th</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">e police station. And that's Knight</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> Street, I believe. From there </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">north to Swift, and from Jadwin west to Stevens where the </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span class="SpellingError SCX194300000">Tastee</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> Fr</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">eeze was, that was the 700 A</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rea </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">confines. </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Probably about 22 buildings in there.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">The original thing prior to computers, everything was manual bookkeeping or ac</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">counting with ledgers. And they </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">came out with a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span class="SpellingError SCX194300000">McBee</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span class="SpellingError SCX194300000">Keysort</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> cards, and it</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> was called electronic data processing. It was sp</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">aghetti wire with </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">holes in the </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">boards, that</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> type of thing. That building had to be a special airlock b</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">uilding. And that's the Spencer </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Kenne</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">y Building beside the </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span class="SpellingError SCX194300000">Gesa</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> Building. That building is built especially to house equipment.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And they just went from there. And I moved around my office. And after 15 years, I went into what they call</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">operations. I was onsite services, which—did</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> that for 17 years. And that was probably the better part</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">of</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">second better job that I had, I guess. The transp</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ortation and everything, on</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">site support services. The whole</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">point</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> there.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">That job took me all over the plant. I established inventories. I took some of the fi</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rst inventories of construction </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">workers' supplies and tools and shop equipment, rolling stock. My name was </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">M</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ud. They thought so much of me </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">they gave me a desk in the corner of a big lunchroom.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> [LAUGHTER]</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">So you did work at various places then?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Yes. Well, yes. My very first location was in North Richland, then called North R</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ichland Camp, where the bus lot </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">was</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the maintenance shops. I'm trying to establish a point</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> up there—w</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hat's over there today?</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">There's a big sand dune on your left going by the automotive shops, past the bus lot, where the bus lot was.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Opposite that sand dune on the other side of Stevens was a bunch of one-story </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">temporar</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">y buildings. That was </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">North Richland Camp. And that's where my first accounting job was there for two or three years.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> I had been there—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I came there in June. And in January of </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">'52, had 22 people along </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">in my department </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">that I </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">worked in. I was a junior clerk at that time. Took me four years to get onto the m</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">anagement roles, but I did. But </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">anyhow, in that room they came in there six months later. After I'd only been he</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">re six months, AEC, predecessor </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">to the OA.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> The AEC has taken over more </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">management, more responsibility. So</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> we're going to be laying off a </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">lot of people. I had only been here six months.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And so others grabbed straws and went different places. I always said either I was</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> too ignorant or lucky, I don't </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">know what. But I just sat still and it panned out for the better. I didn't get laid off.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> I moved from there. But I went </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">downtown to the 703 B</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">uilding, which stood where the Federal B</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">uilding is now.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">There's a building to the rear that the city owns called 703. That was the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> fourth wing. 703 was the frame </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">construction, the three floors. And the later years, they added a fourth wing out </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">of block building. Made it more </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">permanent. That's why it's still standing today.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Now, that was my second location. And then I got on the management role </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">in '55, which meant I went </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">exempt and no more pay for overtime. And we</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">nt out to White Bluffs site—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">tow</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">n</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> site, and that's where the </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">minor construction was located. Minor construction, it's the construction people that are spe</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">cially trained in SWP, </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">radiological construction work</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> as opposed to run-of-the-mill construction.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And they're the ones that had never had any accounting at all for any equipment, supplies, materials or otherwise.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And that's where I had the lunchroom office experience.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">It so happened that they established</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I brought an inventory procedure and establis</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hed that first inventory during </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">a strike. We had to cut government-owned tool boxes. But still, the workers though</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">t they were private. And we had </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">to cut locks in order to take inventory.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> And then</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> we feared for our lives when they came back. Pretty rough day sometimes.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">What timeframe would that have been you were out?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">That was 1955 to '56. A couple of years there, and then another person took over from there and I w</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ent into </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">budgeting at that point, from accounting to budgeting. And I did that for</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">until 19</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">63. And then I moved out to the </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">so-called bus lot, which it was. 105 buses and all that. And I was out there for 17 ple</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">asant years, budgeting, </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">billing</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rate—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Because we were the supplier of all plant services. So we had billing</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> rates to the reactors, and the </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">separations, and the fuel prep, and</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">whoever. The AEC, everything. We billed t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hem, just as </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">if we were like plumbing</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> jobs.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And that I enjoyed. That was probably my most productive period. And from similar</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> work to that, I moved over—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Let’s</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> see, </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">was around when the Federal B</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">uilding was built, but I didn't get into it. That was built </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">in '69. I didn't get down there </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">until 1980. Went down there a couple of years. And then they moved us out t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">o Hanford Square where Battelle </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Boulevard intersection is.