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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 Franklin
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Barbara Brown Taylor
Location
The location of the interview
Clark Place in Moscow, Idaho
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p>Camera man: Whenever you’re-</p>
<p>Robert Franklin: Ready?</p>
<p>Camera man: We’re ready for you, yeah. Do your thing.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay, let’s, yeah, let’s go. My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history interview with Barbara Brown Taylor on January 6<sup>th</sup>, 2017. The interview is being conducted at Clark Place in Moscow, Idaho. I will be talking with Barbara about her experiences growing up at the Hanford Site and her father’s experiences working at the Hanford Site. And for the record, can you state and spell your full name for us?</p>
<p>Barbara Brown Taylor: Barbara Brown Taylor. B-A-R-B-A-R-A, B-R-O-W-N, T-A-Y-L-O-R, no hyphens.</p>
<p>Franklin: Great, thank you. So let’s start from the beginning. How did you come to the Hanford Site?</p>
<p>Taylor: In 1943, my father was hired from a company—wait a minute, take that off. In 1943, my father was hired to be the landscape architect in a new city. What an exciting thing for a landscape architect, what kind of an exciting job! We came from Illinois. I don’t know if he was the sole architect, but I do remember some of the things he did. That’s how I came here.</p>
<p>Franklin: And how old were you when you came?</p>
<p>Taylor: I was eight.</p>
<p>Franklin: And so the city that you’re talking about, that would have been Richland?</p>
<p>Taylor: Richland.</p>
<p>Franklin: Richland, Washington.</p>
<p>Taylor: And we didn’t know, of course, what it was. It was just a new city in the desert, had something to do with the war.</p>
<p>Franklin: Were the Alphabet Houses being constructed at that point-</p>
<p>Taylor: Yes.</p>
<p>Franklin: Or did you arrive before—okay.</p>
<p>Taylor: Well, he arrived in ’43.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>Taylor: The houses were being built. And my mother and brother and I lived on a farm in Illinois until my father wrote to us and said, the house is ready. So at that time, you signed up for a house, the men did the work there. As soon as it was ready, you could bring your family. It didn’t have any glass in the windows, but it was ready.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow. That seems like a pretty crucial component of—</p>
<p>Taylor: My mother thought so. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, especially with the winds that would blow.</p>
<p>Taylor: Absolutely, absolutely. It was covered with dust.</p>
<p>Franklin: So your father, then, would have worked with Albin Pherson, the head architect for the—</p>
<p>Taylor: I assume so. He didn’t talk about the people he worked with. I never met another landscape architect there. He was very busy all the time, because he had a crew that supplied the grass seed and rented—not rented, lent out the lawn mowers and shovels and all sorts of things. As I remember him saying, there was an instruction sheet, which he put out. Somehow the government decided you couldn’t just have a city built on sand with nothing in the yards. Maybe you couldn’t keep people there. I don’t know the reason. But they hired these crews of men who worked on supplying the needs to do a lawn. And as I remember it, you had to have a lawn. If you couldn’t do it with what the city gave you free, then you had to pay somebody to put your lawn in. Because after a certain amount of time, you had to have a lawn.</p>
<p>Franklin: Mm.</p>
<p>Taylor: Not necessarily flowers, just you had to have grass.</p>
<p>Franklin: You had to have grass. What other kinds of work did your father do besides planning out yards and lawns and things like that?</p>
<p>Taylor: Well, he did that for churches and schools. There were only two churches, a Catholic church and a Protestant church. The government built two churches. That was it. And he would landscape those. Any public buildings that needed it—library—there were a few things like that. It was very sketchy and basic at the beginning.</p>
<p>Franklin: Mm-hm.</p>
<p>Taylor: So I think he landscaped whatever was there. I think that’s why they brought him.</p>
<p>Franklin: Tell me about growing up in wartime Richland. Where did you go to school, did you go to church, you know, what was the atmosphere like there?</p>
<p>Taylor: Well, I was eight. And we came here in June, and September was the first day of school. And I went to Lewis and Clark Grade School, which was right up the street of Locke. I lived on Casey Street in an A house. I walked up to school. And that first day, the teacher said, I want to know where all of you are from. Give your name and tell us where you came from. So one at a time, we got up, gave our names. I said Illinois. One of my new friends said New Jersey. Somebody else said Texas, somebody else said Colorado. And I thought at the time, I don’t think this has ever happened before. I don’t think the first day of school, people are from somewhere else. And I’ve always remembered that, how interesting that was to see all those new kids make new friends. When you’re a kid, as long as you’re with your parents and you feel love in a family, it’s great to have new adventures. [LAUGHTER] I don’t think my mother liked it at all! But, you know. That’s one thing. The first year, perhaps a little longer, but the first year, there were no telephones in homes. And as I recall, if the wife was going to have a baby, they would issue her a phone for the period just before she had the baby. So she could call the doctor, her husband at work, whatever. But the minute she had the baby, they came and took the phone out. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Taylor: And there was a phone that first summer on many telephone poles. The kind that just hangs up. You could go there and make a call, free. But you had to find one to do that, because there just wasn’t that accessibility to phones.</p>
<p>Franklin: How would you know who to call? Would you get an operator when you—</p>
<p>Taylor: You’d get an operator, of course. You always got an operator in those days.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure, and then they would connect you to another telephone on a pole on a different street? Or how would—</p>
<p>Taylor: No, no, you probably wouldn’t get a call back. I don’t remember ever walking down the street and hearing a phone ring. [LAUGHTER] It was an out kind of thing. Let’s say you wanted to call your grandmother in Illinois or something. You might get to use it.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay, I see. It wasn’t an in-town—</p>
<p>Taylor: No, not really. I don’t think so.</p>
<p>Franklin: And what did your mother do?</p>
<p>Taylor: My mother was a homemaker, but she had been a registered nurse. And she went back to that when I grew up and was off to college.</p>
<p>Franklin: And were your parents still in Richland at the time?</p>
<p>Taylor: Mm-hmm.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>Taylor: Here’s the thing. I don’t think that the government intended to keep the city. As I remember, we were going to live there as long as we needed to. When the war was over, you’d all go back to wherever you came from or somewhere else. But they didn’t build that city to keep. The wood was not the best, the floors were pine and splintered. Those little prefabs—I didn’t live in one, but they were tiny.</p>
<p>Franklin: I live in one.</p>
<p>Taylor: So you know.</p>
<p>Franklin: They’re very tiny.</p>
<p>Taylor: You know what I mean. They were built out of cardboard—I mean plywood. Plywood was new in those days. And they built them so fast that I remember going to that school up the street, to Lewis and Clark, that first year. And there’d be one when I’d go to school, and when I came back there’d be three.</p>
<p>Franklin: [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Taylor: So during the day I was going to school, the men were slapping those things together. It was interesting [LAUGHTER] seeing, ooh, we have a new house, we have a new house.</p>
<p>Franklin: What do you think your mother did not like about living—you mentioned that she wasn’t too happy about moving there?</p>
<p>Taylor: Oh, she was from Illinois—they were. And Illinois is a green, beautiful state with woods. And Richland was sand. It was sand. So when we moved in, there was no glass in the windows, which they said they’d put in pretty soon. And the yard was all sand. My mother would look out the window with no glass in it, and almost cry. I was eight, and I looked out the window and saw the little girl next door playing in the sand in front of our house. And I remember yelling out the window to her, stop playing in our yard! Stop digging our yard! She was digging a hole in our yard. And my mother put her head against the wall and said, Barbara, we don’t have a yard! [LAUGHTER] Which was very true; we didn’t. As soon as the work really got going with planting the grass everywhere, I remember my father going out—there were things called tract houses, which had been there before the Hanford place was built. Some of them were abandoned, because the government had bought them. They were abandoned, and here were rose bushes and lilac bushes and things that people had had in their yards. Since it now belonged to the government, my father had permission to go and get them. And he would. He took his trailer and he went out there and dug them up himself and brought them in and put some of them at the libraries, and some of them at the churches, whatever. That was one reason we had nice shrubs. Because he would do that.</p>
<p>Franklin: Where was your father stationed during those war years?</p>
<p>Taylor: Where did he live?</p>
<p>Franklin: Where did he work, where was his office, where did he work out of? Or was he just kind of a roving—</p>
<p>Taylor: No, it wasn’t freelance in any way. There were government buildings. There was probably a landscaping building with a parking lot full of lawnmowers. One of his crew was in charge of the lawnmowers. They were probably locked or fenced or something. He had some kind of a building, maybe a hutment—I don’t know what kind it was. I didn’t see him at work. I saw the results of his work.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah.</p>
<p>Taylor: And he also had trucks and drove around in a truck and worked out of his truck, too. The crews, of course, did the work. He was the manager at the time, after he landscaped all the buildings and how they were going to look, ultimately. And he turned the papers over to his supervisors, and they did the work.</p>
<p>Franklin: How did your father get started with landscaping architecture?</p>
<p>Taylor: Well, at the University of Illinois, just before I was born, he graduated in the architecture department, which at that time had the landscape architecture program in it. So he really was an architect with a specialty in landscape architecture. He was just out of college in 1929 when the Masters Tournament golf course was being built. He was very fortunate to know a man named Bobby Jones who designed the—he was an architect, designed the Masters Tournament—built the course. And he hired a bunch of just-out-of-college men like my father. My father and mother had just gotten married. They went to Augusta, Georgia, and my father worked on that golf course. He did some of the—what’s that white part?</p>
<p>Franklin: Sand trap?</p>
<p>Taylor: Sand trap.</p>
<p>Franklin: I’m not much of a golfer.</p>
<p>Taylor: He worked on the sand traps, designing them. And had little models—plaster of Paris models. I wish I had one today, because we always had them around the house. Which my father had gotten when the thing was built. Then they didn’t need those anymore. So he had done that for a few years. By the way, the Masters Tournament golf course was built in 1929. My father told me the money to build it was in escrow. The people who had given the money to build this beautiful golf course had their money tied up in a way that the stock market couldn’t touch it. So that’s why they could build such a beautiful thing in 1929.</p>
<p>Franklin: I see.</p>
<p>Taylor: And ’30, I think. Anyway, that’s what he did. Then during the war, he had a harder time because who was landscaping anything? Not very many people. And he got a job with the government in the CCC program—he was a supervisor in Illinois in the woods where they had workers that were building roads and bridges and beautiful little stone—what do you call that? Well, stone bridges, I guess. And I remember those days, I was very little, like four or five. But I remember that he would take me to the woods and show me what he was doing. So he had that job, and that was a very steady job, because the CCC supported a lot of people during those days. That would have been the ‘30s. Then when the war came along, there were some military plants. One was at Kankakee, and we were there for a year or two, where my father was in charge of all the grounds for the whole plant. I think it was at that time that he was approached to come to Richland. Because they were building Hanford. And they had to build the city, even if they weren’t going to keep it. They had to build it. And hired him to do it. There weren’t that many landscape architects in those days.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure.</p>
<p>Taylor: So I think the word must have gotten out that there was one available.</p>
<p>Franklin: And how long—so your father, did he stay working for Hanford, for the government after the war ended?</p>
<p>Taylor: Yes. A lot of people stayed. I don’t think that the government people understood the idea of a sense of place, where people make their home somewhere and they’re very reluctant to let go of it, even if it has pine floors and is not very up-to-date with everything. Their kids were now in school. They had a job. And it was far enough from the cities—some people liked that, and wanted to stay. It’s right on the edge of the Columbia River, which is one of the most beautiful places in the world. So, my father joined them and wherever there was a job that he could get—because he also had many drafting skills and things like that. There was also a program called the as-built program. I think that was in the ‘50s. But Hanford had been thrown up so fast that there hadn’t been good blueprints of what they did. They hired my dad to run a little office with lots of blueprint machines. And he and some other people would go out and look at the buildings and draw, you know, make sketches of what was really there.</p>
<p>Franklin: Mm-hm.</p>
<p>Taylor: The measurements and all that. And then the idea was now the government knows. Now the firetrucks can go to the right place. Because there were places nobody knew what they were, you know?</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure. Yeah, no, I’ve heard of that program before. And, like you said, it was very necessary.</p>
<p>Taylor: It was very useful, very useful. Then, about that time, 1955, ’56, people were building golf courses again. They hadn’t been all through the war. I don’t think there was one built—but I don’t know that. But they were building them, and Richland wanted to have a golf course and Kennewick wanted to have a golf course—just nine holes. And they hired my dad to design these. Interestingly enough, my father was very generous, and he accepted the jobs even though they weren’t going to pay him. They agreed to give him memberships in the clubs to cover what they should have given him for a salary. [LAUGHTER] Because that’s all they had to offer. And he wanted to see golf courses there. So he built one in Kennewick, and he built one in Richland. He also built Columbia Park, which is all along the river, maybe one of the longest parks in Washington. I don’t know.</p>
<p>Franklin: Really?</p>
<p>Taylor: But it’s very long, and it’s very narrow—some places only 20 feet.</p>
<p>Franklin: Mm-hm. And when you say built it, he—</p>
<p>Taylor: Designed it. He had a good arrangement there, because a lot of the woodsy part—he was very fond of Russian olive trees. And a lot of those were already there, all along the river. So all he had to do was built driveways and parking spots, camping spots, and smooth out the rough places. Make a road—because there’s a road the whole length of it.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, that’s a very widely used park in town. It’s a great park.</p>
<p>Taylor: He loved doing that. I don’t know what they paid him for that. Much later, he built the Memorial Gardens, along the west edge of Richland, which is a cemetery. I have a picture in there of my parents. They gave them a pair of plots instead of paying them. Because they didn’t have the money to pay them. My father wanted a cemetery there. So, I think he was very generous. He was very community-minded. He was on the Benton County Planning Commission for many years. Encouraging parks, encouraging more and more landscaping and making it a more livable town. It needed to be kept up; the work that was done at the beginning needed to be continued, because there were a lot of people who lived there. And he could see the need for that. He told me once, if you live in a desert, you need twice as many trees. And I don’t think everyone agreed with that. Some of the businessmen thought, there’s some land; we’ll build on it. But my father hoped he could get parks in there. And he had to go through the council—Benton County Council—to get those parks approved.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure. How long—did your parents stay in Richland for the rest of their lives?</p>
<p>Taylor: They did.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Taylor: They did. I wanted to tell you that my father died of liver cancer. And we always thought it was the plant. Because when he was in the as-built program, he had to go and inspect the buildings. And one day, he came home and told my mother that the little badge he had to wear had gone off. Lit up, made a noise, and that meant he had been overexposed to something. They had taken him into a safe room, made him shower, given him different clothes, sent him to the doctor. And within a year, he was dead. He had liver cancer. And he never drank. We knew it was not that kind of thing.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure.</p>
<p>Taylor: And a lot of people had that happen. It hasn’t been added up, I don’t think. But there were a lot of people like that.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure. And what year did he pass away?</p>
<p>Taylor: 1966.</p>
<p>Franklin: 1966.</p>
<p>Taylor: He was 64 years old.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay. And you mentioned that you had grown up there and then eventually went to college. What year did you leave Richland to go to—</p>
<p>Taylor: 1953.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. Right. So I’m wondering if you could tell me a little more about growing up in Richland. Did you stay in that same A house for the time that you were there?</p>
<p>Taylor: Yes, yes, until I went to college and got married a year or so later. My parents lived in that house. And then it became possible for residents to buy houses.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, in 1958.</p>
<p>Taylor: They could buy the ones they were in and they could also buy ones nobody wanted. So they bought theirs. And they bought a little one on the other side of town as an investment, which they rented out. A lot of people did that.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, right. I wonder if you could tell me about what you remember about the coming of the commercial—like the Uptown and kind of how Richland transitioned a little bit after the war. To start to become more of a normal town, but still totally government-owned and controlled.</p>
<p>Taylor: Yes, I can tell you that. I thought Uptown was great. There was a theater there! There were stores there, which we hadn’t had much of before. My father was very busy trying to get a park in the spot where that was. And writing things for the <em>Tri-City Herald</em>. And going to the Benton County meetings, trying to encourage a park in that spot. It was quite near a school and the school had a big yard. But there was George Washington Way, was right between where he wanted the park, where Uptown is. And the businessmen just, you know, they had the power and they got it. I always enjoyed it, because I was just a kid. I was in high school at that time.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure.</p>
<p>Taylor: Didn’t realize how ahead of his time my father was. Because he loved trees, he loved building a better environment for people. Considered himself a conservationist. Also considered himself an urban planner, because that’s right in that—he didn’t have degrees in that. But I don’t know that there were degrees at that time. He just built on his education as he went along and did a lot in those fields.</p>
<p>Franklin: Do you remember the day when people found out about what had been produced at Hanford, or what was being produced at Hanford?</p>
<p>Taylor: Well, I was nine.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure.</p>
<p>Taylor: What did I know? I was nine. I saw—we took the <em>Walla Walla Union Bulletin</em> paper. I was sitting on the front lawn, and the paper came. And said something like, the war is over. It was our bomb. Something like that.</p>
<p>Franklin: Mm-hm.</p>
<p>Taylor: And I looked at it. With my nine-year-old understanding, I thought, does this mean we’re leaving? Does this mean the end of Richland? Of course, I didn’t know. I remember that paper, I just don’t remember the exact words of the headline. My parents kept it for a long time, and a lot of people did—kept that newspaper that came out. And of course, I didn’t know what the place was for anyway, except something about the war. And we had lived at Kankakee, and that was something about the war. But my father didn’t seem like the kind of person that would be working in chemistry or in physics or anything like that. By the way, my father grew up in a Quaker family.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh.</p>
<p>Taylor: And he was very pacifist.</p>
<p>Franklin: Mm-hmm.</p>
<p>Taylor: I think he would not have been in any kind of a job that had to do with hurting people. But he didn’t know what it was for. He didn’t know it was a terrible bomb that was being built. And he had a good job. I mean, coming out of the Depression, if you could get a good job, you took it.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, right, yeah. No questions asked. What do you remember about civil defense? Drills and things like that in kind of the early part of the Cold War?</p>
<p>Taylor: Well, I remember getting under the desk. I don’t remember much other than that.</p>
<p>Franklin: Did you ever feel any fear or anxiety about living so close to Hanford, something that might have been a potential target in the case of aggression?</p>
<p>Taylor: No. I think a lot of kids might have. But my parents were not the kind to let us worry. And years later, my mother told me, Barbara, we didn’t know that America was going to win. We had no idea. We had been through the First World War, we had been through the Depression. We knew bad things could happen. And here was the country fighting on two fronts, two parts of the world. We were not having you worry. Because we never knew whether we would win. So we didn’t tell you much. When the newspaper came, we got it, we read it, we read the cartoons to you. You listened to Charlie McCarthy, and the Great Gildersleeve. All those humorous shows, Jack Benny. All those things that never touched on the war.</p>
<p>Franklin: What about later, though, during the Cold War? When you would have been in high school or starting to get a little bit older and maybe hearing more about the kind of conflicts that the US was involved in?</p>
<p>Taylor: Well, I did have an interesting situation. After I married, my husband joined the Army, because there was a draft. And his grades were not as high as they should have been. He was going to Eastern, to college—Eastern Washington College in Cheney. His grades were not as good as they could have been, so he decided to join. Because they promised him an electronics job. He didn’t have to a frontline military person.</p>
<p>Franklin: Mm-hm.</p>
<p>Taylor: And he wanted to be in electronics. So he joined in 1957. And our little boy was born in ’59. I went to Germany a few months after that. My father said, don’t take that baby over there. Because he had been through the Second World War and he knew how bad things could be. And there was a wall.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>Taylor: And there were all those things. And we were--I don’t know how many miles from the wall he was. And he didn’t want me to go. That was one of the few times I ever saw him cry. So we went, we stayed there two years, had a wonderful time going to places even though we didn’t have any money. But it was dangerous. The Army told us, you must keep several days’ worth of diapers, food, clothes, all your papers—you must keep them in one place. Because some morning, a truck may pull up in front of your house—an Army truck. And they’ll say, come and bring your things. And we had to get in the truck—they warned us this might happen—and we’ll drive to France. They had places of protection and more food and care for the children and all that. But it’ll be in France.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure.</p>
<p>Taylor: If something happens with the wall.</p>
<p>Franklin: Do you think your parents might have felt anxiety during the Cold War, living in Hanford in kind of a—I mean, now knowing what was being produced there and that it might have been a target for retaliation?</p>
<p>Taylor: Well, they never said so. They never said so; they didn’t want to worry us. That’s the kind of parents they were. They protected their children. I think there were a lot of young people who had parents like that. I don’t remember anybody saying they were scared.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure.</p>
<p>Taylor: They were busy going to school. We never felt like we didn’t have a future.</p>
<p>Franklin: Did you ever come back to Richland? I’m assuming you probably would’ve come back to visit your family, but did you ever come back to live there again?</p>
<p>Taylor: Yes, my husband and our children came back to live there for a short time when he got out of the Army, he happened to be—it was 19-early-60s and it was hard to get jobs. He got a job there inspecting pipes. The kind of pipes that had nuclear things going through them. And they were welded. He got jobs inspecting the welding. He didn’t like that kind of thing, and so he went on and did other things. He had a degree in industrial arts. He did some drafting for a while. And then he became a police officer in Pullman.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Taylor: So that’s how we ended up back in Pullman and raised our kids there. So I only went back to Richland a few years. Wanted to go back to Pullman. I really had a good time in college there, and I liked having a university. There wasn’t any Tri-Cities center at that time—Tri-Cities branch.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure. And then you mentioned that you worked at WSU as well.</p>
<p>Taylor: 27 years, yeah. From 1967 to 1995. From 1967 to 1995, I was a full-time secretary at WSU. And felt very good about it. I loved working at a university. I went to school along with it, which was great because I had not quite finished college. And so I took a lot of classes.</p>
<p>Franklin: Is there anything else that you’d like to—that we haven’t touched on, that you’d like to talk about? About your father or Hanford or Richland or your own life?</p>
<p>Taylor: Well, Richland was a very safe place for children at that time. As I look back, I didn’t appreciate that. We could get on our bicycles and ride anywhere in town as long as we were home for dinner. We could go to friends’, we could go to school, we could be in summer programs. They always had summer activities for the kids. And I think a lot of the amenities that a city has, even though it was a small town—actually we called it a village. It was known as a village. But I loved that. The freedom. And now, of course, you can’t just tell a kid, just be home for dinner. But they did. I could go to the movies on Saturday. There were two theaters and they had double features all the time. I always felt free to do whatever. I think it felt safe to do that. Another reason might have been we were very middle class. I never saw a black child when I was in school.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure, because African Americans weren’t allowed to live in Richland.</p>
<p>Taylor: They were not allowed to work there. I don’t think that was an open policy, but they didn’t. They lived in Pasco.</p>
<p>Franklin: Mm-hmm.</p>
<p>Taylor: And they were not really given jobs at Hanford. I didn’t know about different races. I was a child. It was a middle class town, and you had to have a job to have a house.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure. And everybody worked for the same employer.</p>
<p>Taylor: Absolutely, at the beginning, they did. Everybody did. I remember my mother saying when they first moved there, rent was $27 a month. And it was an A house. $27 a month. Which was very reasonable for the time.</p>
<p>Franklin: Well, that included pretty much full service, too, right?</p>
<p>Taylor: I think so.</p>
<p>Franklin: The government delivered coal and--</p>
<p>Taylor: Water.</p>
<p>Franklin: Changed the light bulbs, and—</p>
<p>Taylor: I don’t remember that part. I think my father probably would have done a lot of those little things, but—</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Taylor: I think they probably would. But I remember the electricity and the water were included.</p>
<p>Franklin: Richland has such a unique history of being this government constructed and owned town for 15 years. And I’ve always found it interesting to hear people’s experiences, like yours, about how safe and free they felt in a town that was so entirely unique in terms of its—like you said, it was middle class. Everyone who was there had a certain income—</p>
<p>Taylor: Had a job!</p>
<p>Franklin: They had a job. But the government also owned and controlled who could live in that community. So it’s a community of safety, but it seems to be of not the traditional freedoms that we associate with any other kind of community or anything like that. It’s always stuck out to me, in looking at Richland.</p>
<p>Taylor: Well, perhaps an adult would see that. To me it was just feeling safe.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure.</p>
<p>Taylor: I don’t know that I felt unsafe in Illinois. I was in the kind of family that were very caring, that always put our care first. I had very good parents.</p>
<p>Franklin: I’ve had—a couple other times when I’ve interviewed people that have grown up in Richland, one thing that they’ve mentioned is that at some point they were struck how there were no old people, really.</p>
<p>Taylor: Yes, yes.</p>
<p>Franklin: And I wonder if you could talk—was there a moment when you realized that everybody was either children or young adults for the most part?</p>
<p>Taylor: The only people who were there who were old were grandmothers and grandfathers who came to visit or lived with them. I mean, really. I was aware of that. Very much so.</p>
<p>Franklin: And so did anyone in your extended family ever come to Richland to visit? Or how did you keep in touch with them, with that barrier there?</p>
<p>Taylor: Well, in those days you only talked on the phone if somebody died. You didn’t call the family back east, wherever it was. Because it cost money. And you just didn’t do it. There were letters that you would write and then send one to one member of the family, and they would send it to another, and they would send it to another. In that sort of round robin thing. I knew other families that did that. But my grandmother—my grandfather had died young. My grandmother had no money. In those days, a woman might be a housewife, a homemaker, a farmer’s wife, and end up with nothing.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure.</p>
<p>Taylor: No income, no savings. She had two daughters. So she would travel by train from Illinois to stay with my aunt for a while. And then to Washington to stay with my parents for a while.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Taylor: That was common in those days, that an older person would live with you. I had lots of people I knew whose grandmother lived with them, or grandfather lived with them. Or Uncle Joe who was just not quite right. Families took in family. That was not unusual.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, to have a multigenerational household.</p>
<p>Taylor: Right.</p>
<p>Franklin: Like that.</p>
<p>Taylor: So I thought it was perfectly natural. And it was natural. I got to know my grandmother very well and learn things from her that I wouldn’t have if she hadn’t lived with us.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure, sure. Well, and a lot of families, psychologists and a lot of research points to that being very beneficial, too.</p>
<p>Taylor: Right.</p>
<p>Franklin: And it’s how most of the world lives.</p>
<p>Taylor: She had no money, absolutely none.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure, sure.</p>
<p>Taylor: My parents paid everything.</p>
<p>Franklin: Because she wouldn’t have had a job.</p>
<p>Taylor: I don’t think she ever had a job except butter and eggs.</p>
<p>Franklin: Well, she worked, certainly, right, and probably worked very hard.</p>
<p>Taylor: Oh, she worked on the farm, I’m sure. But it’s not the kind of work that was paid. And that would have been before social security. Because that started just about the time I was born.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right. And even then, women got much less than men did.</p>
<p>Taylor: And still do.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yes. [LAUGHTER] What would you like future generations to know about growing up in Richland during World War II and the Cold War? And about the work that your father did?</p>
<p>Taylor: Well, I think the jobs our parents had—especially fathers, because most women were homemakers. I think that meant a lot to kids. I wouldn’t say that it was a caste system, but I was very aware that a girl named Betsey had a father who was a doctor, and they had a nicer house. I don’t know how the housing worked, but all those number houses, they had one of the better houses that was a single-family house, and on a hill, and just nicer. And I was a little jealous that my family wasn’t that wealthy that they could have a better house. So that’s very normal for kids, I think, to be aware of where their family is in the scheme of things.</p>
<p>Franklin: Mm-hm.</p>
<p>Taylor: I came from the Midwest. I thought my parents were middle class, middle-educated. They both had degrees, but not graduate degrees. We lived in an average house. I was very middle. [LAUGHTER] I don’t know what else to say. But there were people who had a little more money. They were managers, they were doctors, they were professionals. And I think we were aware of that. And I think they were aware of that, the kind of cliques. High schools have those.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, yeah.</p>
<p>Taylor: You know, that’s all there is to it. There’s always going to be the athletes and the wealthier kids and the smarter kids and whatever. But I graduated from Columbia High School in 1953 as Barbara Brown. I loved high school. We had choruses, we had bands; we had various kinds of activities like that. And I was in the choir for four years and loved it. Just loved it. There was a teacher named Harley Stell, S-T-E-L-L. And it’s Harley. He was hired right out of college, about 1950, to start a music program, a vocal music program, and he did. Trios, chorus—I think it was called a chorus. And I sang with them and made some really good friends with them for four years. We sang at graduation. I’ll never forget that. Which was a wonderful experience. He added a lot to the school. Because music is an enrichment that students need.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yes.</p>
<p>Taylor: So they started with very basic classes. Just first to eighth grade, and then they kept adding these things. Which is what all towns do, but it was starting, as I was in high school, starting to be a normal town. And people stayed because this is where their roots were now. I think that was quite a shock to the government, that we wanted to buy our houses. We wanted to stay there.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, because like you’d mentioned earlier, the community was from all over the country.</p>
<p>Taylor: That’s right.</p>
<p>Franklin: And no one knew anyone else when they came.</p>
<p>Taylor: But that’s a sociological fact.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure.</p>
<p>Taylor: I think, as I said, a sense of place. A sense that this is where we are, let’s stay here and do the best we can with what we’ve got.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, right. Yeah, that’s really fascinating. Thank you. Well, I just want to thank you for interviewing with us. As someone who lives in Richland, I’d like to thank you for your father’s work—</p>
<p>Taylor: Thank you.</p>
<p>Franklin: For bringing green and trees and things to Richland. Because it helps break up the heat and the sage brush.</p>
<p>Taylor: Well, it’s a pile of sand. That’s what it was to begin with.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah.</p>
<p>Taylor: We had terrible windstorms. We had a fire one year way out in the desert. And I remember that everybody—cars came through the streets and said everybody move to the east side of town, down by the river.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p>Taylor: That was frightening.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, I bet.</p>
<p>Taylor: But this fire was going faster than a man could run.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p>Taylor: It was coming from the big hills over there, the Rattlesnake hills. It came pretty close. I remember that very well; I must have been ten, something like that. I remember that the wind used to cut your legs. Girls wore dresses then; they didn’t wear pants like they do now. Walking home from school, the wind and the sand would cut your legs. Little tiny cuts. And you’d feel like to go hide behind a tree, but you’ve got to go home.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right. Wow.</p>
<p>Taylor: And that was really painful.</p>
<p>Franklin: I bet.</p>
<p>Taylor: They said there was something called a jackalope out in the desert. Nobody ever saw one.</p>
<p>Franklin: [LAUGHTER] Usually just taxidermists make those.</p>
<p>Taylor: With big ears. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Well, Barbara, thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure talking to you.</p>
<p>Taylor: I want this to be about my dad. So please emphasize that.</p>
Duration
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00:46:41
Bit Rate/Frequency
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317 kbps
Names Mentioned
Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community.