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And I was there</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I retired from that location in 1977. My wife and I retired the </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">same week. I've been retired 26 </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">years now at the end of this month.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Was your wife working at the Hanford Site as well?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">She worked after the kids were grown, like most stay-at-home moms do. She s</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">tayed until the daughter was of </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">age, and then she went to work for a credit union, which was the government</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> credit union, which was merged </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">later on with </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span class="SpellingError SCX194300000">Gesa</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> But that was an interesting job. They worked two hours a </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">day, three days a week. Because </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">it was all hand done, no mechanization.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And then she got a job offer from the department in the central stores and pu</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rchasing department. She worked </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">there eight years. In 1986, the income tax law changed a lot of things for all of us, e</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ffective in 1987. It meant that </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">partial vesting was</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">IRS has to rule on all things like that. And that meant t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hat if you had 10 years to vest </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">pensions, once you pass the 50% point, whatever the vesting period is, then you we</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">re partially vested. And so she </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">had 8 years out of 10. So she got 80%. But she had only worked eight y</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ears, so it wasn't a very large </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">accumulation.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Because I got my full. Of course, I'd been here 37 years I think it was, however that works out. 36.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I want to go back and ask you</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—when </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">you were talking earlier about that period in '55, '</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">56 when you were working out at </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">White Bluffs</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> town site</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">. You ment</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ioned radiological construction?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Oh, that—t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hose construction workers worked under what they called SWP, Special Work Permit, which meant radiological.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">They ha</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">d to wear</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the clothing was ca</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">lled SWP clothing then. Today, they call it </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">something else. But they worked </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">under those conditions, so therefore they were subject to different rules.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Whereas, construction wo</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rkers on brand new construction weren’t then—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">they didn't have any of</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> that to contend with. But once </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">a plant went operational, it became radiologically SWP. This is not an anti-union thin</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">g. It's just a demonstration of </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">how things were in those days.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">They had some old buses that</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the original buses in town were called Green Hor</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">nets. And they were small. They </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">had chrome bars that went right across the middle of your back. And for 35 miles, that was not very comfortable.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">When they got the newer buses that you see today, like Greyhound has for instance, they relegated those to the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">construction workers at White Bluff</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">s</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">. Well, since GE guys worked</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> up</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> at White Bluff</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">s</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">, we had to ride those, too.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">So all the office workers in the warehouse</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">GE employees rode one bus. The elec</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">tricians rode another bus. Pipe </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">fitters rode another bus, even though there were only two or three of them. It was really a segmented-type thing.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">As close to anything radiological that I came to when I conducting one of those physical inventor</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ies—w</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">e would be </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">out</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">all of the construction materials were stored outdoors on the ground. I </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">mean, like stainless steel. 308 </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">stainless steel was pretty high-priced stuff. But the sheets were stored outside</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> on pallets. Well, o</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ne sheet is worth </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">thousands and thousands of dollars.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">So we had to lay down on the ground and count the sheets to do the inventory. T</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">his one day—t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">h</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">e only time I came close to any </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">contamination, we went back and boarded the buses that evening from White Blu</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ffs. And we saw the guys on the </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">dock there chipping with a chisel and hammer. That meant they were chipping out</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> flakes of contamination. So we </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">asked what was going </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">on. They said, well, we're next </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">door to F and H A</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">reas.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And F A</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rea had coughed out something they said. And so I said, well, my crew was outside today on the ground.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And if the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">y</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> coughed out because all the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">some construction workers could drive their cars. That's the only people.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Plant operations people all had to ride buses. No parking lots.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">So anyhow, those cars were all impounded. Had tape around them. They co</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">uldn't go home. And some of the </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">guys, they had to take off their shoes, leave them, and be issued safety shoes in lieu of it.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And I said, well, we were on the ground, too. So they proceeded to take us all off the bus and surveyed us with</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> a </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">wand. And they only found a few flakes on our back. And so we were allowed to go</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> home. But that's as close as I </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ever came to getting contaminated. It's still scary.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Yeah. Obviously, Hanford, a site where security was prominent--</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Very tight security, yeah. I was telling the young lady here that across the road</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">way on Stevens, as you near the </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">300 A</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rea, there was a real wide barricade, probably eight lane</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">s</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> that you had t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">o go through. And everybody had </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">to stop, including buses. And the guard would get on the bus, walk down the aisle, and check every badge.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And at that time, AEC had their own security airplanes. That was the purpose of t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">he Richland Airport was for AEC </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">security in th</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">e begi</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">nning. They had a couple Piper C</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ub-</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">type airplanes.