Albin Pherson
Bobby Jones
Harley Stell
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site
1943-1953
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
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Interview with Barbara Brown Taylor
Description
An account of the resource
An interview with Barbara Brown Taylor 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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01-06-2017
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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/mp4
Date Modified
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2018-31-1: 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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/collections/show/27">Barbara Brown Taylor, Oral History Metadata</a>
1955
Bull
Cat
Cold War
Hanford
Houses
Kennewick
Park
River
School
Street
War
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F482a9fe8af3a5584b2466b9e4084da93.mp4
44a30f23746c53a6ea7287aa443ab156
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F246206de477347a3c79fc8f80c19bf0b.jpg
e7d3130df0dd990982909b39fd3f84a7
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
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Post-1943 Oral Histories
Subject
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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
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Robert Bauman
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Bob and Dianne
Location
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Washington State University Tri-Cities
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p>Northwest Public Television | Taylor_Diane_Bob</p>
<p>Man one: Okay</p>
<p>Robert Bauman: All right. Good to go?</p>
<p>Man one: You ready?</p>
<p>Man two: We're ready to go.</p>
<p>Bauman: Okay. All right, well, we'll get started. And I'm going to start first by having each of you say your name for us. Make sure we have that on there. So go ahead.</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: My name is Bob Taylor.</p>
<p>Bauman: All right.</p>
<p>Dianne Taylor: And I'm Dianne Taylor.</p>
<p>Bauman: And Dianne is spelled with two Ns?</p>
<p>Dianne Taylor: Two Ns, yes.</p>
<p>Bauman: Okay, great. And my name's Robert Bauman, and we are conducting this interview on the campus of Washington State University, Tri-Cities. And today is June 10<sup>th</sup> of 2015. And so, if we could start maybe, start, Bob, maybe, with if you could tell us a little bit about your family and how they ended up coming to the Tri-Cities area and when that happened.</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: My father was employed by the US federal prison system. He went to work as a guard at McNeil Island in 1934 for the Department of Prisons, the US Bureau of Prisons--there, I'm finally saying that correctly. And he started off as a guard and was employed at McNeil Island from 1934 actually until he retired in 1955. But the real story to talk about is how I happen to be sitting here. And in the early stages of the creation of the Manhattan Project and what was developing here with the acquisition of all the lands for Hanford, very early in that process, the US Army went to the Bureau of Prisons and contracted for a minimum security type prison camp to be constructed here in the Richland area. The purpose of that being the minimum security prisoners would be farming the lands and the orchards that were being acquired by the Manhattan Project, but would have no men available to take care of the fields and the orchards. And so the Bureau of Prisons contracted with the Department of the Army on behalf of the Manhattan Project to maintain those fields out in Vernita, White Bluffs, all in this area. And they agreed—they, the Department of the Army--agreed to build a, what they call, prison camp. It turned out to be right out on the bend of the Yakima River right near Horn Rapids Dam. And they constructed buildings, facilities, kitchens, dining areas, administration buildings, and the facilities to house and support approximately 250 federal prisoners who were brought in in early 1944 to take care of the agricultural needs of this area. And my father, who was at that point then had been with the federal prison at McNeil Island and had become a senior guard, was chosen to come over here and become superintendent of this camp. The name of the camp is Columbia Camp. And that's a little story in itself. The people in Washington, DC, were out here and didn't quite know the geography. They knew the Columbia River was here somewhere nearby, and even though the Yakima is a much smaller river, they didn't realize it. And so they named this federal prison camp Columbia Camp simply because they were on a river and they thought they were on the Columbia River. That's how it came to have the name Columbia Camp. Anyway, they started bringing the prisoners in in early 1944. And as I say, they typically for the next three and a half years, had about 250 prisoners on site at any given time. I think the number in the various information files I have, there were probably more like 700 prisoners rotated through this area. But the facilities were actually to hold about 250. So my dad took over as superintendent of the prison camp. He came here in early 1944, and initially they had—and I have many pictures of the whole camp, the buildings, and also the housing—there were initially 16 Quonset huts that were built out there for the initial officers and their families to move. At the time he came, those were the first. We moved in here actually on D Day, 1944, June 6<sup>th</sup>, in the middle of a major windstorm. And my mother who was born and raised in Western Washington, to arrive here in those kind of conditions—I don’t have to say that we had no air conditioning, and fans weren't even really very available. We moved into a Quonset hut. We ultimately, by the next spring, they—the Army, the prison—built eight more fancy housing. They brought in prefabs, the basic 609 square foot prefab that everybody in Richland is familiar with, of which there are still hundreds of them. That was the new fancy housing, and my dad as superintendent was able to claim the first one in the row next to the administration building. So in the next spring, then, we moved into a prefab. Again, I have lots of pictures, family pictures, of our housing. The kids, we were bused into Richland. Initially we all went to Sacajawea the first year we were there. And then when Jefferson grade school opened in the fall of '45, we all went there, switched over to there. We had a couple of older kids—family, kids in the camp—that went to high school at what was then called Columbia High School. My mother was a teacher, actually ended up teaching at Columbia High School part of the time that we were here. So as families living at Columbia Camp, we were bused into town, pretty much bused back home. And we played. As kids we played in the heat of the summer and cold in the winter and just pretty much in the desert surrounding the camp out there. The camp itself existed from early 1943. In early 1947, they started—they, again, the US Bureau of Prisons and the US Army--started writing back and forth corresponding about the continued need for the maintenance of the orchards and the fields and ultimately decided that it wasn't necessary anymore. And some of those fields ultimately were left to go, and others were maintained I guess in other ways. In the files that I have, my dad's files, I've got a tremendous amount of correspondence between he and the officials in Washington, DC. The Department of Army, I've got synopsis of what all was done during those period of years. I have interesting files about prisoners and some of their experiences in managing them as agricultural workers, how they got them to work every day, how they kept them fed every day. There's a lot of material in the files that I have of my dad's about that sort of thing. There's a lot of information about the contract itself between the US Army and the Federal Bureau of Prisons as far as payment of fees and expenses and also the type of crops that were harvested in volume and in prices and that sort of thing. It makes for very fascinating reading to have this kind of information available to me about what went on out there. Then ultimately in the fall of 1947, I think we were about the last to leave as a family. We left in November of '47. And basically the place was abandoned. I have, again in the files, there's information about dismantling the camp and sending knives and forks to Leavenworth and dishes to somewhere in Arizona. So there's a lot of very detailed information about the camp. But the long and the short of it is that the camp existed for those three and a half, almost four years. And very, very, very few people anywhere even know about it. The families, the other families, were rotated to different jobs. Three or four of the families went back to McNeil Island. Others went to Arizona, Leavenworth—other federal prison camps. And everybody just went their own way, and nobody was left here to even be a historian for what all went on. And thanks to my mother, who keeps all these documents and records and letters, and even—there’s a lot of letters between my father and my mother when he first came over here, where he's giving examples of daily life here in Richland in 1944 that are just fascinating reading. And the cost of a rental house that the government was charging for people and the cost to buy a refrigerator, things like that. So it's really fun for us to be able to come and sort of make some of this information available as to what Columbia Camp was all about over many, many, many years in Richland, because nobody was here to contradict that statement. A lot of people said, oh, it was a prisoner war camp. And ultimately, finally, that got changed. There was some documentation. At the present time, out at the day camp, there's a kiosk out there with a few pictures and a commentary posted out there, a little parking lot that you can drive to that gives just an extremely brief summary of what Columbia Camp was. There's a picture of a man, a far distant picture of a man standing in front of the administration building. Cannot guarantee it, but I think it—I'm pretty sure it's my dad. He was the superintendent of the camp, so his picture's out there in that kiosk for anybody that wants to go out there and look. But that's what Columbia Camp in a nutshell was all about. We have many, many, many pictures of the camp, the buildings, the dormitory buildings, the kitchen, the administration building, the power plant, the steam plant. And then we ourselves have taken pictures recently from some of those same positions, including the foundation of the steam plant that we've got so we can supplement a lot of what I've been talking about. Well, everything that I've been talking about we can supplement with pictures, and letters, and documents, and correspondence, and files.</p>
<p>Dianne Taylor: Memories.</p>
<p>Bauman: Yeah, right. So really interesting, and so first of all, let me confirm that there are still rumors out there. I've had students tell me, wasn't there a prisoner of war camp?</p>
<p>Dianne Taylor: Really?</p>
<p>Bauman: Oh, yeah.</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: Yeah, yeah, yeah.</p>
<p>Bauman: Or, wasn't a Japanese internment camp here?</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: That's what--</p>
<p>Bauman: No.</p>
<p>Dianne Taylor: Mm-mm.</p>
<p>Bauman: So this is great to--one great thing about interviewing you is to clarify that for people as well.</p>
<p>Dianne Taylor: One of the things that I'd like to bring in, because we didn't know about this for so long. Dad would not talk about his prison experiences. He was a loving, wonderful, wonderful father and grandfather and wonderful father-in-law. But this was never discussed. It wasn't until he died and I'm going through all of their things because Bob's an only child that I find all of this stuff. So Bob's mother's in a nursing home. She's quite elderly. We find this stuff. We get so excited over these pictures. Of course, she thought we were crazy to move to Richland anyway because her memories are not the Richland it is today. So we went, took all these pictures. And all she did was she took them from me, put them down in her purse. And I said, well, Mom, this is exciting. We found all dad's stuff, and we want to talk about it. No, it's secret. She would not talk about it. It was secret. And this is in 19--when did she die?</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: Well, this was in 1995, I think, that we--</p>
<p>Dianne Taylor: It was so ingrained in her, the secrecy of their lives, that even after all that time, she couldn't talk to us. So we took the pictures. I said, mom, I've got to have the pictures. And we took them back. But I think that's when it really hit me what their lives must have been like living here at that time.</p>
<p>Bauman: Right, that even that, which was only tangentially connected to Hanford--</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: Exactly.</p>
<p>Dianne Taylor: Yes. Yeah.</p>
<p>Bauman: Was very secret, right?</p>
<p>Dianne Taylor: Yeah, absolutely.</p>
<p>Bauman: So let me ask you a few questions. So first of all, what was your father's name?</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: Harold E. Taylor.</p>
<p>Bauman: Harold Taylor, okay. And your mother's name?</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: Doris C. Taylor.</p>
<p>Bauman: Okay. And so it was the three of you when you--well, your father came initially, and then you and your mother came.</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: Right, in June.</p>
<p>Bauman: In June of '44. And you mentioned the dust storm.</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: Termination wind.</p>
<p>Bauman: So, and you said that it could hold about 250 prisoners at the camp at once.</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: Yes.</p>
<p>Bauman: So it was minimum security. So what sorts of--but they were federal prisoners.</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: They were.</p>
<p>Bauman: So what sorts of crimes would these men have committed?</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: The vast majority of federal prisoners were not necessarily minimum security, but they were white collar crimes. In some cases bank robbers would sometimes fit into the category, depends on the nature of the individual. But bank robbers weren't necessarily restricted from ever being in the so-called minimum security camps. And, see, we went back to McNeil Island, where my dad then took over the minimum security part of McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary. And so some of these same prisoners went with us back over there. That's kind of an aside, but it's part of explaining to you, or answering your question about minimum security and who qualified. I'll finish that answer first. A lot of them were conscientious objectors. And in fact there's correspondence in the files where prisoners would be sent here to Columbia Camp, but they were always—the conscientious objectors—they were always being monitored, talked to, perhaps convinced that it would be to their best interest if they would revoke their claim to being a conscientious objector and go back and join the Army and basically reinvent themselves in society. And there's a few prisoners did that. We've even got in those boxes, we've got a couple letters that one or two of them wrote to my dad personally thanking him. He's gone back, he's gone in the Army. He feels better about himself. So we've even got that kind of stuff in the file. Anyway, then, just as an interesting aside, when you talk about minimum security versus the hardcore inside the walls type, like at McNeil Island, state prisoners—murders, that sort of thing—of course they're maximum security. But any white collar crime, including—might not sound like white color crime—but bank robbery, that sort of thing, there can be any number of--</p>
<p>Dianne Taylor: In those days.</p>
<p>Bob Taylor:--forgers. There can be any number of kind of people that aren't really hardcore criminals, but they've made mistakes. They've done things bad. But they know that they're decent people. And these are the people that, even on McNeil Island, again, same as here, they would stay in a minimum security area and do the weeding, doing the gardening, doing the orchards, doing the fields, like over there like they were doing here. My dad, as superintendent of the camp at McNeil, we had kind of a beautiful estate, ranch home estate with about an acre and a half of rockeries and gardens and rose trellises. And we had five--as a kid, I never mowed the yard. I had five prisoners that—we did, the family did—that took care of our yard and our place. It was kind of a strange childhood that I had. But that's what minimum security means, that they could be trusted. They were called trustees, as a matter of fact.</p>
<p>Bauman: And so about how large of a staff was there working at the camp?</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: Here at Columbia Camp, there were 24. 24 with families, and then there were another ten to 12 that lived in Prosser, Benton City, some of them right here in Richland that would come to work. So there was less than 40 total staff, 24 of whom were on site with families.</p>
<p>Dianne Taylor: Tell him the story that you were telling me about Dad writing a note about getting these guys to come in on Sunday for roll call.</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: Oh, it was one of the notes, one of the memorandums to his officers in the files that I read. It's something to the effect—no, I guess it was a memo to the entire camp, to the prisoners and the officers. And it's just kind of a tongue-in-cheek, that it seems to be hard to get prisoners to make bed call or duty call or account for themselves on the weekends. And it was just kind of an interesting, the way he wrote that even on the weekends, they still, after all, are prisoners and have to account for themselves. They actually only had I think it was three escapes. Nobody actually ever fully totally escaped. They had three that walked away, but they were caught along the river on the way to Benton City. So that was part of the minimum security idea is that they weren't particularly threats. They knew they just needed to serve their time and get out. And so they weren't trying to break out.</p>
<p>Dianne Taylor: And where could they go? That's the desert. There's no transportation. That's one of the stories Dad did tell me about two of the guys walking to Benton City. And of course they didn't get there because there's nowhere to hide.</p>
<p>Bauman: And so how old were you then when you came here?</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: My birthday's in July, so I was six years old when we moved here in June. And as I said, it was D-Day. And then just turned seven in July, and then I was ten when we left in late '47.</p>
<p>Bauman: Okay. And so what was that like as someone roughly between the ages of seven and ten living out here in the camp in initially a Quonset hut? Is that right?</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: Initially in Quonset hut and then in a prefab. Well, first of all, six-to-ten-year-olds don't really think about hot and cold. The only thing that we were ever really cautioned about by our parents is it's a little problematic to go running around in the desert barefooted. There were rattlesnakes. Never got bit by one. Saw a few. But we had the swimming hole right there at the bend of the river for summertime, spent a lot of time in the swimming. The pictures you can see the two rows of Quonset huts. It was kind of, I call it a parkway, which wasn't necessarily what you would call a bunch of grass in 1944. But nevertheless, there was a grassy strip, two street, two roads for cars, and the Quonset huts and in the middle grassy strip that that's where we played our soccer and mostly soccer that we played there as kids. And we were either in the river, out there in that strip, or just wandering out in the desert barefoot. And with our bicycles, there's a picture I've got showing me standing beside a tree that was very near our house that I crashed into and cut my head open. That sort of thing as living here as a kid. We were typical kids, even though we were--in fact, my entire life growing up was always subject to prison service. We lived on McNeil Island, which was, when we went back, I mean, my grade school and my high school years, I went to school in Lakewood Tacoma, Clover Park High School. But we still lived on the island. We had to catch a prison launch back and forth every day. As kids growing up, none of us ever had the typical life experience of just walking to the store, walking to the theater. We didn't live on Swift and could walk down to the Village—to the theater. We never had those kind of experiences. Speaking of the theater, we did get to come into town. Our parents would carpool or whatever, and we'd come into town to the Hopalong Cassidy, Tom Mix movies on Saturday afternoon at the Village Theater here in Richland. But it was never anything we could ride our bike to or walk to.</p>
<p>Bauman: Yeah, I was going to ask you about that, about getting into town and how often you were able to do that. And what was the town of Richland like? What sorts of memories do you have?</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: Well, I mean, you've got all the pictures as a historian. You know what Richland basically looked like in 1944, 1945. It was like that. I mean, we came into school. The first year I said we went to Sacajawea. The second year, we from then on went to Jefferson. We would become friends with kids in the class and do things with kids in the class, but it was always more difficult. I was in Cub Scouts. My dad would have to drive in to make separate arrangements to go, and to some of the other kids out there as well, to come in to the Cub Scout meetings. One of my memories, and I'm not sure why, but one of my memories was one of the girls’ parents had--and I don't quite understand it now, but her parents had—I can't say they owned, but maybe they did—a large enough piece of ground that she could ride her horses. And I remember some of us—and it was like right here. It was straight north from Jefferson that we would come out of town, although not very far, and ride horses out here in the open prairie. And it might have been right here. I don't know. But we were able to socialize to some degree with the kids in town. But again, one of the things that I have to say, it's like my mother. Even as kids, talked about secrecy. We were instilled with absolutely every bit of that, just like the adults. We absolutely were. And it was just a way of life, so we didn't question it. We didn't try to violate it. We just--everything was secret.</p>
<p>Bauman: So you didn't talk to anyone about the camp at all really?</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: Just that we lived out there. And that was all.</p>
<p>Bauman: Right. So did you know what Hanford was, what was going on?</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: No, not until the bomb was dropped and the paper headline right here in Richland. That's when we knew what was going on. The road now as you go out there is not the same road it was then. What is Horn Rapids Road, which comes across—wherever we are—comes across, that was the road that we came in on. So we came in a little further north into Richland than we do now, where the intersection is. And so right at that corner right there was the beginning of the trailer camp where so many people were living and so many of the kids in school with me were living in the trailer camp. And there was a wire fence along the road, and so we just knew we were outside the fence, and something was going on on the other side of the fence. But we didn't know what it was—until the article came out in the paper.</p>
<p>Bauman: You mentioned, so, the prisoners, would they get transported, then to different fields--</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: They were bused.</p>
<p>Bauman: --to different farms then?</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: There were like, I think as I recall in reading the files, there were sometimes as many as ten different gangs or groups, for lack of a better term, that were bused out to the various sites. And that's part of what's in my dad's files is just the logistics of taking--they called it dinner then--lunch out to feed everybody at lunchtime, and just the difficulties of that sort of thing in running this prison camp. Because some of them out in Vernita, for instance, they basically had to leave with the lunch service right after breakfast to get it out there. Because the road, the road was not great going out to Vernita from here. The road that we drive now and think nothing of was basically just a dirt road in those days going out there. Because the road, the paved road, bent south and went to Benton City when you go out that way. So yeah, there were a number of different orchards. I can remember clearly the—what are now all the Richland ranches on Cottonwood and Birch and Cedar, all those where all the Richland ranches were ultimately built in 1948. All of that was cherry orchards. And we always had one or two crews harvesting the cherries, for instance, right here in town. And a couple times my dad brought me out and actually I helped them pick cherries. So that's just one of my memories is picking cherries in what is now that major housing part of Richland.</p>
<p>Bauman: Right. Now, so, in 1947, when the camp closed and you left, I assume maybe your mother was probably happy about going back to the west side? [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: Extremely, yes, extremely happy to get back to the cool west side, yes.</p>
<p>Dianne Taylor: She was a tiny, tiny, lovely lady, a teacher. Heart and soul a teacher, and totally supportive of Bob's father. But she wasn't happy to be here at all. [LAUGHTER] And she was very, very happy when they finally left.</p>
<p>Bauman: You mentioned she taught at Columbia High School.</p>
<p>Dianne Taylor: Yeah.</p>
<p>Bauman: What did she teach?</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: English, primarily English. And she was in charge of the journalism one school year.</p>
<p>Dianne Taylor: She had to quit teaching, though, because of her duties as--and the words are official hostess of the camp, which is really interesting. She organized bridge activities, social activities, to keep the wives that were thrown out here in the middle of the desert happy. Because of course they weren't working, very many of them. So she worked that first year at Hanford, and then she quit and was kept busy keeping activities going on for the women and children.</p>
<p>Bauman: That’s very interesting. Were there a lot of children around your age you were able to play with?</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: I'm trying to remember. There were, of my own specific age that were my closest friends, there were seven of us that were either within one grade one way or the other. I think there were some older kids that came into high school. Our bus—I think there were about a total of 12 or 14 of us rode the bus into town. There certainly weren't two kids in every household of the 24 officers that worked there. Some of them were more senior and kids were grown and gone.</p>
<p>Bauman: So did you have your own bus, then, that would just take a group of kids from the camp?</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: I guess, yeah, we must have, that there was just a bus that came out and got us and took us back into town. There was nobody else to pick up. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Bauman: And do you remember how you felt about first of all coming here? Do you have any memories of that, and then when you left in 1947?</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: I certainly had no--at age six, everything in the world was exciting to me. I think I mentioned earlier heat and wind, that sort of thing didn't really mean much of anything to me. I have no recollection of being upset about being here, other than knowing that my mother was upset about being here. I liked it here. I had good friends. I was kind of disappointed to go back to McNeil Island. Three of my closest friends at camp that were out there too--let's see, Kenny and Jerry and—</p>
<p>Dianne Taylor: Were they out there then?</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: Yeah. There were, I think, five of us actually went back to McNeil Island. So, at least I wasn't--had my friends going back there with me, which made it better. And then we had a very--from a prefab in the desert, we went back to a fairly palatial estate that we lived on because of my dad's position, so I liked that. And then that next year I started junior high at Clover Park. And so starting then I went back to--I rode the boat to Steilacoom and caught the bus to school. And then I was off on a whole ‘nother part of my life. I think I'd say I was probably happy to be leaving, but not the way my mother was happy to be leaving.</p>
<p>Dianne Taylor: Well, I think it was a pretty idyllic childhood for kids like this. They've got the free reign of the desert, within reason. They've got the swimming pool. Nobody was worrying about jumping into the Yakima River. And they had friends, and they'd go into the movies. We've got a picture of Bob--we think it's Bob--with his buddies. There was a picture in Richland years ago at the post office there was a little museum.</p>
<p>Bauman: A kind of display.</p>
<p>Dianne Taylor: Yeah. And there's a picture of the kids outside the Uptown--not the Uptown, the old Village Theater. And we're pretty sure he's there. But the stories he would tell me, running around, riding their bikes, it was--</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: I just think of it as fun and unique. I really do.</p>
<p>Dianne Taylor: What about the stories about Dad and the baseball field? They had a baseball field there for the prisoners, for their recreation.</p>
<p>Bauman: Oh, at the camp.</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: Well, that was their big activity on the weekends. They had a very nice ball field. Again, there's pictures of it outside of the administration building. And my dad was a good guy. For somebody in 1934 to survive starting as a prison guard at McNeil Island, those were tough times. Those were really tough times. I don't mean living as a family, my mom and dad. I mean just as a human being who felt some degree of emotion about people. Prison guards anywhere in any prison in 1934 were really tough, mean guys. They had to be. But when he came over here, he really--and it shows in his correspondence--he really had a lot of humanity and caring. And he ran a really great camp here and has lots of letters saying so from people, from superiors. What started me on that was just her idea about the baseball. He wanted to make sure that they had sporting activities to do things with over the weekend.</p>
<p>Bauman: Recreation and entertainment.</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: Yeah.</p>
<p>Bauman: I find it very interesting neither of your parents really talked about this stuff, but they kept--</p>
<p>Dianne Taylor: Yeah, oh yeah.</p>
<p>Bauman: --the photos and the documents that you didn't even know.</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: Yeah. We didn't realize they had all that.</p>
<p>Dianne Taylor: And Dad would talk about it a little bit. It wasn't like he never talked about it. But he told me the story one time about the prisoners escaping, and he talked some of these things. But it wasn't something that you talked about very much. It was once in a while. I mean, like every few years there'd be a comment. But Mom didn't talk about it at all, other than the teaching, which of course she loved to be a teacher and loved doing that. But it was a very, very quiet non-discussed part of their lives.</p>
<p>Bauman: Are there any other either events or things that happened that were humorous or special things, memories that stand out in your mind about your years here?</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: One of my major memories actually was the very first summer we were here. And three or four six-year-old boys never, ever, ever, ever got in trouble. But for some reason, we chose to go into the crawl space underneath our Quonset hut. I mean, there was no foundation in the sense you’d think of a foundation. But there was a raised floor and so there was space under there with snakes and bugs and spiders. And my parents never specifically told me, don't ever go down there. You'd sort of think that was understood. But three of us, one hot, hot, hot day, we thought, well, it was just boiling hot outside. It was boiling hot in the Quonset hut. Those things are not fit for human habitation without air conditioning. And so we got the smart idea it might be cooler down there in the crawl space. So we got down in the crawl space, and then for some reason some guards--I say guards—some of the men came around doing some kind of a check of the housing. I don't know what they were necessarily—but here we were, little boys where we were pretty sure we weren't supposed to be, and the adult men walking around sounded like we just knew they were looking specifically for us to get us in trouble. That's kind of silly, really, but it was a big thing for me as six years old to be down there where I'm pretty sure I shouldn't be and knew what kind of trouble I was going to be in when they found us. The other thing is the coming into the shows in the afternoon and standing in the line outside the theater. And, as I say, Tom Mix, and Hopalong Cassidy, and whoever else, the Saturday afternoon shows at the theater. I remember going to those a lot.</p>
<p>Dianne Taylor: One of the fun things that we go out to there. We hadn't been there for a few years, out to the camp. It's just kind of fun to walk around and realize what was there--the families, the men—brought together from all over the country for one purpose. And they fulfilled their purpose and kept the orchards going and the fields, and then they left. And to me there's a lot of kind of neat spirit and ghost—ghost isn't the right word. But there's a sense that there was something really interesting, good happening here—good or bad depending on the way you looked at it. But it's just an interesting place to go and walk around out there. You should do it sometime.</p>
<p>Bauman: Yeah. And a unique place.</p>
<p>Dianne Taylor: Very unique, very unique. And it's fun to walk around, and we think we found the kitchen. So I'm thinking about the guy making the good cinnamon rolls. He was there. And you think you found where Dad—where the office was.</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: Yeah, I'm pretty sure I can identify where the administration building was. But the various cement foundations or partial foundations that are still out there can pretty well match up with the pictures that we have from back then.</p>
<p>Bauman: Well, great. Maybe this might be a good time, then, to sort of end this part, unless there's something we haven't talked about yet that you'd like to in this part of the--</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: Well, I've covered the things that I certainly, the bullet points that I had in mind that I wanted to cover. There's probably always more things to talk about. Part of it is sitting and having the box and going through and pulling a piece of paper might remind me to say something else. But I feel comfortable right now in saying that anybody watching this interview is going to know a whole lot more about what Columbia Camp was about than they knew before. And that's the main point of what we're trying to accomplish here.</p>
<p>Dianne Taylor: There were no fences at Columbia Camp.</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: Right.</p>
<p>Dianne Taylor: There were no fences.</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: Right.</p>
<p>Bauman: Right. And these were all male prisoners, right?</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: Oh yeah.</p>
<p>Bauman: Yeah, well, maybe this would be a good time to end this part, and then we can look at some of the photos and have you comment some of those.</p>
<p>Dianne Taylor: I wish that they had shared it with--Bob's mom and dad had shared it with us sooner, because there would be so many more stories and so much more understanding.</p>
<p>Man one: Okay, so I'm going to give this. Why was it located--I mean, I know it was located for the orchard support and stuff. But why where it was? Ever hear why it was located?</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: I don't specifically know, other than it was near Hanford. It was on the river, which helped with the infrastructure. It was away from this burgeoning 1,500 population big town of Richland.</p>
<p>Man one: And yet kind of remote.</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: And kind of remote. I mean, it was remote for those days.</p>
<p>Bauman: Like you said, escaping was tricky because--</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: Yeah, it was far enough.</p>
<p>Dianne Taylor: Yeah.</p>
<p>Man one: It was Alcatraz in its own way.</p>
<p>Dianne Taylor: Well, it was. It was, because it was--I mean, can you just imagine being out there and trying to escape? And how are you going to get water? It's the true desert.</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: I guess the real answer is, if you realize that Hanford took everything from here north and they weren't going to go across the river, and here's Richland, and down there is Benton City, and this is the Yakima winding out there and just kind of a nice little bend in the river of the Yakima.</p>
<p>Bauman: I love that they call it Columbia Camp even though it's not--</p>
<p>Dianne Taylor: Isn't that funny?</p>
<p>Man one: I know, it's great. Close enough.</p>
<p>Bauman: They didn't know their geography very well.</p>
<p>Dianne Taylor: Yeah. We know it wasn't Bob's father because there were guys from Washington out here long before that. But it's kind of interesting.</p>
<p>Man two: Well, [INAUDIBLE] will bring that light around, put it behind that camera if it'll reach. If it won't I'll bring--or just unplug it and I'll move this cord.</p>
<p>Dianne Taylor: What you doing?</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: Just got one minor issue. I'm just seeing if anything's--</p>
<p>Dianne Taylor: Yeah, this guy had no clue what it's like to be raised in the city, because he started--</p>
<p>Man one: The stories that you tell remind me of this other guy I knew that had grown up--his father was in the Navy. And he grew up on Midway, I think. Midway or Wake Island where it was a mile this way, and it was two miles that way, and that was it.</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: Yeah.</p>
<p>Man one: And as a kid, he loved it. Down at the beach, having a good time, going to the movies, all he wanted, soda pop and all that stuff. But the parents were going crazy.</p>
<p>[LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Bob Taylor: Oh yeah.</p>
<p>Dianne Taylor: Well, when we got this little note from Bob's mother--there's pictures in there of the women of the camp. And if you watched at all the Manhattan Project TV show that was on for a while, these gals are—it's the same women.</p>
Duration
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00:45:43
Bit Rate/Frequency
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189 kbps
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site
1944-1947
Names Mentioned
Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community.
Harold E. Taylor
Doris C. Taylor
Kenny
Jerry
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Bob and Dianne Taylor
Description
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An interview with Bob and Dianne Taylor 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.
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Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Date
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06-10-2015
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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/mp4
Date Modified
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2018-31-1: Metadata v1 created – [A.H.]
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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.
1955
Dam
Hanford
Manhattan Project
Park
Quonset hut
Quonset huts
River
Road
School
Sun
swimming
Theater
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F4550fdc413dc83be66111b1f46565f48.JPG
cdadd3e83c0c3187276f5e7e8afc64cf
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F1583c61c6744d42545aae8cd7b5f497a.mov
045fb4b829211772af34664992cc239c
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
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Post-1943 Oral Histories
Subject
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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
Robert Bauman
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Bob Bush
Location
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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
Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio)
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
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
mov
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 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
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
07-17-2013
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.
Format
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video/mov
Date Modified
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2017-13-11: Metadata v1 created – [A.H.]
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.)
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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d741c436a87a4df782ed4afe3b9f60b6
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F25b95c192b96464279627aadd09cf21d.mp4
9f530d60f6f74bc722817bb2999877a3
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 Franklin
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Daniel Barnett
Location
The location of the interview
Washington State University - Tri Cities
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p>Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin and I’m conducting an oral history interview with Daniel Barnett on July 13<sup>th</sup>, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Daniel Barnett about his experiences growing up in Richland and working at the Hanford site. So the best place to start, I think, is the beginning. So why don’t you tell me where you were born and what year.</p>
<p>Daniel Barnett: I was born in Aberdeen, Washington in 1938—August 13<sup>th</sup>.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Barnett: And when the war started, my dad was working for the Harbor Patrol in Seattle as a patrolman. He heard that they were hiring over here, so he came over here and they hired him almost instantly because he already had the security clearance and everything.</p>
<p>Franklin: Ah.</p>
<p>Barnett: So he called my mom and told her that he had a job over here and to get herself packed, because he was gonna get her. But when she moved here, she couldn’t move to Richland. It wasn’t even on the map at that time. They took it off the map and everything. She had to move to Prosser.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Barnett: And later on when they finally got a prefab built, we moved into a prefab at 1011 Sanford.</p>
<p>Franklin: Where was your father from? Was he from Washington?</p>
<p>Barnett: He was from Oregon. All my family is from Oregon except for me. My dad said he couldn’t get across the border fast enough.</p>
<p>Franklin: So being from—what drew him to Hanford? Was it the pay?</p>
<p>Barnett: I think so. Well, he was originally—he worked at a plywood plant, then he went to work for Harbor Patrol. He had asthma, which the wet climate apparently irritated. So he had a chance to get over here, so he moved over here.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. So the climate played a—</p>
<p>Barnett: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: --big factor and wanted the dry and the sunshine.</p>
<p>Barnett: Well, probably the pay, too, because the pay was good for those times.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right. And how long did your family live in Prosser before you moved?</p>
<p>Barnett: We were there about a year, I think. I don’t remember truthfully—I was only about five when we moved there. And I was there probably about a year. I just vaguely remember moving to Prosser.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right. Okay. And you moved—so you came over in 1944—</p>
<p>Barnett: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: --right? And so you would have moved to Richland in 1944? About there?</p>
<p>Barnett: Oh—I think we actually—Dad came over, I think in ’43. A year later, in ’44 we moved over.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>Barnett: Because I remember ’45 when they announced the war—dropping the bomb on Japan, and Mom told Dad when he come home, I know what you’ve been guarding! [LAUGHTER] Because he didn’t even know what he was guarding at the time.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right. Wow. Did your dad talk about his work much? Or maybe [INAUDIBLE]</p>
<p>Barnett: He worked as a patrolman until they sold the town and then he became a painter.</p>
<p>Franklin: A painter?</p>
<p>Barnett: Yeah, he was an artist so then he became a painter and painted the houses and the buildings in Richland. Because when the government owned Richland, if you had a paint job needed done on the house, you called them and they come in and painted it. You didn’t hire somebody from a company to paint it. The government did it.</p>
<p>Franklin: And was he a patrolman onsite the entire time until they sold the town?</p>
<p>Barnett: Yeah, yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. Was he assigned to a specific area, or--?</p>
<p>Barnett: No, just general patrol. He talked about patrolling the fences, taking their Jeeps and going down the length of the fences and checking them out, and all that sort of stuff. But just a general patrolman, not any special area.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. And you said that your—what did your mother do when she first got here?</p>
<p>Barnett: Oh, she was just a housewife. She eventually went to work as a waitress. And then finally she got on to work at Hanford. She worked with Battelle for about 29 years as a lab tech.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, wow. Do you know which lab she worked in?</p>
<p>Barnett: Well, she did—where they did testing on the animals. Though at that time they were testing marijuana on chimpanzees and different types of animals. She did the test work on the meat from the animals.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, wow.</p>
<p>Barnett: So I don’t know exactly—it was—again, probably wasn’t supposed to be told, so she didn’t say much about it.</p>
<p>Franklin: Did she have any schooling beyond—</p>
<p>Barnett: Just high school.</p>
<p>Franklin: Just high school. And what about your father, did he--?</p>
<p>Barnett: He was just high school.</p>
<p>Franklin: Just high school as well. Where did your mother waitress at?</p>
<p>Barnett: Well, the first place she had was O’Malley’s Drug Store which now is a—what do you call it? A Tojo Gym? Where they teach different martial arts?</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>Barnett: It’s down on Williams, right off of Williams. That’s what it is now.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Barnett: O’Malley’s Drug Store eventually closed, moved up to Kadlec. And a lady bought it from him, and now she’s down there on George Washington Way.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Barnett: And right by O’Malley’s Drug Store used to be a Mayfair market. So I sold newspapers out at the lunch halls at Hanford. Sold—well, I don’t remember—but I think it was the <em>Columbia Basin News </em>to start out, because that was the first newspaper of the Tri-Cities, was the <em>Columbia Basin News</em>. Then they bought them out and became the <em>Tri-City Herald</em>. But I remember selling—give you an idea, you can figure out how much time, because I remember one of the headlines was—one of the union leaders had been arrested by the government. And I don’t even remember who it was, it’s been so long ago. But I remember that was one of the headlines of one of the newspapers.</p>
<p>Franklin: What about—do you remember the <em>Richland Villager</em> at all? That was a local paper.</p>
<p>Barnett: Yeah, but it wasn’t very much. It was very small.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Barnett: I delivered the <em>Seattle P-I.</em></p>
<p>Franklin: <em>Seattle P-I</em>?</p>
<p>Barnett: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. And you said your mother started waitressing at Malley? At O’Malley’s or Malley’s?</p>
<p>Barnett: At O’Malley’s.</p>
<p>Franklin: O’Malley’s. And then did she waitress anywhere else in Richland?</p>
<p>Barnett: Not that I know of. From there she went out to Hanford.</p>
<p>Franklin: And that was when pharmacies or drug stores as we know them now, they used to have lunch counters.</p>
<p>Barnett: Yeah, yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right. And so they would go there and they were more of like a café-slash-pharmacy.</p>
<p>Barnett: Yeah. The one up on Thayer, I think it was Densow’s at that time. That had a heyday lunch counter in it, coffee shop. It closed up and now I think it’s just pharmacy.</p>
<p>Franklin: Mm-hmm.</p>
<p>Barnett: But where the south end—what do you call it? You know when you get down here, you sit and try to remember things and you get kind of jumbled up—Salvation Army building is now on Thayer was originally the Mayfair Market.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. And what did they sell there?</p>
<p>Barnett: Well, that was the grocery store.</p>
<p>Franklin: Grocery store, okay. Do you remember—so you said you moved into—what was the address on Sanford?</p>
<p>Barnett: 1011 Sanford.</p>
<p>Franklin: And do you remember what kind of prefabricated house it was?</p>
<p>Barnett: It was three-bedroom.</p>
<p>Franklin: Three-bedroom prefab, okay.</p>
<p>Barnett: No, I think it was two-bedroom, because my sister was just a little baby then.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. And did you share a room with your sister?</p>
<p>Barnett: Probably with my brother.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, so how many siblings—</p>
<p>Barnett: Had three kids. I had an older brother. We were about five years apart.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay. So an older brother, you, and then a younger sister.</p>
<p>Barnett: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: And then how long did you live at 1011 Sanford?</p>
<p>Barnett: I don’t really remember, but it must have been three or four years, because as soon as they got the A houses built, we had a chance to move into one. And we moved immediately to one. Because we had three kids, and a prefab’s kind of tight for three kids.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, yeah. I live in a two-bedroom prefab. And it’s—with just my wife, and it’s pretty—</p>
<p>Barnett: Well you know why they’re called prefabs.</p>
<p>Franklin: Tell me.</p>
<p>Barnett: They were built by a company, brought in in two sections and then put together. They were prefabricated.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, the prefabricated engineering company out of Portland.</p>
<p>Barnett: And nobody could figure out why they put that little square door in the back other than to throw the garbage out it. I don’t know—have you ever heard of Dupus Boomer?</p>
<p>Franklin: Yes.</p>
<p>Barnett: He made some cartoons about that backdoor.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, and that the rooves had a tendency to fly away.</p>
<p>Barnett: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: And they had to put—</p>
<p>Barnett: Well, in 1955, they did. They had two of them blow off.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, those are great cartoons.</p>
<p>Barnett: Like “Pa wants a bathtub.” [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: So tell me a little more about growing up in Richland. Which schools did you go to?</p>
<p>Barnett: Well, the first school I went was Carmichael. And that was probably a mile-and-a-half away. We walked to school. Nobody thought anything about it. There wasn’t any buses. There was a bus system in Richland, but it was run by the government. It was a little old bus that you could pick up in two places in Richland to go downtown and go to a movie and come back. But no buses hauled you to school. There was high school buses that hauled people. They picked them up in the Horse Heaven Hills on farms and brought them to Hanford—I mean to Col High—it’s Hanford now. But, no, I walked to school real regular, didn’t think about it, nobody had any panic about walking to school. Everybody did it because it’s normal.</p>
<p>Franklin: And do you remember—so you would have been going to—was it Carmichael—growing up right in the early Cold War. What do you remember about civil defense? Duck-and-cover, air raids.</p>
<p>Barnett: I don’t remember doing that.</p>
<p>Franklin: Really?</p>
<p>Barnett: I don’t know whether we did or not, but I don’t remember doing that.</p>
<p>Franklin: Do you remember knowing what was being made at Hanford? Did you ever have any fear—how real did the Cold War seem to you?</p>
<p>Barnett: Well, the Cold War affected me quite a bit because I was in eight years during the Cold War—in the Air Force.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>Barnett: The security was a lot tighter. I mean, there was—you couldn’t go out to Hanford without having your security badge checked. Now you can drive clear to the Area and before you go in the Area have your badge checked.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>Barnett: But then, there was a badge check when you got on the buses, the badge check, when you got out to your area, and then again they checked your badges when you left the area.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>Barnett: So it was—the security was real tight.</p>
<p>Franklin: Mm-hmm. But what about when you were growing up, when you were a kid in school? Did you ever have any special fear or pride in what was being made at Hanford?</p>
<p>Barnett: Nope. It was—like I said, nobody knew what they were doing out there until they dropped the bomb. Then they found out they’d been protecting part of the atomic bomb.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>Barnett: But I had no fears about it. I went down the irrigation ditch—there used to be an irrigation ditch that ran through town that started—it had two, three ponds on Wellsian Way that were the settling ponds for Richland’s water system. And we used to go there and swim in them. One of the ponds they eventually made a juvenile fishing pond. And the irrigation ditch runs from there, clear down to where the hospital is, down in front of the hospital, several ponds down through the hospital and then under—well, through the Uptown district, one of them went through the Uptown district, and one went to the Columbia River. And wasn’t until ’48 that they finally put a pump in there, because in ’48 when they built the dam—they built the dike, rather—the irrigation ditches plugged up. So they had to put up a pump station in so they could pump the water irrigation ditch up into the river. We used to fish in that. We used to go down there and slide down—slide over where the pump was, because it was all slick and slimy. We’d put on an old pair of jeans and go down there and slide into the water. I mean, that’s things kids then. Nowadays they wouldn’t even think about it. My mother told me when I could swim 25 feet, I could go in the river by myself. Mainly because you didn’t go to the river too often in the winter; you went in the summer. And there’s not a place in the Yakima, if you can swim 25 feet, you can’t get back to the shore. So I spent all my—most weekends and spare time at the Yakima River playing around.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow. What about—maybe you could talk a little bit about the growth of Richland and kind of the building of some of the major hallmarks, like the Uptown and the—</p>
<p>Barnett: Well, the Uptown was built—the rest of it closed up, but originally the Uptown—as you come into Uptown off to the left—that was a big theater. And we used to have a big matinee. The Spudnut’s shop has always been there. I can remember going to the movie on a Saturday and the lineup for the movie—I think it was 20 cents for a movie then. But it was clear past the Spudnut shop. We used to watch the owner there making the Spudnuts while we were waiting to get into the movies.</p>
<p>Franklin: Has that been in its same location--</p>
<p>Barnett: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: --in the mall?</p>
<p>Barnett: Spudnut’s has been there ever since it started. They originally were out there in Kennewick. If you go in there and pick up their menu, they have a little story about where they started. They started out there in the Wye.</p>
<p>Franklin: That’s great. And what else about it? Because Richland kind of developed out towards--</p>
<p>Barnett: Well, Newberry’s was on the other end of the Uptown district. That was kind of a department store type. I think the only one I saw was about 15 years ago, and that was in the Dalles, Oregon. I don’t even know if they exist anymore. The downtown district, every year we had different contests for the kids. They had marble shooting contests and bubblegum blowing contests—all kind of contests to keep the kids’ interest.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>Barnett: At that time, the—what is it? The Allied Arts, or was that in the Atomic Frontier Days?</p>
<p>Franklin: Can you talk maybe a little bit about the Atomic Frontier—do you remember going to the parades?</p>
<p>Barnett: Yeah. They had a lot of the old western movie stars come to the Atomic Frontier Days.</p>
<p>Franklin: Like—do you remember any names in particular?</p>
<p>Barnett: No, I don’t. Like I say, a kid doesn’t retain names like that. He hears them and doesn’t retain them. But my dad, apparently, knew a couple of them, so he visited with them. It started out as just a celebration of Hanford and stuff. And then it worked into the Allied Arts show.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. And do you remember any particulars of those celebrations, like the parade—the floats, or—</p>
<p>Barnett: Well, there wasn’t any parade. There wasn’t any parade, and where Howard Amon Park is, there used to be a swimming pool. You know where it makes a turnaround? Well, there off to the right there used to be a swimming pool. And right now, they still got the old children’s swimming pool there, but then there was a regular swimming pool in the water. And in 1948 when the big flood came, it filled up full of water and they ended up breaking it up and burying it and building the Howard Prout pool. But we used to go down there and swim just about every day. And we’d go to the other end of the park and pick peaches, because it used to be a peach orchard. Because there were orchards all over town. Where Jason Lee was—the old Jason Lee—that was a cherry orchard. Where Densow is, that was a cherry orchard. Carmichael had an orchard. There was orchards all over town. Because this was an agriculture district at the time the government bought it and moved in.</p>
<p>Franklin: Were you in any clubs or—</p>
<p>Barnett: I was a boy scouts.</p>
<p>Franklin: --organizations? Boy Scouts?</p>
<p>Barnett: Yeah. We had—one that sticks in my mind the most was we had one of our young scouts drowned at the Uptown. That’s the one I mentioned. He went on an inner tube, fell in the water and drowned. That was in ’48. And actually, the water where the hospital was, the irrigation ditch you got there, that was 15-foot deep at that time.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p>Barnett: That backed up so much, they—that’s when they built what they called the America Mile, the dike. They called all the earthmovers from Hanford out to Richland to build that dike. Because when they started, the water was lapping over the edge to go into the houses. And they poured that thing in about 24 hours.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow, that’s amazing.</p>
<p>Barnett: Now, the George Washington Way was closed to all civilian traffic, and these great big earthmovers were just going down the road, 30, 40 miles an hour.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow. What other kinds of activities did you do in Boy Scouts?</p>
<p>Barnett: Oh, built models. Car models. You whittle them out, put the wheels on them, all that, have races with them. Went on trips. Just normal Boy Scout stuff. Got a little more sophisticated, but just the normal Boy Scout stuff then.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right. And so after you went to Carmichael, did you then go to Richland High?</p>
<p>Barnett: Col High.</p>
<p>Franklin: Col High?</p>
<p>Barnett: [LAUGHTER] It was Col High then.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh.</p>
<p>Barnett: They changed the name because there was a Col High downstream on the Columbia that had had the name before Richland High was called Col High. So they changed it to Richland High instead of Col High.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh. But was the mascot always still the—</p>
<p>Barnett: All the bomber.</p>
<p>Franklin: --bombers? Okay. So the Col High Bombers?</p>
<p>Barnett: Yup.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. And when did you graduate high school?</p>
<p>Barnett: 1957.</p>
<p>Franklin: And then what did you do?</p>
<p>Barnett: I went in the Air Force. I think about two months after I got out and I went in the Air Force. I already spent 27 months in the National Guards. I got in the National Guards when I was 16, and when I went to sign up for the Air Force, the squadron commander of the National Guards was—he got shook up because he enlisted me when I was 16. [LAUGHTER] So they changed the date on my discharge papers from the National Guards. So according to my discharge papers from the National Guards, I’m 78 right now.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh.</p>
<p>Barnett: Those days, they did things like that, nobody thought anything about it.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow, yeah.</p>
<p>Barnett: Because if you were warm they took you into the military then.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right. [LAUGHTER] And what did you—describe your time in the Air Force.</p>
<p>Barnett: Well, of course there was basic training. The first place I went was Westover, Massachusetts—that’s Springfield, Massachusetts. And that was a total culture shock for me, because I grew up in a comparatively small city. And Springfield then had over 100,000 people in it.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, and I guess, too, at this point you would have completely grown up when Richland was a government—</p>
<p>Barnett: Yup.</p>
<p>Franklin: --still was all government space.</p>
<p>Barnett: Yup, they sold it while I was in the Air Force.</p>
<p>Franklin: Can—actually I guess maybe we can back up a little bit. What strikes you, maybe looking back on that, or—</p>
<p>Barnett: I watched them build the Alphabet Houses. And there wasn’t one or two people on the houses; there was five or six building these houses. And they seemed to go up overnight. One of the things that I don’t know is fact or not, but knowing the government it probably was—is they were supposed to build half basements for a coal fire furnace, a coal bin, and two tubs, and place for a washing machine. The contractors screwed up on some of them and built a full basement. And the government found out about it and made them go back in and seal half the basement with dirt. [LAUGHTER] Typical government.</p>
<p>Franklin: Were your—granted you were a kid at this point, but was your sense—were people happy—</p>
<p>Barnett: Oh yeah!</p>
<p>Franklin: living in a government-controlled and -owned town?</p>
<p>Barnett: Nobody thought anything about it. There was very little crime. Because at that time, there was only about two, three ways to get out of Richland. So there was nobody causing any big deal. And if you got in a whole bunch of trouble—you didn’t live in Richland unless you worked at Hanford. And if your kids got into too much trouble, they told the parents, you calm them down or go find another job. So it was stopped.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right. Did you—was Richland mostly a white community at that time? Right? Were there any other—</p>
<p>Barnett: Yeah, there was—one, I think there was only one black community in Richland—Norris Brown. And I think they lived in Putnam.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Barnett: I remember we had a basketball game in Sunnyside. And Sunnyside wasn’t gonna let them play on their court. And we told them, fine, we’ll just get up and leave. So we all started to get up and leave and they finally broke it and gave in and let them play on the basketball court.</p>
<p>Franklin: How did you know this family? Did you go to school together?</p>
<p>Barnett: Yeah, I went to school with them.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh okay, and did you play basketball?</p>
<p>Barnett: No! I’m not a sports—I had my first surgery on my knee when I was about 13, so—</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, wow.</p>
<p>Barnett: I’ve never played any sports. My sporting then was hunting and fishing.</p>
<p>Franklin: But you kind of heard about this story?</p>
<p>Barnett: Oh, yeah. We all know them. Went to basketball games. Then there was sock hops and at noon they taught dancing in the lunchrooms for kids that wanted to learn how to dance.</p>
<p>Franklin: So do you know what the patriarch of that family would have done at Hanford to be able to earn a place at Hanford? Because mostly from what I’ve heard, mostly African Americans had to live in Pasco.</p>
<p>Barnett: Yeah, because they wouldn’t let them live in Richland—I mean Kennewick.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, in Kennewick. So how did—do you know any particulars as to how that family was able to live in Richland?</p>
<p>Barnett: I think it’s just that the government—that they had to be equal on them, and they just hired them and they went to work out there. I don’t know any particulars on it, but that’s basic what it was.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>Barnett: They were in a government town, and there was no way that anybody could refuse—and there was nobody that complained about it.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>Barnett: Again, the government controlled it. They said, if you don’t like it, goodbye.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right. And they would—they called the government for pretty much anything you needed on the house, right? For coal?</p>
<p>Barnett: Right. Lightbulbs, chains, coal. But coal was delivered once a—I don’t know whether it was once a month or once a week. But coal was automatically delivered. And like I say, if there was anything major done, you called the housing department. They came in and fixed it.</p>
<p>Franklin: I think sometimes for outsiders looking in, it’s kind of striking to hear about the government completely owning this town and controlling the lives of the people and having that much control on people’s freedoms and responsibility. But from the people I’ve talked to who grow up in Richland, they have very fond memories of it.</p>
<p>Barnett: Yeah, there was no restrictions on the normal freedoms. There was restriction on if your kids got into trouble, because, like I said, the patrol would go up to the person that had the kids that were causing the problem and said you either straighten your kids out or you go and find another job. Which, to me, made common sense. And so it was actually pretty decent.</p>
<p>Franklin: Did you ever get any sense from your parents that they felt, maybe, restricted, not being able to own their own home or do any of their own repairs, or did they just—</p>
<p>Barnett: No, not then. I think—that was just after the Depression—I think they were just happy to be able to get a home.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right. Interesting. Because, you know, for some people looking outside, you could look at that level of government control—because we have these big debates about the role of the government in society today, and it’s kind of interesting to hear about it.</p>
<p>Barnett: Well, there was no control where the government come in and said, you do this and you do that and you do this. As long as you didn’t get into trouble and you did your job, and were a normal person, there was nobody ever complained about it. I remember I was back behind where the Racquet Club is. I was hunting ground squirrels with a .22 one day. And at that time, nobody had any problems with it. And one of the Richland patrol people came and picked me up and brought me back to the patrol station. And he called my dad. My dad come in and he says, what’s wrong? He says, we caught your boy shooting .22s at such-and-such area. He said, well, is he aiming at the road? Said, no. Said, did he shoot it at anybody? Said, no. Then what the hell are you bothering me about? I mean, that’s just how it was in those times. It wasn’t any of this, oh my god, he’s got a gun. It just was normal. Because I had my first rifle when I was about—I must have been about eight years old. And we used to go out and go rabbit hunting.</p>
<p>Franklin: Did you ever spend much time in Kennewick or Pasco—in either of those--?</p>
<p>Barnett: Not really. My wife was born in Pasco.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Barnett: I never spent much time in it because I had no reason to. I mean, it wasn’t the case of I was afraid to or wary about it—just I had no reason to. All, everything I needed was in Richland or around the Richland area.</p>
<p>Franklin: Why did you first have to get surgery on your knee at 13?</p>
<p>Barnett: Well, my knee locked. I didn’t find out until about 25 years later that the doctor had actually not fixed it. Because what they found out was there was a meniscus cartilage—you know in your knee? And mine was oblong and it had broke in half. And it had slipped between the joint and it had locked my knee so I couldn’t straighten it out. So I’d have to pick it up, lay it across the other leg, and pull it and pop it back out. But that was the first—I was accident prone. I had a radical mastoid when I was about 15. By the time I got out of high school, I probably had 100 stitches in me. I mean, if it happened, I did it and got it happened to me. I was playing baseball, jumped over a fence, and landed on a guard rake with the thongs up—four thongs in one of my foot.</p>
<p>Franklin: Ouch.</p>
<p>Barnett: Weird things like that are always happening to me. One time, when I was in school, I reached up to open a door and a kid slammed it and put my hand through the window, sliced across this way. And I looked at it, bleeding, and I closed it up and went to the nurse’s office. The nurse got all panicky. She called my mom, and I could hear my mom say over the phone real loud, again?! And the nurse must’ve thought she was the hard-heartest old lady there ever was, but my mother was just used to it.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, right.</p>
<p>Barnett: And I didn’t do things out of the way to have it happen, just—if it’s gonna be an odd thing, it happened.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>Barnett: So I kind of, like I say, with all this mess I got with my knee now, I call it Young Stupid Male Syndrome, a lot of it. I don’t—I get frustrated with it, because I love to garden and I can’t garden anymore. But I don’t get worried or depressed about it, because it’s there and nothing I can do about it, so just live with it.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right. So jump back ahead now. So you said you moved to Springfield in the Air Force for basic training, and that was—</p>
<p>Barnett: No, I was—San Antonio for basic training, and then to Springfield.</p>
<p>Franklin: And that was a big culture shock.</p>
<p>Barnett: Oh, yeah. I mean, I drove a vehicle and drove into town to haul officers into town. And here is a town with 100,000 people and I’d never been in anything bigger than Richland, Washington. So you can imagine the shock it was, being in that kind of traffic.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right. And then where did you go after that?</p>
<p>Barnett: Well, I was there for about a year-and-a-half, two years. Then I went to Thule, Greenland.</p>
<p>Franklin: Interesting.</p>
<p>Barnett: Top of the world.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah. And what were you—was that for the—weren’t there bombers stationed—</p>
<p>Barnett: No, they had the fueling planes there. Yes, they had SAC planes all over the world at that time. But at Thule they had the KC-135s and the KC-97s that were fueling planes.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>Barnett: So we were there to support them.</p>
<p>Franklin: And those were there to refuel the—</p>
<p>Barnett: The B-52s.</p>
<p>Franklin: --the B-52s that were carrying weapons in case of--</p>
<p>Barnett: Yup, because there was one from every base in the world in the air 24 hours a day.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right. And can you talk—what was that like, to be in—and was the base separated from any other communities in Greenland, or did you--</p>
<p>Barnett: It was a base of its own. There were no other communities besides Thule, that’s it.</p>
<p>Franklin: And how long were you there?</p>
<p>Barnett: Year.</p>
<p>Franklin: And what was that like?</p>
<p>Barnett: Well, it’s an interesting place to visit, but you don’t want to live there permanently. [LAUGHTER] Let’s put it that way. They have permafrost which is—oh, I guess about two foot down. So in the spring there are all these little beautiful tundra flowers—yellows and whites and all that. And then when they’re gone it’s just green grass and that’s it. And when they went to put a pole in the ground, they put a can—a barrel of oil in the ground, and light the oil, and then dig around that barrel. Because that’s the only way to get down past the permafrost. Because permafrost is almost like concrete.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yes, yeah. I’m from Alaska originally, and so I’m very familiar with permafrost. So after Greenland, where did you go?</p>
<p>Barnett: Went to Mountain Home Air Force Base.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: And where is that?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Idaho, Washington.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay. So kind of close to--</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Yeah, out in Mountain Home. They had B-47s then at Mountain Home.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: I figured out that they actually phased out B-47s because they were built before the B-52s and they figured the B-47s weren't worth keeping around.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: And what did you do in the Air Force?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: I drove. I drove every kind of vehicle you can think of.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, really?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Yeah. When I moved to Fairchild from Mountain Home, I was trained to tow B-52s in the back, in the hangars.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: With a five-ton Yuke. Four-wheel drive, five ton, and you had wing walkers on the outside that would guide you, and you would back this thing up, this big B-52 into a hangar. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: They would pull it down to a fueling station or whatever. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Cool. And then when did you come back to Richland?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: 1965. I got out to Richland and we moved to--I can't remember the address, but it was on Marshall. We moved to a house on Marshall.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Was it an Alphabet House, or was it a--</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Yeah, it was an Alphabet House. I remember it most because the neighbors had a monkey. And the monkey kept stealing my daughter's candy from her. [LAUGHTER] </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: So you said--wait, so by this point you had a family?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Yeah, I had--I adopted my oldest boy and I had two children.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: They were all born at Fairchild.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. And a wife, I presume?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Yeah.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: And what did your wife do in Richland?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: She was just a mother. But we divorced in about '70. And then I remarried.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. And what did you do when you came back to Richland?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Anything I could. I worked at O'Malley's Drug Store for a while. I worked at his house--O'Malley's house, leveled his backyard. I worked at Walter's Grape Juice, I worked at Bell Furniture, I worked at—at that time, it was originally called the Mart, at that big building right next to the Federal Building. At one time, that was a big--what would you call it? They had a cafeteria and a grocery store and all the other—kind of like Walmart.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: It was called the Mart at that time. And I worked there in the clippers that they washed the dishes with. And then I went to work for the bowling alley, Atomic Lanes, which was right there where the Jacks and Sons Tavern is. That was a community center and a bowling alley there. And I worked there for about a month, and then they went automatic. So, about that time, I was just about ready to get out—finish high school. And I don't think I had any other job after that, and I went in the Air Force.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, so--I'm sorry. When you came back to Richland, what did you do? So in 1965.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Oh, I did everything then. You name it, I took a job. Before—I'm sorry, I got it backwards. Before I went in the Air Force, there wasn't many jobs for people in the—who were kids in Richland. And I worked the bowling alley and I worked down at a dry cleaning outfit. But when I come back to Richland, that's when I had all these other jobs. I worked all these other jobs to keep supplied for the family.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: How had Richland changed in the eight years since you had been gone?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Well, the Uptown district had--the Newberry's had left. And there was a Safeway store right next to the theater. Right now I think it's a—I don't know, some kind of a multi shop deal. And both of the stores that were there originally are gone. They're now all antique stores.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: So it was—when it was built, it was the first big complex for going shopping in Tri-Cities.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: And after they built that, they built Highlands. And that was another big complex for shopping. So I worked everything I could, and 19--oh, what was it? [SIGH] About '67 or '68, I went to work at Hanford. I finally got on with them. Because I'd been applying at Hanford for three years. And I finally got to work with them. I won't mention how I got to work for them, because to me, it's kind of a ridiculous deal, and I don't know whether it was prejudice or not. Well, I'll go ahead. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: I was gonna say, now you've got my interest.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: I was--how I'd shop for a job, I'd go out and fill out an employment application, and I'd just distribute--go out all over town and fill out employment applications. And every week, I'd go back and check them. Well, one time, I was filling out an appointment application, and one of the guys I knew, I met him, and he said, hey, there's a new employment office over there at the new Whitaker School. And you might check it out. So I went over there and checked it out and signed up. And three days later, Hanford called me for a job. And I found out that that originally was a minority employment office.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Oh.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: So I've always had the feeling that somebody didn't look at the records right. They didn't see the C. [LAUGHTER] Because I didn't get hired until I went to there and did an application. Because the government was required to hire a certain number of minority--</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Right. Well, but you did get hired.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Yeah.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: So what did you do at Hanford?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Well, I can say as little as possible, like everybody else. [LAUGHTER] That's a common joke. Of course, it took me about--I couldn't understand it. It took me about three months to get a security clearance. When I was in SAC, I had a Secret clearance. Both my folks worked at Hanford, they had Secret clearance. But it still took me about three months to get a security clearance. And all the time, since I've been on the Air Force, I've lived in Richland, I never could understand the government—why they wasted so much money on a security clearance for me. But when I got out there, I started as a process operator. And started at B Plant. And there was no training at that time. I mean, when you went into a radiation zone, one of the guys that was experienced took you with him. And you dressed like he did, hoping he knew what he was doing, because that's how you dressed. And that's how you learned to dress right. So I started out going into the canyon--I don't know if you knew what the canyons were—okay? We went into the canyons and I helped mixed chemicals in the chemical gallery. And that's where I think I really screwed up my knees, because I can remember—remember, I call it Young Stupid Male Syndrome--I remember throwing a hundred-pound sack of chemicals on my shoulder and going up three flights of stairs with them, rather than wait for the elevator. Young and dumb, indestructible. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Actually, maybe for those who might be watching this who might not be as familiar with some of this stuff as I am, can you describe the canyon?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Well, the canyon was—well, like I say, the building was about 150-foot wide and about 800-foot long. And it was four stories deep and there was just one--the reason they call it canyon was because it was a gigantic canyon. It went the full length of the building, and they had huge cranes that moved different stuff so they could process the atomic waste. Because in B Plant, they process the nuclear waste. They ship it down to B Plant and we go through chemical stuff to separate the strontium and cesium from it. And that would be sent to the encapsulation plant. That was built about—oh, six years after I went to work at B Plant. They closed up after I'd been there for ten years, and I went to work for Encapsulation Building. But the canyon is an immensely big, empty storage building, really what it is. And I don't know how—or what they're gonna do with them now, because there is some radiation there that you wouldn't believe how hot it was. We took samples of radiation behind lead shields, and then they were so hot that they ended up having the crane pick up the samples and dispose of them, because we couldn't move them.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Wow. Did you—and so when you came back, your father was no longer working at Hanford, right?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Yeah, he was still working at Hanford.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, was he still working—so you guys worked at Hanford at the same time.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Yeah.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, wow, that's really interesting. So can you tell me a little bit more about what a—describe in a little more detail the job of a process operator?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Well, real basically, we were what you might call nuclear janitors.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: We clean up the messes that pipe fitters or millwrights or electricians made. We process all the chemical--mixed all the chemicals and processed—did all the processing of separating the strontium and cesium from the nuclear waste and ship them to tank farms. And that was basically what our main job was. We had a few major accidents. Now it'd be all over the world, about how bad it was and all that. But we just went about our business cleaning it up and went on our job. None of us got an overdose of radiation. We relied on our radiation monitors and they were good radiation monitors. If we were getting too much, they yanked us out of there real quick. So we didn't even think about it. It wasn't the case of being scared of it or anything else. It's like your hazardous wastes that they got, like coming from the hospital, where they work in an x-ray lab, they throw all the gloves and stuff and that. That's called mixed hazardous waste. Well, you could take a bath in that and not get any radiation on you. But according to what the public knew, those things are really highly radioactive boxes. And I think the biggest problem the government had is they didn't tell the people enough about what was really going on after the war was over. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Oh. Really?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Yeah, because there would have been less worry about things that were going on then, if they would have known. Because if you don't know anything about radiation, and you hear somebody mentions something is irradiated, you get all panicky about it. The expression for radiation out there was, you get a crap up. You get a crap up, you scrub it off and go about your business. Now, they panic and take you to town and do all that sort of stuff. There, we just scrubbed it off and went about our business.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: And I never worried about it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. So you said you were a process separator at B Plant. And then you went to the Canyon, and what did you do--</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Well, I didn't go to the Canyon, I went to 225-B, the Encapsulation Building.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin; 225-B, the Encapsulation Building.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: That's where they encapsulated the strontium and cesium. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: We all did a multitude of jobs. We worked on the cells, processing the strontium and cesium. And we worked behind the cells in mixing chemicals and we worked from when they loaded the chemicals for shipment for a long period of time when they were shipping cesium to the radiation plant for irradiating medical waste. And that ended when the guy was what they called recycling the cesium capsules too much. They get real hot. I mean, temperature-wise. And he was setting it in the water for a period of time and taking it out of water and cooling them off and stashing them back in the water. Well, one of them leaked.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Ooh.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: And so they ended up, the whole place had to have all those capsules moved back. So that was a big fiasco. And again, it wasn't our fault. It was the guy doing the work was stupid enough to not check and see what he was doing.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: And that's usually what happens with most—any of the radiation. And if you work with radiation, it's not the guy doing the work, it's somebody that's stupid and doesn't check what he's doing, doesn't follow regulations that causes the problem. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: So did you have any other jobs at Hanford? Or what--</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: I don't know, you ever heard of McCluskey?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Well, I was over there when we cleaned—for five weeks cleaning up that building.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Really?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Yeah. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Were you there at the time of the accident--</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: No, no.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: --or part of the cleanup for that?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Afterwards. They were trying to clean up the rooms so they could go in there and get things squared away. And we spent five weeks there. And to tell you how screwball the government can be, the last week-and-a-half we were there, we finally told our supervisor, look, all of worked on this radiation for 15, 20 years. We know how to clean it up. Quit telling us what to do. Let us go in there and clean it up and we'll get it cleaned up for you in no time at all. So they took a chance. And what they did is we ragged all along the bottom of the building, and we took water fire extinguishers. Because it's americium, and americium is a powder substance, it floats real easy. But it's water soluble--it'll run down with water. So we went in there and sprayed the walls with it real heavy. Then wiped everything down, moved everything that was movable, bagged it up in plastic bags and moved it out. And inside of a week, we had it down to mask only. Before then, we were wearing three pairs of plastic and cooling air and fresh air.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: And we cleaned it up in a week-and-a-half because they didn't want the people that knew what they were doing doing it. And that's the biggest problem with the government: they've always got the bureaucracy up here that knows what's going on, but they never ask the poor guy that’s doing all the work what's going on. I think you've seen that numerous times. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: I think so. [LAUGHTER] Wow, that's really fascinating. So how long total did you work at Hanford?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: 30 years.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: 30 years.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: I had to take a medical retirement in '98.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: '98. So then you were there, then, kind of from the shift from production to cleanup. Right? The production and shutdown.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: No, when I left they were just getting ready to start cleaning things up.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Okay, so can you maybe talk about the shift from production to shutdown? How did that affect your job?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Well, I really didn't get in on any of the cleanup, because I left before they did. But I talked to a number of the guys out there that I worked with that were in the cleanup. The biggest problem they had is they put such a limit on chemicals they could use to do cleanup that they had to use things that they claim were not environmentally safe. They had to void all that--like Tide. They wouldn't even let us use Tide to wash the walls down. Now, you use Tide in washing machines. [LAUGHTER] Come on, give me a break. That's a hazardous chemical? And I guess it took them quite a while to get the thing cleaned up. Because, like I say, they didn't start cleaning it up until after I left.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Right. So what did you do in the shutdown era? Like after '87, from '87 to '98? What was your job primarily?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: They didn't shut down--they shut B Plant down, but they didn't shut 2-and-a-quarter down. 2-and-a-quarter was still processing strontium and cesium.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay, so then you kept in the waste encapsulation.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Yeah.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Can you describe a little bit more the process of waste encapsulation?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Well, strontium is not soluble--not water soluble. And strontium is. And what they had--they had a special process--I don't know exactly the process. I just know what we did. You would take a mixed chemicals with the cesium and you would dissolve it and then you would heat it up to--I think--800 degrees into a liquid. And then you had a machine we called a tilt-pour which would pour seven capsules at a time full of cesium. And then you'd take these capsules and you'd put a sensoring disc in them to make them airtight. And then you'd weld a cap onto that. That'd be welded by a machine. And most then it was computerized. Then that was decontaminated until it was clean. And then it was put into another capsule, and that capsule was also—put a lid on it, but it was soldered on—welded on. And that was moved into the pool cells. Pool cells are 13-foot deep. What you had is a special hole built into the wall with water that you would shove that capsule through. And then the guy on the other side in the pool cell would grab the capsule and pull it out. And he would go to the pool cell that he's designated to go to, and he would shove it through a hole in the wall. And somebody on the other side would grab it and pull it and then you'd put it into its spot. So it was quite a process. And the fear was--you couldn't get that capsule within five feet of the top. Because if you did, you'd get a high radiation alarm. They’d read millions of rads on those capsules. They were hot, no two ways about it. And one thing I've always wondered is why does cesium glow blue when you turn the lights out?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: You turn the lights out in the pool cell, and all these cesium capsules will glow blue. And I've never--I've had somebody say it's something about the speed of light and all that. But I'd like to know the real reason it does that.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: That sounds kind of strangely beautiful.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: It was. It's a blue glow all along the bottom. The strontium doesn't. Strontium is not water soluble and it doesn't glow at all. In fact, I got some strontium in me one time when I had a tape when one of the manipulators--I don't know if I didn't mention--all the work was done from the outside with the manipulators. You know what manipulators are.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Right, yeah.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Okay, and all the capsulation, all of the work was done with manipulators from the outside. And it was amazing what some of those guys could do. They could take a little bottle about so big with a little bitty top and they could pick up that bottle, hold it here, and took up the other--the cap with the lid and put it on it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: I was never that good with it, but there some guys out there who got real expertise with that. It just takes a lot of work to learn to use those things. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: I bet.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: That's one reason my hand's tore up--my hand just didn't take it so much.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: And you said you got strontium on your hand?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Yeah, I got--I couldn't handle manipulators good because my hand was falling apart on me. So I took all the decontamination of the manipulator. Because that's--a manipulator has to be pulled after so many--I think it's so many weeks, the Mylar coating on it starts deteriorating. So it has to be pulled, decontaminated, and new Mylar sheath put on it. And I was in there decontaminating one of the manipulators, and one of the—well, they were trying new bands that controlled the grips. And one of them broke and sliced my hand. And I got some strontium in my finger. It was about 700 counts. I wasn't too worried about it. But they took me to town and went on all government roads, documented and everything and brought me back. I couldn't work with radiation for about three months until that thing finally deteriorated--worked out of the body.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: But I didn't worry about it. It wasn't enough to do any harm.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Wow, that's really--</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: See, that's the difference between working with the stuff and knowing what it does, and not working with the stuff.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Right. Right, I've heard a lot of similar things about--</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: It's like chemicals. I'd rather work at a radiation plant than at a chemical plant. Because if you have good radiation monitors, you're not gonna get an overdose of radiation. But with a chemical plant, look what they have out there now. A guy gets a whiff of chemicals, they all go panic about it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, I see where you're--I see your point. So you said--earlier when you said you would put the cesium in the pools—cesium cans, you couldn't get them too close to something, because they'd get too hot. Sorry--can you--</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: No, it wasn't too close--they're in--oh, it probably was a--well, what would you call it? It was like a cabinet with holes in it. You would drop these in there. And they're spaced out. You couldn't pull them too high. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: If you pulled them sometimes when you're getting ready to transfer them to the pool cell, they would hydroplane and come up. And if you pulled them too fast, they would come up and you'd get a high radiation alarm. You’d just drop it back down and it'd go off.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: That's what it was.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: I got--okay. I gotcha. So--</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: It only takes one time, you remember not to do that anymore. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: [LAUGHTER] I bet. So even though your area—your work didn't change much when most of the plans ordered to shut down. You still probably worked with a lot of people whose jobs might have changed--</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Yeah.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: --during shutdown. Can you talk about that transition between process--?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Well, I talked with some of the guys and they were talking about how much work it took to get things cleaned up. Like the area behind the pool cells, that had to be completely decontaminated. And we finally got it down to where it was just one pair and no masks. That took a lot of work. Decontaminating just takes a lot of hand-scrubbing. I mean, it's not a case of, you can put something there and pick it up and get rid of it. You got a scrub a lot of places until it's gone. It takes a lot of work. And I talked to one fella, and he said that they had all the cells that were down to clean—and what they consider clean is no radiation in them. And it is hard for me to believe, because some of those cells were really hot. But I never got a chance on the cleanup.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: How was--so when Hanford was shifting over, how was this change explained by management, or some of the--how was it conveyed, or how did the community take it?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Management never explained anything to anybody. [LAUGHTER] I don't remember hearing the community complaining about anything, because most of the guys worked out there, and they knew what was going on. So there was no big panic about it. It wasn't the case where some guys didn't work here, they were told this was going on and got all excited because they didn’t know what was going on. Most people knew what was going on. So there was no big panic that I remember.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: We didn't panic with radiation, because we had good radiation monitors.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: And that makes a big difference when you're working around radiation.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: So being in waste encapsulation, how did other events--other nuclear accidents around the country or around the world, like Three Mile Island or Chernobyl, kind of affect how your job or how--</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: It made us see how ridiculous--because Three Mile Island actually worked. It was [UNKNOWN] what it was built for. And the moderation they got--radiation they got was not as much as you get flying from here to Denver City. Because you get more radiation from the sun than you do from—what the people at Three Mile Island got. But they blew it up so big, because so many years the government kept radiation such a secret. And that's the reason there's so much panic whenever they say radiation. Of course, there's been some real bad accidents. That one in Japan—that was a horrible thing. But as far as Hanford goes, most of the people that worked at Hanford don't—I guess they're not working around radiation anymore; it's all chemicals. Because they're getting—they get the chemicals and to me, that's the management's problem. Because they're doing something wrong in taking care of the people. The people are doing what they're told to do. If management is telling them, hey, you got to wear this, and they're not wearing it, then that's their problem—that’s the worker's problem. But when the management doesn't do anything about it, that's their problem—that’s management's problem. And I think from what I've heard and read, most of this is a managerial problem. It's not a case that the worker is going out of his way to ignore any safety concerns.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Right. What about the accident in Chernobyl? How did that--did that affect your job, or--</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Yeah, it affected it because they shut down N Reactor. And N Reactor, up until then, was as safe as any reactor in the country. It had so many safety pieces on it that you could darn near slam a door and make it shut down. But they shut it down because it was something like Chernobyl. And that's where the big effect was. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: How did--oh, how did security policies change over time? Did they change with the different contractors or in response to different events?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: No, the security’s main thing was basically the same. You had the security guards at like 200 East—well, they left the security guards that you couldn’t get out to Hanford without a security clearance. But that quit because they had the buses, and that stopped. And they had the security guards checking the buses and stuff as you went through. And then typical government, they started screaming about, oh, we're burning too much gas. We can't afford gas! So we'll shut the buses down. [LAUGHTER] So everybody had to drive out. But the guards at the gate checked your badges, checked your cars. If there was anything in it--you couldn’t take cameras or anything like that out there. If the guard knew you, he checked you out whether he knew you or not, because he had to make sure your wife didn't leave a camera sitting in your backseat you didn't know about.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Which happened on occasion.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Right, I bet. How did your job change with the different contractors coming in? Did it change much, or did you--</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Well, every contractor that came in, the engineers thought they were gonna remake the world. They would come up with some plan that they saw on a schematic and say, this is the way we want to do it. And we'd tell them point blank, it won't work. We've tried it that way. And they say, oh yes, it will! So we'd spend $50,000 in parts and stuff to put this together, and then it didn't work. And then they went around, well, why didn't it work? Well. The only one I ever saw that was a decent engineer is when he'd draw up a plan to do something, he would go to the millwrights, he would go to the operators, he'd go to the instrument techs and ask them to look at it and see if there's anything that needs done on it. And he had never had any problems. But these that come straight out of school and thought they could reinvent the world were a pain in the butt to us because they cost money and time.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Do you remember who that good engineer was?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: He left. I don't remember who he was. But he left and went to work for a big company some place.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay. Do you remember President Nixon's visit in--I think it was 1970 or 1971?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: I might have. I didn't see him. I don't worry about politics.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: He didn't do our place any good or any bad. Just a big political statement.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: How did the Tri-Cities change from when you came back in 1968 until today? What kind of strikes you as major changes?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Well, there seem to be more, you might say, petty crimes. There wasn't as much as there was before--there was more than there was before, I should say. But the city maintained its equilibrium about the same, because the people have been here for 20 years, and then they sold the city to the town. There was no big change in the government. The police stayed the same. The biggest change was you had to call a painter if you wanted your house painted. And they sold the houses to the people, and that was the biggest change.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: How about, though, since—from when you came back in 1968 until today? Has there been any--has the community changed at all?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Well, a lot of the businesses have left Richland. They moved out Columbia Center area, or up there in that area. We don't have--you got to go to Columbia Center to find a business. There's a few still there. There's Home Depot and stuff like that down there, Big Lots. But there's not as many as there used to be. And mostly antique shops or stereo shops.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: But there's always the Spudnut. It's always been there.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: There is always the Spudnuts, yeah. They're good too. Is there anything else that I haven't asked you about that you'd like to talk about?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Well, us kids had different ways of playing that nowadays they would just panic about it. We used to have BB gun fights. We’d put on leather jackets and extra pair of Levi's and a hat and go into these orchards like where Densow's was and we'd have BB gun fights. And you haven't really lived until you've had your butt shot by a BB. [LAUGHTER] But nowadays there'd be some big panic about it that you're gonna shoot an eye out. Well, nobody ever shot an eye out because we made sure that we didn't shoot towards the head. [LAUGHTER] When they were building the houses, that's what was amazing, how fast they put these houses up. It wasn't a week or so to get a house started--it was almost a week and they had the thing almost done. And we used to go to different houses and have clod fights. Things like that that you don't dare do nowadays.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: When you had what kind of fights?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Clod fights. Clodded earth. We'd get behind stuff and throw clods at each other. And the snow then was two, three foot deep. Because I remember building snow forts in my yard three foot high and never have to go to the yard to get snow. So there has been a big change in the weather. And the shelterbelt, that made a big difference, because I remember when we had sandstorms--not dust storms, sandstorms. And my dad would pull his car up in front of the house to keep the sand from blasting the side of the car off--the paint. So there's been big changes. The shelterbelt was one thing the government put in that actually worked. It’s kind of surprising. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: That's great. Is there anything else? Anything else you'd like to talk about?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Well, not really. Just that the area behind--you know, in West Richland at that time used to be Heminger City and Enterprise. They were two cities then.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Okay, tell me, were those cities that predated the Hanford Project?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Yeah.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Okay, and how big were there?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Oh, they were just little communities. It was just one run into the other. There was one called Enterprise, one was called--what did I just say?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Something city.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Heminger City.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Heminger City.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: One of the elections went out for voting, they had one of the places that you went to was called Enterprise.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: And how long did those communities last after Hanford came?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Not very long. I can remember Dad going out to the first town—first little town was Heminger City. And that was right where Cline's computer shop is, it was automobile shop there. And those were all owned by one group--one person. I think it was--Herricks was the name. And she had a little taco stand in one of the places. And OK Tire Shop had part of the one building that they sold tires and did car repair out of. So it was a slow change in West Richland. We had a feed store for a while. But Hanford went on strike and our feed store went down the tubes. They used to have what they called parking lot critter sells. People would bring all their animals, little animals that they wanted to sell in cages. And we would sell them for them and get 10% of the interest. It was a pretty good deal, because a lot of people had pet rabbits and stuff like that and they wanted to get rid of them. Usually had them at the un-boat races. You heard of the un-boat races?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Why don't you tell me?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: The un-boat races? You ever heard of them?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: Why don't you tell me?</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Well, the un-boat race was you went up to the Horn Rapids Dam, and you put something in. It could not be a boat. It could be a bath tub, it could be inner tubes--it could be anything that you could see above that would float and it could not be called--it was called un-boat race. And there was a prize that they got down towards the bridge that crosses the Yakima there on George Washington Way. Got down about that far, there was a prize who got there first. But they ended up cutting that out because people left too much stuff—garbage alongside the road. They wouldn’t pick it up and take it with them when they were done with it. But that was a lot of fun. We used to stand up on the ridge. Always started about May. And we'd stand there and watch people come down the river on these un-boats. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Franklin: That sounds really fun. Anyone else have anything? Okay, well, Dan, thank you so much for talking to us today. I learned a lot of great stuff about Richland and waste encapsulation. I really appreciate it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Barnett: Okay.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:09:22
Bit Rate/Frequency
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317 kbps
Hanford Sites
Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview
200 East Area
B Plant
N Reactor
225-B Encapsulation Building
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site
1968-today
Years on Hanford Site
Years on the Hanford Site, if any.
1968-1998
Names Mentioned
Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community.
Newberry
O'Malley
Walter
Jacks
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Daniel Barnett
Description
An account of the resource
An interview with Daniel Barnett 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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07-14-2016
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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/mp4
Date Modified
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2017-08-11: Metadata v1 created – [A.H.]
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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.
1955
200 East
B Plant
Battelle
Cold War
Dam
Hanford
Houses
K-Basin
Kennewick
Market
N Reactor
Park
River
School
Sun
swimming
War
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b57899b4456572c689b8c6aaa528cfed
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F583865462e4fa6396d8d362c783d5ae2.mp4
1a5d0b226d8d91e261ba39aaba60fd79
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 Franklin
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
George Boice
Location
The location of the interview
Washington State University Tri-Cities
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p>Tom Hungate: Okay.</p>
<p>Robert Franklin: You ready, Tom?</p>
<p>Hungate: Mm-hm.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history interview with George Boice on July 15<sup>th</sup>, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Mr. Boice about his experiences living in Richland. So why don’t we start at the beginning, that’s the best place. When and where were you born?</p>
<p>George Boice: I was born in Ellensburg. A third generation native of the state of Washington. My father and my grandmother were born in Cle Elum.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, Wow.</p>
<p>Boice: We came through this—the tribe came through this territory and crossed the White Bluffs ferry in 1885. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p>Boice: And went up to the Kittitas County area. And then we came back later. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: What year were you born?</p>
<p>Boice: ’37.</p>
<p>Franklin: ’37. Did your family work at all at the coal mine in Roslyn?</p>
<p>Boice: Yes. [LAUGHTER] Short answers. My grandmother’s brother, Uncle Tony, was a mine rescue worker up there at Roslyn.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Boice: You go up to Roslyn, that is interesting. Ever been there?</p>
<p>Franklin: Yes, I have.</p>
<p>Boice: 27 cemeteries. Just neater than all get out. [LAUGHTER] The different ethnic groups up there. They talk about one Fourth of July, the Italians were going to raise the Italian flag in the main street there. Some of the local citizens took a dim view of it. And some wagons were turned on their side and the Winchesters came out, and the sweet little old lady got out there and got everybody calmed down before the shooting started. [LAUGHTER] But the flag didn’t go up. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow. So what brought your family down to the Hanford area?</p>
<p>Boice: My—[LAUGHTER] When they started Hanford—Dad was a firefighter in Ellensburg, had been for a few years. And when they set up Hanford, the first thing they did for a fire department was pick up the retired fire chief out of Yakima. Well, he goes around to the local fire departments and starts hydrating citizens. [LAUGHTER] So, Dad came down here in ’43 as the ninth man hired at the Hanford Fire Department. Always claimed that half of them had been canned before he got there. [LAUGHTER] So he went to work in ’43—June of ’43 at Hanford. We were still there at Ellensburg, and we didn’t come down here ‘til summer of ’44.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, wow.</p>
<p>Boice: And they were still moving prefabs in, and unloading them with rapid shape.</p>
<p>Franklin: Did your father commute at this time, or did he live on—</p>
<p>Boice: Uh-unh. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Where did he—do you know much about his living quarters or where he lived?</p>
<p>Boice: Yeah, there were barracks.</p>
<p>Franklin: So he lived in the barracks?</p>
<p>Boice: Oh, yes.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. Did he come back to visit at all?</p>
<p>Boice: Oh, yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Boice: Wasn’t but—hell, by the time you get up to the Hanford area, it’s just over the ridge. [LAUGHTER] So he’d come in every couple of weeks.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. How many siblings do you have?</p>
<p>Boice: One of each—one brother, one sister.</p>
<p>Franklin: Older, younger?</p>
<p>Boice: Oh, yeah. My brother was born in Kadlec in September of ’45. My sister was—well, they bracket the war. She was born about a month before it started—or right after it started. She was born in December of ’41.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Boice: And he was born September of ’45.</p>
<p>Franklin: So can you talk a little more about your father’s job at Hanford? What did he—did he talk much about what he did, or—</p>
<p>Boice: [LAUGHTER] Oh, yeah! You know. The place is building up, it’s trying to erupt. You’ve got construction going all directions. Trailer house fires. He talked about them [EMOTIONAL]—how quick people died in them damn trailer houses. They’d go up in a matter of seconds. And there were acres of them. But yeah, it was—And the amount of nothing to do. I mean, you had time to work and then there was really no recreational facilities. He worked at a grocery store for a while in his off hours stocking milk. He said it was not unusual to work a whole shift with a forklift or a handcart walking out of the stack and filling the same slot behind the counter there. We came over twice to visit him at Hanford.</p>
<p>Franklin: Before you moved—</p>
<p>Boice: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: --in ’44. Okay.</p>
<p>Boice: You drive across the Vantage Bridge, and somebody had gone through with a grader and graded out a dirt-slash-gravel road. And we drove around and down, and across the Hanford ferry into Hanford. Because you could get into Hanford; it wasn’t restricted—the town. Everything else was. So getting in and out of Hanford was no trick. Getting out of the surrounding area was. So my mom and I and my grandfather went down there.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow. And where did you stay? Did you just go for the day?</p>
<p>Boice: Well, we didn’t—when I was there, we didn’t stay. We just went for the day and went home.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Boice: But Mom talks about going down and staying overnight. [LAUGHTER] She says she was not warned. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Warned about what?</p>
<p>Boice: To keep everything you wanted nailed down.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh.</p>
<p>Boice: She got up in the morning and somebody stole her girdle. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow. So when your family moved in summer of ’44, where did you move to?</p>
<p>Boice: 17-1.</p>
<p>Franklin: 17-1?</p>
<p>Boice: That was the lot number and the house number. It is now 1033 Sanford.</p>
<p>Franklin: Ah.</p>
<p>Boice: It’s on the southwest corner of Sanford and Putnam.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yup. I live right by there.</p>
<p>Boice: We went in there and it was—they had—you can’t describe to people how they had come in there and just dozed the farmland over, staked out streets and planted houses. And hauled them in on trucks and set them down. We were fortunate—I didn’t realize how fortunate it was—in the fact that we had only come about 100 miles or so—we came in a truck. We had our stuff. Mom had her piano. And I can’t tell you how many times women would come up and bang on the door, can I play your piano?</p>
<p>Franklin: Really?</p>
<p>Boice: Strangers off the street. Just because it was there, and it was—so we had all kind of musical stuff. Everybody could play better than Mom could. But we had the piano.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p>Boice: And she had her houseplants. It was different. But there was no trees in Richland. There wasn’t three blades of grass! [LAUGHTER] You’d come in, you got a garden hose and a plastic nozzle. You hosed down your lot and it immediately became a slick, slimy mud pile. Great for kids to play in! Man, we could slide in that mud across there—it was really cool! And then when it dried up, why, it reticulated like a picture puzzle. So we’re picking chunks up and stacking them up and building houses. And Mom gets up and she’s just madder than a wet hen, so we had to put the lawn back together. [LAUGHTER] But the hose nozzles were so interesting, because when you had a plastic nozzle, but you couldn’t get anything else. There was a hardware store here, eventually, but they didn’t handle stuff like that. This was a war going on. And the ingenuity that went into lawn sprinklers would just boggle your mind! The cutest one I remember was some guy took a chunk of surgical tubing—he got a bent pipe for an uppensticker. And he stretched his hunk of surgical tubing over the end of it, turned the water on, and it was not efficiently watering his area, but he could flail water all over a half an acre! [LAUGHTER] That was one of the cuter ones. There was also no shade and no air conditioning.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>Boice: Coming down in a moving truck, Dad brought his carpenter tools, he brought his bench, and he set to work building an air conditioner. Now, this was the dog-gonedest thing you ever saw. He got some burlap sacks and set out there with scrap lumber in the backyard on his workbench just creating shavings out of boards. Fill these burlap sacks with wood shavings for the pads for his air conditioner. He got a motor out of I-don’t-know-what. It was an appliance motor out of something. And he whittled out this propeller out of a two-by-four. And he cranked this thing up and it sounded like a B-29. [LAUGHTER] But it would blow sort of cool air, which raised the wrath of the neighbors. Number one was the racket he was making. Number two was we had air conditioning. So immediately, guys come out of the woodwork in all directions. Guy next door was a sheet metal worker. He came home with parts to make a much better, more efficient fan that was quieter. [LAUGHTER] So they set to work building him one. [LAUGHTER] We made air conditioners—you come up with a motor, and they would come up with an air conditioner. And we would deliver them on the back of my little red wagon. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Where would you put that? Like, would that just go in the window?</p>