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">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.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Somebody had run the barricade. The plane goes out, lands in front of them, stop</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">s them, and that's how they got </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">apprehended.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Another i</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ncident of security, yeah, that's the subject? </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Many y</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ears later now, after 1963, and </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I'm in the transportation assignment. Airspace was off limits to all airplanes ove</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">r Hanford because they had army </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">artillery guarding it in the Cold War and all that.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And a private plane had violated the space. And the AEC planes had forced it do</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">wn. And once they're down, they </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">can't ever take off. So after a week or so, they sent a lowboy trailer out there, l</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">oaded the small airplane on it, </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">proceeded to come down what's the highway and now Stevens. And down where S</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">teven</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">s today, 240 and all that </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">intersection is, there wa</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">s only two lanes on the road then, not six. But at that junct</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ure there, </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">there was a blinking </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">light. And they had to turn right to go to the Richland Airport.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And this guy, the truck driver pulling this low-boy, he had never pulled an airplane </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">before. And he didn't allow for </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">that pull. Well, that blinking light clipped off a wing. And then he got time off. It was not </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">really his fault, that pilot in </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the beginning. </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">But there's a lot of—I guess full of</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> interesting stories like that on security.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Great. Did you have special security clearance to work at Hanford at the time?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Which?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Any special security clearance?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Oh, yeah. I had Q clearance, which there's one higher than that</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> that's top secret. But</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> Q clearance meant you </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">could go into any and all areas. And because the nature of my job, I had that my whole time I was out there.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Once you have it, they would tend not to take it away from you because it's quite ex</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">pensive investigation to get it </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">in the first place. I might mention something interesting in that regard.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">When I first came to work in 1951,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> why,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> the PSQ is Personnel Security Questionnaire. And it's about 25 pages long.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And you had to memorize it</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> because every five years, you had to update it. Well any</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">how, I filled that out, and you </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">give references.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> And I have, </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">in the Twin Falls area, a farmer that had been a neighbor farmer in Nebraska, where I was born</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> to my</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">parents. I gave him as a reference because he had known me all my life. And that would be higher points.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">About a year or two later</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I guess probably a year later I had gone back down to Twin Falls to visit the in-laws</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">and</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> I went and</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> saw this farmer, family friend. The first thing he said to me, Bobby, what in the world did you do?</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> [LAUGHTER]</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> The FBI had</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">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</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">really did very, very tight security. It's probably tighter than it was when I was in the Air Corps.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">You mentioned riding a bus out to work.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Yeah, everybody rode it, except those few construction workers in that minor construction area. They were</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">permitted their cars. I don't know why, but no one else drove cars on the plant. Everybody rode on the bus.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">The bus fa</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">re</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> was</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">of course, it was subsidized. It was a plant operation, like anything else is. To make the liability</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">insurance legal, they charged a nickel each way on the bus, which later on got changed to a dollar or something.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">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</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">legal.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">From those old green buses, they came up with some</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I forget what they're called. More like Greyhound buses.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And then in 1963, the year I went out to the transportation, they bought a fleet of </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span class="SpellingError SCX194300000">Flxibles</span></span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">. And that's F-L-X.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">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,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">not buses. They had storage underneath. And so we had quite a suggestion system on the plant. And you would</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">get monetary award or mention. And somebody said, well, instead of running mail carrier cars delivering mail to all</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the stops on the whole plant, load the mail onto the now available storage bins on these buses. And that was a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">pretty good suggestion award, </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">monetarily</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> to somebody.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And they did that. Took it out to a central mail station out there, and then dispatched it.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">You mentioned different contractor</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">s you worked for over the years--</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>:</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> Uh-huh.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">The story behind that for the record is that General Elec</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">well, DuPont built the plant. That's who my dad worked</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">for. And GE came in '46, I believe. And they were here until the group I was in</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">they</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> phased out in groups. I was</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the last group to go out. </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">[COUGH] </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Excuse me, in 196</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">'66.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">When the </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">GE phased out, they had a dollar a year contract. Like Henry Kaiser and rest of them did during the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">war, for the good of the country. But they trained an awful lot of people in the infancy field of nuclear engineering.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">General Electric trained all those people here and then they opened up the turnkey operations in San Jose and</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Japan. But anyhow, AEC was still AEC at that point. And then, their wise decision</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">instead of one contractor, they</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">would have nine. And so there were</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the reactors was one. </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Separation plant was another. Fuel </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">preparation</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">at 300 A</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rea was another. The laboratories, which is today basically Battelle. Site services. The company doctors</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">formed a foundation called Hanford Environmental Health Foundation, which is the MDs that gave the annual</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">exams.