<p>Boice: We put it in a window.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay. And how would you attach it to the house?</p>
<p>Boice: Ingeniously! Most often, they would just build a rack underneath, a shelf on top, and set it up on top there. A houses, you wanted to put your air conditioner—at least about everybody did—set it at the top of the stairs where it would blow out the upstairs and cool your downstairs. They were reasonably efficient. The one thing about all the homemade air conditioners—very few of them, if any, had a recirculating system. So you had to use fresh water. This had two sides to it. You didn’t crud up your water system with alkali by reusing your water. But you did have to go out there and keep moving your hose where it drained out to water your lawn.</p>
<p>Franklin: [LAUGHTER] Wow. What kind of house did your family move into?</p>
<p>Boice: Well, originally we had a three-bedroom prefab. Prefabs come in three sizes and five colors. And a bunch of very ingenious kids on Halloween 1944 went out and stole the damn street signs. The buses coming back off of swing shift had no earthly idea where they were going. They wandered around town, because all the houses looked alike! [LAUGHTER] Then after a while—oh, let’s see, we moved in in August, and about the following spring—because we started out school at Sacajawea and then at Christmas vacation they changed us to Marcus Whitman. But up there on Longfitt, thereabouts, I was coming home from school and here sits the roof of a prefab right out in the middle of the street. Apparently, this guy was sleeping and a windstorm come along and picked up his whole roof and set it out in the middle of the street. Thereafter they had a crew of carpenters going around fastening the rooves of the prefabs down a little tighter.</p>
<p>Franklin: Because at that time, right, they had flat rooves.</p>
<p>Boice: Flat rooves.</p>
<p>Franklin: Correct? That kind of overhung a bit, something that the wind could really easily—</p>
<p>Boice: Oh, yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: --grab ahold and pop off. Do you remember when they got the gabled rooves that they all have now?</p>
<p>Boice: No, I don’t, because I was—I think after we left, but I wouldn’t bet heavy money on it. We moved off the prefab in ’45.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Boice: And into an A house on Swift. I don’t recall when they put the gabled rooves on.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. So what did your mom do? Did she work at Hanford at all?</p>
<p>Boice: No.</p>
<p>Franklin: No?</p>
<p>Boice: She was a stay-at-home mom.</p>
<p>Franklin: Stay-at-home mom?</p>
<p>Boice: It was such an interesting place. The buses ran every 30 minutes. No charge, just go out and get on the bus. One of my main jobs was—because there was no mail delivery, everybody in Richland got their mail general delivery. So I’d take the bus, go downtown, get off at the post office, check the mail, go down to the grocery store—and there was only one—that was a brief period, but then there was only one grocery store at that time. And that’s where that ski rental shop is—kayak rental shop on the corner of Lee and GW?</p>
<p>Franklin: Mm-hmm.</p>
<p>Boice: That was the grocery store. The one and only. Shortly thereafter, Safeway opened up on the corner of—southwest corner of Lee and Jadwin. So things picked up. And then there was—they come up with the community center grocery store—whatever you want to call them. There was one at Thayer and Williams, which was the Groceteria. Garmo’s was out there on Stevens and Jadwin—no, Symons and something-or-other. The south end of town was—oh, nuts. He was the one that survived—Campbell’s. Campbell’s grocery store. He specialized in fresh fruit and stuff, and of the whole pile of them, he was the one that really come out of it in good shape. But the fourth one is now the school office, up there by Marcus Whitman. That was a grocery store.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Boice: But you go down, you do your post office work, and then you go and get your groceries, and if you’re lucky you get ten cents. Next bus home. You know where the Knights of Columbus Hall is out on the bypass?</p>
<p>Franklin: Mm-hmm.</p>
<p>Boice: That used to be—originally that was the Richland post office.</p>
<p>Franklin: Mm-hmm.</p>
<p>Boice: It’s up there at Knight and GW, I think. There wasn’t a whole bunch of shopping centers. The Richland Theater was in existence. The drug store next door to it was there. After a while, the big brown building, which was everything, at that time, when it opened up it was CC Anderson’s. Then there was the dime store, and, oh, we were hot and heavy then. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Can you tell me a little more about your dad’s job? What would a typical day or a typical week look like for someone who worked on the fire department?</p>
<p>Boice: On the fire department, there is no such thing as typical. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah.</p>
<p>Boice: It was wild. In the beginning, they opened up—they were on shifts. Like everything was on day shifts, swing shift, graveyard. In our neighborhood, after my brother was born, we moved down to Swift and McPherson. Dad had come into town by that time. If you go behind the Richland Theater, you look real close, there’s two B houses back there. One of them’s a real B house and the other one ain’t. You look at the B houses over here, and the other one that ain’t is over here. And you look real close at the driveways. That was the original fire station that the City of Richland had going. That was the fire station when Hanford came in. Then they built a fire station on Jadwin in conjunction with the housing building and a couple other things, right across from the 700 Area, which is what they wanted, was coverage on that 700 Area. So that was the downtown fire station. And when they opened that up, why, then Dad came up out of Hanford.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Boice: He wasn’t too long there, and they opened one up Williams off of Thayer, in behind the Groceteria and a little service station up there with a small satellite fire station. Two trucks and one crew. Dad was there for years and years and years.</p>
<p>Franklin: How long did your dad work for Hanford or the government here?</p>
<p>Boice: Like I say, he came in in ’43 and retired in the early ‘70s.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>Boice: Rode her right on through.</p>
<p>Franklin: So what did he do when the community transitioned in ’58?</p>
<p>Boice: They bought him!</p>
<p>Franklin: The City of Richland did?</p>
<p>Boice: Yup, the City of Richland bought the outstanding time and he rolled right over.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>Boice: [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: So can you talk a little bit more about growing up here? You said you went to Marcus Whitman and then to—and then what other schools did you go to?</p>
<p>Boice: Well, like I say, there was no shade.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>Boice: And very few radio stations. With a good shot you could get in Yakima, Spokane, and Walla Walla, and that was about it. So we sat around in the shade, and my mother read us stories. [LAUGHTER] One of them was a book we picked up in Walla Walla about Sacajawea. She read us the entire story of Sacajawea and the Shoshones and the Lewis and Clark Expedition, et cetera, et cetera. And in ’44, they opened up Sacajawea School. Now, as everybody does, they did their darnedest to convert us kids to saying Sah-CAH-jah-wee-ah. It didn’t take. [LAUGHTER] Because there was already Sacajawea State Park and everybody was using the term Sacajawea. But Sah-CAH-jah-wee-ah—they tried. They gave it their level best. It didn’t take. But the time that they were doing this, Miss Jesson was a teacher there was giving us the thumbnail sketch about Sacajawea. She did a pretty good job—well, you know, she told you what she knew. And she made mention of the fact that she was married to a trapper, but they didn’t know what his name or anything about him. I says, his name was Toussaint Charbonneau. He got her off a wolf man of the minute carriage for a white buffalo robe. My status went up. [LAUGHTER] And the teachers wanted to know where in the cat hair I learned that. Well, Mom read us the book. But I’ve always liked Sacajawea School. Just kind of a kinship. We went—in ’45, they opened up Marcus Whitman. We went there ’45 was all, because when they broke for the summer, we were over by—we moved. By the next fall we were over in the area where I could go to Sacajawea again. But we were going to Marcus Whitman when Roosevelt was shot—died. So that was the event of the time. You watched the transition of one President to another. The flag ceremony—the whole thing—it was interesting for a kid.</p>
<p>Franklin: I bet. What do you remember about during the war years that kind of focus on secrecy and security? How did that affect your life and your family’s life?</p>
<p>Boice: You didn’t talk to nobody about nothing! [LAUGHTER] I mean, that was just the words. You didn’t talk about—if somebody asks you what your dad does, you talk about something else. It was so interesting here in the last year, I think—time goes quicker now. A whole bunch of us from that neighborhood on Swift went to a funeral—this boy’s mother—well, yeah—Bill’s mother’s 100<sup>th</sup> birthday, after the funeral they had a sit-down dinner. I happened to sit down at the table with the whole kids of the old neighborhood. And we’re talking about all this stuff, and the secrecy, and the ones you watch out for—this girl over here. Yeah. She didn’t share the secrets with the neighbors when they were talking about who’s got butter on sale. They didn’t tell her anymore. She fried her food in butter. So no one would tell her where the butter sales were when it was available. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Was there any mention of the work going on at Hanford at school that you can remember?</p>
<p>Boice: The one thing of what was going on, and it wasn’t the work at Hanford, because nobody talked about that. But when the Japs were sending over the firebombs—</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, the balloon bombs.</p>
<p>Boice: Yes. We were told to write no letters, tell nobody, because they didn’t want it to get out how blinking effective they were.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right. The fear of these bombs from the sky—</p>
<p>Boice: They were hitting, and they were working.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah.</p>
<p>Boice: You guys are in the right position to find out. But there was a rumor going around that a balloon-loaded Jap had landed out there in the area and they caught him and bundled him up and carted him off before they did any business. Okay, la-di-da-di-da. There’s rumors about one thing and another. And four or five years ago, CNN or one of these, they were talking about the weather balloons. They showed the colored pictures taken out here at Hanford of the balloons landing in the BPA lines and burning up. [LAUGHTER] End of speech, end of story. [LAUGHTER] But I was surprised to find out that something had happened. There was no soldiers attached or anything else, but there was an incident.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, we’ve—there are a couple confirmed reports of—we actually did an oral history with a gentleman whose father had been a patrolman and had seen one of the balloons land and had to chase it down and didn’t realize right away that it was—had explosives attached to it. The others—there’s a couple reports of them touching down onsite. And there was a family that was killed in Idaho where they were picnicking and a balloon came down.</p>
<p>Boice: Idaho or Oregon?</p>
<p>Franklin: I think it was—oh, that’s right, maybe it was Oregon.</p>
<p>Boice: K Falls.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yes.</p>
<p>Boice: You go to the museum in Klamath Falls had the—or when I went through it—I was working down there twenty years ago or so—they had a big display of the family that was picnicking and the kids went to prod on it, and it went off and killed a girl.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah. Were there—when you were—so we’re still in the World War II era and we’ll definitely get to the Cold War in a bit—but were there any kind of—what do you remember about like emergency procedures in school? Was there anything special, kind of drills or something during World War II?</p>
<p>Boice: You mean the duck-and-cover?</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, that kind of stuff. Was there any duck-and-cover during World War II?</p>
<p>Boice: Oh, yeah, oh, yeah. Of course—my kindergarten days—now, man. Lived across the street from the college there at Ellensburg, and firebombs were to be worried about. But I was covered. I had a bucket full of sand and a shovel, and it was there on the front porch. When the firebomb came through there, I was going to put my sand on it. So we were prepared. God help us if it landed any place else. [LAUGHTER] But the beginning of the war when I was a kid in Ellensburg was so funny, because we were living right across the street from the college and everything was just the standard college. And the war started, and immediately, there’s all these people running around here that can’t count. Hup, two, three, four. Hup, two, three, four. I wasn’t even in kindergarten, and I knew about my ones! [LAUGHTER] And there was—you go across the street and around the corner, and there was this one half basement room where I could stand there and watch the guys play shirts-and-skins basketball. And the next time I looked, here’s a skeleton of a single engine aircraft, and a guy instructing people on how to make dead stick landing. Now, of all the damned things for a four-year-old kid to remember, dead stick landings was what he was talking about. And they had this thing skeletonized where they could show the internal workings of all the aeronautics.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p>Boice: But in Richland—oh, yes. Duck-and-cover fire drills. But they never talked about nuclear, because it was yet to be discovered. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, right. So Ellensburg then quickly became inundated with—the state college there became a training area?</p>
<p>Boice: Oh, yeah. Just that fast.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow. In your notes here, I also see you mentioned about the heavy military presence and the olive drab everywhere and the cops in Army uniforms.</p>
<p>Boice: [LAUGHTER] It absolutely was. Richland was strictly OD. I think they only had one bucket of paint. But all the vehicles were olive drab. The buses were, on today’s standards, I’ll call them a three-quarter size school bus painted olive drab. The vehicles were anything they could scrounge up, because I remember two GIs in a ’37 Chev coupe, and I know today some farmer had taken the trunk out and made a pickup box out of it. But they scrounged this thing up someplace, painted it OD, and here’s the MPs running around in a ’37 Chev pickup. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: [LAUGHTER] A homemade pickup?</p>
<p>Boice: Yeah. It was years later that I found out—Dad didn’t say anything about it, and he certainly knew—that it was simple, because the war was going on. Everything was prioritized. But they had unlimited supply of uniforms. So they put the cops in soldiers’ uniforms; the firemen were in Navy uniforms. The firemen stood out and were very easily recognizable, but you couldn’t tell the soldiers and the cops apart, because they all had the same stuff on. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow. A couple oral histories we’ve done with people that were children in Richland, a couple of them mentioned their fathers had taken them onsite somewhat clandestinely. Did your father ever take you onsite into a secured area?</p>
<p>Boice: No.</p>
<p>Franklin: Did you ever get access to any of that some way?</p>
<p>Boice: No, I did not go to any secured area.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Boice: I was raised running in and out of fire stations. To this day, when I go through the door of a fire station, my hands go into my pockets. You’re allowed to touch nothing. Because you leave fingerprints. [LAUGHTER] It’s just a genuine reflex.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah! So you said that you went to Sacajawea, then to Marcus Whitman then back to Sacajawea. Then where did you go to high school?</p>
<p>Boice: We went through all of the—I’ll call it the school construction. They couldn’t build schools fast enough in Richland.</p>
<p>Franklin: I bet.</p>
<p>Boice: We had double shifts. Now they have these temporary quarters—whatever you call them. But we had hutments. Sacajawea had six hutments out there. They built the hutments, and then they went to double shifts. So you went to school at 8:00, and at noon they marched out, teacher and all, and our class marched in, and we went home at 4:30 or 5:00, something like that. So we went through all of that, and then in ’49, they opened Carmichael. A brand new junior high school, man, this is cool! And I was in the seventh grade in Carmichael and I are still the proud possessor of ASB cord 001, 1949, Carmichael Junior High School. The first one they ever gave out. [LAUGHTER] And that was neat, to have a real hard-built school. It was—oh, we had class. After three months, we moved to Kennewick. The Kennewick school system—</p>
<p>Franklin: Your family did, or--?</p>
<p>Boice: Yeah!</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>Boice: Dad stayed in Richland, but they were selling off. And if you didn’t have priority, the houses went to the guy that was there first. And in that A house, we were in second, so we were not in line to buy the house.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>Boice: So, Dad got a piece of property in Kennewick and we moved to Kennewick. And what a school system mess.</p>
<p>Franklin: Why?</p>
<p>Boice: They were behind. They couldn’t get money quick enough. They couldn’t build stuff fast enough. They had the red brick building—forget what it was called. It had been a high school at one time, and they pressed it back into service. It was so overcrowded you couldn’t believe it. But they finally built the high school that’s there now. It opened in ’52, I believe. ’51—yeah, class of ’52 was the first one to graduate—’52 or ’53. Graduated from Erwin S. Black Senior High School. And it was Erwin S. Black Senior High School one year. Because he was the school superintendent, and they built the school—they named the school in his honor because he had gone to bat and made trips back and forth to Washington, DC to cash some money to use for the school system. Then they got in a shooting match with the <em>Tri-City Herald</em>. [LAUGHTER] And Erwin S. Black and the schoolboard got run out of town, and they chiseled his name off the front of the school. But for one year it was E.S. Black.</p>
<p>Franklin: And then it just became Kennewick High School.</p>
<p>Boice: It became Kennewick High School.</p>
<p>Franklin: Can you talk a little bit more about this disagreement between Erwin S. Black and the schoolboard and the <em>Tri-City Herald</em>?</p>
<p>Boice: It was several things. One of them, there was a book—and I can’t recall—Magruder? McGregor? Somebody. It was a history book, and it mentioned communism. And that was brought up and made a big deal. This was back in the McCarthy era.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>Boice: That was brought out. And there was a lot of talk—Black was a certified building inspector, and he inspected the construction of the high school. It was said by a lot of people that it wasn’t up to standards; that the concrete wasn’t what it should have been. And I don’t know what the specs were. I wasn’t into concrete work at that time. I have been later. But I know when we were hanging the benches in the ag shop, where you would put a concrete anchor in the wall ordinarily and it would hold, they didn’t there. And they had to through-bolt through the wall to get to things to hang. So there was—and transfer of equipment and stuff—this was swapped for that, and that was swapped for this—and I don’t remember that, and the only guy I know that did know has died. [LAUGHTER] But one of the kids that graduated from Erwin S. Black, one of the few that was in that class, worked with him off and on and was aware of what went on.</p>
<p>Franklin: When you said that there was a book that mentioned communism, did it mention it in a favorable light, or did it just make a mention to communism?</p>
<p>Boice: More or less, it just made a mention.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Boice: I was on the—oh, we had the open house at the school, and I was one of the tour guides. Yeah, I showed them the book and what it had to say. And I don’t recall anything drastic.</p>
<p>Franklin: So then did you graduate from Kennewick High School?</p>
<p>Boice: No. [LAUGHTER] The military had a hell of a sale. Anybody that enlisted by the first of February got the Korean GI Bill of Rights. And those that enlisted afterwards didn’t. So I drug up in January and joined the Air Force.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh. Without graduating.</p>
<p>Boice: Without graduating.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. Interesting.</p>
<p>Boice: So I served my illustrious military career in a photo lab in Mountain Home, Idaho. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: And how long were you in the Air Force?</p>
<p>Boice: Two years.</p>
<p>Franklin: Two years, and then you were discharged?</p>
<p>Boice: Yes, yup, yup.</p>
<p>Franklin: When you were in school, you mentioned being in school during this McCarthy era, one of the real hot points of the Cold War. Can you talk a little bit about the civil defense procedures and kind of the general feeling of that time as it related to—because I imagine with Hanford so close, and now knowing what was being produced there, that would have been a likely target. It’s a major part of the nuclear weapons stockpile. So can you talk a little bit about that time and just the general feeling?</p>
<p>Boice: Well, you knew what was going to happen—or what they said was gonna happen. It was the duck-and-cover thing. And we had drills. A lot of what they said what was gonna happen—now they talk about getting into water to modulate it. Then, it was one of the things that they didn’t want you to do. Because we had the irrigation ditch that was running right alongside of the schools. But then they didn’t want you to get into it. So, it’s changed. They had the civil defense procedures—Radiant Cleaners, they’re in Kennewick. They had panel delivery cleaner trucks. They were rigged for emergency ambulances. They had fold-down bunks in them; they could handle four people. [LAUGHTER] It was taken serious.</p>
<p>Franklin: Did you feel any particular sense of worry, or did it not seem to really affect you, your daily life or your psychological—</p>
<p>Boice: It never bothered me ‘til years afterwards. When they talked about the Green Run, where they turned a bunch of that stuff loose, just to see what it would do to the citizens and count the drift on it. The people that had—the down-winders, and the people that had the thyroid problems. My sister was one of the first rounds that went to court over that.</p>
<p>Franklin: Really?</p>
<p>Boice: Because she was—we moved into Richland. She had her third birthday in the prefab, when they were still practicing how to build this stuff. And then we moved in on a farm where the alfalfa grew, the cow ate it, gave them milk, and everything was recycled and nothing went over the fence. And so it bothered me, then, that they used us as guinea pigs. But the other hand, they really didn’t know what in the cat hair that they were doing in a lot of cases. The nuclear waste? You’ve heard about the radioactive rabbit turds.</p>
<p>Franklin: I have.</p>
<p>Boice: You have?</p>
<p>Franklin: Yes, I have, but why don’t you mention that?</p>
<p>Boice: I was working with Vitro out here—’72, I think it was. The radioactivity, of course, is settled on the sagebrush. And the rabbits went around eating the leaves, just leaving fat, dumb and happy, and concentrating everything into the rabbit turds. And they were contemplating taking the top six inches of about two or three sections and burying it. Only they couldn’t decide where they had to build the hole. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: When you—you mentioned just a minute ago that you were on a farm, and you had the cows that would have eaten the tainted alfalfa—was your milk ever tested? Or did anyone ever come and--</p>
<p>Boice: Nah. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: test your—Were you ever tested for—or your family, anybody in your family, ever tested for radiation? Because I know that they, at one point, had those Whole Body Counters that they would test—some children in Pasco were tested through those machines?</p>
<p>Boice: You ever been through a Whole Body Counter?</p>
<p>Franklin: I have not been through a Whole Body Counter.</p>
<p>Boice: Depending on where you’re at, there may or may not be a—they’re kind of a joke. Now, when I was working here at Vitro, we went through the Whole Body thing, and they were serious. I mean, before we got cleared out, we went through the chamber, and we were counted. I went to work in South Carolina. They—as far as I was concerned—were very sloppy with their radiation handling and their checking and their radiation monitoring. We had a hand-and-foot monitoring station where we was going in and out of. You stick your hands in and they check it, and your feet were there at the same time. Well, this one time, I come up pretty hot, so I found an RM. I says, that machine gave me a bad reading. Oh, he says, that machine’s no good anyway. Come around to this other one over here and we’ll check you out. Well, if the blinking thing’s no good, why in the cat hair are we using it?! [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: So, just a second ago, you mentioned you were working for Vitro?</p>
<p>Boice: Uh-huh.</p>
<p>Franklin: What is or was Vitro?</p>
<p>Boice: What was Vitro? Okay. Vitro Engineering—and I don’t know how many times the name changed hands. But these guys were the ones that laid out the City of Richland—laid out the Hanford Projects. These were the strictly insiders. There was pictures on a wall of my grade school buddy’s dad, who I remember being a surveyor in Richland there. And these guys—this has gone on forever, and they were a pretty dug-in organization. To the point that they were not really aware that there was a world outside the fence. They’d heard about it, but they weren’t too sure it existed. [LAUGHTER] But I ended up at Vitro, and we did the Tank Farms that they’re having problems with, the hot tanks? We were in on the modification of that farm. We surveyed in there quite a bit. Whenever they show the pictures on TV, they always show you the evaporation facility. They show you that same picture. Warren Wolfe and I—I say Warren and I—it’s a little—our crew brought that up out of the ground, and we modified the tank farm, and we laid out the construction on that building from the ground right through the top.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Boice: And I was very fortunate, because all my surveying experience to that point was with the railroads and pipelines and longline work. Construction surveying was new to me. And I got throwed in with an old boy that was good at it. [LAUGHTER] And I learned a bunch working with him. And rolled right over, later on, into Hanford, too. We got in on the end of that—[LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Hanford II?</p>
<p>Boice: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, as--T-O-O. And which building was this that you and Warren Wolfe and your crew built?</p>
<p>Boice: All I remember is the evaporation facility.</p>
<p>Franklin: What was your specific job at Vitro? Were you a surveyor?</p>
<p>Boice: I was a surveyor. I was an instrument man. You get in the hot zones—we got inside the Canyon Building on several different occasions. And you got suited up, and I was instructed very specifically and emphatically to touch nothing, because anything that got crapped up, they kept. And we couldn’t get the instruments crapped up. But that stuff was so hot that the paper—the Rite-in-the-Rain books have got a specific paper there that has pitch in it or something—it attracts radioactivity like a sponge. And when they kept the notes, then one of us would stay inside and the other guy would get out in the clean zone, and we’d have to transcribe all the notes, because that book was so hot that they wouldn’t let it out of the area. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p>Boice: There was some weird stuff going on.</p>
<p>Franklin: Any other—</p>
<p>Boice: Yeah, but there’s some I ain’t gonna talk about. [LAUGHTER] Okay. We came so close to having a nuclear disaster, it wasn’t even funny. We were good. We were awful good. And we were fast. And we were set up out there on an offset, and Rosie the labor foreman come over. Somebody said you needed a shot here for a hole for a penetration into the tank. Man, we whipped that out and figured the pull and what it was gonna take. Swung over there, put a distance and an angle, drove the stake in the ground. I figured that Warren checked it, and away we went. We come back in a week or so, or a few days later, we were back in that same farm. And Rosie comes over there and he says, would you guys check that again? Because these guys was digging a hole there and they’re supposed to hit a tank. And we checked it. And I lied, and Warren swore to it. [LAUGHTER] We forgot we was on a ten-foot offset. So they’re digging clear to one side of this tank, and just good solid dirt. Had we been just half as screwed-up as we were, they would have gone right down the edge of that tank with a core drill. And we’d have had ooey-gooeys all over the place. They talked to us. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Kind of a happy accident, right?</p>
<p>Boice: Yeah, we were—I’ll never forget Warren’s work. He’d come back with the boss and he says, name me one guy in this world ever got through this life being perfect. He says, always pissed me off, he’s a damned carpenter. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: So you went to—you joined the Air Force, you went to Idaho for two years. When you came back—or what did you do after that? Did you come back to Richland after?</p>
<p>Boice: We were living in Kennewick.</p>
<p>Franklin: Living in Kennewick.</p>
<p>Boice: And I was working at the Washington Hardware Store. And this kid—we were working on cars in my buddy’s garage. And this guy comes through and he’s surveying for the Corps. And he talked that they were setting up a photogrammetry section. Well, heck, that’s what I was doing in the service. So, I beat feet over to Walla Walla to sign up to lay out photo mosaics. And they say, we haven’t got enough work for fulltime at that job. Are you a draftsman? No, I are not a draftsman. He says, would you take a job surveying? You bet. I became a surveyor. [LAUGHTER] And we worked from the mouth of the Deschutes River to Lewiston, Idaho. The first thing was the mouth of the Deschutes to McNary Dam—we mapped from the water level to the top of the bluffs by hand.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p>Boice: And then we went through, starting in ’58, and we inventoried the railroad. Now, when you inventory a railroad, we inventoried a railroad. Everything they possessed was put down. First, you go through and you measure and put stations—mark station markings on the rails. 80 miles of them. Then you go back and you reference everything the railroad’s got. Ties, spikes, tie plates, rails, joints, joint bars—if the fence moves, how far did it move, from what to what? If the rail changes, if there’s an isolation joint in there, you put that in. When you come to a switch, you measure everything that’s in the switch facility. You go—everything that that railroad has got. You become very, very familiar with railroads. [LAUGHTER] And then we went ahead, and we built railroads clear up to Lewistown. We handled a railroad layout real heavy. When they—are you familiar with the Marmes men?</p>
<p>Franklin: Yes.</p>
<p>Boice: Luck of the draw, I was on that. Because we were the—call it the resident survey crew in that area.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh.</p>
<p>Boice: And we were babysitting construction. Make sure they got sticks out ahead of them, make sure that things are checked out behind them. They’re putting in a detour, why, check that out. They’re building a bridge, make sure it’s set up right, and check it out when they get done. So, first they call up and they say, there’s a guy down here at the mouth of the Palouse River thinks he hit something, and he wants an elevation on this cave, see where the water’s gonna come when they raise the water behind Lower Monumental, I believe.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, I think that sounds right.</p>
<p>Boice: Is that the dam? So we went down there and run him in an elevation, painted it on the cave face. Happily on our way. Well, they hit pay dirt. [LAUGHTER] They dug up bones. So we were called back. They wanted—because the drillers were in there then doing sub-cell drilling of what’s down there. So we got to come in there and locate their holes so they know where what is. That was interesting. The whole thing. Now that the world has got into this Ice Age floods and stuff, I wish so heavily that I knew then what I know now. Because the layers that they went through were very definitely visible. This thing had been covered in various floods. But it was so interesting, the stuff that they found. Because it became an international incident. One of the coolest cats in the whole joint was Pono the Greek. And Pono run the sluice box. He had been all over the world. When the girls dug everything out, then they took the dirt to Pono, and he washed it down. Pono found thread of somebody’s sewing. Then they found the needle. And that to me was so cool. They had this needle that looked for all the world like a darning needle. How in the blazes they cut that eye in there! This was a really heads-up organization. [LAUGHTER] Interesting. Very interesting.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, that was a very significant archaeological find.</p>
<p>Boice: I’ve got to go back some day and talk to that doctor. At an anniversary of something, we’re down here at Columbia Park, and he was talking and I showed up there with the historical society doing something-or-other. And I talked to him for about five minutes. He mentioned the fact that he wanted to see the guy that painted that elevation. I said, well, you’re looking at him. [LAUGHTER] It was—I got to go talk to him. Because one of the things in their report—they talked that the ditch was dug with a Cat. Now, I ain’t saying they’re wrong, because I didn’t see any digging when I was there. But just—as you’re going up and looking at a hole, and in those days we had looked at a bunch of holes—we were inspectors. They were going behind the soils guys. And it just to me had all the appearance of somebody that dug a ditch with a dragline. And I always figured it was a dragline in there, and somebody said it was a Cat. I don’t totally agree with him. But the bones were so interesting. They said that the one thing about the site was there had been somebody living on it forever. Just, the further down you went, the more primitive they became, ‘til you got past the layer of the Mazama ash, when Crater Lake blew its top. And they went past Mazama ash and suddenly things looked pretty sophisticated. That’s where the needle came from and a few other things. It was neat. I’d have liked to spend more time with them.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah. I’m sure you heard about the dam failing and the site flooding after they—because they created the protective dam around the shelter, and that failed and let water in.</p>
<p>Boice: It didn’t fail! The SOB was never built to hold! When they brought us down there to check these drill holes out, the drillers—we had other stuff to do that morning, and we didn’t get down there until 10:00. The driller had a half-a-dozen holes in. I’m talking to this old driller, and he says, they ain’t never gonna keep water out of that thing, because there’s a layer of palm wood down there and it’s gonna leak like a sieve. But they did it anyway. And we’re down there checking on settlement pins and a whole bunch of other stuff when the water’s coming up. But we’re all on the radio, and it’s like a big one-party line—you can hear what’s going on no matter where. And they’re putting in pumps, and the more pumps they put in, the more water they sprayed out, but noting changed. [LAUGHTER] So it’s a lovely fishing pond. But interesting: it was shortly thereafter that I quit the corps and went to Alaska. Within a year-and-a-half, two years, I’m up there doing the same thing, only instead of spotting holes in the ground, we’re spotting oil wells. And sitting in a warm-up shack, talking to a driller, and he made mention of the fact that they had spudded oil wells. Now, when they spud an oil well, they get in there with an oversized auger, like you’re setting telephone poles. And they go down there through the mud and the blood and the crud ‘til they get to solid rock. And then they bring in the drills. And he says, we have yet to spud a well here that we didn’t get palm wood. And that has always sat with me. Now, when they’re talking about global warming—if there has been palm trees growing at the mouth of the Palouse River, and palm trees growing at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, it’s been a lot warmer than people are willing to talk about. [LAUGHTER] Just boggles my mind that there is palm wood in Alaska as well as Marmes Rockshelter.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow, that’s really interesting. So you were—Marmes, then Alaska. When did you come to work for Vitro at Hanford?</p>
<p>Boice: That was a pretty short season. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: At Hanford, or in Alaska?</p>
<p>Boice: At Vitro. Oh, at Alaska I worked for various contractors. But Vitro—we didn’t philosophically match. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Ah.</p>
<p>Boice: Their minds were all inside the fence. And I’m too antagonistic. [LAUGHTER] If we had a problem—thou shalt not speak bad of Vitro. And we’re laying out penetrations on top of a tank. And they’re all done. Radius and angle—which radius is—and they had them at different stages there, and other people had been doing them. And this tank had been there for quite a—not quite a while, but every once in a while someone would come in and set some more holes, set some more holes. Well, they didn’t continue their circle around—nobody closed the circle. So by the time we get there ‘til the end, we have to figure out by adding up each and every hole all the way around the circle at every different radius to get the dimensions to where we’re at. Where if the guy had closed out his circle, you could have backed him out and been out of there in about a tenth the time. So I happened to make the statement, I said, Vitro drafting strikes again. And I was a marked man. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: How long in total, then, did you work out on the Hanford site?</p>
<p>Boice: Well, in ’56-’57, or ’57-’58, they were doing a lot of military work out there. And we did the roads up Rattlesnake—was in on that. The road up Saddle Mountain. A lot of RADAR sites. You’re aware of the Nike sites on—</p>
<p>Franklin: Yup.</p>
<p>Boice: --the north side of the river over there?</p>
<p>Franklin: Yup.</p>
<p>Boice: Been there, done that. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: So—that wasn’t for Vitro, was that when you were with—</p>
<p>Boice: That was the Corps.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Boice: And we also did a lot of work up at Moses Lake.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Boice: All the runway extensions up there, we were in on. They throwed us in the clink. They did not like our very presence.</p>
<p>Franklin: Why?</p>
<p>Boice: Apparently Moses Lake had two different structures. There was the Strategic Air Command structure up there, and there was the Military Air Transport Service. I didn’t know the difference. Les was—we were doing some mapping work. And the three of us were just gonna run some levels out to the next site we were gonna work at. And we took off the BM—benchmark—at the control tower. And we get about two turns out across the flight line there. And a bunch of guys come out, like a changing of the guard or something. Two or three of them stopped to talk to Kirby and George. The other five come out along, and they walked, just formed a circle around me, and they wanted to know if I wanted to go with them. They had submachine guns and a whole bunch of other stuff, and I said, heck, there’s nothing I’d rather do! [LAUGHTER] So they called up Walla Walla and they verified our existence. Then we had to go through security and get badges to—and we’d been working on that thing off-and-on for months. But we just hadn’t stepped in the right zone.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, wow.</p>
<p>Boice: [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: They were just kind of waiting for you, then, to—</p>
<p>Boice: Just different—different bunch of stuff.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right. When you were in school in Kennewick, so after the—or even just after the word was out about the Hanford site, after August 6<sup>th</sup>, 1945, when you were in school, did they teach anything about Hanford history? Was it—</p>
<p>Boice: Go back to August 6<sup>th</sup>.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Boice: What a day. [EMOTIONAL] What a wonderful day! I’d been down at the Village Theater—now the Richland Theater. I don’t even remember what was playing. But we came out, [EMOTIONAL] and the bells were ringing. The church down there, they were ringing their bells. And everybody was whooping it up—the war was over! And I’ll never forget, some gal in there alongside the street, she had half a dozen kids with garbage can lids and a parade going, and they’re banging and clanging. And the festivities that the war was over. And then we went back and they came out with the thing and Truman said, It’s the Atomic Bomb, and that’s what we’ve been building. And Mom went over and talked to the lady next door. She mentioned the U-235. And the gal says, they didn’t talk about that, did they? And she’d been keeping files, and her husband had been working on it. And neither of them would ever admit that they knew what the other one was doing. It was that tight. And the security in Richland. The FBI knew everybody in town, because it was not uncommon—it was a regular thing that they would come around and they would talk to you, and ask about him. And then they’d go talk to him and ask about you. It was just—it was what was going on. We didn’t know why. Well, after that—yeah, after it came out what was going on out there, then we knew what was there. But until Truman come out and said, here’s what was going on, we didn’t know.</p>
<p>Franklin: What about V-J Day? Was that a separate kind of a big celebration?</p>
<p>Boice: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Was that as big as the news of the bomb drop? Or was the bomb drop more of a pivotal moment here in the—</p>
<p>Boice: Well, the V-J Day, the end of the war, was the big day. That’s the celebration that I’ll never forget.</p>
<p>Franklin: Can you talk about it?</p>
<p>Boice: June—you heard about Harry Truman, didn’t you? When he come out to Hanford?</p>
<p>Franklin: No.</p>
<p>Boice: [LAUGHTER] The head of security was a guy by the name of McHale. And Dad worked pretty close with him with the fire department because everything was safety and security and if you had a problem, see McHale. Now, the guy had taken—he was pretty much high up in intelligence—but he had assumed the position of a first sergeant. And Sarge McHale was the guy. No matter what happened, Sarge McHale. Harry Truman did a fantastic job, and made his reputation just going from plant to plant—the Truman Investigating Committee, cutting down waste. And I guess he did a heck of a job. But he come out to Hanford and demanded to be let in.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sorry, was this when he was Vice President or President?</p>
<p>Boice: He was a senator!</p>
<p>Franklin: Senator—Senator Harry Truman. Okay.</p>
<p>Boice: And he comes there and demands to be let in. And of course, the guard says, McHale! And McHale comes over there and meets him head-on. He says, I’m Senator Truman, and I demand to be let in. McHale says, I don’t give a damn if you’re President of the United States; you ain’t coming in here. And he didn’t. Well, years later, and I believe it was when they were dedicating the Elks Club in Pasco, Truman was back up in this area. And he was President. And he come out to Hanford and he looked up McHale. And he said, uh-huh, you son of a bitch, you didn’t think I’d make ‘er, did ya? [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow. That’s a great story. [LAUGHTER] But thank you. So after the war was over, was what went on at Hanford taught in school? Was there mention of the work at Hanford that built the bomb? Was that part of the curriculum here in town?</p>
<p>Boice: The local lore.</p>
<p>Franklin: The local lore, but nothing in the school at all?</p>
<p>Boice: Not that I recall.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Boice: Everything was—there was a terrific amount of pride. The Atomic City, the atomic this, the atomic that. The first barber shop quartet come to town, when GE left—no, DuPont left, GE come in, four guys come in from Schenectady, New York with a barber shop quartet. First ones I ever saw. And they were the Atomic City Four. And the next one were the Nuclear Notes. [LAUGHTER] But there was an atomic pride, all over the area. Then there was the people that thought we should be ashamed of it. That we had built this device that killed a whole bunch of people.</p>
<p>Franklin: Now, were these people in the community? Or people outside?</p>
<p>Boice: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: And this was right at the time—</p>
<p>Boice: Oh, no, no, no. This is--</p>
<p>Franklin: Later?</p>
<p>Boice: Last week? [LAUGHTER] Last few years ago, yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Boice: I got my—I’m still behind Hanford.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Boice: Screwed up and all. Back to Vitro for a little bit. Like I say, they were—the organization that literally purchased and built the city of Richland—now, at that time I was flying, and I was flying out of the Richland airport. And there was an old geezer out there called Norm. Norm flew the bench. He was always on the bench out in front of the airport, there. And if somebody just going up to burn up some hours or play, why, Norm was willing to go along. I saw Norm and I hauled him around and then I went back to work for Vitro. And Pritchard brought this guy through—it was Norm! Norm had been the head of real estate when the entire city of Richland and the whole Hanford Project was bought. He was in charge of it. And he retired and trained his successor, who died. And he trained the next guy, who died. So they had Norm on a retainer. Just to ride dirt on real estate. Quite an interesting character!</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, I bet. I think I’d kind of like to return about something we were just talking about a minute ago, where you were talking about people that—especially in the later years that have been critical of Hanford. I’d like to get more of your feelings on that. On how you feel about that, or kind of what part of their argument or their viewpoint that you don’t agree with.</p>
<p>Boice: They were talking about—well, first there was the Richland High School and their bomb insignia. It was felt that they were making a big deal or prideful about this terrible event. And I always go back to a group from Japan that came over and were very critical of Richland for the same thing. And the gentleman who was interviewing them or was talking to them, when they got done, informed them in no uncertain terms, that we were invited very unceremoniously into that war, and we’re sorry if you didn’t like the way we ended it. [LAUGHTER] You get to researching, I’d like to bring up, why didn’t they drop the bomb on Tokyo? Because there was nothing left on Tokyo to injure. If you read about Curt LeMay and the Strategic Air Command and the bombing of Japan, he had eliminated that thing down to—the B-29 was supposed to be a high altitude bomber. And it wasn’t as great at it as it was advertised to be. But they had eliminated the defenses. And they made the B-29 into a low-level trucking company, and they were just hauling stuff over and unloading it. And the firebombing of Tokyo—the movies they showed us in the Air Force was something to behold. I mean, they—it was so much worse than what happened at Nagasaki or Hiroshima, either one. He was told to save two or three targets—clean targets. And when they come over there with the bombs, then they used these clean targets and saw what they could do. Of the four devices—the four nuclear devices, we used—was it four or three in World War II?</p>
<p>Franklin: Are you referring to—</p>
<p>Boice: All but one of them came from Hanford.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah.</p>
<p>Boice: The first one at Los Alamos was plutonium. And then Hiroshima was Oak Ridge.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yup.</p>
<p>Boice: And then Nagasaki was plutonium.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah.</p>
<p>Boice: But there’s those that—and there were at the time, there was a big discussion on, should we demonstrate to them what this thing could do? And the big argument was, what if it doesn’t do? What if you drop it and it don’t do nothing? [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Interesting. Can you speak to—or do you remember anything about the Civil Rights era in the Tri-Cities?</p>
<p>Boice: [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: There were reports of—you know, it’s known that Kennewick was kind of a sun-down town, and that many minorities were forced to live in East Pasco. And that during the war—</p>
<p>[NEW CLIP]</p>
<p>Franklin: There had been a sizable African American population at Hanford, but that after the war many of them left. So I was wondering if you could speak to the Civil Rights action you might have seen or you might have observed or anything in the Tri-Cities?</p>
<p>Boice: Well, I was up in Lewiston when their civil rights march come through. But it was well-advertised. People knew what was gonna happen. And I was at the hardware store, and there’s a black cement finisher I’d worked with building houses in Pasco. I says, Leroy! You gonna come march on Kennewick? He said, [AFFECTED DIALECT] shee-it. I wantsta live in Kennewick just about as bad as you wantsta live in East Pasco. [LAUGHTER] They had a march on Kennewick—a bunch of people that—I am told, because I was living in Lewiston, and I was in Lewiston at the time. But there’s a group out of Seattle and a group out of Portland come up to Pasco, and they marched across the bridge. They marched down Avenue C, up Washington Street, down Kennewick Avenue. And Kennewick yawned. Nobody particularly cared. They got to the Methodist church, and the groups come out and says, you look hot. Come on in and have some lemonade. They sat down at the church, had lemonade and went home. And that was the civil rights march in Kennewick. But there is—when I was there growing up, there were no blacks in Kennewick. There were blacks in Pasco, and there were no blacks in Richland. With the exception—the guy that run the shoeshine parlor at Ganzel’s barbershop lived in the basement, and they tell me that there was two black porters at the Hanford House. And that was the total black population of Richland.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p>Boice: But they were not welcome in Kennewick. It wasn’t that big a deal when I was walking down Kennewick Avenue when a couple of black guys—they were bums, hobos—come walking down Main Street, you might as well say. And a cop pulled up and says, the railroad tracks are two blocks down that way. They go east and west. Either one will get you out of town. And they went to the railroad track. I always figured that the blacks wanted to move to Kennewick because they couldn’t stand to live next to the blacks in Pasco. [LAUGHTER] And if you want to get right down to it, well, all that hooping and hollering they do right now, you go down to Fayette, Mississippi, which is 98.645% black, and all the blacks in Mississippi can live in Fayette and nobody cares. Go down to Van Horn, Texas, which is all Mexicans, and they can all live in Van Horn, Texas, and nobody cares. But you let half a dozen white guys go up in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and they just have yourself a storm. Why, these are a bunch of white separatists! If everybody else can live together, why can’t the whites?</p>
<p>Franklin: Interesting. Some might say they were kind of starting a separatist movement up there, I think—claiming their own territory, and—</p>
<p>Boice: So what?</p>
<p>Franklin: Well, living together communally is often different from claiming that you don’t—aren’t subject to the law, the jurisdiction of the United States.</p>
<p>Boice: Nobody said that they weren’t subject to the law.</p>
<p>Franklin: Well--</p>
<p>Boice: They kept trying to integrate Prudhoe, but he kept getting cold and going home.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, in Alaska?</p>
<p>Boice: Yeah!</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah.</p>
<p>Boice: They had a heck of a time keeping Prudhoe integrated. Because them black people do not like cold weather! [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: I don’t think a lot of people like cold weather.</p>
<p>Boice: It was a big joke when we went down south there, to work at Savannah River. Because—hell, we’d come out of here and it was Thanksgiving. It was cold. We got down there, of course, if you’re traveling you’re gonna get nightshift. We left having the cold weather here at night down there. And I says, that’s okay, you’ll get yours come summertime when it heats up. But surprisingly—and I was really surprised that they didn’t take the hot weather any better than we did. I mean, it was miserably hot, but they were just as big a problem as a rest of us.</p>
<p>Franklin: I imagine it’s quite a bit more humid down there, though, with the—when it gets hot, you know. Because the heat with the humidity is—</p>
<p>Boice: Yeah, it is.</p>
<p>Franklin: --much worse than the dry heat.</p>
<p>Boice: Yeah, yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Is there anything that we haven’t talked about that you’d like to mention? Or any question I haven’t asked you that you think I should—</p>
<p>Boice: I don’t know what it would be. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, we’ve really gone—really jumped all over the place. It’s been great. Anyone else have any questions?</p>
<p>Hungate: No, the only question—you said you’d done some work with the railroad. What railroad?</p>
<p>Boice: Name one. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Hungate: All railroads? Union Pacific, all the different--?</p>
<p>Boice: Yes. Right now they’re talking about the oil trains, and their problems with them tipping over? I wonder how long it’s gonna take them to get to the problem. In the beginning, railroads were 39-foot rails bolted together. Measured mile after mile after mile of it. Then in about, oh, the middle ‘60s—’67, thereabouts, ’66—when they were putting in the SP&S, that’s now the BN—the Burlington Northern on the Washington side. They went with quarter-mile steel. And the first question that we had as surveyors—because you’re constantly working with the expansion and contraction of steel—was how are they going to control that in long rails? Because if you’re working on railroads very long, first thing you realize is do not sit on the joints in a hot day. You get your butt pinched! [LAUGHTER] When those tracks expand. So we brought this up and the first thing they told us was, well, they’ve got special steel and it’s only going to expand sideways. Well, that story lasted about as long as it took when they started putting it together. Because when they started—they’d set up a factory down here, if you’ll call it that. Brought in 39-foot un-punched rail, and just rolled her off, welded her together and ground down the joints and put her in quarter-mile sections. They were very particular when they put it in at the temperature that they laid that down on, where before—you know what a creeper is? Okay, it’s a kind of a hairpin device that you put over the rail so that it will slide less. But in the old days, the 39-foot rail very seldom saw any creepers. When they put that quarter-mile steel together, you saw a lot of creepers. Now they have gone to ribbon rail. They welded the quarter-mile steel together. You drive down to Portland, and you look at that rail, and you’re gonna go a long ways before you see a joint. There at Quinton and Washman’s dip—which don’t mean a thing to you guys—[LAUGHTER] about a mile post from 120-whatever, they have got a creeper on each—alongside of each and every tie. I mean, they were using creepers like they were going out of style. To me, the expansion’s the thing that they got to worry about, but then they should have figured this out because they’re running it. But it’s a factor. You got to factor it in when you’re doing a pipeline, when you’re doing a railroad. When we were doing the pipeline, Maurice Smith of British Petroleum, who was the head pipeline engineer, I had lunch with him. [LAUGHTER] It ain’t like we sit down at a specified lunch—he dropped in at the chow hall I was eating and sat down at our table. So we got to talking about it. And that was the question I brought up, was how are you going to handle the expansion in the steel? And he says—he admitted it was a heck of a problem. And that you got to run as many Ss as you can so that it’ll take up and accordion itself. And when you’ve got a long straight stretch, it’s gonna give you problems. [LAUGHTER] Because it’s gonna go someplace. And that’s the thing that—after they started the quarter-mile steel, a couple of years later, we had a hot summer. The article in the Tri-City Herald called it the long, hot summer, where we had over 90 days of over 90-degree weather. But they were cutting chunks out of that railroad to keep her on the road bed. And at that time, when the SP&S was having these problems, the UP was laughing at them. They said, we tried this stuff in Wyoming. It didn’t work. And they’re using 39-foot stuff, and it was just whistling down the road. But now I see that they’re using the ribbon rail like everybody else. I can’t see how it’s gonna work, but the they’re doing it. [LAUGHTER] It ain’t my role! [LAUGHTER] The other one was the Camas Prairie. And that starts out, oh, about ten miles above Ice Harbor Dam, thereabouts, breaks loose, and goes clear up past Lewiston, up into Grangeville, Idaho. That’s a crazy little river.</p>
<p>Franklin: That’s the one that they filmed that Charles Bronson movie.</p>
<p>Boice: Breakheart Pass?</p>
<p>Franklin: Breakheart Pass, yeah.</p>
<p>Boice: Yeah, that was done up there. You get into railroad history—this area is knee-deep in it. Vollard was the great character in that. He started out with a little portage railroad around Idaho Falls and that area. And then he got the Walla Walla line—I call it the WWWWW&WWW line—Walla Walla, Waitsburg, Washtucna and Washington Wail Woad—which was a money maker. But he ended up getting a lineup from Portland out here. And then when they started building the Northern Pacific, they were building from both ends, and he was hauling Northern Pacific rail over his tracks and taking it out in railroad stock. By the time they got connected over in Montana, he owned a sizable chunk of the railroad. [LAUGHTER] And it was—you get into that railroad history, and it’s just takeover checkers. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Great. Well, thank you so much, George.</p>
<p>Boice: Okay! [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: It was a pleasure talking to you. And, yeah, thanks for coming in today.</p>
<p>Boice: All righty. Write if you find work! [LAUGHTER]</p>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:46:59
Bit Rate/Frequency
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317 kbps
Hanford Sites
Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview
700 Area
Vitro Engineering
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site
1944-
Years on Hanford Site
Years on the Hanford Site, if any.