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And the computer end</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">, it was now getting into the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> infancy of t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hat,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> computer sciences corp</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">s</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">, we had the first</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">contracts on that. So all together, there were nine contractors. And the portion that I was with went to ITT. They</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">bid, came in and bid</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">. I helped conduct tours of the facility for the bidders. Because I knew all about it and knew the ins</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">and outs on some of the monetary parts that their accounting people would have questions on. We'd walk through</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">shops and all that.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Well, anyhow, ITT got the site support</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">site services. And we had that for five years. And austerity set in in the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">'70s. Well, '70. They said, we got to get site services' budget down to less than $10 million. And it probably was 13</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">or 14, I don't remember now.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">So my boss and another analyst, like myself, sequestered</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">talk about sequester. We sequestered ourselves in</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the then new Federal B</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">uilding for about a week. Almost 20 hours a day, whittling and whittling and working on a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">budget. And there was only one conclusion. We had to cut everything in half.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Went through all that sweat. Went up with our pres</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ident, Tom Leddy, went upstairs to an</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> AEC finance</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">office, </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">presented</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> our whole case. And the man turns around and says, well, it doesn't make any difference, Tom.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Your contract's not renewed anyhow.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And so now, Atlantic Richfield, </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">an existing contractor for 200 A</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">reas, somehow the separations plant contractor that</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">is an oil company owned,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> can all of a sudden manage a site service. And so they did absorb us. But politics</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">were still around in those days. And there were three of us analysts. One had got transferred by ITT up to the new</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">line</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">newly est</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ablished Distant Early Warning L</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ine from Russia up to Alaska. So that left two of us. And we waited</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">around. We waited around and never got an offer. And they said, no, we can do it all without you. We don't need</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">you. How come it took so many people anyhow?</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">On a Friday afternoon, the man that I did budgets for saw me in a restroom. He said, you got an offer yet? </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I said, no, n</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">o. I'm</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">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</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">went downtown, and a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">bout 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</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">went over Atlantic Richfield</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> under those.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> [</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">AUDIO CUTS OUT] </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And so I'm</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> not mad, not knocking—knocking them</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">, that's just the way things were.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And then Rockwell came to town. Wh</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">en they laid off everybody on</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> B</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">-2,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> I'm trying to think of other</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">in the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">community, something might be of interest for the history project. Back into the '50s.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Those</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> same green buses, they had, oh, </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">four or five of them that ran in town like a modified transit system. I don't</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">think they had that many riders, but it did. And also, the plant buses ran what they called shuttle routes. And those</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">buses went into Richland on probably six routes and drove around the neighborhoods and picked up workers on</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the three shifts. And that's why up in the ranch house district, there was the bypass you'll see between homes.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">The pathways that go clear through lots. Blocks were so long that they had to provide a quicker route to the bus</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">stops.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Now, those rides were free because they were shuttle buses. When you got out to the bus lot, you paid your</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">nickel, or a pass, whatever it was.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I wanted to ask you about accounting in </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">terms of equipment practices. W</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ere there a lot of changes during the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">time you worked at the Hanford</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> site? Computer technology come in and change things?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Oh, yeah. For sure. In the beginning, as I mentioned earlier, all accounting was open ledgers and hand posted.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Adding machine tapes at the end of the day trying to balance them all out. And we had that until</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">let's see. 1970s—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">think it was 1977, we got our very first taste of it. Every other desk in a group of about 20 people in cost</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">accounting that I was in.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">There was cost accounting, gener</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">al accounting, and so on, p</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">roperty management. But anyhow, we had about 20</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">people. Every other desk had a monitor. Well, they referred to them as a computer. But they were just the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">monitor. And down at the end of our building was one printer. And everything was on floppy disk. Every program</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">was on a floppy disk. Nothing was built-in because it was just the infancy. The big computers were down in the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Federal B</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">uilding. And a sub-basement below the basement was specially built for that.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">But back to our office. Across the hall from us, we had two small computers that are</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">to me, they're about the size</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">of portable sewing machines. And I can't even remember the names of them </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">because they don't exist today b</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ut</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">they were the computer locally. So we wanted to run our work order system, we would phone down to the guy</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">down at the other end of the building, insert the floppy disk from work system and wait.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Well, I've got somebody'</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">s inventory. You have to wait. Because t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">here's only one place to load up down there. So finally,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">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</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">have to say, now print it. And they got one printer for the whole building. And so it's pretty interesting.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Whereas</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> today, I've got a laptop that I</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> can virtually do everything with. But we graduated from hand posted</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">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</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">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</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">information, but it's just so much printing.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">It's even hard to remember after 26 years how antiquated that is compared to today. But prior to that, it wasn't</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">even the PCs. They called everything a PC. Or, was PC compatible. Because prior to that, the only electronic data</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">processing nickname was spaghetti wire. I'm not very conversant in it, but it was some kind of a board that had a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">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</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">actually calculate them.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I wanted to ask you a little bit more about the community of Richland. What was that like in the 1950s? I know it</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">was a government--</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">In the town? I g</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">uess I didn't cover that area. Everything—a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ll houses were owned by government. We rented them.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">My wife and I and family, we came after the days of free everything. When the coal was free</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">all the furnaces</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">were coal fed. Some people would convert them later on to oil. But anyhow, they were coal burning. However you</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">got the coal,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> whether it was government days</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> or you bought the coal from the courtyard, which is down at the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">end of what's </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">now Wellsian</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> Way. There was a coal yard where that lumber yard is. And that's why those</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">railroad tracks that are abandoned and rundown, that's where the coal cars came in.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> And </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I can add something a little bit later about coal cars and the plant. But anyhow, we rented from the government.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">For example, that brand new apartment that I mentioned moving onto first was a two-bedroom, full basement.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Steam heated because</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I'll digress a little bit.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">All the downtown 700 A</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rea, including the Catholic church, central</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> church, the hospital, all 700 A</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rea, including</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">those new apartments, and all downtown shopping area were steam heated by a steam plant, which was located</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">where the back door of the post office is today in that small parking lot. And that one plant furnished steam for</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">everything.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Well, back to this new apartment. The steam pipe</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">s</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> ran through this full basement. And our kids played</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">there</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">wasn't any yards. There was just apartments. And they would play in the basement because they were quite</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">small. But they can remember today the pop, pop, </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">pop in those steam pipes.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And the rent for that two-bedroom apartment was higher than any other house in town. It was $77 a month. And</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the reason it was $77 instead of $70 was because it included $7 for electricity. Nobody had electricity meters yet.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Even in that new place. So when they did put in electricity meters in all homes later, which had to be</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—during that time, </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the year we</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">were there, which is December '51 to December of '52, sometime in that period of time they put the meters in.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">They took off $7 off the rent because now we're going to pay</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—and </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">their theory is it was $5 for a one-bedroom place,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">whatever it was. $7 for a two-bedroom and $10 for a three-bedroom for electricity in those days. And nobody had</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">electric heat, of course.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And then, later on they put in water meters. And again, they had to come into your home, invade your home, and</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">put in something. So it was strictly government prior to</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—well, another—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">and when I lived in the rental, if something went wrong</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">with the plumbing, they would send out a plumber, but you paid for it, though.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">But later on when I went to the tall two-story, three-bedroom duplex houses, or called </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">A</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> houses, that was our first</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">house after that apartment. And as I remember, I think the rent was</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">they had rent districts with low, medium, and</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">high in the more desirable parts of town.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And we were on Haupt Street across from uptown district where Hunt Street is and Jefferson Park. And I think our</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rent for that was like $47 because it was not a brand new apartment.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And later on, we</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—I was</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> on the housing list. And you applied and months or years later, you'd rotate up to</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">move into a nicer place or a different location. But in the meantime, up came an F house, which is a two-story</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">single family, kind of a Cape Cod-looking type of house. And that came up on the housing list. However, the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">caveat was that you had to cash out the present owner who had made some improvements. He had converted</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the coal to oil, t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hey put in a clotheslin</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">e, which nobody had clotheslines, a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">nd something else.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">So cashed him out for</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I believe it was $750. And if I do that, I could have it, so I did. We lived in that place for 19</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">years. Our daughter grew up there and got married out of that home. And that's the only home she ever knew.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> [LAUGHTER] </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And we were there until 1977 when the real estate market in Richland was</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">this is community wide. The housing</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">prices were mo</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ving 18% a year, about 1.5</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">% a month.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> And I thought well, I don't need to be setting</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> still. I</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> mean, if I cash out here, and went on</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">. So we </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">sold that home. I listed it. Earl,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> my</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">father, was very ill. We were going to Spokane. I listed it. A man came by, looked it out. What were you asking? I</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">said, oh, about 17. He shook his head. And I said, too high? He says, no, 27,000. </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">[LAUGHTER] </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Just to show you how bad</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">things were. And so it sold right away. What are you going </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">to do now? And I said, well. Would</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> you want to try a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">mobile home? I know a jewel.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And in those days, real estate men did not sell mobile homes. But this couple had bought their first house from</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">him, or something. And i</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">t was somebody retiring out of postal</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">, wanted to go back to Montana. Never</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">smoked in it, never had any pets in it, n</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">o kids. It was the Cadillac of mobile h</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">omes. We were there two years, b</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ut</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">that was l</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ong enough. Then we moved into the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> house that I'm still in. I'm widowed now for five years. The house</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">we're in now, we've lived in that longer than</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> in</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> any other place. </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">[LAUGHTER] </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">But the community</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> just</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> has changed so drastically.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">South Richland. People say today they live in South Richland. We lived in South Richland, which was south of the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">downtown shopping district to the Yakima Bridge. That was South Richland.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">What is now South Ri</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">chland out there was Kennewick</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Highlands.