1972-
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
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Interview with George Boice
Description
An account of the resource
George Boice moved to Richland, Washington in 1944 as a child. He began working on the Hanford Site in 1972.
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.
Date
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07/15/2016
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.
Format
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video/mp4
Date Modified
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2017-08-11: Metadata v1 created – [A.H.]
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.)
Ellensburg (Wash.)
Kennewick (Wash.)
Pasco (Wash.)
Publisher
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Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
700 Area
Cat
Cold War
Construction
Dam
DuPont
FBI
Hanford
Kennewick
Los Alamos
Mountain
Park
River
Savannah River
School
Street
Tank Farm
Tank Farms
Theater
Trailer
War
-
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241b3581b4824ce1fee07a65245d921a
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F00a4b4d870d07017259caa950d80b7df.mp4
4dbea9a206df1a8666e32125a22ff250
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
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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
Jack Collins
Location
The location of the interview
Washington State University Tri-Cities
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p>Jack Collins: Now did you hear of people like—names like Alex Parks and some of those that helped sue the government? He was very—he was state legislature, I believe at one time.</p>
<p>Robert Bauman: Yeah—</p>
<p>Collins: From Grandview.</p>
<p>Bauman: I knew about the Wiehls—</p>
<p>Collins: Or Prosser?</p>
<p>Bauman: Dick Wiehl’s.</p>
<p>Collins: That had the ferry?</p>
<p>Bauman: Yeah. I talked to Dick Wiehl.</p>
<p>Collins: Yeah.</p>
<p>Bauman: That was one.</p>
<p>Collins: Ida Mae was in my class at school—</p>
<p>Bauman: Oh really? Oh, there you go.</p>
<p>Collins: We used to walk her down the river where her dad would pick her up and roll her across the river to where the original town of White Bluffs was.</p>
<p>Bauman: Oh, sure, yeah.</p>
<p>Collins: And he had—my grandparents lived in Old Town. They had a house in Old Town there before it moved up to the newer area. And spent a lot of time in Old Town.</p>
<p>Bauman: I think we’re just about ready.</p>
<p>Collins: Okay.</p>
<p>Bauman: So we’ll get started here in just a minute. And then—</p>
<p>Collins: Yeah. And another thing, are you aware of the Mormons coming out there, when the Mormon Church bought it?</p>
<p>Bauman: Yeah.</p>
<p>Collins: Okay. Did they tell you the story about the guy that brought his John Deere tractor and a four wheel trailer out from Utah? All the way out from Utah and brought all of his stuff—</p>
<p>Bauman: No.</p>
<p>Collins: And set it down on the black sandbar?</p>
<p>Bauman: No, no, I haven’t heard—</p>
<p>Collins: That was quite a story. Can you imagine the time it took him to drive out with a John Deere tractor?</p>
<p>Bauman: That would—no, I can’t imagine. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Collins: [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Bauman: Are we good to go?</p>
<p>Man: Yeah, yeah.</p>
<p>Bauman. All right, we’re good to get started. So, the first thing I’ll have you do is just say your name and spell your last name for us.</p>
<p>Collins: I’m Jack Collins, C-O-L-L-I-N-S.</p>
<p>Bauman: Okay, great. And my name is Robert Bauman and today is August 4<sup>th</sup> of 2015. And we are recording this interview on the campus of Washington State University, Tri-Cities. So first of all, welcome, and thanks for coming all this way out here-- [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Collins: I’m glad to—</p>
<p>Bauman: --for this interview.</p>
<p>Collins: I’m glad to be here.</p>
<p>Bauman: Great. I wonder if we could just start by maybe talking about your family and what brought them to White Bluffs, when they came, and that sort of—</p>
<p>Collins: We came to White Bluffs in the middle of the Depression. [LAUGHTER] And we didn’t have much. And my grandfather had moved there ahead of us, lived in Old Town. And he wrote my folks and told them that there was work there. Farm work and stuff. My dad was a good mechanic. And he went to White Bluffs, so we had work. We bought a little farm, ten acre farm, in White Bluffs. And he worked for farmers for years around there. And then when Sam Allard needed a person to help out up at the county pumping plant, he had met my father—I don’t know how they met, but maybe through Joe Grewell that run the Priest Rapids power plant. But they asked my dad to come up and they liked him very well, because his dad had had a blacksmith’s shop. And my dad knew how to do things, how to make stuff, how to forge, weld, how to do all this type stuff. And they had a lot of machine work that they had to do in the plant in those days. And it was all handwork. They had to hone thrust bearings. We used to go down as kids and help him hone thrust bearings, because it was fun! Sit out on the porch at the county pumping plant. We used to run the chain hoist lifting those big pumps out. There was two 500s and a 750 horse power pump. They were all raw sewer pumps that the water district had bought from Chicago or somewhere back there. They didn’t use them, and they were for sale and that’s how they got the— This is--I wasn’t there when this happened, this is the story that I always got. They did that, and then they had their own power plant—the Priest Rapids power plant. So my father got out there and worked and Sam taught him all the stuff about the plant. And finally my dad ended up as head operator there, running it. He worked there for a number of years. We lived in the house up above the plant. We owned a farm down below the plant, downriver from the plant. We had a 35 acre farm the government took away from us. And then they kept my dad on after the government took over to pump water for all the construction in the water districts. So we had—us and the Potter family, Jack Potter, and his son Jackie, and the three boys of us, Ted and myself and Ray, were the only kids living in the restricted area. We lived at Coyote. And Mom—they hired Mom to haul us down to school every day during school. That was after White Bluffs School had burned and we started going to Hanford. It was 16 miles. So we did that for a number of years. Then the government finally, when the government finished and they were ready to start operating the plants, they had us move out. We moved to Zillah, Washington. And then we saw a lot of stuff in there, what the government did to those people was—was not good. They took their property, and a few people like Alex Parks and some other influential farmers in there took them to court because the government took the property without buying the water rights or any of that stuff. And the people there owned the Priest Rapids power plant, the power lines going to the county pumping plant. And they owned all the canals, the pipelines, head boxes, risers, you can name everything for the water district. A lot of stuff. That was about, probably 20 miles of canals, concrete canal. The government just assumed that. And it took over three years in court to get the government to pay for that. And they just forced the people out with—my folks had very little money when they left there. We lost our farm, we had two farms, we had one down in White Bluffs, we had one up at Coyote, up by Allard’s pumping plant was. And then me and my two brothers, we were the ones that were going all over the area out there, selling food to the guys coming out there in the area. All they’d get is peanut butter sandwiches coming out of the mess halls downtown there in Hanford. And those guys, trying to eat peanut butter sandwiches and water in hundred and some degree weather—we’d end up out there with egg sandwiches, candy bars, pop, coffee-- [LAUGHTER] and sell it to these guys. So we got to be their friends, so they hauled us all over the area with their construction equipment. We rode construction trains, the engineers all knew us. They were all buying this stuff from us. So we made a lot of money. We put it all in war bonds. I cashed my war bonds to marry my wife. That was my money that I had when I married her. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Bauman: That’s great.</p>
<p>Collins: And it was a fun life out there. And we—in the summer, we just stripped down to just nothing but a bathing suit and our bare feet, and we was all over the country out there, just in the bare feet in the desert out there. We were pretty tough kids in those days. [LAUGHTER] Swim in the river, and swim in the canal. And there was a lot of parties went on down at Black Sand bar. Community parties, we had a lot of fun at those. Everybody would meet down there for big swimming parties and picnics and stuff. And then Table Mountain, now where the stuff is all stored—I don’t know whether you’ve heard about Table Mountain where they dug and they put the—</p>
<p>Bauman: Yup, yup.</p>
<p>Collins: Okay. We used to have our church picnics on top of Table Mountain. And used to go out, and we used to follow the sheep herds and stuff that went through there, and get all the bum lambs and stuff. We had quite a herd of sheep that we got from—we had no place to take them. We had to sell them when the government took over. We had cattle and sheep and everything. And they forced us to sell all of that stuff. We got not much out of it. But that’s the way the government operates. I got like twelve other stories, a lot of stories that I heard from some of the old timers, how they used to fish for sturgeon. They used to throw like a head of lettuce on a big hook out in the Columbia River.</p>
<p>Bauman: Really? Yeah.</p>
<p>Collins: Or a part of a chicken. And they’re bottom feeders, and they had quarter inch rope hooked to those. And they’d take the horses and pull them out, they were so big.</p>
<p>Bauman: Wow.</p>
<p>Collins: And that’s the—the old timers used to do that. Then we used to go to the—one of our trips at school was to go out to the Indian smokehouses, where they were smoking fish and stuff. The Priest Rapids Indians. That was quite a trip! And we were very familiar with them. And then my dad, when he worked up at the Priest Rapids power plant, when the put the new channel in to channel water into it, my dad worked on that, on running a jackhammer. That was before he went to work at Coyote. And we would go up there when they were going to have their blasts, and watch them blow that rock up. It was big time! They were drilling that basalt up there, and boy that was really a blast when they set all that rock off.</p>
<p>Bauman: Wow.</p>
<p>Collins: And we’d see the Priest Rapids Indian kids, they would be in their steam house getting all hot and everything, and they’d come out of the steam house and go jump in the river, naked! [LAUGHTER] Tough little kids! But I don’t know where they—they didn’t go to school with us. I think they were self-taught up there. But they were very healthy.</p>
<p>Bauman: So, I’m going to go ask you a couple questions, kinda go back a little bit. You mentioned that your grandfather lived at White Bluffs before you moved there?</p>
<p>Collins: He lived in Old White Bluffs.</p>
<p>Bauman: Lived in Old White Bluffs.</p>
<p>Collins: Yeah.</p>
<p>Bauman: And what was his name?</p>
<p>Collins: Lyons.</p>
<p>Bauman: Oh, his last name was Lyons?</p>
<p>Collins: Lyons, yeah. [LAUGHTER] What was Grandpa’s name?</p>
<p>Woman: Alva.</p>
<p>Collins: Alva Edward Lyons.</p>
<p>Bauman: Okay, okay.</p>
<p>Collins: Him and my grandmother, and they’re the ones that taught us. And they had two children that lived with them, they were my mother’s parents.</p>
<p>Bauman: Okay. And how old were you then when your family moved to White Bluffs?</p>
<p>Collins: I was in the first grade of school. So that was about, what? ’37, ’38, somewhere along there.</p>
<p>Bauman: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>Collins: And we were the last family moved out of Hanford when they opened—when they started the plant.</p>
<p>Bauman: Right. And do you know how long you were there?</p>
<p>Collins: I went to school—finished the seventh grade of school at Hanford.</p>
<p>Bauman: Okay. And then you moved to—</p>
<p>Collins: We moved to Zillah.</p>
<p>Bauman: To Zillah. Okay. So what was the community of White Bluffs like?</p>
<p>Collins: It was a very friendly community. Everybody got along. I could say we went down to—we had all kinds of community things there. There was nothing else to do. We had a movie theater. The guy that run the ice plant there in town, he put on a show about twice a year, and that was a big thing, going to the movie, down to his little old movie house. Oh, they had church doings and stuff there. And a lot of potlucks. They had a grange there, too, I believe, and a lot of potlucks at the grange. That’s about all there was to do there. But everybody was friendly. It was different. They all looked out for one another. And—</p>
<p>Bauman: Now, you mentioned that you had a farm in White Bluffs and then one by the—</p>
<p>Collins: Our first farm was a ten-acre one. It was close to the town of White Bluffs.</p>
<p>Bauman: And what sort of crops did you have there?</p>
<p>Collins: Oh, we—it was old ground, leaded-out ground.</p>
<p>Bauman: Okay.</p>
<p>Collins: It wasn’t great ground. But as kids we used to, there, we would cut asparagus and stuff. Take it uptown in our wagon, and pull it uptown. We only lived about a half a mile from town. Sell asparagus to the people in town, little bundles of asparagus. Then go to the drug store and buy candy with our money. That was our candy money. I’ve always worked, even as a kid, I’ve always worked. We picked fruit and all kinds of stuff.</p>
<p>Bauman: And so you mentioned you went to school in White Bluffs, and then at some point the school burned?</p>
<p>Collins: Yes, I went to school at White Bluffs ‘til the school burned.</p>
<p>Bauman: Mm-hm, and then Hanford—</p>
<p>Collins: Can I bring up a thing about the principal there?</p>
<p>Bauman: Oh, sure, absolutely.</p>
<p>Collins: She had—that’s the house that we got and they had—her husband run that horse ferry that pulled—I mean the cable ferry that pulled the—across the Columbia River. And she had a way of making the kids mind, she had a rubber hose and she’d take you down to the furnace room, and introduce them to a rubber hose.</p>
<p>Bauman: [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Collins: My brother Ray got that one time. [LAUGHTER] And I was always good in school after I heard what happened there! [LAUGHTER] But we need more of that today. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Bauman: So your family got to stay much longer than most other families after the Federal government came.</p>
<p>Collins: We got to stay, we were the last family moved.</p>
<p>Bauman: When we were talking before, you’d mentioned that you got notice around the time you had some apricots that were—</p>
<p>Collins: Apricot trees, yeah. We were going to plant 15 or 16 acres of apricots on our place. We lost all of our deposit and everything. The government could’ve cared less. They just—we had to turn them back. They arrived the day that our place was condemned.</p>
<p>Bauman: Wow. And so do you remember how long you got to stay there, like—a lot of people had to move out in ’43, early 1943—</p>
<p>Collins: It was about—</p>
<p>Bauman: How long, much longer did you--</p>
<p>Collins: A year and a half or two years.</p>
<p>Bauman: Oh, okay. So that’s quite a while longer you had to stay.</p>
<p>Collins: Yeah, all during construction, Dad pumped the water for the construction of the railroads and the roads and stuff. All the water trucks that came there. And he had pumps, pump it out of the canal, he was pumping in any water going on down. And they were using it for all the construction, the water he was pumping.</p>
<p>Bauman: Okay. So he was very valuable to the—</p>
<p>Collins: Yeah, they had—they wanted to move him to Richland and keep him on. My dad only went to fifth grade of school, but he was pretty knowledgeable. In those days, although they didn’t go very far. But they wanted to move on down, they’d give him a bunch of training and stuff. But he said, no, he says, I’m not going to take my boys to Richland. Because Richland was a pretty tough town in those days. And so we moved, he left the government job. He was making $150 a month for the water district. We got a house, our lights and water furnished. He worked seven 12s for them. And ‘round, all year long. In the wintertime, when they shut the plant down, they were working in the plant overhauling stuff. And then when the government took over, I think he went up to $1,200 a month. And he worked a 40 hour week.</p>
<p>Bauman: Wow.</p>
<p>Collins: I can bring up another thing about—They used to hone all the thrust bearings. There were big thrust bearings that these big pumps sat on. They were three stories high, and they were very heavy. They weighed tons. So they brought an engineer out there that was going to tell my dad how to do that. So he said they could do a better job machining them than he could do it by hand. He told them, no, they couldn’t. So this engineer, he was going to prove it. So he took one of them and did it. And they took, I think it was a 750 horse pump out of it, and they set it down on it, and he threw the switch. And you have to rock those switches in to bring those motors up to speed there. So big and so heavy that you can’t bring them up just once. This guy threw the switch on it, blew the windings out of this pump and stuff, and it cost the government a load of money to tear that pump apart and get it rewound. I don’t know that he lost his job or not, but they always believed my dad after that, because he knew how to start them. He never blew one up in years that he ran the plant. They’d never had that happen before. And so a lot of things happened there. They brought guys out that my dad had to teach how to run the plant. They had young college guys. And it was interesting. We used to go down once in a while. We’d sit in for Dad. They brought the power in that was 66,000 volts from up there, and they had to transform down to 2,200 for the pumps. And you had to check those transformers every day for temperature. And then you had to check all the bearings on the pumps and all that. You had to work. And then call the readings in on the gauges there to tell them how much power you were drawing and everything, so they’d know how much power to send from Priest Rapids down to the plant. Because that’s the only thing that they furnished power for. So you was always busy there. You had to know what you were doing.</p>
<p>Bauman: Oh, yeah.</p>
<p>Collins: So Dad taught us kids all how to do it. We didn’t have nothing else to do. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Bauman: You mentioned when people had to leave in 1943 that a lot of people went to court eventually. Do you have any idea how much money your parents got for your property?</p>
<p>Collins: It was very little. We had enough to buy an old leaded-out ten-acre place out in Zillah.</p>
<p>Bauman: And that was enough?</p>
<p>Collins: But it wasn’t good. And it took them years, a lot of those people that they went out of there with, the older people, the widows and widwoers and stuff. They ended up in institutions. They had no family, they had no one. And the government just forced them out. They told them they’d come in with trucks and haul their stuff out if they didn’t leave. They’d haul them out of the area.</p>
<p>Bauman: Wow.</p>
<p>Collins: That’s the way they operated with us. We were a very fortunate family, the way we got out. And my father had a truck and he bought a lot of the stuff from those people and we took it out to the auction sales and stuff and sold it. And we’d load up watermelons. And take them to the end of the barracks, we’d buy overripe watermelons. Because they were good, they were good watermelons. And take them in and sell them to the barracks there. And they were very—those people down there were very happy to get nice, ripe watermelons. Because everyone else was selling them green ones, and we were selling them ripe ones.</p>
<p>Bauman: Yeah, you were very enterprising. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Collins: Hey, we did anything to make money. We had to.</p>
<p>Bauman: Sure.</p>
<p>Collins: We didn’t have any. We picked lots of fruit, worked in warehouses, did all of that stuff. Oh yeah, and there was another thing, too, that came up. There was an old recluse lived down under the railroad station, under their deck out front. And he had been, and I think you have something about him—he had been a pharmacist, was the story. And he had given the wrong prescription and killed a lady. And he left pharmacy and just ended up a recluse there—I don’t—I’d seen him, I’d seen him in the stores and stuff, seen him wandering around town. But that’s all I know about him.</p>
<p>Bauman: So when we were talking earlier, you also mentioned that at some point you ended up working at Hanford. Is that right?</p>
<p>Collins: I worked for the telephone company.</p>
<p>Bauman: For the telephone company.</p>
<p>Collins: And Hanford was the area that I had.</p>
<p>Bauman: Right.</p>
<p>Collins: And I had a high security clearance to go out in the Hanford area and build a number of the offices out there. I built West Richland—or I didn’t build it, I was in charge of it—when that young fellow got killed, that was one of my projects. When he swung the crane into the powerline and killed him. That was one of my projects. Downtown Richland, I did a lot of work on that one. And Kennewick, I did a lot of work there on all the Kennewick offices.</p>
<p>Bauman: So what time period was this, then, that you were working for the phone company?</p>
<p>Collins: I was working, doing that—that was, oh, I was about 40-something years old, so it would have had to have been ’70, in there.</p>
<p>Bauman: Okay.</p>
<p>Collins: When they were building the offices out in the Hanford area. We didn’t have—our company did not have the Hanford area for the telephone offices—went out of, oh, down on the Columbia River had that. And we did their engineering and construction for them. They farmed it out to General Telephone at that time. That’s why it was out there building them. I drilled a lot of grounding wells out there, which—north of where Colonel Rockwell took over to watch what was happening underground. And they locked them up, but we never got to touch them again after we drilled them. They took the wells over. We could use them for grounding for offices, but we had to drill pretty deep because there’s no mineral in this ground here. It’s very poor grounding in this area. So.</p>
<p>Bauman: Was it—did it feel strange at all, when you were doing that to be back out in that area working? Where you had lived for a while?</p>
<p>Collins: I’d been out there, yes. I’m a pioneer resident. So we got to go on the trips when they took them out there. You used to come out to the White Bluffs-Hanford picnic here all the time.</p>
<p>Bauman: Okay, right.</p>
<p>Collins: And we went out to our old farm one time. We weren’t supposed to be there, but we did. [LAUGHTER] And they had burned everything down. Mysteriously, while we—before we left, we had a big barn full of stuff, stored full of stuff—that mysteriously burned. And no one else—no one out there but the people, the government people.</p>
<p>Bauman: Yeah.</p>
<p>Collins: And it was other stuff happened out there. The house that we lived in out there got burned. When we were there, we saw the foundation of it and a bunch of ashes. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Bauman: So, talking about White Bluffs community, who were some of the families that you knew well growing up, or some of your friends when you were—</p>
<p>Collins: We knew Alex Parks. Oh, jiminy. I just can’t remember all the names now. It’s—</p>
<p>Bauman: That’s okay.</p>
<p>Collins: But he was a very close friend of my folks’, very influential when they had the lawsuit. Russ Webert.</p>
<p>Bauman: Okay.</p>
<p>Collins: Heck, can’t remember anymore.</p>
<p>Bauman: That’s all right.</p>
<p>Collins: Somewhere, I’ve got all the school pictures and stuff, too. I’m trying to get them back, of all the years I was in school down there. If you’d want those for your museum, I’m trying to get them back now.</p>
<p>Bauman: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>Collins: I may have to go to court to get them, I don’t know at this point.</p>
<p>Bauman: Wow. The other thing, when we were talking earlier that you had a picture of the school bus—</p>
<p>Collins: Yes.</p>
<p>Bauman: That you, that you rode.</p>
<p>Collins: That was the school bus that we rode from there to the Hanford School.</p>
<p>Bauman: Right, after the White Bluffs School burned down.</p>
<p>Collins: And my uncle drove it, and we had a lot of—[LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Bauman: Looked like a pretty small school bus. How many kids rode in that, do you remember?</p>
<p>Collins: [SIGH] There was probably five or six of us on it. It would hold a few more than that, but there just wasn’t any more kids up there.</p>
<p>Bauman: Yeah.</p>
<p>Collins: Yeah.</p>
<p>Bauman: And so how long did you go to school in Hanford, then?</p>
<p>Collins: I went to school in Hanford for two years.</p>
<p>Bauman: Two years, okay.</p>
<p>Collins: We were on the double shifting when we went to Hanford.</p>
<p>Bauman: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>Collins: You know what—we were on the morning shift, we went in the morning, and then they had a night shift.</p>
<p>Bauman: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>Collins: We were on the morning shift. We didn’t get to learn too much at Hanford. It was tough when went to another school all day. I had a lot of catching up to do!</p>
<p>Bauman: And how long did that take to ride out there?</p>
<p>Collins: Well, it was about 16 miles.</p>
<p>Bauman: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>Collins: To our place, and then the bus went on farther, so--probably another eight miles.</p>
<p>Bauman: Pretty good ride.</p>
<p>Collins: Oh, yeah. Then after the government took over, then my mother would haul us. The government hired her to haul us. Because it was just us three kids and Jackie Potter. Four of us. And she would haul us in that old ’36 Ford. Haul us to school every day, and two round trips a day, every day.</p>
<p>Bauman: Wow.</p>
<p>Collins: So it was cheaper than them owning a bus and stuff. So they didn’t get a lot out of it, but it was better for us.</p>
<p>Bauman: So by the time you and your family left, pretty much everyone else was gone, all the other residents of White Bluffs. Had the government already torn down a lot of the buildings at the other farms and places by the time you left?</p>
<p>Collins: Oh, yeah, they just went in and wiped the place out. They didn’t give a darn about anything that was in there. And then after we moved out and I got older, my brother and I went in and bought a lot of that stuff. We bought all the poles and the powerline between the Coyote pumping plant and Priest Rapids. We bought all those there around Sunnyside. And then the racetrack, we got most of those poles for the lighting and everything there—the poles around the racetrack. And then we bought a lot of those Quonset huts in there. Tore down a lot of those Quonsets. I saw pictures of them on some of your stuff, you know, the fish hatchery and stuff?</p>
<p>Bauman: Mm-hm.</p>
<p>Collins: We tore that old fish hatchery down, my brother and I did.</p>
<p>Bauman: Really?</p>
<p>Collins: And hauled that all out of there and sold them to farmers in the valley for shelters for their pigs and cattle and stuff. And we bought a lot of stuff in Hanford there, him and I did. I worked for him, and we hauled a lot of stuff out of Hanford when they were tearing it down.</p>
<p>Bauman: Mm-hm.</p>
<p>Collins: And that was kinda interesting. One time we were in tearing the fish hatchery down, and he picked up a bucket and said it was radioactive. And we mentioned it to the guard there, and I didn’t see him all day. They took him and he was gone. And boy, he said they run him through any test you can imagine. Because we didn’t work for the government, we were bidding on stuff and buying stuff in there. But that was quite an interesting experience, too. We got to see all those fish hatcheries, those big fish in those tanks that they were testing radioactivity on. And then I had a lot of friends that worked out there, like Jack Potter. I don’t know whether you ever—his dad was the mayor of Hanford at one time.</p>
<p>Bauman: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>Collins: And he’s told me stories about running dozers in those pits out there. And how dangerous it was, him and some other people were telling me about it. How they saw people get sickened out there. They’re all gone now. They were a lot older than I was. But friends of my family.</p>
<p>Bauman: I was going to ask you, the pumping station that your dad operated, how big of an area did that serve?</p>
<p>Collins: That served everything from Coyote down to Hanford and all the Hanford area.</p>
<p>Bauman: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>Collins: White Bluffs, Hanford, about—I don’t know—16 or 20 miles of canal that it served. It was a big area.</p>
<p>Bauman: Yeah, it is.</p>
<p>Collins: All those farms that it pumped. And a few farms pumped out of the river. They had pumps on the river. Now my grandfather run a farm for an outfit there. And they had a pump. It was just right below the black sandbar—or above the black sandbar, I mean, on the river. And my grandfather run that for a few years. And they pumped out of the river for that. A few people did. But most of them were from the Coyote pumping plant for water.</p>
<p>Bauman: Yeah, that’s a lot of farms that it served.</p>
<p>Collins: Hundreds of acres.</p>
<p>Bauman: Yeah.</p>
<p>Collins: Beautiful farms. Everything there was two weeks ahead of everywhere else in the country. So the fruit all got on the fresh fruit market. And it was—they got really a high premium price out of it. And they had their own packing houses there. There’s a railroad that come in, they trucked stuff out of there. And a lot of stuff went on there.</p>
<p>Bauman: Yeah, yeah.</p>
<p>Collins: But we used to go down—I used to lid and make boxes and stuff in those warehouses for Alex Parks. We worked for him all summer long. Just when we were little kids! But all the kids there worked. Every kid that lived there worked. They aren’t like today. [LAUGHTER] We were busy! [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Bauman: Right, yeah. So you were, what, about fifth grade when people started leaving?</p>
<p>Collins: I started first grade at White Bluffs—</p>
<p>Bauman: When you first came, yeah, but--</p>
<p>Collins: And I went to the fifth grade there, no, sixth and seventh at Hanford.</p>
<p>Bauman: But when people started having to leave because the Federal government was coming in, do you remember your, or your family’s reaction to that? As people were leaving, and what you thought about that?</p>
<p>Collins: It was complete shock to everybody when that happened. A car drove up to your house with guys in it, and they told you your property was condemned, you’d have to leave within two weeks, I think it was. You know, how shocked would you be if they’d do something like that to you?</p>
<p>Bauman: Yeah.</p>
<p>Collins: Or, if you didn’t leave, they’d bring in military people with trucks, and they’d haul you out of the area. And I was just a young kid then, but I can remember that, you know.</p>
<p>Bauman: Sure.</p>
<p>Collins: And it wasn’t good.</p>
<p>Bauman: Right. Yeah, do you remember seeing the trucks come into the area?</p>
<p>Collins: Never saw that, no.</p>
<p>Bauman: No?</p>
<p>Collins: Most of them got out. It’s all they could do.</p>
<p>Bauman: So what would you like people to know about White Bluffs—because it’s not there anymore and hasn’t been for a long time—what should people--</p>
<p>Collins: It was a beautiful area. It was a great place for kids to grow up. Because we learned how to work. Practically everyone that came out of there was successful. My brother Ted was a car dealer, now he’s a farmer. Ray is—I gave you the information on him—is very successful. He was an officer in the military and flew training planes for the, where they shot at him with those big howitzers and stuff. Yeah, it was his job flying those planes off from the ground. He’s got bad hearing now from those howitzers going off behind him. Wrecked his hearing. Anyway, he went and got a lot of training from the military in radio. And then he got into it, and now he’s—from the letter I gave you there—he’s very influential in the electronics industry. He’s getting a very large award, he’ll be in the history books with Edison and all those people for his contribution to the electrical—you know, the radio industry. He’s invented a lot of radio stuff. I was in construction. I was construction superintendent, worked my way up to an engineer in construction. We’re all non-college-graduated. We all learned it on our own. And in the service, I had a lot of electronics school in the service, too. I went through all that in the Airforce. And got out and started studying. And I did go to college some after I was older and working. But I built a lot of projects. I built projects here, which I was telling you about. I was in charge of all of them. My area at that time was eastern Washington, Idaho, and Montana for the telephone company, over all their construction projects and building construction. So we all—</p>
<p>Bauman: Are there any other memories about White Bluffs, or stories that you remember well that we haven’t talked about yet or you haven’t shared yet?</p>
<p>Collins: [LAUGHTER] There’s so many—</p>
<p>Bauman: That you can—</p>
<p>Collins: --things that I can just go on. It was just a very great community, as far as we were concerned. They moved a bunch of—the Mormons came in, they shipped a lot of them up here. They were on—the Mormon Church was supporting them in Utah, was my understanding. So they bought these farms for them. Boy, they were ornery kids. [LAUGHTER] We used to fight with them all the time.</p>
<p>Bauman: Oh, you know, you mentioned—I was going to ask you—you mentioned, your grandfather, the place he bought was one that had been for World War I initially, is that right?</p>
<p>Collins: That was the one my father bought.</p>
<p>Bauman: Oh, the one your father—okay.</p>
<p>Collins: Yeah, the ten acres. There’s a lot of those war veterans—I don’t know what happened to it. There’s a lot of that property available. And you have the listing of what they were talking about, on how you could buy cheap property? And my folks got in there and they was able to buy a little ten acre farm.</p>
<p>Bauman: Okay.</p>
<p>Collins: I don’t know how much Dad paid for it, but it wasn’t a lot at the time. And they house hadn’t been lived in for a long time. And we fixed that up to live in. He had a barn on the place. And we lived there and worked and folks worked on the house. It was a small house. But we were close to the school, we walked to school, there was no school buses then.</p>
<p>Bauman: Right.</p>
<p>Collins: So we all walked to school. And then he got the chance to go up to Coyote pumping plant. And that’s the first time we was able to have—my folks went to town and they bought an electric stove and a refrigerator. And that was a big deal! We’d never had that before. We were not a wealthy family. We were lucky to have an icebox. And a wood stove, and all of this stuff. And we didn’t even have running water in the house when we bought it. We had a pump on a well out the back door. And that was even big time to us, them days. It was better than what we had before. And then when we got up to Coyote, up there, then we had all the conveniences. We had electricity, and we had—</p>
<p>Bauman: Running water?</p>
<p>Collins: --hot water in the house—</p>
<p>Bauman: Did you have a telephone?</p>
<p>Collins: Huh?</p>
<p>Bauman: Was there a telephone?</p>
<p>Collins: Telephone.</p>
<p>Bauman: Wow.</p>
<p>Collins: Crank telephone. And everybody listened in. He’d crank it and everybody else’s phone would ring, and you knew what was going on in the whole neighborhood. Because everybody was on the phone, the whole neighborhood. Because they could hear you. And if you wanted to go long distance, the drug store downtown, they had some equipment down there where they could—if you wanted to make a long distance call, you had to ring the operator down there and have her connect you with where you were going at that time.</p>
<p>Bauman: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>Collins: If you wanted to call out of the area. And it was one of these old ones where they had it on fence posts or whatever they could anchor the wire to, you know. [LAUGHTER] It was pretty crude, boxes with the telephone equipment in it. Wooden boxes. [LAUGHTER] It wasn’t—but people did it. They survived. And we had an icehouse there in town—I can’t remember the name of the people. They made ice for the railroad. And you’d get ice there for your iceboxes. They were friends of my folks, but I can’t remember their name. And they had a son that lived down here. I knew him quite well, but I can’t remember him now.</p>
<p>Bauman: Yeah, the other thing I meant to ask you was, where did you move from? Where did your family come from before they came to White Bluffs?</p>
<p>Collins: Well, I was born in Zillah.</p>
<p>Bauman: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>Collins: And then we—it was during the Depression—I was born in 1930, and those were tough times. I don’t remember much about it, but I remember my folks telling me about it. We moved around in the valley doing different work where my dad could find work. He would get maybe a dollar and a half a day. That was wages then. If you was lucky! And then when he found out we could get work in Hanford—or in White Bluffs, we moved there. Because you could work for farmers and stuff, and you could get all of your stuff, you know, all your fruit. We canned all of our own fruit. We canned everything. Asparagus. We had—Mom canned everything. We lived on that. [LAUGHTER] And we probably lived better than a lot of other people. Because we were resourceful. We had a big garden. We raised a lot of stuff. We even raised peanuts here one year!</p>
<p>Bauman: Really?</p>
<p>Collins: Yeah!</p>
<p>Bauman: Huh.</p>
<p>Collins: The ground was that good. It was sandy and hot. And raised hay and started getting cattle—cows. Had milk cows, and we had all of that stuff. We had all of our meat. During rationing times, we butchered all of our own meat. We didn’t have to worry about rationing, because we had it. [LAUGHTER] So we lived pretty good. We didn’t have any money. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Bauman: Yeah. But you had the farm and resources.</p>
<p>Collins: We had the farm, and we had food. And that was a big thing during Depression, if you had that—</p>
<p>Bauman: Right. Yeah. Well, I want to thank you very much for coming today, all the way out here. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Collins: Well, I hope I’ve done you some good, I don’t know—</p>
<p>Bauman: Oh, this is really interesting stuff. I haven’t been able to interview very many people who lived out at White Bluffs, so—</p>
<p>Collins: Oh, well, I’m 84 years old, and I was just a little kid! [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Bauman: [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Collins: But I do remember a lot of that stuff. And I talked to both of my brothers. And Ray wanted me to show you that, to show how some of the people came out of there successfully, you know?</p>
<p>Bauman: Sure, right, right.</p>
<p>Collins: And I’m sure there’s a lot of others. I’m sure we weren’t alone.</p>
<p>Bauman: Now where were you age-wise among the brothers?</p>
<p>Collins: I’m the middle one.</p>
<p>Bauman: You’re the middle one. Okay.</p>
<p>Collins: I’m the middle one, yeah.</p>
<p>Bauman: Okay.</p>
<p>Collins: Ted is older and Ray is younger.</p>
<p>Bauman: Okay. All right. And so after you moved to Zillah, what did you do from there?</p>
<p>Collins: From Zillah?</p>
<p>Bauman: Yeah, after you left White Bluffs and you—</p>
<p>Collins: Went back to Zillah?</p>
<p>Bauman: You went back to Zillah and—</p>
<p>Collins: We went to school there, finished school there. And then I worked some for the telephone company. I worked around different jobs, farm jobs and stuff like that. And then I married my wife. And we couldn’t—I worked for Western Electric then, putting in the new telephones off of Yakima. And they laid all of us off, they laid I think 1,200 or 1,500 people off in one shot. So I had an electronics background and everything, but they only kept very, very selected few. I wasn’t one of them. And I didn’t have a job and I—doing some other stuff around there. And I wasn’t making any money, so I moved to the coast. I went to work at Boeing. [LAUGHTER] And I didn’t like Boeing. It was known as the Lazy B, and that’s what it was at that time. The people just—they didn’t know how to work. They drove me crazy. I didn’t have enough work to do, I couldn’t find enough work to do. We had one guy in our area that was supposed to be the biggest producer. He’d come in and we had to stamp our work. I was in quality control there and we had to stamp our work when we inspected things. I inspected on Airforce One, on the wings of that. And this guy, he would come in and check in, and the mail girl was his girlfriend. And they’d check in, he’d give his stamp to one of the mechanics, and the two of them would leave for the day. Come and check out at night. They were high producers because their stuff was just getting shoved through. And he was a buddy of our supervisor, so me and the supervisor didn’t get along. And then when he asked me to come and mow his lawn on the weekend, and I—I explained to him I didn’t do things like that. I had a family, I had four children at the time. And I wasn’t about to mow somebody’s lawn on the weekend and take care of them rather than take care of my family. I don’t care if he was my supervisor. I didn’t like him. So that was my, about the end of my job at Boeing. Then I went into construction work.</p>
<p>Bauman: Right.</p>
<p>Collins: Where I did well.</p>
<p>Bauman: Well, again, I want to thank you very much for coming today and sharing stories about White Bluffs and your father’s work at the pumping plant and all that. It’s really interesting.</p>
<p>Collins: We were supposed to someday—I was supposed to get that land back. But I don’t think that will ever happen.</p>
<p>Bauman: Mm, mm-hm.</p>
<p>Collins: I would love to have our property on the Columbia River. God, it was a beautiful piece of property.</p>
<p>Bauman: Oh, yeah, I bet.</p>
<p>Collins: All that, Coyote Rapids there. And we were going to buy Delia Allard’s place, down the river—Sam Allard’s first wife. He was married twice. I don’t know what the reasoning was. She lived down there with her son-in-law, I think it was her son-in-law. And I don’t know the whole deal there. And we were buying their farm, too, which they had a beautiful home that they built down there. Rock home, and we wanted that. But Dad was negotiating for that when the government took our land away from us, so that was gone. So—[LAUGHTER] Anyway.</p>
<p>Bauman: Well, thank you very much, I really appreciate it.</p>
<p>Collins: Yeah.</p>
<p>Bauman: This has been really interesting and very helpful. Thank you.</p>
<p>Collins: Well, I hope I don’t get myself in any trouble with some of this stuff I talked about.</p>
<p>Bauman: Oh, not too much.</p>
<p>[LAUGHTER]</p>
Original Format
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mp4
Duration
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00:45:51
Bit Rate/Frequency
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317kbps
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site
1937-1943
Names Mentioned
Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community.
Dick Wiehl
Ida Mae
Alex Parks
Ray Collins
Alex Parks
Jack Potter
Delia Allard
Sam Allard
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Jack Collins
Description
An account of the resource
An interview with Jack Collins 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.
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Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Date
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08-04-2015
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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/mp4
Date Modified
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2017-13-11: Metadata v1 created – [A.H.]
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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.