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> So it depends on who you're talking to today.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Yeah. </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Do you remember any special community events, parades, any of those sorts of things during the '50s and '60s?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Community event</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">s</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Yeah.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Yep. Back in GE days, they had Atomic Frontier D</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ays. And they were a big thing. Had beauty queens in it, rode in</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the float, and all that.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Down at the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—[COUGH] excuse me. For Atomic F</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rontie</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">r D</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ays down at the lower end of Lee Boulevard, which is still the same</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">shape today. They set up booths all on there. And it was a really big event. Before we had the hydro races even.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">People look back fondly on that.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Talking about community, again, my mother, I said, worked for the post office, wh</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ich—i</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">t stood on the corner of Knight</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> Street, where it touches George Washington Way. There's some kind of a lawyer office building there</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">today. And the old post office is the Knights of Columbus building on the bypass highway.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">But she</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> would have to take the mail and</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> go</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> over to where the Red</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> Lion Motel is today, at</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> the Desert Inn, a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">frame building, winged out basically</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> the same</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">. And that was referred to as the transient quarters. And that was</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">for upper management that were going through and it wasn't </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">really </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">a public motel, per se. But she would have mail for</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">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</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">that</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> Desert Inn.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Talking about badges, something humorous on that. We didn't wear things around our neck in the beginning</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">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</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">every building you went into, you</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> just</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> pulled it out, flashed it to the guard. It usually was a lady security employee.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">There were guards in the building, but the person on the desk was a security clerk. But you'd just automatically</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—you’d open it </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">like that and</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> flag and</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> put it back in your pocket.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Every buildin</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">g you went into. Downtown, 700 A</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rea, that first building I've referred to. One day I went into a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">restaurant and I just did that automatically</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> [LAUGHTER]</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> because it's just so automatic. Then they graduated to having the thing</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">around your neck. And then also, if you worked in the outer areas, you had to wear a radiation badge in addition</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">to your secu</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rity badge. There was two types and o</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ne 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</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">of them was a pencil </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">shaped. And that's what they called it. And the other one was a flat badge, which was</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">carried in something around your neck.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And in all the areas I worked, and the places I described laying on the ground t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hat happened and all that, my</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">RAMs,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> they call it, never accumulated in my w</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">orking life to be a danger</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">. I had some, of course. Everybody</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">does in the background. But I never accumulated to a danger point.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">There were people, some smart aleck people that would take their badge and hold it over a source at work so</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">they could get some time off. Because if you got</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">what was the phrase?</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Anyhow, if they got contaminated, they put them on a beefsteak diet. And they stayed home. And they come every</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">day and took a urine sample and all that s</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">tuff. But they had a life of riley. So that was nice</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">. But the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">guys got canned that did that. But they would purposely expose their pencil so they could stay home.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">So did all employees ha</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ve those, either the pencil or--</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Only those that worked in reactor and separations areas, yeah. I mentioned these departments.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> Actually, t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">he first department is Fuel Preparations Department, FPD. The</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> present—the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> 300 A</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rea</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">most of the buildings have now been</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">torn down that you don't even see them there. But the north half roughly was fuels preparation department</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">headed for the reactors. They took uranium and encapsulated it in cans, like can of peas in just so many words.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And the south half of that 300 A</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rea was a laboratory area, the predecessor of Battelle. So the fuel was prepared</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">there. And it was machined and canned and sent as nickname slugs to the reactors. Then, the reactors loaded</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">into all those little tubes. And then from the reactors, they come </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">out the backside into those</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> cooling pods and all that. And t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ransported in</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">casks to the 200 A</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">reas, which are</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> separated area, separations. And the rea</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ctor area on the face</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> side was not</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">that dangerous.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">The 200 A</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">reas only work on</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> what they </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">called the canyons, PUREX and RE</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">DOX, and those kind of</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">buildings. But t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hose cells were very, very hot. But you had to be </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">measured no matter where you were.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">One of our site services was a decontamination laundry</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> called the laundry. And all clothing</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I mentioned to you</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">before SWP.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Well, SWP, radiologic exposure employees wore whites. Carpenters and truck drivers and all that that didn't work</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">around reactors wore blues. And so they were sorted. And we had different billing rates for that laundry because</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the blues only had to </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">be laundered and dried. Whereas</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> the others had to be laundered, dried, and</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">decontaminated, checked in separate washing machines. And then workers wore</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—i</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">n the beginning, wore World</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">War II-style gas masks for our air supply before they invented a moon-type suit.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> [LAUGHTER]</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> But they wore gas masks.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And the mask would come back to this mask station, which was part of the laundry. And they took the mask</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">s, and t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hey'd take away the cartridge. They'd put th</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">e mask in dishwasher machines, i</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">n racks. That's how they would</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">wash them. And then they would get them a new filter and package them up. Sanitize them and package them up</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">l</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ike medical supplies would be in</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I can't think of any other unusual operation out there like that.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I want to c</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hange gears just</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> a little bit. President Kennedy visited the site in 1963.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Yep, 1963.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I was wondering--</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">When they did that, they let all the schools out. And for the first time, non-workers were allowed to go in cars out</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">there. It was a grand traffic jam, but it was quite a deal. And he landed his Air</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> Force plane up at Moses Lake—at Larsen airbase at Ephrata, </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">whichever you want to call it. And then helicoptered. And of course, like it is</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">today, there were three or four helicopters. And you don't know which one he's on and all that bit.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> And here, e</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">veryone is gathered out the N Reactor a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rea, which is a dual-purpose reactor. They captured the heat from the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">reactor, put it through a pipe throu</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">gh a fence to the predecessor</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> to Energy Northwest, which was </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">called Whoops.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> This was a big deal, a dual-purpose react</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">or. And N stood for new reactor, really. </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Anyhow, he comes in and they got a low-boy trailer. They fixed up down in the shops where I worked</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">my office</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">was. And then built a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> podium just precisely for the P</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">resident with him emblem and the whole bit. So I was privy to</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">get to see some things like that.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> But anyhow, t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hat was the stage. And it was a long low-boy, so it accommodated all the senato</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rs and all the local—Sam Volpentest, the guy credited with HAMMER</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">those type of people. Glenn Lee</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> from the Tri-City Herald, you name it.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">So the helicopter comes in, blows dust over everybody. But anyhow, my wife and kids and all schools were</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">brought out there. And I don't know how many thousand people were out there in the desert. And you could see</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">President Kennedy. He got up on the stage. You get close enough, you could get pictures.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Then, that same year in </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">November, he got assassinated. So t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hat was a busy year.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Do you remember any other special events with dignitaries like that? Or other--</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Well, I could go way back to World War II. I wasn't here, but I have a family connection</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> on it</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">. All over United States,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">they had</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> war bond drives for various reasons to help. Build a ship, b</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">uild an airplane. The one that happened here is not</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the only one. But they took so much money out of all the paycheck of Hanford workers, which included my dad as</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">a carpenter. And the money they collected bought the B-17 Bomber, which was named Day's Pay.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And that bomber</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">they had a bomber out here, a B-17, so that people could see it, but it wasn't the same one. On</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the Richland High School wall there's a mural. And that's a rendition by a famous artist of Day's Pay in formation.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And so I can say that my parents contributed to that. And that's the story behind that one bomber. Every worker</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">out there,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> construction or operations, they donated a day's pay.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I wonder</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> what was the most challenging part of your job working at the Hanford site?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">As an accounting person, my most challengin</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">g part was learning government-e</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">se.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> [LAUGHTER]</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> How to deal. And in that vein,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">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</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">certain corporations.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Later on, when I mentioned that I went down to the federal building for my</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">finally got located in that building,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> there was</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">another fellow and I were old timers in accounting. And that year, they had five college grads, accounting grads</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">come in. They hired five at one time. And they ran them by Marv and </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> for exposure.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">This is how things are done. This is how the contacts are. And our basic job was to squire these young fellows</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">around and introduce them to certain counterparts and now DOE. Now, this is how you make appointments with</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">them. This is what you do. This is what you never do. And likewise, with senior management. And it paid off</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">because of those five, all four of them b</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ecame managers or supervisors, a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">nd one of them became my manager</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">within two years.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Today, that same man is the comptroller at Savannah River Plant.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> [LAUGHTER]</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> And so I like to feel that I contributed to them</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">being</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">partially to them being successful. And so that's a reward. But probably the most difficult thing coming from</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">a private</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I worked for Colorado Mill and Elevator, which means I worked at a flour mill district office as a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">bookkeeper. And that's a small town deal in Twin Falls.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">To come to work for the government where some of your family despises you because you work for the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">government, but you had to fight that as well as learn how the government operates.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Y</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ou mentioned earlier, y</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ou were talking about coal being used for heat in Richland. You also said you wanted to talk about coal fires</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">going up</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> at the site.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Oh, w</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hat?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Coal fires?</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>:</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Oh, yeah. Interestingly, the midway power station, substation at midway, is one of the reasons they built Hanford</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">where they did because the Grand Coulee Dam had just been completed and an electricity producer</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">a major</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">producer. And they put the midway substation down there. That basically was built to furnish huge amounts of</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">power to Hanford, for the reactors, everything.