Boeing
General Telephone
Hanford
Kennewick
Mountain
Park
Parks
Quonset hut
Quonset huts
River
Running
School
Sun
swimming
War
Western Electric
-
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4edca9efa5b020755d209c72f854cb83
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F08e2a82e15be87724cc35f3cc14a3127.mp4
b8689a451a342a533ee6e816848384f1
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Title
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Post-1943 Oral Histories
Subject
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Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War
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An account of the resource
Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War
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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
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Robert Franklin
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Jerome Martin
Location
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Washington State University Tri-Cities
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p class="MsoNormal">Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin. I’m conducting an oral history with Jerome Martin on June 1<sup>st</sup>, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University, Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Jerome Martin about his experiences working at the Hanford site and his involvement with the Herbert M. Parker Foundation. And you—just wanted to use your legal name to start out with, but you prefer to be called Jerry, right?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Jerome Martin: Yes, I do.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Jerome’s a little too formal. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Right. Just for the technical purposes. Sure. No more, we will not mention the name—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Again. [LAUGHTER] So for the record, you did an interview with the Parker Foundation sometime in 2010.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I believe it was earlier.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Or possibly earlier. And some of the Parker Foundation videos, as we know, were lost. And so this video is an attempt to recapture some of the information that would have been in that oral history, but also add some other information, and also to give you a chance to talk about your involvement with the Herbert M. Parker Foundation. So just as a introduction to whoever views this in the future. So why don’t we start in the beginning? How did you come to—you’re not from the Tri-Cities?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Not originally.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: All right. How did you come to the Tri-Cities?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, a little quick history, I got my bachelor’s degree at San Diego State College and then I was a radiation safety officer at San Diego State for about three years. Then I had an opportunity to go to the University of Colorado in Boulder, where, again, I was a radiation safety officer and on the faculty of the physics department. After several years there, an excellent opportunity came up for me here at Hanford with Battelle, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. So I moved here in 1976, and had a great opportunity to work with many other more senior people here at Hanford that had been here since the beginning. One of those, of course, was Herbert M. Parker. He was former director of the laboratories under General Electric, and then retired, but stayed on with Battelle as a director. I had a few opportunities to interact with him, and was quite impressed. I have heard stories about, he was a rather demanding taskmaster. And I could kind of imagining myself trying to work for him, but it would have been a challenge.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: What do you feel is important to be known about Herbert M. Parker for the historical record?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I’ve had an opportunity to review many of his publications. They were quite professional and very well researched, and in many cases the leading authority on several topics. So I was very impressed by his publications. I didn’t have a direct opportunity to work for him, so I don’t know about his management style or other things. But that was the thing that impressed me the most, was his publications.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: What topics did Dr. Parker write on—or do his research?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: His early professional career was in medical physics. He was at Swedish Hospital in Seattle for many years. Then he was called upon, as part of the Manhattan Project, to set up the safety program at Oak Ridge. He did that for about a year or so. Then he was called upon to do the same thing here at Hanford. So he came here and established the entire environmental safety and health program for Hanford. Of course he had all the right background to be able to do that, and he was able to recruit a number of really talented people to help him with that. So I think Hanford ended up with what could be known as the best environmental safety and health program, among all the early AEC and then DoE laboratories. One of the things that impressed me most by that program was the record keeping. And I had an opportunity to work on that in later years. But the way the record keeping was designed and set up and maintained was quite thorough. It was designed to be able to recreate whatever may have happened according to those records. It turned out to be very valuable in later years.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Who instituted that record-keeping? Was that Parker?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I don’t recall the name of the individual that set it up, although I know Ken Hyde was involved very early on. He may have been at the very origin of it. But I’m sure Parker certainly influenced the rigor with which that program was established. In later years, John Jech was manager of the record keeping program, and then my good friend, Matt Lyon, was the manager of that. I worked with Matt, then, on American National Standard Institute’s standard for record keeping. We incorporated into that standard virtually all of the fundamentals that Parker had established initially.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: The first name was John—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: The second manager of records was John Jech. J-E-C-H.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Do you know if he’s still living?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: No, he’s not.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: And what about Lyon?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Matt Lyon passed away about ten years ago, as did Ken Hyde.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: What’s that?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Ken Hyde—I think they all three passed away about ten years ago.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yeah, give or take.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: So you mentioned that the record keeping was designed to recreate an incident as it happened. Do you know of any such—or can you speak to any such times when that record keeping system was crucial into a safety issue?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: The one that comes to mind is one of the more I guess infamous incidents here at Hanford. It occurred just around the time I arrived here in 1976. It was sometimes called the McCluskey accident out at the 231-Z Building. There was an explosion in a glovebox that resulted in very significant contamination of Mr. McCluskey by americium-241. And the response to that incident, and then all the following treatment of Mr. McCluskey was very well documented. In fact, those documents then became the basis for a whole series of scientific papers that described the entire incident and all the aspects of it. So that was one major case where excellent record keeping was very valuable.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Excellent. And what—I’m just curious now—what happened to Mr. McCluskey?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: He survived for about ten years after the accident. He initially had very severe acid burns and trauma. But he was very carefully treated for that. The americium contamination that he had was gradually eliminated—not eliminated, but reduced substantially. He survived for another ten years after that incident even though he had heart trouble. I know several people that assisted in his care, and it was quite remarkable what they were able to do and what he was able to do.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow. Did he ever go back to work?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: No, he was 65 at the time of the accident.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: So he kind of went into medical retirement at that point. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Right. Yeah, I can imagine. So you said you came in 1976.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Right.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: And what did you—what was your first job, when you came to Battelle?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, I worked in what was called the radiation protection department, later called health physics department. My first assignment was called ALARA management. ALARA stands for maintain our radiation exposures as low as reasonably achievable. I would monitor the exposure records of Battelle workers, and watch for any that were the least bit unusually high, and then look for ways that we could reduce those exposures. And I monitored other things like average exposures and the use of dosimeters and things of that nature. The overall assignment was to generally reduce the workers’ radiation exposure.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: How successful do you feel that the department was in that effort?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I think we were very successful, and it went on for many years, even after I had that assignment. I remember one time, looking at a report that DoE put out annually on radiation exposures over all the major DoE facilities. Those average exposures, highest individual exposures, and things of that nature. Battelle and Hanford had among the lowest averages of all the other DoE facilities. So, I believe it was a very effective ALARA program here at Hanford.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Do you know if that report was ever made publically available?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Oh, yes.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yeah, those are published every year by DoE.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, great. I’ll have to find that. Sorry, just scribbling down some notes.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: At one point, Battelle had a contract with the DoE headquarters to actually do the production of that report each year.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: And I was involved in the production of it—oh, three or four years, as I recall.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Okay. So you mentioned that you had moved on out of that program or department, so what—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Right. Well, I started getting involved in management at kind of the bottom level. I was an associate section manager, and then I got an assignment as section manager for the radiation monitoring section. I was responsible for all the radiation monitors—or as they’re now called, radiation protection technologists—the radiation monitors for Battelle and two other of the contractors here at Hanford. It was kind of ironic that I was located in what used to be the 300 Area library, and my office was on the second floor. And my office was the former office of Herbert M. Parker, when he was director of laboratories.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow!</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: It was an honor to have that space, and recall memories of Mr. Parker.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow, that’s great. And how long did you do that for?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I did that two or three years, and then another opportunity came along in 1979—no actually, it was ’79, but I guess I’d been on that management job for about a year and a half. In September of ’79, which was about three months after the Three Mile Island accident, we had an opportunity to make a proposal to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to provide support for their staff in emergency planning work. At that time, NRC was making a big push on all the power plants, all the nuclear power plants across the country to enhance their emergency planning programs. So we began about a ten-year project with NRC to supplement their staff. The NRC established the requirement for annual emergency exercises at each of the nuclear power plants, where they had to work up a scenario, and then they would activate their emergency response staff to demonstrate that they would know how to handle that accident scenario. We served as observers. We had teams of observers with the NRC staff. We did a total of 800 of those exercises over a ten-year period.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: So we had a lot of staff out there, doing a lot of travel.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Yeah. So that would have been—so you said for power, would that have been for all of the power reactors in the United States?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yes. There were 103 plants at the time.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow. Did you do any in foreign countries?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I didn’t personally, but we did have some staff that went to a similar kind of program with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and visited foreign nuclear power plants. Some in France, that I recall.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow. So you said 103 power plants?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: In the US, yeah.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Actually, that was the number of reactors. There was a fewer number of plants, because many of them are two or more reactors at a site.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, okay so the 103 is the number of reactors?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I believe that’s correct. At that time.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: How did Chernobyl affect your field and your work?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: That’s an excellent question, because that was in this period. Of course, the Chernobyl accident happened in 1986, and I was working directly with NRC at that time. I was project manager on that NRC contract. When Chernobyl happened, there was an immediate reaction, and NRC had to study the Chernobyl accident as well as we could, and then determine what could be applied to US power reactors by way of improvements and emergency planning. One of my managers, Bill Bair, was part of a US delegation led by DoE and NRC to actually visit the Chernobyl area shortly after the accident, interact with the Russians, and do lessons learned that was turned into a series of DoE and NRC documents that tried to extract as much useful information as we could from Chernobyl and apply it here in the US.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Right, because if I’m not mistaken, the design of the Chernobyl reactor—there were reactors of similar design in the United States.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Not exactly. The Chernobyl reactor had no containment vessel. There were a few reactors in the US that also did not have containment vessels, but they had other safeguards. The N Reactor was one of those. Unfortunately, I would call it an overreaction of the US government to a reactor with no containment. Severe restrictions were put on N Reactor, and some re-design was required that ultimately led to the end of N Reactor. It’s interesting to note that at that point in time, which was about 1986, 1987, N Reactor had generated more electricity from a nuclear reactor than any other plant in the world. So it’s unfortunate it came to an early demise.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: And—sorry, my ignorance here on the technical aspects. You said some of them don’t have a containment vessel. What does a containment vessel look like and what role does it play, and why would there would be reactors with one and without one?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, N Reactor went back to the early—the late ‘50s, I believe when it was designed. It was designed similar to the other reactors here at Hanford that were intended for production of plutonium. But N Reactor was a dual purpose, in that it also generated 800 megawatts of electricity. But it had a similar kind of design to what you see out at B Plant, for example. So it didn’t have the same kind of containment vessel that other modern pressurized water reactors or other nuclear power plants have that is designed in such a way that if there is reactor core damage, any radioactivity released can be contained and not released.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Or released in a very controlled fashion.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: I see. Kind of like a clam shell that kind of covers the—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, it’s basically—yeah, in many cases a spherical kind of containment.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Okay. Excellent. So after—obviously the demise of N Reactor, ’86, ’87, is kind of the end of operations—or I should say of product production—product and energy production on the Hanford site. So how did your job change after that? And what did you continue to do after the shutdown?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I wasn’t directly affected by N Reactor shutting down. And the other production reactors had been shut down before that, so I wasn’t really directly involved in that. But I had yet another opportunity came up that turned out to be really a challenge for me. The Pantex plant in Amarillo, Texas is the primary assembly and disassembly facility for nuclear weapons. At that time, it was managed by a company called Mason and Hanger. Mason and Hanger had that contract for many years, and DoE challenged them to rebid the contract. So Mason and Hanger reached out to Battelle for assistance in teaming on environmental health and safety. So my manager talked me into being involved, so I went down to Amarillo and visited the plant and worked with the team there on the proposal that had to be presented to DoE. And we won the contract. Of course in the fine print it said I then had to move there.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Ah!</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: But it turned out great. By that time, my family was pretty well grown, kids were through college. So we moved down to Amarillo, and I went to work at Pantex. We really enjoyed that. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Amarillo’s a very nice town, a lot of nice people. The work at Pantex was very challenging. I enjoyed that very much, too.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Great. So how long were you at the Pantex plant?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, I was manager of the radiation safety department down there for three years, which was my original contract obligation. During that time, we were very closely scrutinized by the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board, which was an organization established by Congress to be a watchdog over DoE. Their method for watching DoE was to watch the contractors very closely. So they would scrutinize everything we did, and then challenge DoE if they found something. They pushed us in a way that was good, because one of the things they promoted was professional certification. I’m a certified health physicist, certified by the American Board of Health Physics. At the time at Pantex, I was the only one we had there. But the DNFSB pushed us to add more, so I got more of my staff certified. There was a similar program for technicians called the National Registry of Radiation Protection Technologists, and at the time, we had two of my staff that were registered with NRRPT. Again, they pushed us to promote more training. By the end of that three-year period, I think we had ten of our technologists registered and certified. So we really improved the credentials of our staff. We instituted some new programs, again, related to ALARA radiation reduction. Probably the most interesting or challenging day of my life occurred down there in 1994. We were working on disassembly of the W48 program. The W48 was a tactical weapon used in—that was deployed in Europe—it was never used. But it was a very small, cylindrical nuclear weapon designed to be shot out of a 155 millimeter howitzer, which is amazing just to think about. But the plutonium pit in this device was surrounded by high explosive. It turned out to be rather difficult to disassemble this particular design of nuclear weapon. It also turned out that the plutonium pit had a relatively high dose rate, compared to others. So the workers were getting some increased exposure to their hands in the process of working on this. So we were concerned about their extremity dose. So we worked up a method for doing a classified videotape of the disassembly operation, so that we could study each step in the process to find ways to improve worker safety. Providing shielding, remote tools, things of that nature. The process on this was to take the plutonium pit and high explosives and put it in liquid nitrogen bath for a period of time. Then bring it out and put it in a little tub-like, and pour hot water on it. The HE would expand rapidly and crack off. And for the most part, it worked very well. Well, there was this one particular pit that we were working on when we were doing the videotape for this study. Apparently the HE wasn’t coming off the way it should, and so they had to repeat this process over and over. They brought it out of the liquid nitrogen, poured hot water on it, and the plutonium—the cladding, the beryllium cladding on the plutonium pit actually cracked, due to the severe temperature change. The workers who were working on this were trained very carefully that if that cladding on the pit ever cracks, get out of there fast, so you avoid a plutonium exposure. So that happened. One of the technicians heard an audible crack and saw it on the surface of that pit. And they all evacuated immediately. They got just outside the door of this special facility, and they called our radiation safety office, and fortunately my three best technicians were standing there by the phone. They said, pit had cracked. And so they got over there as fast as they possibly could. They recognized the danger of having an exposed plutonium pit, and how that can oxidize and cause severe contamination very quickly. They decided to put on respirators to protect themselves, but they didn’t bother with any of the other protective clothing because they wanted to save time. So they made an entry where the cracked pit was, still there with the water bath on it, and the video shooting this picture. They took samples right on the crack and on the water and all around it. They managed to take that plutonium pit and get it into a plastic bag and then they doubled bagged it and then they triple bagged it and sealed it up. Then they came out. Of course, the samples revealed that there was indeed plutonium contamination coming out of that crack, but they had contained it very quickly. When we made a later entry to retrieve the video tape that was still running, and we looked at the timestamp on it. From the time the crack appeared until they had it in the bag was seven minutes.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow!</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: That’s about as fast as you can possibly expect a response team to come in and secure a situation like that. And so, following that, of course we had the incident debriefing, and I had to chair that. But we very carefully went through and recorded every little thing that happened from the time they were working on the disassembly to the time they exited. Got that all documented, and then the videotape of course documented all of that. The scrutiny by Department of Energy, the Amarillo office, the Albuquerque office, Headquarters, any number of others—we had a lot of attention that day. It was a long, hard day at the office, but very exciting. Following that, we had to debrief many other investigation committees and others. But we had that videotape to rely on, and that just was invaluable. That’s my—that was probably the most exciting day of my life, down there. [LAUGHTER] Got a follow-up to that. That W48 weapon was designed by Livermore. They came in at a later time and did a post-mortem on that cracked pit. And when they did, we discovered that the amount of plutonium contamination there that was available for distribution had it not been contained, would have totally just made that facility useless. I mean, extremely expensive clean-up, if it ever got done.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Not just the room, but the entire facility?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, mainly that room.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: That room.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: But it was a very big room, and a very valuable room, specially designed. But the quick response of our radiation safety technicians and getting that contained saved that room and millions of dollars in expense.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow. And so this was a weapon that was the size of a howitzer shell?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: 155 millimeters.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow. And what is the—I don’t know if you know this—but what’s the explosive power of that—is it—I guess it could be—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, it’s just like the atomic bombs used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, about 20-kiloton fission device. The plutonium pit is designed to implode and cause a super-critical reaction.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: But fired out of a howitzer, instead of—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Fired out of a howitzer, perhaps 20 miles or something. And then you can somehow coordinate the careful detonation of this--</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: --device. It boggled my mind.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: I guess that’s best that that was never ever—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: There’s quite a large number of different nuclear weapons. Many of them were tactical weapons used in Europe—or deployed in Europe during the Cold War. Many other more modern ones are part of Polaris missiles and other large bombs that can be deployed by B-52s or B-2s.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Sure.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yeah. There’s quite a wide range of different models and designs. I didn’t know that at the time, but it’s fascinating. I remember one day standing in one of the disassembly rooms, and they had this nuclear weapon in a cradle standing there on the floor, and they had the top off of it. And I could just look down in the top of it. I couldn’t touch it, but I could look in there and just see the engineering in one of those things was just amazing. Just beyond belief.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: I bet. I can only imagine.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yeah. But I’ve gone off on this nuclear weapons story and departed from Hanford.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: It’s okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Maybe I should come back.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: I think that’s a very interesting story. I certainly—I’ve also, like I said, heard of plenty of bombs—ICBMs, missiles, but I’d never quite heard of a howitzer-type fired weapon. But also just the fact that your team and your field was able to prevent a really nasty incident is pretty amazing.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Right.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: It speaks to your profession and your skill.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, like I mentioned, the professional credentials. Two of the three technicians who responded were certified by NNRPT. And they had the right kind of training, knew what to do, did it very well.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Great.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I had an opportunity a year later to nominate them for a special DoE award for unusual—not heroism, but effective response. And they won the award that year.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: That’s great. So how and when did you leave Pantex?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, the first time, was in ’96—no, I’m sorry, in ’93—and I had a special appointment back at DoE headquarters in Germantown. So I went back there for two years to work with the branch of DoE that was like an inspector general—the internal inspection branch, if you will. Very similar in scope to what the DNFSB—Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board—was doing. Scrutinizing all the DoE operations at the national labs and other facilities, and trying to always make improvements.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: So I worked with the DoE headquarters staff on many different audits that we did at other DoE labs. At the time, I specialized in dosimetry, both internal and external dosimetry, and other operational health physics parts of the program.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow. So when did you come back to the Tri-Cities?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, I had a couple other interesting assignments in there. After DoE headquarters, then I went back to Pantex for three more years. And then another opportunity came up on an old facility near Cincinnati that needed to be decommissioned—decontaminated and decommissioned. And I went to Oak Ridge first, worked with the Foster Wheeler Company on the design of what became the largest radon control building that had ever been done. I was the radiation safety officer for that project at Oak Ridge in the design effort. And then we moved to Cincinnati for a year and I worked at the Fernald facility in actually building this radon control facility. What we were trying to deal with were these large concrete silos that contained residual ore material from the Second World War. They have to go back to—when the Manhattan Project was trying to bring together the necessary uranium in addition to the plutonium that was produced here at Hanford, they were using a rich pitch blend ore that was coming from what was then called Belgian Congo in Africa. It was shipped from there up the Saint Lawrence River to a facility near Niagara Falls. And then it ended up being processed to extract as much uranium as possible. But there were these residuals. They ended up in these concrete silos near Niagara Falls, New York as well as this Fernald facility, just outside of Cincinnati. So we had three big concrete silos that—I don’t recall—they must have been 80 feet in diameter and 50 feet high. So they held a lot of uranium ore residuals. It contained a fair amount of radium, which gave off radon gas. This facility was located not too far from a residential area. So it became a greater concern for getting it cleaned up. We put together this radon control facility that had these huge charcoal beds and you could pipe—you could take the head gas off of this silo, pipe it into these charcoal beds where the radon would be absorbed, and then the clean air would circulate. So you could fairly rapidly reduce the concentration of radon inside the silo to much lower levels. In the process, the charcoal beds got loaded up by absorbing radon. There came a point where you had to heat up that charcoal to drive off the captured radon. We devised a clever scheme with four different beds where we could kind of keep one of them recirculating on all times and have the other three working.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: So you say drive off the captured radon, where would it be driven off?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Over to the next charcoal bed, which hadn’t yet been completely saturated.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh! But then eventually you still have charcoal that—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: but it decays with a 3.8 day half-life, and that was built into the plan, too.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh!</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: But if it was to escape, right, it would get people very—it would contaminate or get people sick, or--?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, it was pretty carefully designed not to—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, but I’m saying that radon—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Oh, if it escaped from the silo. If there was no control of it—a certain amount of radon was escaping from the silo. For the most part, it’s a light gas, it just goes up and the wind blows it and disperses it. So it was very difficult to even measure anything offsite. But there was that concern there that we were dealing with.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: But if enough of it was released at once, then there might have been an issue?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Like if the whole roof of the silo was suddenly removed and it all came out, that could be a problem, yeah.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Interesting. I didn’t realize it had such a short half-life.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yeah. So I did that, what amounted to ten years of offsite assignments. About that time, my wife and I got tired of moving. So we came back to the Tri-Cities, and our kids are here. I came back to work at Battelle for another few years before I retired.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: When did you come back to Battelle?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I came back in 2001.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, okay. So then you worked for—it says you retired in 2006.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I retired about four years later. And the last major project I worked on was also very interesting. It was the project for customs and border protection. It was to install radiation portal monitors at seaports. This was shortly after 9/11, and there was a concern about dirty bomb material being imported by any means. We had one part of the project dealt with seaport, another part airports, and a third part postal facilities.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: So I worked on the seaports part, and I had the Port of Los Angeles was my assignment. Another one of us had Port of Long Beach, which is right next door, which are the largest seaports on the West Coast and have the largest number of shipping containers coming in. So we devised a method for monitoring those shipping containers as they were unloaded and making sure nothing was coming in that way.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Did—oh, sorry.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Very interesting project.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: I don’t know if you can speak to this, but was anything caught by these monitors?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yes. But not dirty bomb material.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Turns out they were so sensitive, they would detect any kind of elevated background radioactivity. For example, kitty litter is a little bit elevated in background. Any kind of stone product, and there are various granite and other stone products imported from different places. Those had a high enough background activity that they would trigger our monitors. So we would run all these containers through a set of monitors, and any that triggered that amount would then be sent over to a secondary monitor, where they’d examine it more carefully, verify what was actually in the containers, sometimes inspect them.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: So recently our project staff got a tour of some of the facilities at HAMMER. And I believe we saw one of those monitors. Would that have been the same?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Mm-hm. Big yellow columns?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Yeah, that they run it through.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yep, that was the one.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: So you helped design—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: We helped design—oh, I didn’t really get involved in design. That was done by some real smart people out here at Battelle. But I was onsite trying to get them installed.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: And tested.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow. That’s really—that’s fascinating.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yeah, it was. I had a chance to do a lot of fun things when I worked at Battelle.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Yeah, it sounds like it. Sounds like maybe I need to go get a job over there. Maybe they need a traveling historian. So, where—what have you been doing since you retired?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, for about five years, I worked for Dade Moeller, which is kind of a spinoff company from Battelle. And they had a major contract with NIOSH—National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health—as part of an employee compensation program for radiation workers. Initially, the way this was set up was we got the actual radiation exposure records for former employees and examined their measured radiation exposure, and then did some other calculations that would tend to take into account anything else that they might have been exposed to but was somehow not measured on the dosimeter and many other factors to kind of add up their maximum possible radiation dose. And then that was compared—this is where it got a little complex. There are many different types of cancer that can be caused by radiation at a high enough level. Some types of cancer can be caused by a radiation level lower than some others. So it depended on what type of cancer the individual had as to which—how we measured their maximum possible radiation exposure to the likelihood that that cancer was caused by radiation. We did a careful calculation using probability and determined that if their cancer was at least 50% probable that it was caused by radiation, then they were granted an award. Well, we did that for several years in a very careful, scientific way that was well-documented. Then it became political. A lot of former workers, then, applied for another category within this overall compensation program that they called Special Exposure Cohort. Which meant that it didn’t matter how much radiation exposure they had, if they had the right type of cancer, they could get the award. And it’s kind of degenerated that way. But for many years, I think we did it right. I also had an opportunity to work on another part of that project where we did what we call the technical basis documents, where we reconstructed the history of how radiation exposure records were developed and maintained at each of these different sites. Every one varied a little bit. I did the one for the technical basis document for Pantex in Amarillo, because I was familiar with that. But I got to do several other interesting sites, one of which was Ames Laboratory in Ames, Iowa. Going there and interviewing some of these old-timers and looking at their old records, I found that there was a chemistry professor at what was then Iowa State University. He was called upon by the Manhattan Project in 1943 to help them improve their methods for extracting uranium metal. The old process that had been used by the Curies and other early scientists was really quite inefficient. But this professor developed a method used in a calcium catalyst that was very effective. He was able to purify uranium metal much quicker and in larger quantities. The story was that he would have to get on the train every Sunday afternoon and go to Chicago for the meeting with the Manhattan Project and report on the progress of his research and so on. One week after successfully isolating an ingot of uranium metal, he took it with him in his briefcase. Went into the meeting with Manhattan Project and clunked it on the desk, and passed it around. He said that this is a new method for producing substantial quantities of uranium metal. All the scientists around the table kind of poked at it and scratched it and so on and didn’t believe it was really uranium, but it was. And they finally decided that he had made a great breakthrough, so they sent him back to Iowa and said, make a lot more, fast. And he did. So he had the material they needed, then, for the Manhattan Project.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Interesting story.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Yeah, that’s really fascinating. So how did you become involved with the Parker Foundation?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: About ten years ago—almost ten years ago—my friend Bill Bair and Ron Kathren and a couple others on the Parker Board invited me to participate. Matt Moeller was chairman of the board at that time—invited me to participate, and I just joined in, and found it very rewarding. I really appreciate what the Parker Board does in the memory of Herb Parker and in the sense of scholarships and other educational programs. So it’s a pleasure to contribute to that.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Great, great. You moved in 1975 or ’76?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I moved here in ’76.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: ’76. And you mentioned children. Were your children born here, or did you move here with them?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: My oldest daughter was born in San Diego, and my younger daughter was born in Boulder, Colorado.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: So they were six and eight, I think, when we moved here.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: What were your impressions of Richland in the mid-70s when you moved? Did you live in Richland or did you--?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: We did. Yeah, we lived just a few blocks from WSU here.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: In North Richland. It was a very different community, but one that I came to know and respect. Because at that time, education was really paramount in the minds of parents and the school system. And my wife was a teacher. So we really took an interest in that. My kids got a really good education here in Richland. Went to Hanford High, and then did well in college. One of the main features of Richland at that time, I think, was a superior education program. Some of the other history of Richland with old government housing, and then we got a new house, and things like that are entirely different, but also very interesting.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: And is that what you kind of are meaning when you say it was a different community? I guess I’d like to unpack that a little bit more. How—in what ways was it different?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, a large part of Richland was originally government housing, and you only had to drive through town, you could see all the evidence of that. And then on the north side of Richland, they had opened up—beginning in 1965, I believe—development of newer private housing. We got here just in time to get in on a new house, and worked out fine for us.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Great. Was there—being next to a site that was primarily involved in product production, plutonium production—was there a different feeling about the Cold War in Richland per se than anywhere else you had lived in the United States at that time?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: There definitely was different feelings about the Cold War and living anywhere near a nuclear power plant. I remember when we were working with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission at many different reactor sites around the country. In many cases we would have public meetings to introduce the local folks to what we were trying to do to improve the emergency planning. There was a lot of concern about living anywhere near a nuclear power plant just a few years after TMI. I tried to explain to people how I live within 30 miles of nine nuclear power plants. But I understood radiation. I understood the risk, and I understood what could go wrong or how to deal with it. And it didn’t concern—didn’t bother me that much to live here. I found that to be generally true of a lot of people in Richland that were part—working at Hanford and were well-educated. They understood the risk and they could deal with it. Whereas many other people were just afraid. And I attribute that to what I call now about a 71-year deliberate misinformation program on the part of mass media to scare people about radiation.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: I like that. I’m writing it down. How do you feel that the—do you feel that the ending of the Cold War changed your work at all? I guess the reason why I ask—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: It did.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: --these questions about the Cold War is because it was the impetus for much of the continued production of the material.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yeah. I was in Germany in 1988, just before the Berlin Wall came down. I was also there in Berlin in 1984, and we actually crossed through Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin on a special tour.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Really?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: It was quite amazing. I was in Berlin for a meeting of the International Radiation Protection Association. I took my whole family; it was a tremendous adventure for them. But we were able to be part of a special US Army tour that went through Checkpoint Charlie. I think they did this once a week. And we had a little tour of East Berlin while it was still under the control of the USSR. We visited their Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and they had a little ceremonial changing the guard there. And we visited the square in Berlin where Hitler had burned the books that one night in 1939. And then we visited a huge Russian war memorial, and there was a building there where the Germans had surrendered in 1945. There was quite a story about that. But I was really impressed with this huge Russian war memorial. There were five mass graves that each held 100,000 soldiers. It was done in kind of the Russian style, with statues and other honorary symbols to clearly show their respect for the lives of all those soldiers. But that was an impressive sight. But I was there again in 1988 just before the Berlin Wall came down, and you could kind of see the end of the Cold War coming. So it was a great opportunity that I had, working for Battelle, being able to travel like that, and do many exciting things.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Did you get to ever talk or meet with any of your counterparts on the Russian side?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yes.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: After the Cold War ended. And what was that like, to finally work with what had been considered the enemy?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: It was quite unusual. I was scheduled to go to Russia a week after 9/11. It almost got canceled, but I managed to go. I was giving—they were having a conference for young scientists and trying to introduce them to international concepts of radiation safety. So I gave my paper and four others that we did to that group. It was located at what was the Russian equivalent of Los Alamos, their design facility. There weren’t very many Americans had been in there up to that point. So I was watched very closely. [LAUGHTER] And not allowed to see much, actually. But it was a very interesting exchange. The papers I was presenting were prepared in both English and Russian. And then we also did what they called a poster presentation, where we had a big poster with diagrams and everything—again translated to Russian. So we were able to put these up at this conference for these young scientists. They, I think, got a lot out of it because it was in their language so it was easy for them to understand. Working with an interpreter was a new experience for me. I would give this oral presentation, so I’d say one sentence and the pause. The interpreter would repeat that. I’d say the next sentence, and—kind of an awkward way to do an oral presentation.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: I can imagine.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: But their hospitality was very good. This was in 2001. So the Cold War had been over for quite a few years. But we were trying to establish better relations. I think it was quite effective in doing that. I had another opportunity to work with Russian scientists on an NRC program, again where NRC was trying to provide training to their equivalent Russian inspectors for nuclear power plants and explain to them some of the ways that they did inspections, things they looked for, how they documented findings and things like that. We had four Russian inspectors and their interpreter come over from Moscow. I was their host in Washington, DC, and we worked with them there with the NRC headquarters for a week, providing training. And then we brought them out to Idaho to the Idaho National Lab, north of Idaho Falls, and went to a large hot cell facility at Idaho. A hot cell is where they have a heavily shielded enclosure with mechanical arms that do things on the inside. It was quite a sophisticated facility and somewhat unlike what the Russian counterparts were used to. But it was a good learning exercise for them. We kind of went through a demonstration of how we would do an inspection—a safety inspection. So, I had those kind of opportunities to interact with Russian scientists and found that very exciting. Very interesting.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Did you find that there was anything that you had learned from them at all? Or do you feel that the US was much more advanced in radiation protection and health physics?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, I kept my ears open when I was talking to them, but they didn’t reveal much. [LAUGHTER] So, we didn’t pick up much that way.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Sure.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: We were trying to help them.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Right. Were you at Hanford during the Russian visit to Hanford when they toured the Plutonium Finishing Plant?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: No. That was after I retired, I think.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Okay, just curious.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I heard about it of course.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: I’m sure. That must have been a pretty big deal from the standpoint of both countries. Is there anything that we haven’t covered that you would like to talk about?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I think there’s one thing I remember from when I did this interview the first time that I wanted to mention.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Sure.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I’ve been talking about all the varied experiences I had, and excellent opportunities over the years. But I think one of the perhaps most impressive things that I was able to do was to be able to hire several good people into my organization. I won’t mention names, but there were several that I call superstars that are now leaders in the field. I was able to bring them in right out of college or from another job, and hire several really good people that certainly enhanced our program, and then gave them great opportunities to grow and expand. Like I say, they’re now leaders in the field. That was one of the most rewarding parts of my job.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: That’s great. Maybe you can give me their names off camera and we could contact them.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I think they’re already on your list. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, okay, good.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: But I’ll do that.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Well, good.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: We’ll do that.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: They should be. Tom, did you—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Tom Hungate: No, I’m fine.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Emma, did you have anything?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Emma Rice: No, I’m fine.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Okay. Well, I think that’s it. Jerry, thank you so much.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, that was fun. Did we stay on target?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: I believe we did.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I wandered a little. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: That’s okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: There’s some stories there that might be interesting.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: I think the stories help keep the oral histories—they have a human-centered focus and they’re interesting for people to watch.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I hope so.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: And I think there might be a couple things that merit some more research in there that personally, for me, I’d like to find out some more about.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Especially the howitzer thing.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Oh, yeah. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Hungate: One thing I’d just like to ask—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Sure.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Hungate: You’ve been involved in a lot of things over a broad range of time and experiences and I just kind of wonder what you would feel is the one—maybe the item or two that you’ve worked on that will leave the most lasting impact?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: The most lasting impact.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Hungate: Or that you wished had been developed more that didn’t quite complete, you’d like to see more work done on it, it was either defunded or it was—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, I’m thinking of several different things now. I’ll just have to think it through. The work we did with NRC to improve emergency planning on nuclear power plants I think was very effective. And that’s still being maintained today. Work we did with DoE at Pantex on nuclear weapons. You mentioned the end of the Cold War, that’s when many of these tactical nuclear weapons in Europe were brought back and declared obsolete, and so we were doing a massive disassembly operation on those. I learned a lot about nuclear weapons and found it fascinating. We implemented some methods at Pantex that I think are still in use in the maintenance programs that they do now. But we were able to, I think, substantially improve on radiation safety at Pantex. Certainly to the point where we were finally blessed by DNFSB and DoE. I think the quality of that program has been maintained. There’s several other projects that I’ve worked on over the years, but I guess there’s no one thing that stands out that I would be concerned about that it was defunded or ended or somehow went downhill. I’m sure that’s happened, but I haven’t kept track of everything.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Being as nuclear power and nuclear weapons have different objectives, and you mentioned this retirement of a lot of nuclear weapons, do you feel that nuclear weapons still have a role to play in security—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I do.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: You do?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yes. Because the Russians still have a lot of them, China has some, the French and English have a few. It’s what I call the mutual deterrent, which is a term that’s been used. It just means that we don’t ever want to use one again, but if any one of those countries had some kind of an unbalanced advantage, it could be used. So if we have this mutual assured deterrence, it keeps that in balance. So it’s important to maintain that stockpile.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Interesting. Thank you.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Hungate: Okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Great.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin. I’m conducting an oral history with Jerome Martin on June 1<sup>st</sup>, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University, Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Jerome Martin about his experiences working at the Hanford site and his involvement with the Herbert M. Parker Foundation. And you—just wanted to use your legal name to start out with, but you prefer to be called Jerry, right?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Jerome Martin: Yes, I do.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Jerome’s a little too formal. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Right. Just for the technical purposes. Sure. No more, we will not mention the name—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Again. [LAUGHTER] So for the record, you did an interview with the Parker Foundation sometime in 2010.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I believe it was earlier.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Or possibly earlier. And some of the Parker Foundation videos, as we know, were lost. And so this video is an attempt to recapture some of the information that would have been in that oral history, but also add some other information, and also to give you a chance to talk about your involvement with the Herbert M. Parker Foundation. So just as a introduction to whoever views this in the future. So why don’t we start in the beginning? How did you come to—you’re not from the Tri-Cities?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Not originally.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: All right. How did you come to the Tri-Cities?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, a little quick history, I got my bachelor’s degree at San Diego State College and then I was a radiation safety officer at San Diego State for about three years. Then I had an opportunity to go to the University of Colorado in Boulder, where, again, I was a radiation safety officer and on the faculty of the physics department. After several years there, an excellent opportunity came up for me here at Hanford with Battelle, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. So I moved here in 1976, and had a great opportunity to work with many other more senior people here at Hanford that had been here since the beginning. One of those, of course, was Herbert M. Parker. He was former director of the laboratories under General Electric, and then retired, but stayed on with Battelle as a director. I had a few opportunities to interact with him, and was quite impressed. I have heard stories about, he was a rather demanding taskmaster. And I could kind of imagining myself trying to work for him, but it would have been a challenge.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: What do you feel is important to be known about Herbert M. Parker for the historical record?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I’ve had an opportunity to review many of his publications. They were quite professional and very well researched, and in many cases the leading authority on several topics. So I was very impressed by his publications. I didn’t have a direct opportunity to work for him, so I don’t know about his management style or other things. But that was the thing that impressed me the most, was his publications.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: What topics did Dr. Parker write on—or do his research?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: His early professional career was in medical physics. He was at Swedish Hospital in Seattle for many years. Then he was called upon, as part of the Manhattan Project, to set up the safety program at Oak Ridge. He did that for about a year or so. Then he was called upon to do the same thing here at Hanford. So he came here and established the entire environmental safety and health program for Hanford. Of course he had all the right background to be able to do that, and he was able to recruit a number of really talented people to help him with that. So I think Hanford ended up with what could be known as the best environmental safety and health program, among all the early AEC and then DoE laboratories. One of the things that impressed me most by that program was the record keeping. And I had an opportunity to work on that in later years. But the way the record keeping was designed and set up and maintained was quite thorough. It was designed to be able to recreate whatever may have happened according to those records. It turned out to be very valuable in later years.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Who instituted that record-keeping? Was that Parker?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I don’t recall the name of the individual that set it up, although I know Ken Hyde was involved very early on. He may have been at the very origin of it. But I’m sure Parker certainly influenced the rigor with which that program was established. In later years, John Jech was manager of the record keeping program, and then my good friend, Matt Lyon, was the manager of that. I worked with Matt, then, on American National Standard Institute’s standard for record keeping. We incorporated into that standard virtually all of the fundamentals that Parker had established initially.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: The first name was John—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: The second manager of records was John Jech. J-E-C-H.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Do you know if he’s still living?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: No, he’s not.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: And what about Lyon?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Matt Lyon passed away about ten years ago, as did Ken Hyde.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: What’s that?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Ken Hyde—I think they all three passed away about ten years ago.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yeah, give or take.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: So you mentioned that the record keeping was designed to recreate an incident as it happened. Do you know of any such—or can you speak to any such times when that record keeping system was crucial into a safety issue?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: The one that comes to mind is one of the more I guess infamous incidents here at Hanford. It occurred just around the time I arrived here in 1976. It was sometimes called the McCluskey accident out at the 231-Z Building. There was an explosion in a glovebox that resulted in very significant contamination of Mr. McCluskey by americium-241. And the response to that incident, and then all the following treatment of Mr. McCluskey was very well documented. In fact, those documents then became the basis for a whole series of scientific papers that described the entire incident and all the aspects of it. So that was one major case where excellent record keeping was very valuable.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Excellent. And what—I’m just curious now—what happened to Mr. McCluskey?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: He survived for about ten years after the accident. He initially had very severe acid burns and trauma. But he was very carefully treated for that. The americium contamination that he had was gradually eliminated—not eliminated, but reduced substantially. He survived for another ten years after that incident even though he had heart trouble. I know several people that assisted in his care, and it was quite remarkable what they were able to do and what he was able to do.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow. Did he ever go back to work?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: No, he was 65 at the time of the accident.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: So he kind of went into medical retirement at that point. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Right. Yeah, I can imagine. So you said you came in 1976.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Right.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: And what did you—what was your first job, when you came to Battelle?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, I worked in what was called the radiation protection department, later called health physics department. My first assignment was called ALARA management. ALARA stands for maintain our radiation exposures as low as reasonably achievable. I would monitor the exposure records of Battelle workers, and watch for any that were the least bit unusually high, and then look for ways that we could reduce those exposures. And I monitored other things like average exposures and the use of dosimeters and things of that nature. The overall assignment was to generally reduce the workers’ radiation exposure.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: How successful do you feel that the department was in that effort?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I think we were very successful, and it went on for many years, even after I had that assignment. I remember one time, looking at a report that DoE put out annually on radiation exposures over all the major DoE facilities. Those average exposures, highest individual exposures, and things of that nature. Battelle and Hanford had among the lowest averages of all the other DoE facilities. So, I believe it was a very effective ALARA program here at Hanford.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Do you know if that report was ever made publically available?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Oh, yes.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yeah, those are published every year by DoE.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, great. I’ll have to find that. Sorry, just scribbling down some notes.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: At one point, Battelle had a contract with the DoE headquarters to actually do the production of that report each year.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: And I was involved in the production of it—oh, three or four years, as I recall.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Okay. So you mentioned that you had moved on out of that program or department, so what—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Right. Well, I started getting involved in management at kind of the bottom level. I was an associate section manager, and then I got an assignment as section manager for the radiation monitoring section. I was responsible for all the radiation monitors—or as they’re now called, radiation protection technologists—the radiation monitors for Battelle and two other of the contractors here at Hanford. It was kind of ironic that I was located in what used to be the 300 Area library, and my office was on the second floor. And my office was the former office of Herbert M. Parker, when he was director of laboratories.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow!</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: It was an honor to have that space, and recall memories of Mr. Parker.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow, that’s great. And how long did you do that for?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I did that two or three years, and then another opportunity came along in 1979—no actually, it was ’79, but I guess I’d been on that management job for about a year and a half. In September of ’79, which was about three months after the Three Mile Island accident, we had an opportunity to make a proposal to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to provide support for their staff in emergency planning work. At that time, NRC was making a big push on all the power plants, all the nuclear power plants across the country to enhance their emergency planning programs. So we began about a ten-year project with NRC to supplement their staff. The NRC established the requirement for annual emergency exercises at each of the nuclear power plants, where they had to work up a scenario, and then they would activate their emergency response staff to demonstrate that they would know how to handle that accident scenario. We served as observers. We had teams of observers with the NRC staff. We did a total of 800 of those exercises over a ten-year period.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: So we had a lot of staff out there, doing a lot of travel.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Yeah. So that would have been—so you said for power, would that have been for all of the power reactors in the United States?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yes. There were 103 plants at the time.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow. Did you do any in foreign countries?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I didn’t personally, but we did have some staff that went to a similar kind of program with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and visited foreign nuclear power plants. Some in France, that I recall.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow. So you said 103 power plants?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: In the US, yeah.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Actually, that was the number of reactors. There was a fewer number of plants, because many of them are two or more reactors at a site.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, okay so the 103 is the number of reactors?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I believe that’s correct. At that time.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: How did Chernobyl affect your field and your work?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: That’s an excellent question, because that was in this period. Of course, the Chernobyl accident happened in 1986, and I was working directly with NRC at that time. I was project manager on that NRC contract. When Chernobyl happened, there was an immediate reaction, and NRC had to study the Chernobyl accident as well as we could, and then determine what could be applied to US power reactors by way of improvements and emergency planning. One of my managers, Bill Bair, was part of a US delegation led by DoE and NRC to actually visit the Chernobyl area shortly after the accident, interact with the Russians, and do lessons learned that was turned into a series of DoE and NRC documents that tried to extract as much useful information as we could from Chernobyl and apply it here in the US.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Right, because if I’m not mistaken, the design of the Chernobyl reactor—there were reactors of similar design in the United States.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Not exactly. The Chernobyl reactor had no containment vessel. There were a few reactors in the US that also did not have containment vessels, but they had other safeguards. The N Reactor was one of those. Unfortunately, I would call it an overreaction of the US government to a reactor with no containment. Severe restrictions were put on N Reactor, and some re-design was required that ultimately led to the end of N Reactor. It’s interesting to note that at that point in time, which was about 1986, 1987, N Reactor had generated more electricity from a nuclear reactor than any other plant in the world. So it’s unfortunate it came to an early demise.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: And—sorry, my ignorance here on the technical aspects. You said some of them don’t have a containment vessel. What does a containment vessel look like and what role does it play, and why would there would be reactors with one and without one?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, N Reactor went back to the early—the late ‘50s, I believe when it was designed. It was designed similar to the other reactors here at Hanford that were intended for production of plutonium. But N Reactor was a dual purpose, in that it also generated 800 megawatts of electricity. But it had a similar kind of design to what you see out at B Plant, for example. So it didn’t have the same kind of containment vessel that other modern pressurized water reactors or other nuclear power plants have that is designed in such a way that if there is reactor core damage, any radioactivity released can be contained and not released.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Or released in a very controlled fashion.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: I see. Kind of like a clam shell that kind of covers the—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, it’s basically—yeah, in many cases a spherical kind of containment.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Okay. Excellent. So after—obviously the demise of N Reactor, ’86, ’87, is kind of the end of operations—or I should say of product production—product and energy production on the Hanford site. So how did your job change after that? And what did you continue to do after the shutdown?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I wasn’t directly affected by N Reactor shutting down. And the other production reactors had been shut down before that, so I wasn’t really directly involved in that. But I had yet another opportunity came up that turned out to be really a challenge for me. The Pantex plant in Amarillo, Texas is the primary assembly and disassembly facility for nuclear weapons. At that time, it was managed by a company called Mason and Hanger. Mason and Hanger had that contract for many years, and DoE challenged them to rebid the contract. So Mason and Hanger reached out to Battelle for assistance in teaming on environmental health and safety. So my manager talked me into being involved, so I went down to Amarillo and visited the plant and worked with the team there on the proposal that had to be presented to DoE. And we won the contract. Of course in the fine print it said I then had to move there.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Ah!</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: But it turned out great. By that time, my family was pretty well grown, kids were through college. So we moved down to Amarillo, and I went to work at Pantex. We really enjoyed that. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Amarillo’s a very nice town, a lot of nice people. The work at Pantex was very challenging. I enjoyed that very much, too.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Great. So how long were you at the Pantex plant?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, I was manager of the radiation safety department down there for three years, which was my original contract obligation. During that time, we were very closely scrutinized by the Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board, which was an organization established by Congress to be a watchdog over DoE. Their method for watching DoE was to watch the contractors very closely. So they would scrutinize everything we did, and then challenge DoE if they found something. They pushed us in a way that was good, because one of the things they promoted was professional certification. I’m a certified health physicist, certified by the American Board of Health Physics. At the time at Pantex, I was the only one we had there. But the DNFSB pushed us to add more, so I got more of my staff certified. There was a similar program for technicians called the National Registry of Radiation Protection Technologists, and at the time, we had two of my staff that were registered with NRRPT. Again, they pushed us to promote more training. By the end of that three-year period, I think we had ten of our technologists registered and certified. So we really improved the credentials of our staff. We instituted some new programs, again, related to ALARA radiation reduction. Probably the most interesting or challenging day of my life occurred down there in 1994. We were working on disassembly of the W48 program. The W48 was a tactical weapon used in—that was deployed in Europe—it was never used. But it was a very small, cylindrical nuclear weapon designed to be shot out of a 155 millimeter howitzer, which is amazing just to think about. But the plutonium pit in this device was surrounded by high explosive. It turned out to be rather difficult to disassemble this particular design of nuclear weapon. It also turned out that the plutonium pit had a relatively high dose rate, compared to others. So the workers were getting some increased exposure to their hands in the process of working on this. So we were concerned about their extremity dose. So we worked up a method for doing a classified videotape of the disassembly operation, so that we could study each step in the process to find ways to improve worker safety. Providing shielding, remote tools, things of that nature. The process on this was to take the plutonium pit and high explosives and put it in liquid nitrogen bath for a period of time. Then bring it out and put it in a little tub-like, and pour hot water on it. The HE would expand rapidly and crack off. And for the most part, it worked very well. Well, there was this one particular pit that we were working on when we were doing the videotape for this study. Apparently the HE wasn’t coming off the way it should, and so they had to repeat this process over and over. They brought it out of the liquid nitrogen, poured hot water on it, and the plutonium—the cladding, the beryllium cladding on the plutonium pit actually cracked, due to the severe temperature change. The workers who were working on this were trained very carefully that if that cladding on the pit ever cracks, get out of there fast, so you avoid a plutonium exposure. So that happened. One of the technicians heard an audible crack and saw it on the surface of that pit. And they all evacuated immediately. They got just outside the door of this special facility, and they called our radiation safety office, and fortunately my three best technicians were standing there by the phone. They said, pit had cracked. And so they got over there as fast as they possibly could. They recognized the danger of having an exposed plutonium pit, and how that can oxidize and cause severe contamination very quickly. They decided to put on respirators to protect themselves, but they didn’t bother with any of the other protective clothing because they wanted to save time. So they made an entry where the cracked pit was, still there with the water bath on it, and the video shooting this picture. They took samples right on the crack and on the water and all around it. They managed to take that plutonium pit and get it into a plastic bag and then they doubled bagged it and then they triple bagged it and sealed it up. Then they came out. Of course, the samples revealed that there was indeed plutonium contamination coming out of that crack, but they had contained it very quickly. When we made a later entry to retrieve the video tape that was still running, and we looked at the timestamp on it. From the time the crack appeared until they had it in the bag was seven minutes.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow!</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: That’s about as fast as you can possibly expect a response team to come in and secure a situation like that. And so, following that, of course we had the incident debriefing, and I had to chair that. But we very carefully went through and recorded every little thing that happened from the time they were working on the disassembly to the time they exited. Got that all documented, and then the videotape of course documented all of that. The scrutiny by Department of Energy, the Amarillo office, the Albuquerque office, Headquarters, any number of others—we had a lot of attention that day. It was a long, hard day at the office, but very exciting. Following that, we had to debrief many other investigation committees and others. But we had that videotape to rely on, and that just was invaluable. That’s my—that was probably the most exciting day of my life, down there. [LAUGHTER] Got a follow-up to that. That W48 weapon was designed by Livermore. They came in at a later time and did a post-mortem on that cracked pit. And when they did, we discovered that the amount of plutonium contamination there that was available for distribution had it not been contained, would have totally just made that facility useless. I mean, extremely expensive clean-up, if it ever got done.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Not just the room, but the entire facility?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, mainly that room.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: That room.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: But it was a very big room, and a very valuable room, specially designed. But the quick response of our radiation safety technicians and getting that contained saved that room and millions of dollars in expense.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow. And so this was a weapon that was the size of a howitzer shell?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: 155 millimeters.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow. And what is the—I don’t know if you know this—but what’s the explosive power of that—is it—I guess it could be—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, it’s just like the atomic bombs used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, about 20-kiloton fission device. The plutonium pit is designed to implode and cause a super-critical reaction.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: But fired out of a howitzer, instead of—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Fired out of a howitzer, perhaps 20 miles or something. And then you can somehow coordinate the careful detonation of this--</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: --device. It boggled my mind.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: I guess that’s best that that was never ever—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: There’s quite a large number of different nuclear weapons. Many of them were tactical weapons used in Europe—or deployed in Europe during the Cold War. Many other more modern ones are part of Polaris missiles and other large bombs that can be deployed by B-52s or B-2s.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Sure.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yeah. There’s quite a wide range of different models and designs. I didn’t know that at the time, but it’s fascinating. I remember one day standing in one of the disassembly rooms, and they had this nuclear weapon in a cradle standing there on the floor, and they had the top off of it. And I could just look down in the top of it. I couldn’t touch it, but I could look in there and just see the engineering in one of those things was just amazing. Just beyond belief.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: I bet. I can only imagine.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yeah. But I’ve gone off on this nuclear weapons story and departed from Hanford.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: It’s okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Maybe I should come back.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: I think that’s a very interesting story. I certainly—I’ve also, like I said, heard of plenty of bombs—ICBMs, missiles, but I’d never quite heard of a howitzer-type fired weapon. But also just the fact that your team and your field was able to prevent a really nasty incident is pretty amazing.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Right.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: It speaks to your profession and your skill.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, like I mentioned, the professional credentials. Two of the three technicians who responded were certified by NNRPT. And they had the right kind of training, knew what to do, did it very well.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Great.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I had an opportunity a year later to nominate them for a special DoE award for unusual—not heroism, but effective response. And they won the award that year.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: That’s great. So how and when did you leave Pantex?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, the first time, was in ’96—no, I’m sorry, in ’93—and I had a special appointment back at DoE headquarters in Germantown. So I went back there for two years to work with the branch of DoE that was like an inspector general—the internal inspection branch, if you will. Very similar in scope to what the DNFSB—Defense Nuclear Facility Safety Board—was doing. Scrutinizing all the DoE operations at the national labs and other facilities, and trying to always make improvements.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: So I worked with the DoE headquarters staff on many different audits that we did at other DoE labs. At the time, I specialized in dosimetry, both internal and external dosimetry, and other operational health physics parts of the program.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow. So when did you come back to the Tri-Cities?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, I had a couple other interesting assignments in there. After DoE headquarters, then I went back to Pantex for three more years. And then another opportunity came up on an old facility near Cincinnati that needed to be decommissioned—decontaminated and decommissioned. And I went to Oak Ridge first, worked with the Foster Wheeler Company on the design of what became the largest radon control building that had ever been done. I was the radiation safety officer for that project at Oak Ridge in the design effort. And then we moved to Cincinnati for a year and I worked at the Fernald facility in actually building this radon control facility. What we were trying to deal with were these large concrete silos that contained residual ore material from the Second World War. They have to go back to—when the Manhattan Project was trying to bring together the necessary uranium in addition to the plutonium that was produced here at Hanford, they were using a rich pitch blend ore that was coming from what was then called Belgian Congo in Africa. It was shipped from there up the Saint Lawrence River to a facility near Niagara Falls. And then it ended up being processed to extract as much uranium as possible. But there were these residuals. They ended up in these concrete silos near Niagara Falls, New York as well as this Fernald facility, just outside of Cincinnati. So we had three big concrete silos that—I don’t recall—they must have been 80 feet in diameter and 50 feet high. So they held a lot of uranium ore residuals. It contained a fair amount of radium, which gave off radon gas. This facility was located not too far from a residential area. So it became a greater concern for getting it cleaned up. We put together this radon control facility that had these huge charcoal beds and you could pipe—you could take the head gas off of this silo, pipe it into these charcoal beds where the radon would be absorbed, and then the clean air would circulate. So you could fairly rapidly reduce the concentration of radon inside the silo to much lower levels. In the process, the charcoal beds got loaded up by absorbing radon. There came a point where you had to heat up that charcoal to drive off the captured radon. We devised a clever scheme with four different beds where we could kind of keep one of them recirculating on all times and have the other three working.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: So you say drive off the captured radon, where would it be driven off?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Over to the next charcoal bed, which hadn’t yet been completely saturated.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh! But then eventually you still have charcoal that—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: but it decays with a 3.8 day half-life, and that was built into the plan, too.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh!</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: But if it was to escape, right, it would get people very—it would contaminate or get people sick, or--?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, it was pretty carefully designed not to—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, but I’m saying that radon—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Oh, if it escaped from the silo. If there was no control of it—a certain amount of radon was escaping from the silo. For the most part, it’s a light gas, it just goes up and the wind blows it and disperses it. So it was very difficult to even measure anything offsite. But there was that concern there that we were dealing with.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: But if enough of it was released at once, then there might have been an issue?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Like if the whole roof of the silo was suddenly removed and it all came out, that could be a problem, yeah.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Interesting. I didn’t realize it had such a short half-life.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yeah. So I did that, what amounted to ten years of offsite assignments. About that time, my wife and I got tired of moving. So we came back to the Tri-Cities, and our kids are here. I came back to work at Battelle for another few years before I retired.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: When did you come back to Battelle?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I came back in 2001.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, okay. So then you worked for—it says you retired in 2006.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I retired about four years later. And the last major project I worked on was also very interesting. It was the project for customs and border protection. It was to install radiation portal monitors at seaports. This was shortly after 9/11, and there was a concern about dirty bomb material being imported by any means. We had one part of the project dealt with seaport, another part airports, and a third part postal facilities.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: So I worked on the seaports part, and I had the Port of Los Angeles was my assignment. Another one of us had Port of Long Beach, which is right next door, which are the largest seaports on the West Coast and have the largest number of shipping containers coming in. So we devised a method for monitoring those shipping containers as they were unloaded and making sure nothing was coming in that way.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Did—oh, sorry.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Very interesting project.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: I don’t know if you can speak to this, but was anything caught by these monitors?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yes. But not dirty bomb material.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Turns out they were so sensitive, they would detect any kind of elevated background radioactivity. For example, kitty litter is a little bit elevated in background. Any kind of stone product, and there are various granite and other stone products imported from different places. Those had a high enough background activity that they would trigger our monitors. So we would run all these containers through a set of monitors, and any that triggered that amount would then be sent over to a secondary monitor, where they’d examine it more carefully, verify what was actually in the containers, sometimes inspect them.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: So recently our project staff got a tour of some of the facilities at HAMMER. And I believe we saw one of those monitors. Would that have been the same?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Mm-hm. Big yellow columns?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Yeah, that they run it through.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yep, that was the one.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: So you helped design—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: We helped design—oh, I didn’t really get involved in design. That was done by some real smart people out here at Battelle. But I was onsite trying to get them installed.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: And tested.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow. That’s really—that’s fascinating.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yeah, it was. I had a chance to do a lot of fun things when I worked at Battelle.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Yeah, it sounds like it. Sounds like maybe I need to go get a job over there. Maybe they need a traveling historian. So, where—what have you been doing since you retired?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, for about five years, I worked for Dade Moeller, which is kind of a spinoff company from Battelle. And they had a major contract with NIOSH—National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health—as part of an employee compensation program for radiation workers. Initially, the way this was set up was we got the actual radiation exposure records for former employees and examined their measured radiation exposure, and then did some other calculations that would tend to take into account anything else that they might have been exposed to but was somehow not measured on the dosimeter and many other factors to kind of add up their maximum possible radiation dose. And then that was compared—this is where it got a little complex. There are many different types of cancer that can be caused by radiation at a high enough level. Some types of cancer can be caused by a radiation level lower than some others. So it depended on what type of cancer the individual had as to which—how we measured their maximum possible radiation exposure to the likelihood that that cancer was caused by radiation. We did a careful calculation using probability and determined that if their cancer was at least 50% probable that it was caused by radiation, then they were granted an award. Well, we did that for several years in a very careful, scientific way that was well-documented. Then it became political. A lot of former workers, then, applied for another category within this overall compensation program that they called Special Exposure Cohort. Which meant that it didn’t matter how much radiation exposure they had, if they had the right type of cancer, they could get the award. And it’s kind of degenerated that way. But for many years, I think we did it right. I also had an opportunity to work on another part of that project where we did what we call the technical basis documents, where we reconstructed the history of how radiation exposure records were developed and maintained at each of these different sites. Every one varied a little bit. I did the one for the technical basis document for Pantex in Amarillo, because I was familiar with that. But I got to do several other interesting sites, one of which was Ames Laboratory in Ames, Iowa. Going there and interviewing some of these old-timers and looking at their old records, I found that there was a chemistry professor at what was then Iowa State University. He was called upon by the Manhattan Project in 1943 to help them improve their methods for extracting uranium metal. The old process that had been used by the Curies and other early scientists was really quite inefficient. But this professor developed a method used in a calcium catalyst that was very effective. He was able to purify uranium metal much quicker and in larger quantities. The story was that he would have to get on the train every Sunday afternoon and go to Chicago for the meeting with the Manhattan Project and report on the progress of his research and so on. One week after successfully isolating an ingot of uranium metal, he took it with him in his briefcase. Went into the meeting with Manhattan Project and clunked it on the desk, and passed it around. He said that this is a new method for producing substantial quantities of uranium metal. All the scientists around the table kind of poked at it and scratched it and so on and didn’t believe it was really uranium, but it was. And they finally decided that he had made a great breakthrough, so they sent him back to Iowa and said, make a lot more, fast. And he did. So he had the material they needed, then, for the Manhattan Project.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Interesting story.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Yeah, that’s really fascinating. So how did you become involved with the Parker Foundation?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: About ten years ago—almost ten years ago—my friend Bill Bair and Ron Kathren and a couple others on the Parker Board invited me to participate. Matt Moeller was chairman of the board at that time—invited me to participate, and I just joined in, and found it very rewarding. I really appreciate what the Parker Board does in the memory of Herb Parker and in the sense of scholarships and other educational programs. So it’s a pleasure to contribute to that.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Great, great. You moved in 1975 or ’76?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I moved here in ’76.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: ’76. And you mentioned children. Were your children born here, or did you move here with them?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: My oldest daughter was born in San Diego, and my younger daughter was born in Boulder, Colorado.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: So they were six and eight, I think, when we moved here.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: What were your impressions of Richland in the mid-70s when you moved? Did you live in Richland or did you--?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: We did. Yeah, we lived just a few blocks from WSU here.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: In North Richland. It was a very different community, but one that I came to know and respect. Because at that time, education was really paramount in the minds of parents and the school system. And my wife was a teacher. So we really took an interest in that. My kids got a really good education here in Richland. Went to Hanford High, and then did well in college. One of the main features of Richland at that time, I think, was a superior education program. Some of the other history of Richland with old government housing, and then we got a new house, and things like that are entirely different, but also very interesting.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: And is that what you kind of are meaning when you say it was a different community? I guess I’d like to unpack that a little bit more. How—in what ways was it different?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, a large part of Richland was originally government housing, and you only had to drive through town, you could see all the evidence of that. And then on the north side of Richland, they had opened up—beginning in 1965, I believe—development of newer private housing. We got here just in time to get in on a new house, and worked out fine for us.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Great. Was there—being next to a site that was primarily involved in product production, plutonium production—was there a different feeling about the Cold War in Richland per se than anywhere else you had lived in the United States at that time?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: There definitely was different feelings about the Cold War and living anywhere near a nuclear power plant. I remember when we were working with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission at many different reactor sites around the country. In many cases we would have public meetings to introduce the local folks to what we were trying to do to improve the emergency planning. There was a lot of concern about living anywhere near a nuclear power plant just a few years after TMI. I tried to explain to people how I live within 30 miles of nine nuclear power plants. But I understood radiation. I understood the risk, and I understood what could go wrong or how to deal with it. And it didn’t concern—didn’t bother me that much to live here. I found that to be generally true of a lot of people in Richland that were part—working at Hanford and were well-educated. They understood the risk and they could deal with it. Whereas many other people were just afraid. And I attribute that to what I call now about a 71-year deliberate misinformation program on the part of mass media to scare people about radiation.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: I like that. I’m writing it down. How do you feel that the—do you feel that the ending of the Cold War changed your work at all? I guess the reason why I ask—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: It did.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: --these questions about the Cold War is because it was the impetus for much of the continued production of the material.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yeah. I was in Germany in 1988, just before the Berlin Wall came down. I was also there in Berlin in 1984, and we actually crossed through Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin on a special tour.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Really?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: It was quite amazing. I was in Berlin for a meeting of the International Radiation Protection Association. I took my whole family; it was a tremendous adventure for them. But we were able to be part of a special US Army tour that went through Checkpoint Charlie. I think they did this once a week. And we had a little tour of East Berlin while it was still under the control of the USSR. We visited their Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and they had a little ceremonial changing the guard there. And we visited the square in Berlin where Hitler had burned the books that one night in 1939. And then we visited a huge Russian war memorial, and there was a building there where the Germans had surrendered in 1945. There was quite a story about that. But I was really impressed with this huge Russian war memorial. There were five mass graves that each held 100,000 soldiers. It was done in kind of the Russian style, with statues and other honorary symbols to clearly show their respect for the lives of all those soldiers. But that was an impressive sight. But I was there again in 1988 just before the Berlin Wall came down, and you could kind of see the end of the Cold War coming. So it was a great opportunity that I had, working for Battelle, being able to travel like that, and do many exciting things.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Did you get to ever talk or meet with any of your counterparts on the Russian side?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yes.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: After the Cold War ended. And what was that like, to finally work with what had been considered the enemy?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: It was quite unusual. I was scheduled to go to Russia a week after 9/11. It almost got canceled, but I managed to go. I was giving—they were having a conference for young scientists and trying to introduce them to international concepts of radiation safety. So I gave my paper and four others that we did to that group. It was located at what was the Russian equivalent of Los Alamos, their design facility. There weren’t very many Americans had been in there up to that point. So I was watched very closely. [LAUGHTER] And not allowed to see much, actually. But it was a very interesting exchange. The papers I was presenting were prepared in both English and Russian. And then we also did what they called a poster presentation, where we had a big poster with diagrams and everything—again translated to Russian. So we were able to put these up at this conference for these young scientists. They, I think, got a lot out of it because it was in their language so it was easy for them to understand. Working with an interpreter was a new experience for me. I would give this oral presentation, so I’d say one sentence and the pause. The interpreter would repeat that. I’d say the next sentence, and—kind of an awkward way to do an oral presentation.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: I can imagine.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: But their hospitality was very good. This was in 2001. So the Cold War had been over for quite a few years. But we were trying to establish better relations. I think it was quite effective in doing that. I had another opportunity to work with Russian scientists on an NRC program, again where NRC was trying to provide training to their equivalent Russian inspectors for nuclear power plants and explain to them some of the ways that they did inspections, things they looked for, how they documented findings and things like that. We had four Russian inspectors and their interpreter come over from Moscow. I was their host in Washington, DC, and we worked with them there with the NRC headquarters for a week, providing training. And then we brought them out to Idaho to the Idaho National Lab, north of Idaho Falls, and went to a large hot cell facility at Idaho. A hot cell is where they have a heavily shielded enclosure with mechanical arms that do things on the inside. It was quite a sophisticated facility and somewhat unlike what the Russian counterparts were used to. But it was a good learning exercise for them. We kind of went through a demonstration of how we would do an inspection—a safety inspection. So, I had those kind of opportunities to interact with Russian scientists and found that very exciting. Very interesting.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Did you find that there was anything that you had learned from them at all? Or do you feel that the US was much more advanced in radiation protection and health physics?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, I kept my ears open when I was talking to them, but they didn’t reveal much. [LAUGHTER] So, we didn’t pick up much that way.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Sure.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: We were trying to help them.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Right. Were you at Hanford during the Russian visit to Hanford when they toured the Plutonium Finishing Plant?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: No. That was after I retired, I think.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Okay, just curious.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I heard about it of course.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: I’m sure. That must have been a pretty big deal from the standpoint of both countries. Is there anything that we haven’t covered that you would like to talk about?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I think there’s one thing I remember from when I did this interview the first time that I wanted to mention.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Sure.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I’ve been talking about all the varied experiences I had, and excellent opportunities over the years. But I think one of the perhaps most impressive things that I was able to do was to be able to hire several good people into my organization. I won’t mention names, but there were several that I call superstars that are now leaders in the field. I was able to bring them in right out of college or from another job, and hire several really good people that certainly enhanced our program, and then gave them great opportunities to grow and expand. Like I say, they’re now leaders in the field. That was one of the most rewarding parts of my job.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: That’s great. Maybe you can give me their names off camera and we could contact them.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I think they’re already on your list. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Oh, okay, good.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: But I’ll do that.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Well, good.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: We’ll do that.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: They should be. Tom, did you—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Tom Hungate: No, I’m fine.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Emma, did you have anything?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Emma Rice: No, I’m fine.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Okay. Well, I think that’s it. Jerry, thank you so much.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, that was fun. Did we stay on target?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: I believe we did.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I wandered a little. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: That’s okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: There’s some stories there that might be interesting.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: I think the stories help keep the oral histories—they have a human-centered focus and they’re interesting for people to watch.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I hope so.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: And I think there might be a couple things that merit some more research in there that personally, for me, I’d like to find out some more about.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Especially the howitzer thing.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Oh, yeah. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Hungate: One thing I’d just like to ask—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Sure.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Hungate: You’ve been involved in a lot of things over a broad range of time and experiences and I just kind of wonder what you would feel is the one—maybe the item or two that you’ve worked on that will leave the most lasting impact?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: The most lasting impact.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Hungate: Or that you wished had been developed more that didn’t quite complete, you’d like to see more work done on it, it was either defunded or it was—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Well, I’m thinking of several different things now. I’ll just have to think it through. The work we did with NRC to improve emergency planning on nuclear power plants I think was very effective. And that’s still being maintained today. Work we did with DoE at Pantex on nuclear weapons. You mentioned the end of the Cold War, that’s when many of these tactical nuclear weapons in Europe were brought back and declared obsolete, and so we were doing a massive disassembly operation on those. I learned a lot about nuclear weapons and found it fascinating. We implemented some methods at Pantex that I think are still in use in the maintenance programs that they do now. But we were able to, I think, substantially improve on radiation safety at Pantex. Certainly to the point where we were finally blessed by DNFSB and DoE. I think the quality of that program has been maintained. There’s several other projects that I’ve worked on over the years, but I guess there’s no one thing that stands out that I would be concerned about that it was defunded or ended or somehow went downhill. I’m sure that’s happened, but I haven’t kept track of everything.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Being as nuclear power and nuclear weapons have different objectives, and you mentioned this retirement of a lot of nuclear weapons, do you feel that nuclear weapons still have a role to play in security—</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: I do.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: You do?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Martin: Yes. Because the Russians still have a lot of them, China has some, the French and English have a few. It’s what I call the mutual deterrent, which is a term that’s been used. It just means that we don’t ever want to use one again, but if any one of those countries had some kind of an unbalanced advantage, it could be used. So if we have this mutual assured deterrence, it keeps that in balance. So it’s important to maintain that stockpile.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Interesting. Thank you.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Hungate: Okay.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Franklin: Great.</p>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:02:44
Bit Rate/Frequency
Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio)
317 kbps
Hanford Sites
Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview
300 Area
B Plant
N Reactor
Plutonium Finishing Plant
Years on Hanford Site
Years on the Hanford Site, if any.
1976-2006
2001-2006
Names Mentioned
Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community.
Herbert M. Parker
Ken Hyde
John Jech
McCluskey
Mason and Hanger
Dade Moeller
Bill Bair
Ron Kathren
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site
2001-today
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 Jerome Martin
Description
An account of the resource
An interview with Jerome Martin 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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06-01-16
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.
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video/mp4
Date Modified
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2017-15-12: 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.
300 Area
B Plant
Battelle
Cold War
Department of Energy
General Electric
HAMMER
Hanford
Livermore
Los Alamo
Los Alamos
Manhattan Project
N Reactor
Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Park
Plutonium
Plutonium Finishing Plant
River
Ron Kathren
Safety
Sun
War
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fe569ea39d2b6ee7a52c2712dfe05f0ad.JPG
eb77089662d22082b1f797feab5fac35
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 Franklin
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Keith Klein
Location
The location of the interview
Washington State University Tri-Cities
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p>Tom Hungate: Rolling.</p>
<p>Robert Franklin: Okay. My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history interview with Keith Klein on February 7<sup>th</sup>, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Keith about his experiences working at the Hanford Site. And for the record, can you state and spell your full name for us?</p>
<p>Keith Klein: Keith Klein. K-L-E-I-N.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. And K-E-I-T-H?</p>
<p>Klein: K-E-I-T-H, yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay, great. Tell me how and why you came to work at the Hanford Site.</p>
<p>Klein: Well, I suppose it started as—born in the early ‘50s, and at that time, atomic energy was the stuff of comic books and intrigue and power. It was, you know—whenever the planet was threatened by alien beings, they’d always convene a meeting of the Atomic Energy Commission. So I think in the back of my mind, I always had an inkling that I’d end up somehow dealing with atomic energy. The path that got me here was actually as an Atomic Energy Commission intern in the early ‘70s. One of my assignments as an intern was out here doing FFTF construction, I think in ’73. After that, a series of assignments, most back at headquarters dealing with all aspects of the fuel cycle. Mid ‘90s, I was dispatched to Rocky Flats, and that’s where I gained experience dealing with plutonium and contaminated facilities and the work force and this kind of the field experiences as a deputy manager out at Rocky Flats. One of the obstacles to getting Rocky Flats cleaned up was getting rid of the transuranic waste. So I ended up getting dispatched down to Carlsbad, New Mexico for a six-month stint with the assignment of getting it open and recruiting a permanent manager. Opening WIPP had eluded a number of people and brought in lawsuits. There were a lot of different combination of technical issues, operational issues, regulatory, political, perception, communications issues—you name it. But I guess I impressed the secretary with that assignment, and next thing you know, he asked me to come out here to Richland. That was in 1999. So I came out here as a manager of the Richland Operations Office then and was here until I retired from federal service in 2007.</p>
<p>Franklin: Great. Just for those who might not know, could you say what WIPP stands for and what its mission was?</p>
<p>Klein: WIPP is the Waste Isolation Pilot Project, and it was the first deep geologic disposal facility in the—well, in the world, really. It’s in a geologic formation, about a half-mile under in salt beds that are several hundreds of millions of years old and have been—just their very existence shows a lack of moving water, because salt being soluble. And of course disposing of nuclear waste and particularly of things—plutonium-bearing waste, transuranic waste falls in that category. Lot of folks afraid about transportation and is it going to leak out and so forth. But the community there was actually very supportive. The scientific community was as well. But of course there was a lot of—you know, this is falling on the heels of nuclear power, a lot of opponents of nuclear power. It seemed like we’re similarly opposed to solving the waste problem. So it had some similar characteristics as the challenges being faced up here. But that was a very big deal for those of us in the nuclear waste community. It was recently shut down for some operational issues. And when it shuts down it shuts down for a few years. But it was key to emptying out this category waste called transuranic waste from sites around the country including here at Hanford and the national laboratories.</p>
<p>Franklin: When you came out in the early ‘70s as an intern for FFTF construction, what did you do?</p>
<p>Klein: Well, it was FFTF construction. Actually first assignment was dealing with electrical systems then. I was assigned to—it was a Bechtel Corporation doing work out there in the field. I was being mentored by a fellow that was actually in a responsible for the crafts, pulling wire and routing things. So you know that was all part of giving us on-the-ground experience. And this in particular was construction. Later went to a Westinghouse subsidiary that was placing the large vessels, setting the pumps and the heat exchangers and that sort of thing. It was an incredible amount of stainless steel. And quality assurance, obviously, building a reactor is very important. Had to have good records and had to know that things in fact were welded like they’re supposed to be, tested like they’re supposed to be and so forth. And it—of course—you know, then I was part of the AEC Breeder Reactor Program and I think that was what really attracted me to the Atomic Energy Commission, is the idea that a source of energy could make more fuel than it used. And it seemed environmentally benign at the time. I still happen to believe it’s one of the more benign forms of energy, but it’s obviously been beset with a number of challenges in terms of the times—and this comes back to Hanford, actually. The time it takes to do things now and the number of layers and checks and so forth. In the commercial nuclear business, time is money. And the more time it takes, the more costs. And then things getting held up in the regulatory process with interveners, it basically got priced out of the market and became uneconomical. It had also gotten very complicated at the time, and that’s another example. You start adding layers of safety and things like that, you can end up—things getting more complicated and difficult to analyze and manage and deal with. So it kind of collapsed under its own weight there for a while. But there is a new generation of reactors that are coming that are more inherently safe and simpler in a lot of respects. So I think there’s still some hope out there for sources of electrical energy that, in my mind, can be very benign.</p>
<p>Franklin: Mm-hm. Thank you. So you came to RL—Richland—in ’99, then, and you were the site—the DOE site manager.</p>
<p>Klein: Correct.</p>
<p>Franklin: For the Hanford unit. Can you talk about some of the progress you made in that position, but also maybe some of the setbacks as well? Because that’s during this kind of shift into this more modern phase of cleanup, right, where most of the production and reprocessing of fuels had stopped by that point.</p>
<p>Klein: That’s a huge topic, Robert.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure.</p>