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Which in total</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">because I processed vouchers, I know it was 32 </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">megs</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">. Which today doesn't sound like much, but</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the whole plant bill was 32 </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">megs</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> when everything was operating. But if the power were interrupted, they had</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> to have</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">backup. So e</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">very area had a huge diesel-powered</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">like water pumps, where t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hey could pump the water from the river</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">instead of by electrically. They had to be able to pump it because it was critical. Because all the water for the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">whole plant was taken in at intake water plants near the rea</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ctors along the river. The 200 A</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rea water is piped to</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">them in a huge line as raw water until it gets to their place.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">The backup is these coal-fired steam plants</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">,</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> is what I was trying to say. It got about 30-some cars of coal a day</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rolled through Richland past the cemetery. In the beginning, the railroad </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">came down from the north, from V</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">antage</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">area down along the Columbia River. There's a railroad bridge across the</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> river, </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Beverly I think it is. And it came</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">down to below the 100</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">-</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">B</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> R</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">eactor area. That's where the line ended. And t</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">hen a plant had its own railway</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">incidentally. It had a 285 mile-long rail line, high line and low line.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Then, they built</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">--</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">in 1950, the </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">year before I came</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">, they built the line that we see today that comes from</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Columbia Center into Richland, by the cemetery. And it ends at the old bus lot area, where that railroad car</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Columbia Center into Richland, by the cemetery. And it ends at the old bus lot area, where that railroad car</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rebuilding outfit is now, there is a roundhouse that it's rectangular in shape. But some 30 cars of coal a day came</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">in here to supply </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">because those plants were—</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">they actually operated the steam plants. They didn't start</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">them up from cold. They just ran constantly.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I wonder if you could provide sort of an overall assessment of how Hanford was as a place to work. What was it</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">like as a place to work?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">It was a great place for me. I came out of an area that was the agriculturally-oriented. And the Korean War</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">started. Wages were frozen, y</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ou weren't going to go anywhere. I came up here and I got a new start, like</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">pioneers did. I visualized that's what fa</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">rming pioneers did the same thing</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">. And it opened up a whole field for me, a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">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</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the water here.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">I'm a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">sked by a nephew in Hermiston </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">constantly, how do you drink the water? And I said, well, it comes out of</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">the river. How can it co</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">me out of the river and that </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">plume</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">’s</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> out there?</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">There's so many false stories around here. But working at Hanford, I think, by and large, almost all employees</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">would tell you the same thing. It was a great place to work.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">The pay was decent. Maybe you didn't get rich, but it was decent. It's in a nice area to live in.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">When we came back in the '50s, or in the '40s, and before that even of course, shopping was pretty much</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">nonexistent. They went to Yakima, or Spokane, o</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">r Walla Walla. That I didn’t—w</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">e didn't experience that too much by 1951</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">because by that time, the U</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ptown shopping district was built. And there was a men's store. And there was four</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">women's stores. Because GE was the prime contractor, there was an appliance dealer that handled GE-Hotpoint</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">appliances. We got employee discounts when we worked for GE.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">We also got 10% gasoline discount when we worked for Atlantic Richfield Hanford. But we just grew with the times.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">And it's just such an entirely different area now than it was. Just the world is different, too.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Is there anything that I haven't asked you about? Is there anything you would like to talk about that we haven't</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">talked about yet?</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Now really, w</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">ork-wise at Hanford, I think I</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">’ve</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> pretty well-covered it. I'll repeat myself. My first 15 years was construction</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">engineering accounting, which is an entirely different field than operations accounting. Operations accounting</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">concerns itself with the </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">reactor</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">s and separations and the site services that support them. But I learned a lot by</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">working at Hanford.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">My family, three adult children live here, are retired here. My oldest son went on Medicare this year.</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> [LAUGHTER]</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> And that kind</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">of puts you in your place quickly. But it's been</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> a</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> good enough place that they stayed in the area. And of the six</span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"> </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">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.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bauman</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">Well, Bob, I'd like to thank you very much for coming and talking to us today. I really appreciate it.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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<p class="Paragraph SCX194300000"><span class="TextRun SCX194300000"><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bush</span>: </span><span class="TextRun SCX194300000">It's been my pleasure.</span><span class="EOP SCX194300000"> </span></p>
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Location
The location of the interview
Washington State University - Tri-Cities
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
1:02:19
Bit Rate/Frequency
Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio)
3068 kbps
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site
1951-2013
Years on Hanford Site
Years on the Hanford Site, if any.
1951-1977
Names Mentioned
Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community.
Volpentest, Sam
Kaiser, Henry
Leddy, Tom
Hanford Sites
Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview
General Electric
Atlantic Richfield
Rockwell
Westinghouse
703 Building
F Area
H Area
300 Area
200 Area
700 Area
WPPSS
HAMMER
N Reactor
100-B Reactor
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Bob Bush
Description
An account of the resource
Bob Bush moved to Pasco, Washington in 1951 and later moved to Richland, Washington. Bob worked on the Hanford Site from 1951-1987.
An interview conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Mission Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
video/mp4
Provenance
A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource.
The Hanford Oral History Project operates under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who are the primary contractors for the US Department of Energy's curatorial services relating to the Hanford site. This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to this US Department of Energy collection.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Hanford Site (Wash.)
Richland (Wash.)
Pasco (Wash.)
Grand Coulee Dam (Wash.)
Date Modified
Date on which the resource was changed.
2016-05-17: Metadata v1 created – [J.G.]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
7/7/2013
100-B Reactor
200 Area
300 Area
700 Area
703 Building
DuPont
F Area
General Electric
H Area
Henry Kaiser
Kennedy, John Fitzgerald, 1917-1963
N Reactor
Richland (Wash.)
Washington Public Power Supply System