<p>Klein: But it’s actually one I love to talk about because it was indeed a very daunting challenge. I understand you’ve interviewed Mike Lawrence and he signed a compliance agreement out here, the Tri-Party Agreement. But then he left and left it to others to implement that and get the work done. So he made the commitments and everyone else was kind of left holding the bag. John Wagner, I think did his best to get the ball rolling, but I think during that time there was just a lot of norming and forming and trying to figure out things. There wasn’t a whole lot of on-the-ground progress. I learned a lot at Rocky Flats and at WIPP about what it takes to get work done in these kind of environments. That included both technically and in terms of dealing with the workforce and dealing with the contracts. You know, the people that do the real work here are really contractors to DOE. And depending on how the contracts are written and things are incentivized and how much—just the whole dynamic between receiving the money—you have to go out and get the money from Congress, so you have to convince them that you have a plan, you know what you’re doing, you can deliver, that you’re investment grade. And then you have to deliver, because if you don’t, the money will dry up and lots of other problems. So giving this cleanup some focus, some momentum and just making it manageable, if you will, was one of the biggest challenges. Technically, there were two urgent risks—well, there were actually three urgent risks at the time. Of course the high-level waste that I think everybody knows about. But we had about 18 tons of plutonium-bearing materials that were unstable. These were things that when they shut down after the Cold War were left in various forms: alloys, residues, oxides, pure metal. And plutonium can be very reactive and exothermic. So it really needs to be stabilized, lest your—you have some real problems. Recall high school chemistry, you put a little sodium in the water—it’s that type of thing. So dealing with the plutonium—and again, I had the experience there with Rocky Flats—was a second urgent priority. And the third one was the spent fuel that was left in the K Basins. There were about 2,000 tons. That was about 80%, 90% of the DOE inventory that was left in the K Basins. This fuel was prone to oxidizing dissolving. And as a result of that, just deteriorating. So it was losing its integrity and creating a lot of sludge on the bottom. So even the act of moving it would create these clouds and you couldn’t see. The Site had been experimenting with different things to try to package up and dry out this—and stabilize this spent fuel so it could be stored in a dry, inert, stable, stable environment. So that was a second major challenge. And then of course there’s all this contaminated groundwater underlying the Site. Billions of gallons that had been dumped into the soil. You know, the soil here is something called a vadose zone where it’s got this dry sand and gravel mixtures and then there’s—can be basalt layers under that that are relatively impermeable, and you know, the water table that’s about where the Columbia River level is. So the center portion of the Site is built up. But long story short, waste in both liquid forms and then solid forms of waste have been buried in several hundred sites around the Hanford Site. So figuring out what we’re going to do with all those waste sites and with the contaminated groundwater was another set of challenges. And then of course there were, depending on how you count them, 700, 1,500 contaminated buildings out there that needed to be dealt with. This coupled with—right when I came, a legislation had been passed setting up a separate office of river protection to deal specifically with the high-level waste and the high-level waste tanks. So part of my job was helping to get that set up and transferred. Dick French was my counterpart dealing with that. The national lab, PNNL, was also actually under the Richland Operations Office at that time, but after a couple years it was decided similarly that the office of science—you know, it’s such a different focus that it was better off separated out. And from my standpoint, these were all good things, because there’s plenty of challenges to go around. So when I came, I guess my biggest challenges were how do you help manage, mobilize, organize efforts to get confidence that you have a plan for dealing with these things. We had these regulatory commitments, but it’s people that clean these things up. It’s not paper. You can sign anything you want; it doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. So this kind of comes down to contracts, understanding the workforce, what motivates them, and basically how to enable them. So my job is one of enabling. I mean, there’s so many smart people out here, it’s intimidating. And impressive and inspiring. And given the latitude, they’ll figure out how to do things. You compare when I came here it was different than it is even now, what, 16, 18 years later. But when I came here compared to like the ‘40s, a world of difference in terms of what it took to get work done. In the ‘40s, they could learn by doing, experiment, play with things, and they didn’t have to get multi layers of permission, or—they didn’t have emails or cell phones or computers. I mean, it was slide rules and hand-written notes and so forth. Which comes back to just how amazing they were. How creative and innovative. Of course, it was under a wartime environment. But contrast that, when I came here—a lot of different regulatory structures put in place—something called the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board to oversee DOE. The Atomic Energy Commission was self-regulating. And when environmental laws were passed, which has led to the Tri-Party Agreement, the Department of Energy was out of compliance with a number of these national laws, like the Resource Recovery—RCRA—and the Comprehensive Environmental Liability—CRCLA. So this compliance agreement, the Tri-Party Agreement was basically—this is how DOE was going to come into compliance with these things. Of course, there’s money that’s associated with that. DOE, like other agencies, lives on an annual budget. So you can’t get multi-year appropriations; you never really know how much you’re going to get from year to year. So to make commitments hoping you’ll get the money is part of the whole dynamic of getting work done here. But back to what it takes to get work done. It’s understanding these different laws and regulations. In my mind, I was fortunate, then, that I had good relationships back at headquarters and the trust and confidence of the leadership. So I was able to basically authorize more things on my signature based on my discretion than, certainly, what can be done today. Unfortunately with problems, you get more oversight and more second guessing and so forth. So it’s kind of success-begets-success. But in any event, my focus—and before you can clean up the buildings, you have to deal with the urgent priorities first: things that can go bump in the night. And again it comes back to the top three at the time were high-level waste and the plutonium, and the spent fuels. So the focus was really on the plutonium and spent fuel until you can get these things out of the different buildings, you can’t take down the buildings, that’s—stabilizing these things more important than—you know, the ground water was contaminated. I mean, the contamination was spreading, but you had to remove the sources, otherwise you’re continuing to feed—you can continue to clean up the groundwater, but there’s still stuff coming in, then you’re just kind of halting some progression but not really cleaning it up. So dealing with these different sources was the focus. But long story short, we had some brainstorming sessions with all the contractor heads, KEA, you know, folks that were working for me—how can we make this a simple, compelling, understandable vision? Make this, our task, more manageable? And what we came up with was basically featured three things. We came to call it the river, the plateau and the future. And said, our job is going to be to transition the central part of the Site into a long-term waste management area. The central part of the Site is where the high-level waste tanks are, the reprocessing canyons, a lot of these burial grounds. I mean, we were going to be here for a long time. And that’s also the stuff that’s farthest away from the river. So if you can sort of encapsulate and stop the hemorrhaging there, then kind of in a triage approach, then, that gives you—allows you to start cleaning up the rest. The second part was restoring the river corridor. And there the idea was to clean this up as good as is practical as we could and to make it available for other uses. So these are the reactors along the river, the other waste sites, burial grounds, the areas around the 300 Area where all the research is taking place and things like that. And the third part, the future, was—I guess I viewed this whole challenge out here as one of managing change and transition. And considering that we have 10,000 folks working out here, they need a future. It’s hard enough to ask someone to work themselves out of a job, but to work themselves out of a job without the prospect of other jobs, so—and that’s not something the DOE, the Atomic Energy Commission or others had a whole lot of experience at or are very good at. We’re a scientific and technical community. And most of us, myself included, is engineers. We go into these disciplines because we like numbers and quantities and we’re typically introverts and that sort of thing. So dealing with something as amorphous as the future is tough. But we convinced ourselves it was important and we had all these resources like the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and university systems and all these smart, talented people. There’s no reason why the things we’re learning here, lessons learned and businesses that could develop around here couldn’t be provided for a good socioeconomic environment here, too. And I think the Department of Energy and its predecessors always wanted to be a good community citizen. So just scrubbing out all the molecules but leaving this place an economic ghost town is not the right thing to do. Certainly, we want to get it as clean as we can, but you want to leave the community whole. And it comes back to the sacrifices that were made here going back to the tribes and the folks that were evicted in order to do this and the people that lost their lives helping to build the facilities and operate the facilities in the early years to produce the weapons material. Certainly the communities paid a price here. So the river, the plateau, and the future was kind of our mantra, and that’s how we organized things. Tried to fashion over the years that followed contracts that did that. But in any event, what I did was I sold—as for meeting with Doc Hastings, he was the congressman at the time. Sat down with him. I remember it very well, I was still—had become a—because of Rocky Flats and Waste Isolation Pilot Plant—I had some experience dealing with elected officials and high level stuff, but it’s still intimidating. You know, it’s like, I’m a freaking engineer. So but went to him with—at his office over in Pasco and laid this out. And he liked it, and we had some very good discussions and a rapport. But he lives across the river from the 300 Area, is where his house is. So he looks down, and he can actually see a lot of these things. And of course he’s committed to the community and Hanford and he wanted to give me the best shot possible as well. And I should say, too, due to my homework before I came in here, I learned about folks like Sam Volpentest and Bob Ferguson and I went around and met them and got their ideas, perception of things, and how things work. So I think I was fortunate, had a lot of good support from different corners. Doc went to bat for us, as did the senators, for the funding. They’ve been great supporters here, appreciative of the history and the challenges that remain. We put in place contracts. I brought a contract type they used at Rocky Flats successfully that’s different than the conventional contracts that the Atomic Energy Commission was used to operating under. The traditional contracts are management and operating contracts. And in that kind of contract, it’s for a certain period of time and the contractor’s pretty much graded by how their DOE counterparts felt about how they were doing. And it was a lot of one-to-one counterparts with the contractors doing whatever DOE said at any particular time. So, it can work well when you’re in kind of a steady environment in a production mode, like churning out nuclear weapons material and operating. But at Rocky Flats what we learned is you need a lot more incentive to be creative and innovative. What worked there was having an agreement with the contractors and the contract type and the regulators about, this is the scope of work that’s going to get done, and as long as we stay within this box, basically—you know, leave us alone. And that was my philosophy in this contract that’s called a cost-plus-incentive-fee contract, CPIF, versus MNO which is a cost-plus-award fee. And the amount of money the contractor makes is tied to how well they do this tangible piece of work that you can actually see and feel. So we have an official government estimate that this is how long it should take based on our historical experience; this is how much it should cost. So every dollar you save bringing that in sooner and earlier, you get to save 30 cents on that dollar. So when you’re talking about contracts that cover, you know, five- to ten-year period, you’re talking about potentially a couple hundred million dollars in fees on the table there. Well, at Rocky Flats, what we learned is, particularly the contractors can share that with the employees, that they can get quite creative about how to do things. And they are able to learn by doing. You know, the envelope is a safety envelope; you can’t do anything unless you know it’s safe. So that’s where we focused our attention, is making sure we had a good safety basis and watching that through facility reps and other things. But basically, not trying to micromanage or giving them the freedom, as much as we could, to do things. And having a very good scope. So that’s what we put around the river corridor contract. The idea there is we’re going to blitz the river corridor. And we need this tangible progress, too, to further build confidence that we can do this. Of course, you can’t demolish buildings and excavate sites unless you’ve got something to do with the waste that’s coming out. So that comes back to things like ERDF and the different disposal grounds in the middle of the site—the energy—Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility—huge facility in the center of the site. So this whole thing becomes a huge chess game of sorts where the different pieces are the money and the contracts and the people and the labor agreements and the different technical pieces that have to fall in sequence before you can do things. And in some way, the icing on the cake is actually taking down the buildings. Because by that time, you’ve had to take the materials out. And you can’t take the materials out unless there’s something you can do with them. So whether there’s plutonium and having the equipment in place to stabilize them and then package it and put it somewhere. That’s basically the plan we had: the river, the plateau and the future. And I think the results, I’m pretty proud, speak for themselves. We packaged up all that spent fuel, got it off the river, from out of the K Reactors into the central part of the plateau. We got all the plutonium stabilized. And that ended up being able to—my successor able to ship that actually offsite to Savannah River. And put in place the river corridor contract, which I think has been pretty widely acclaimed and recognized as being successful. And it meant a lot of good things are happening. The folks dealing with high-level waste and the Waste Treatment Plant I think have had some different kinds of challenges and still dealing with a lot of that. But I think you see excellent progress on the rest of the Site.</p>
<p>Franklin: I was wondering if you could speak about the challenge of vitrification as a—I mean, it’s a proposed way to isolate and deal with the waste and it’s been successful at other sites, but seems to have hit snags at Hanford.</p>
<p>Klein: Well, this was not my territory.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Klein: I know a fair amount about it, so I’m tempted to give you opinion. But I did not have responsibility for that, and so—Kevin Smith is the current Office of River Protection manager and he’d be a better one to talk to about that. But vitrification in general was a form preferred by the state and others for stabilizing some components of the waste out there that’s very highly radioactive. It’s interesting—back in the day, some of the components in these tanks that generate the most heat are strontium and cesium: fission products, versus the actinides. The actinides being plutonium, uranium, those type of things. And there’s not a whole lot of that in this high-level waste. But in the old days, they started taking out the cesium and the strontium so the tanks weren’t generating as much heat so they could put more waste in. And we put—before my time, they put the strontium and cesium into capsules. And they’re stored in a water pool up—attached to one of their processing facilities and that was under my purview. Now the process moving that to dry storage. And I only say that because, you know, in my mind, there are alternative forms for managing these different wastes that they can be used. And with fission products, 30-year half-life, rule of thumb is if ten half-lives—these things reduce to a millionth their radioactivity or less, 10<sup>-6</sup>, and basically are innocuous at that time. So thirty years, half-life of ten years, that’s 300 years. In geologic time, that’s nothing. So do you really need geologic disposal for things with fission products with 30-year half-lifes? And if you don’t need geologic disposal, do you really need to vitrify the wastes and put them into these glass waste forms? I mean, basically what’s attractive about glass is it’s not as susceptible to dissolution and water and dissolving. So things can stay pretty much contained, is the thought. But even these high-level waste logs, they’re just going into dry storage anyway. You know, I’m a proponent, I guess, for a lot of these different wastes, that dry storage, I think, is the most economical, efficient, and—I think there’s a reasonable chance our civilization will stay intact for 300 years. You can put these things in dry storage casks and things like that, they’re basically tamper-proof and they cool themselves. It’s just keeping people away from them. I mean, I can talk more about vitrification if you really want, but like I said, it’s really not my bailiwick.</p>
<p>Franklin: No, that’s fine. So you said your three major challenges were dealing with high-level waste, dealing with unstable plutonium-bearing materials and then the spent fuel.</p>
<p>Klein: High-level waste was assigned to the separate office, so that really wasn’t my—</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay, so—</p>
<p>Klein: --biggest challenge. So it was plutonium and the spent fuel were the two urgent priorities. But the third is really getting on with the cleanup and giving the whole cleanup some momentum and direction and some legs.</p>
<p>Franklin: What do you see as the future of Hanford? Because the focuses of the river, the plateau and the future. And the river and plateau seem to have these concrete goals applied to them. The future does seem harder to diagnose or kind of see, because eventually there is an idea that cleanup will be performed. And then so what do you think the future of the Tri-Cities holds after the danger’s mitigated?</p>
<p>Klein: Science, technology, engineering and math. I think this is, at its heart, a STEM community. And I think that we are very well-suited to grow that identity. We have a great STEM education that’s getting recognized nationwide [UNKNOWN] leading that. We have, I think, STEM employment opportunities. One of the things—my interests after retiring is running something called Executive Director Tri-Cities Local Business Association. And it’s looking at helping build local businesses with a high-tech nature that can help accommodate transition of employees. I’ve been active in promoting provisions in the DOE subcontracts that encourage the prime contractors to contract out more and better pieces of work to companies. So, I mean, I think there’s always been a good support for small businesses, but oftentimes that can be for janitorial supplies or this little thing, that little thing. There’s basically a huge workforce embedded—we call it in the fence—that does a lot of these other things. I’d like to see more, bigger, better chunks of that work able to go to local businesses that can then use that to develop their resumes. I mean, they’re highly incentivized to perform if—one, this is their backyard, their neighbors; two, you don’t get invited back to the party if you don’t do well. And they’re small and they’re very manageable. I think it would be very efficient. We have a number of examples of companies that have grown out of Hanford business or out of PNNL inventions or the expertise that people develop here that’s applicable to environmental challenges around the globe. So I think capitalizing on the lab and its high-tech things they do. We have BSEL right here and WSU Tri-Cities is a good example of kind of the collaborations. But PNNL is in a number of different sectors, and so the leveraging that more to help grow STEM businesses, employment opportunities, research opportunities I think is good. You’ve got the viticulture and the science of wines that is, I think, grown appreciation. Tourism, things like the Manhattan National Park, where people will come and see and appreciate the remarkable things that were done here. And the consequences, good and bad. But I mean it’s just—the stories to be told, people come here from around the world, I think, to see firsthand B Reactor and learn more about what that meant, what it took to get there. You’ve got the Reach National Monument, you have Ice Age Floods. There’s even STEM tourism. So you’ve got STEM education, STEM employment, STEM entrepreneurship. STEM tourism, I think, could really change—when people think of Hanford, instead of a stigma and high-level waste, oh my god, and the images that are conjured up there, I think are somewhat overblown. But instead of that, thinking of Hanford as science, technology, energy and math. This is the place to come to start a business, to get experience, to find good, smart people. I think it would do a good service for the community. And I think the national park would be one of the crown jewels in terms of STEM identity.</p>
<p>Franklin: Great. Speaking of high-level waste, has most of the danger been mitigated, to your knowledge, of the waste that’s out onsite? Or where—yeah, that’s my question.</p>
<p>Klein: The urgent risks have. I think, for the most part, the High Level Waste Tank have been interim stabilized, which means they’re—most of the things that are a threat of getting out and leaking, they basically got as much water, liquids, out of them as is possible in the single-shelled tanks. Leaks there, without a source of water, something to drive it further down into the water column or out, is mitigated. Double-shelled tanks are getting old and, of course, that’s a—had some leaks there. But even there, they’re double-shelled, so you can detect it and they can be emptied. Of course running out of space there. But the problem with nuclear waste, again, is until you know what you’re going to do with it, you can end up just moving it around. So the idea is you really need to put it in a better form and move it to someplace where it can be more easily managed or basically almost be semi-maintenance-free. We put a lot of stock into deep geologic repository, Yucca Mountain, that’s what we need to manage this high-level waste. But as I said before, I think, a lot of these can be managed quite safely for as long as may be necessary in dry storage still. So in terms of urgent risks, I think they’ve been for the most—mitigated. Now we’re dealing with more chronic, the longer-term risks and there, I think it’s a matter of being smart and getting a more productive. I think the red tape and the bureaucracy and the second-guessing, it’s almost become like a spectator sport with all the different oversight agencies and folks that are from King 5 over on the west side that seems to—and others, they’re really just focused on I’d say the things that can scare people or that might reflect badly on here but without appreciating it, I guess. I mean, there’s—yeah, there’s some mistakes that have been made, are being made, but the bulk of the people here that are good-hearted, well-intentioned, hard-working—you know, we live here, we drink the water here. If something was acutely dangerous, we’d know and we’d be able to deal with it. So I think things here are a lot safer than we appreciate.</p>
<p>Franklin: Do you find that, in general, the public is misinformed about both the nuclear materials production process but also the waste and the dangers of nuclear waste?</p>
<p>Klein: I would say, for the most part, the general public is apathetic about it. That there are segments of the public, the media, and others that—with different agendas, whether it be attention or profit or others, that put their own slant on it. But I think that with each new generation of people and understanding the atom that things are getting better. With radiation, you can measure it. It’s very easily detectable. Unlike gasses and chemicals and other things. We as a society put up, well, what are you going to do with the waste? Well, you look at the volumes of waste that are being involved and so forth, it’s really small. But we don’t seem to ask that same question about carbon dioxide and some of these others, yet we’re perfectly content to continue driving our cars and so forth. So I think there is a lack of perspective on these things. In some ways, it’s—the attention to them is important because they’re not going to just go away on their own. I mean, there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done and we need to have the resources to do it, and it’s kind of the squeaky wheel gets greased when it comes to budget things. But on the other hand, those things can get out of hand. So I don’t know what the public thinks, but I do have—[LAUGHTER]—I guess I’m an optimist at heart and think that each generation, like I said, is going to be smarter about—you know, what are the real hazards of these things and what really makes sense in terms of dealing with it? But one of my concerns is the less productive, the more inefficient we become: people with hands-on experience are retiring or dying. We can’t afford to lose that expertise. So I’m very much in favor of getting on with these things while we have these people around that know their way around and can deal with these things. Otherwise, we’re going to be wringing our hands and analyzing everything to death and actually doing less work. So that’s one of my biggest fears about all this stuff getting stretched out and prolonged.</p>
<p>Franklin: When you were—it was eight years you were head of—for eight years you were head of DOE RL. How did you deal with the critics? Hanford detractors or critics of the cleanup operation. Were there protests in Richland? I know Mike Lawrence talked about protests, and I’m wondering if you—how did you deal with either the protests or media scrutiny of Hanford?</p>
<p>Klein: You have to develop a thick skin. I mean, it still hurts. You feel it personally, you feel a disservice to all the folks that are working out here, putting their heart and soul into this. They get maligned so easily. How do you deal with it? It grates on you. It just kind of contributes to the stress. But it’s like, we’re all people with feelings and it’s—but the media typically focus on what’s going wrong and what’s sexy or what’s—get people’s attention, either sell viewership, readership, whatever. It just comes with the territory.</p>
<p>Franklin: Interesting. Thank you. Do you—you mentioned something pretty interesting a few minutes ago and I kind of wanted to get your thoughts on it. I understand that you probably don’t have an intimate—you might not have an intimate knowledge of the oil and gas industry, but do you feel that the nuclear industry has more unfair restrictions on it than oil and gas does in terms of energy production? Because you mentioned that oil and gas production, people don’t think about their emissions from their car the same way they kind of get this emotional response to nuclear energy. And certainly oil and gas producers don’t have to plan for 50, 100, 3,000 years into the future for the byproducts of the product they sell. I’m wondering if you could ruminate on that a bit more, or if you feel like there’s an undue burden on the nuclear power industry that’s not on other forms of energy.</p>
<p>Klein: I do think it has suffered unfairly for a number of reasons. Some of which I touched on before. I mean, I’m all for renewables, but I think they can only go so far. And it’s about the economics. I think the strength of our country is a lot about our economy. If you have cheap natural gas or—you know, the regulations on coal don’t take into account the cost of these different emissions, whether it’s CO2 or others, then I think those penalize the alternatives. Things like solar and wind have gotten tax breaks and different credits that I think have helped them come to market. Now you can get very inexpensive solar cells and things. And like I said, I’m all for using those where it makes sense. But from my standpoint, I think there’s still a need for some baseload. I think regionally distributed baseload, like small modular reactors, makes tremendous sense. So that you don’t have these vulnerable interconnected, largescale grids, but local communities could live on that, I think. In some areas of the world, they’re able to use the bypass, the residual heat, for steam, home heating and others. So I think, you look into the future, I think there could still be a very useful role for clean, safe, nuclear power without it being stymied by what about the nuclear waste? I think that can all be managed very well. So for future generations, I think—reducing dependence on fossil fuels and making the renewables—and I would consider nuclear power a renewable source—there’s lots of energy in those big atoms. It can and should be economical.</p>
<p>Franklin: Great.</p>
<p>Klein: If we get out of the way.</p>
<p>Franklin: [LAUGHTER] I’d like to switch topics to the historic preservation angle of your work. And I’d like you to talk about your involvement with preservation and saving of B Reactor from—and where you started. I know it was originally scheduled to be remediated and that was postponed and then eventually, I think due to pressure from B Reactor Museum Association and other groups, it gained a different kind of status, landmark status and things. I was wondering if you could talk about your role in that effort.</p>
<p>Klein: Well, you know, nine different reactors operating here along the Columbia River—really, nowhere else in the world is it like that. B Reactor being the first large industrial scale reactor in the world. The DOE office, back under the Office of Environmental Management. And their job is to clean up. DOE does have an historian. So you have a bureaucracy that’s basically goal in life is to remediate these sites and facilities and get the liabilities down, the mortgages down and so forth. There’s a lot of pressure to do that. We’re on a course of cocooning these various reactors, putting them into cheap-to-keep mode where basically you’ve removed all the ancillary facilities and reduced it down to a core building and sealed that up and basically [UNKNOWN] that went through all the regulatory processes. If we seal these up, put these into a mode that’s good for 50, 70 years, keep the critters and people out, and have monitors in it and then we’ll come back and the radiation levels will further decayed by then. And we can dispose of these, finally—these graphite blocks and cores. So we’re on a roll in terms of cocooning these reactors. But the—I guess the people—and you can’t help but work at these sites or go out to these facilities and not be in awe of the magnitude of what was accomplished out here from an engineering and scientific standpoint. I mean, to me, it was just remarkable and first time I went out to B Reactor, it—like most people, as nuclear engineers, it’s kind of like Mecca. It strikes you and it just—really, it just hits a chord emotionally. And certainly the folks at BRMA, the B Reactor Museum Association, and others felt—knew that. I think they were instrumental in raising some community consciousness about it. I had a person on my staff, Colleen French, who is now running the national park, who is communications, and she and I, basically, strategized as to how can we stop this freight train from running over B Reactor, considering that I had a mandate to proceed, basically, and cocoon it like the others. Folks on my staff, to be honest with you, were split. There were some people that saw it as an asset and others not—it’s a liability. Come on, get on with it. I lean towards the wanting to preserve it, and I guess, feel guilty almost taking it down. So Colleen and I strategized as to, how do we give this the best shot possible? So we went back and met with the DOE historian and talked to some others, and basically were able to prepare some memorandum decisions that said that at a minimum, we should give this more time and think this out. At a maximum, we should just bite the bullet and preserve it and do what we can and try to be careful. I mean, you can only spend money for things that—it’s government money. DOE goes to Congress, it’s appropriation and it’s money to x, y, and z. It’s illegal to use it for r, s, and—you know. It’s for this purpose and this purpose only. So it started with, I guess, working with the DOE system and other laws and rules that say, you know, under preservation—there are some preservation responsibilities and others and exploiting those to create room to keep it open until folks could get a better sense of, in general, just the role of the Manhattan Project in history and DOE’s role in preserving that, and working with other institutions, the Park Service and others to formalize that. And of course Park Service is struggling with their own—they don’t have enough money to take care of things they already have. So you get into that whole realm of things. But at least we were able to stop the bulldozers, if you will, or the momentum—the cocooning momentum, at least for B Reactor. Potentially with even T Plant and some other things. And I really give Colleen a lot of credit with how hard she worked, too, to help us put together that strategy and create that opening or stay of execution. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Did you encounter resistance in Washington, DC for—</p>
<p>Klein: Oh, yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: --for this idea? How did you overcome that, to help to show people the value of this?</p>
<p>Klein: Well, I guess, fortunately, I had enough—what—backing and credit or chits that I could dissent, disagree with my management agreeably and get things elevated to a higher level. So it was, I think, agree to disagree. And I credit with my management back in DC in the Office of Environmental Management with how they dealt with it too. And letting higher powers basically decide this, with the help of the historian and others. And I think that’s—you know, the other thing that I did is I listened to Skip Gosling. Clay Sell was the deputy secretary at the time. He was a history buff.</p>
<p>Franklin: So you say at the time, which—what time was this?</p>
<p>Klein: This was at the time when we were struggling with, how do we legitimize preserving B Reactor?</p>
<p>Franklin: Do you know around what year or years this would have been?</p>
<p>Klein: I’m going to guess it was 2003, 2004 timeframe.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. Sorry to interrupt.</p>
<p>Klein: Yeah, no, I just—so much of this is a blur in terms of who was where when. You start dealing with DC, it’s like—[LAUGHTER]—all look alike after a while. You know, I can come at it from different angles, Republicans, Democrats, you know, different folks’ emphasis and so forth. So I’m having a hard time recalling who exactly that was. But I remember Clay Sell and I can easily get back to you on when that was.</p>
<p>Franklin: It’s okay. I was just trying to get a general sense. So you said Skip Gosling?</p>
<p>Klein: Skip Gosling was the historian that we were working with. Clay Sell was the Deputy Secretary of Energy that was a history buff and who, I think, just, in the end, prevailed and was a decision-maker that enabled preserving this and working with Park Service. Colleen and I had a few different trips back to DC talking to these people and encouraging them—I hesitate to use the word lobbying, because it means something very, very particular, and we weren’t lobbying Congress; it was really within the Department. Although we had, certainly, allies, I think, with Patty Murray and Doc Hastings and others who, again, appreciated the Hanford history and what was done here and its significance.</p>
<p>Franklin: Did the Hanford collection—the array of historic objects and artifacts gathered from Site—was that part of your—what you were in charge of when you were heading the DOE or was that a different—</p>
<p>Klein: No, it was—I mean, that was under my purview. And we certainly had staff. But I must confess that of all the alligators that were surrounding the boat, that was the least of my—it wasn’t high up. I mean, that wasn’t—just too many other things were chomping at me and having to deal with. But I always felt comfortable—I mean, when you get in these positions, you kind of look at what your people are doing and you trust them in doing the right thing and you try to set a tone and direction and values and that sort of thing. So I was very fortunate—we have a very competent staff in environmental analysis and preservation, conservation. Paid attention to the different rules and governing those things. And they took care of it. They were, I think, good stewards.</p>
<p>Franklin: Great. How did you become involved with the REACH Museum?</p>
<p>Klein: Ah! At first it was as an ex oficio member of—it was called the REACH Board at the time. I think Colleen actually suggested it to me and them and set that up. I mean, it was an easy fit for me. As long as I was with DOE, I couldn’t be an actual member of the board. So the job was more of advisory and helping them. Of course, by that time, I think my feelings were well known that I did have a soft spot for appreciating the heritage here. Even predating the Manhattan Project, going back to the basalt flows and then the Ice Age Floods. There’s something very special and unique about this area, both the land and the people. And it’s those circumstances and things that gave rise to—I mean, the geology and the setting here is what gave rise to this being a great location for the Manhattan Project and the plutonium production mission. Which in turn brought all these incredible people here and formed a national laboratory that’s self-sustaining and a wonderful thing in its own right. And now lands are getting turned over to the port and being made available for other uses. I think it opens up opportunities for the tribes. But anyway, so the REACH was an easy fit for me to get involved in. And I’m proud to say I’m still—now I’m one what’s called the Foundation. It’s how the management structure of the REACH is set up. But they’ve overcome some very big hurdles. But I think the fact they have is—it’s meant to be, and it’s going to grow and prosper. But we still have some heavy lifts.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. Is there—sorry. What would you like future generations to know about working at Hanford? Or just Hanford in general?</p>
<p>Klein: I guess I’d like future generations to appreciate both the sacrifice and the significance of what happened here. That goes back to the tribes and what they sacrificed to what the early settlers that were evicted sacrificed, what the men and women involved in the construction, design, that relocated out here sacrificed, and the significance being with what was done. I’m still in awe. B Reactor up and running from nothing to up and running in 18 months, come on! I mean, it’s just—without computers and slide rules. These were adventurers, technologically, engineering, scientifically, and even management-wise. People come together. And at the same time, this is all under—because of threat of war. And creating something where people came and did this remarkable thing and have it used to kill people. There’s so many conflicting things about this to be learned so we don’t repeat the lessons of the past, yet showing what we’re capable of doing when we do come together with enough motivation and incentive and liberties. It’s just remarkable. So it’s a tough one to answer, what do you want people to remember? I just hope they appreciate the whole thing. The sacrifice and the significance.</p>
<p>Franklin: Great. Is there anything else that we haven’t talked about that you’d like to mention?</p>
<p>Klein: I feel drained. [LAUGHTER] If there’s something in particular that you’re interested in. Yeah, no, I just feel like I’ve been spouting out all over the place here.</p>
<p>Franklin: No, it was great. You really touched on a lot of really pertinent topics and it’s really nice to have your interview next to Mike Lawrence—you know, just this kind of documenting this post-production change. I think it’ll be really crucial to help people figure out—this is all part of the same story, and how people figure out, okay, what happened when that singular mission was kind of over, and how did this place kind of find its identity after that, that the whole mission had changed. So thank you. And thank you for talking to us today.</p>
<p>Klein: Well, I’m just—it comes back, like the STEM identity. I’m just hoping and optimistic that we can have a future that’s as distinctive and worthy as the significance of our predecessors did out here. Because it really changed the world, when you—it really is mind-blowing in a lot of respects. I’m just grateful to have the opportunity to be a little part of that continuum. Yeah, the fastest eight years of my life. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Well, thank you, Keith. I really appreciate it.</p>
<p>Klein: Yeah, you bet, Robert.<br /><br /><br /><a href="https://youtu.be/MAy7K26aMgY">View interview on Youtube.</a></p>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:09:55
Bit Rate/Frequency
Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio)
317 kbps
Hanford Sites
Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview
FFTF (Fast Flux Test Facility)
WIPP (Waste Isolation Pilot Project)
K Basins
PNNL (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)
ERDF (Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility)
K Reactors
ORP (Office of River Protection)
B Reactor
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site
1970-
Years on Hanford Site
Years on the Hanford Site, if any.
1973-
Names Mentioned
Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community.
Sam Volpentest
Bob Ferguson
Kevin Smith
Skip Gosling
Patty Murray
Doc Hastings
Mike Lawrence
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 Keith Klein
Description
An account of the resource
Keith Klein first moved to Richland, Washington in 1973. Keith worked for the Atomic Energy Commission and later the U.S. Department of Energy from 1970-2007.
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
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
02-07-17
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
Date Modified
Date on which the resource was changed.
2017-04-12: Metadata v1 created – [A.H.]
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.)
Rocky Flats (Colo.)
Carlsbad (N.M.)
Breeder reactors
Radioactive waste disposal
Radioactive waste sites
Hazardous waste site remediation
Columbia River
300 Area
Atomic Energy Commission
B Reactor
B Reactor Museum Association
Bechtel
BRMA
Cold War
Department of Energy
Flood
Floods
Hanford
K Basin
K Basins
K Reactor
K-Basin
K-Basins
Manhattan Project
Mountain
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Park
River
Safety
Savannah River
supplies
T Plant
War
Westinghouse
-
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1d9ff302dc0efcf4ee11d86c83d6be20
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fddda1570e3fff97baa01b4ef0f7d0005.mp4
2e095f92470d1f4278f84252b3f1b62d
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
Ken Silliman
Location
The location of the interview
Washington State University Tri-Cities
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p><strong>Northwest Public Television | Silliman_Ken</strong></p>
<p>Camera man: I'm recording.</p>
<p>Robert Bauman: All right. So I'm going to get the formal stuff out of the way first, and then we’ll talk. My name is Robert Bauman, and I'm interviewing Mr. Ken Silliman. And today is July 2nd of 2013. Interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. And I'll be talking with Mr. Silliman about his family's history about growing up in Kennewick and about his memories of the area and the impact of Hanford on the area and so forth. So Mr. Silliman, I'm going to start by just asking you to talk a little bit about your family and how and why they came to Kennewick.</p>
<p>Ken Silliman: Well, my mother's family was Case, and the Cases came in 1894 to the state of Washington. They came to Goldendale and then down to the Prosser area. And my granddad homesteaded then on Rattlesnake. When my mother and dad got married in 1914, Dad farmed a section of Grandpa's land for a year. And then he went out to the Weller Ranch and leased that. And he farmed that I believe until 1928 as close as I can figure. Couldn't afford to farm any more on dryland wheat on Rattlesnake, so he eventually took a job at Farmers Exchange. And that's how we got down to Kennewick. And then bought one of the partners out in '34 and the other one in '43, and we've had it since then.</p>
<p>Bauman: Okay. And so you moved into Kennewick in the 19--</p>
<p>Silliman: 1930.</p>
<p>Bauman: 1930, Okay. And then you were born in Kennewick?</p>
<p>Silliman: Yes. My brothers were all born on Rattlesnake. I was born in Kennewick in 1931.</p>
<p>Bauman: Okay. And what sort of memories do you have of Kennewick as a young boy growing up? What sort of community was it like? What sorts of things did you do for fun?</p>
<p>Silliman: Well, it was a very, very small town. Even in 1940, it was probably a little under 2,000 people. If anything happened in town and you got in any kind of trouble, well, your parents already knew about it by the time you got home. I learned to swim in the Columbia River and the irrigation canal there. Kennewick was very small. 10th Avenue was the boundary line of it on the south, Olympia on the west, and just past Gum Street on east. So there wasn't much town here.</p>
<p>Bauman: And so was it mostly an agricultural area then?</p>
<p>Silliman: Definitely, definitely ag. Both fruit and dry land wheat. Dry land wheat controlled a lot of the money that was spent in the area in that.</p>
<p>Bauman: Okay. I want you to talk about Farmers Exchange a little bit. I know your--was it your grandfather or your father who bought part of the business?</p>
<p>Silliman: My father.</p>
<p>Bauman: Your father.</p>
<p>Silliman: Yeah. Carl Williams and Alfred Amon, who were two dryland wheat farmers, started it either in '23 or '24. I can prove both dates there. [LAUGHTER] They came in towns, started--Alfred was mayor in Kennewick four different times. I believe it was in four different decades. And Carl Williams I believe was one of the trustees for WSU a period of time there.</p>
<p>Bauman: And so initially, what sorts of things did Farmers Exchange do?</p>
<p>Silliman: Well, it started as a livestock trading outfit. Trade horses for pigs or chickens for cows or just whatever you wanted to trade there. And then they got into the feed business a little bit to feed their own livestock and to sell a little bit. Got into garden seeds just a little bit. They were located right behind Washington Hardware on what at that time was Front Street. It's now Canal Drive. And our livestock pens were between us and Washington Hardware. They finally decided that, the city did, they did not want the livestock there a half block off Kennewick Avenue. So we moved our livestock down to behind Church's Grape Juice there on some leased land. And then when that Dad bought Alfred out, the last partner in '43, he couldn't go out and trade livestock and run the store, too. So we did away with the livestock at that time. Other than we still given into chickens, and rabbits, and wild turkeys, and things like that yet.</p>
<p>Bauman: [LAUGHTER] So did you help out at the store when you were growing up?</p>
<p>Silliman: Oh, sure. I worked the store. I was small for my age, so I didn't start right away there. And at that time the feed was all 100 pound bags except for wheat. It was in catch weights, which was just whatever would fit in the bag. It could be 125, 130, 120 there in that. Yeah, I worked there as a kid. But when I say how long I've worked there--which is 59 years--I don't count when I worked there as a kid because I probably wasn't worth much.</p>
<p>Bauman: [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Silliman: But also of course we know we worked in the orchards there. So we cut asparagus after the war started. They let us out early. They started school late so that we could go out and cut asparagus in the morning. Then we'd have to go to school some on Saturday to make up that time.</p>
<p>Bauman: Hm. Interesting. So what was school like in Kennewick in the 1930s, 1940s?</p>
<p>Silliman: Well, it changed considerably from the '30s to the '40s. They built the new high school in Kennewick in '36. And the first graduating class was '37, one of my brothers that I was later in business with was in that class. And I started first grade in the fall of '37 there. But very, very small. You knew everybody until about '43. Then things went nuts. People have asked us, didn't we resent all of a sudden, the class was just being overflowing and having to use extra rooms and storage buildings and stuff like that. We didn't think about that too much. Just more kids to play with. And a lot of those kids that came in the '40s are still my very, very close friends.</p>
<p>Bauman: Growing up, do you remember any community celebrations, picnics, 4th of July parades, any of those sort of community events?</p>
<p>Silliman: Oh, yes. We're right on 4th of July right now. And they always had a big to do it at the Keewaydin Park there. The Brandland wheat farmers would normally maybe make one round around outside of their field to make sure their machine was working. Then they'd take a break and come to the to-do downtown here. And then right after that, they'd usually start harvest there. Then there was the Gape Festival in the '40s I would guess, '46, '47. I remember that one specifically. They had two different entertaining groups. They had Spike Jones here and Jack Teagarden. And when Spike Jones sent them their contracts, there was two different contracts. And there were different amounts of money. So they took the cheaper one. So he put on the same show for three days in a row. That was right in the street there in the 200 Block on Kennewick Avenue. But some of the other Grape Festivals were held up around Keewaydin Park in that. We used to have rodeos up where the high school, Kennewick High School is now in there.</p>
<p>Bauman: And so you were born in 1932?</p>
<p>Silliman: '31.</p>
<p>Bauman: '31. And so you, when you were growing up, in the Great Depression, did you have a sense that there was an economic depression going on? Or as a young kid, were you not really fully aware of this?</p>
<p>Silliman: I probably wasn't fully aware of it. We had a great big garden. We had a couple milk cows. We had chickens. We were pretty self-sufficient there on it. I got a new pair of shoes usually the start of school, new pair of overalls. So I was doing fine, yeah. Probably the folks were having to scrape and stoove for it.</p>
<p>Bauman: So going back to talking about the Farmers Exchange a little bit more, you mentioned that your father was partners with--</p>
<p>Silliman: He went to work for Carl and Alfred. Then in '34, he bought Carl out. And he and Alfred then were partners until '43 when Alfred wanted to go run his cherry orchard. And so Dad bought him out there. Things were simpler then. They wrote the contract with an indelible pencil and half a piece of paper and tore the bottom half off. And I still have that contract.</p>
<p>Bauman: [LAUGHTER] Didn't have a roomful of attorneys there--</p>
<p>Silliman: [LAUGHTER] No, no.</p>
<p>Bauman: --to do the contract. So you mentioned one thing you noticed when, at some point, in the 1940s, suddenly there were a lot more students in schools in Kennewick. I wonder if you could talk about any other changes you noticed or impact the Hanford site on the town of Kennewick?</p>
<p>Silliman: Well yes, there was a lot of things. Avenue C went from the Old Grain Bridge to Benton Street and then as Columbia Avenue down to the river. And that was houses, basically. All of a sudden, any space that had a place where you'd put a trailer or any building that you didn't have rain coming through it was rented out. I remember one time, I think it was in '43, that we lived at 603 North Everett which was down by the river about half a block off the river. And we were out in the yard on a Sunday. This car drove by several times, a little coupe with a man and woman in it. And finally the man got out and came and said, do you know any place we can rent a bed and bath there? We've lived here for a week just in our car and we just can't find anything. My dad said why don't you sit down and have some iced tea. And I'll call around, surely I can find something. He came out about a half hour later and said you're right, there just nothing for rent in Kennewick. He said you might as well stay with us until you find something. And they lived with us for about a month. He was an engineer from the East Coast and his wife.</p>
<p>Bauman: Right, so it impacted your family directly, at least--</p>
<p>Silliman: Oh, yeah. And the schools and everything else there. The road, when the workers would come home there at quitting time, the roads would be so full you couldn't even get on Columbia Avenue and that. I remember Newman's Grocery, finally they had—most of the groceries closed at 6 o'clock. He started a second grocery on the corner of Benton and Kennewick Avenue. It was a cash and carry rather than a charge and fill your order for you. But he had stayed open late so the Hanford workers could get back and get some groceries there. Entertainment, I remember the folks would take their car over Saturday sometime and park on Kennewick Avenue, leave their car there. And then they'd go over in the evening and people would walk down street and visit. And women would sit in the cars and men would walk up and down the street and visit to different guys. It was a different time.</p>
<p>Bauman: You mentioned more students in school. Were more schools built then?</p>
<p>Silliman: Well, not right away. My favorite thing to do as a little boy was to go with my dad when he was trading livestock. And he'd go to Wallula, or Pasco, or Connell, or Benton City, or Richland. And I always had to ask him, when we crossed the river, whether we were going into Benton City or Richland because they were both very, very, very small towns there. I think Richland had a store in it run by John Dam, if I recall right. And his daughter was our sixth grade teacher there, Geri Dam was her name.</p>
<p>Bauman: So you did occasionally—you did go to the other towns sort of in the area at times?</p>
<p>Silliman: Oh sure. We came up to football games. Kennewick, Pasco, and Richland--Pasco and Richland kind of fought back and forth. Pasco of course was a railroad town and that. But we had friends in Pasco and we had friends in Richland. And we competed against some of them there.</p>
<p>Bauman: Mm-hm. So any other changes or ways that the sort of significant growth seemed to affect Kennewick at all, if you can remember? Obviously it changed some of the business practices. They stayed open later, at least—</p>
<p>Silliman: That grocery store did. Yeah, mm-hm. Things were just chock full. Everything was chock full. For instance, there was a place called Camel's Cabins right at the base of the old Green Bridge. And I've heard stories that at times, he had some CCC camp type places there with boards up about four foot and then canvas over the top. He rented those for eight hours at a time. You moved in, ate, slept, got out so the next family could come in there.</p>
<p>Bauman: Wow.</p>
<p>Silliman: So like I say, everything was just chock full.</p>
<p>Bauman: Right, right. Now, do you remember--so you were born in '31. So you were about 12 years old in '43 when the Hanford project started. I guess, first of all, do you remember--going back to 1941, when the attack on Pearl Harbor-- do you remember--</p>
<p>Silliman: Oh certainly.</p>
<p>Bauman: --that sort of thing. And do you have any memories from that? And then when did you find out about something happening out at Hanford?</p>
<p>Silliman: Well you never knew what was happening in Hanford. If you asked somebody what was happening out there, they said they're building Wendell Willkie buttons or nylon stockings or something like that that you couldn't get a hold of. But of course, everything like sugar and shoes were rationed.</p>
<p>Bauman: And when did you find out what was going on at Hanford? After the war ended, after the bombs?</p>
<p>Silliman: Yes. You just did not hear what was going on. And if somebody did say anything, they weren't there very long. Yeah.</p>
<p>Bauman: You just knew there was some sort of big project that people were working on?</p>
<p>Silliman: Yes, that's all we knew, was a big project.</p>
<p>B. Yeah. And so going back, do you remember finding out about World War II itself, the attack on Pearl Harbor?</p>
<p>Silliman: Oh yeah. As I recall, it was on a Sunday. And it affected me because my brother Clint, who was working for J.C. Penney's up in Palouse, he enlisted right away with the caveat that he be able to bring his stuff home before he went in. So he got to be home for Christmas. So that's the last Christmas he was home for a number of years.</p>
<p>Bauman: Right, so your family was impacted very immediately.</p>
<p>Silliman: Mm-hm. Yeah, all three of my brothers were in World War II.</p>
<p>Bauman: And so then what about yourself? What happened with you after finishing high school? What did you do from that point on?</p>
<p>Silliman: Well, I had grown up with a friend that lived down in the garden tracts with me there. His name was Bill Bryce. We'd gone all the way through--we played together before school. Went to school together. Walked back and forth to school together. Went to college together. Roomed together in college. Then when the Korean War broke out, they weren't giving deferments to begin with. So I enlisted and he sat it out. And finally they gave deferments there. So he went ahead and completed his college there and then went to University of Washington. That was at Central. And then he went on to the University of Washington and got his masters. And then did his service and put in his career with Boeing. In fact, he was responsible for writing the Boeing contract out here a number of years ago when Boeing was doing the computer service out here. He was the sales manager.</p>
<p>Bauman: And then what point did you come back to Farmers Exchange?</p>
<p>Silliman: When I got out of the service, I was considering a job with Fairchild Camera Corporation. I was in a RB-36 reconnaissance bomber outfit that used a lot of cameras. My job was to run the shop to repair and service those. And I got offered a job there. But it would've been travelling. And by this time, I married while I was in the service. And my brother came back to South Dakota where I was stationed at Ellsworth and said, would you like to come back to the store? And that's what I always want to do all my life. So I took him up on that. And when we got out, my wife I came back here and went to work. And I've been there ever since.</p>
<p>Bauman: And what year was that?</p>
<p>Silliman: That was 1954. And Clint and I and Dad were in partnership. Them we bought Dad out shortly after that. Then Clint and I were in partners until '81. His son was going to buy him out, and then he backed out. So I bought him out. And then they shut down Hanford. [LAUGHTER] And boy, did it have an effect on us through the '80s. Just almost busted us.</p>
<p>Bauman: Really?</p>
<p>Silliman: Yeah.</p>
<p>Bauman: Hm. So again, more impact related to Hanford?</p>
<p>Silliman: Oh yeah. And Hanford still has a big impact on us. We didn't realize, some of these people that traded with us had been trading with us for a number of years. We didn't know what they did. To us, that's Old Joe, you know? And in '81 when they started laying all those people off, Old Joe was coming in and saying hey, I make sure the family gets the feed and stuff they need. I’ll send you a check, I'm going to Texas or somewhere else and see what I can find. So it really had an effect on us in the '80s. Some of the layoffs since then haven't had as big effect. But they still affect us.</p>
<p>Bauman: Yeah, so it definitely says something about the economic impact that-</p>
<p>Silliman: But there's been more diversification since then.</p>
<p>Bauman: Mm-hm, mm-hm. And since 1954, a lot of grown in Kennewick?</p>
<p>Silliman: Considerably.</p>
<p>Bauman: Changed quite a bit from 1954. What are some of the biggest changes that you've seen since 1954 in Kennewick? Obviously the size is one of them, right?</p>
<p>Silliman: The size, the selection, the competition. You know, every time they open a big box store, they handle something that we handle there. But we find we can compete with them through service and other ways. And we've had to change. We started off trading cattle. Now we trade lawn mowers and power equipment there. We still have the feed. We still have the garden supplies. We've enlarged that. But you wouldn't recognize the store from what it was when I was a boy. We've also bought other buildings around us and expanded there.</p>
<p>Bauman: But still in downtown Kennewick?</p>
<p>Silliman: The same location. Other than the one move that we made there in '39 from behind Washington Hardware up to where we are now.</p>
<p>Bauman: Is there anything I haven't asked you about or that you haven't talked about in terms of, especially in terms of say, growing up in Kennewick or any stories or events that really stand that you think you'd really like to talk about?</p>
<p>Silliman: Well during the buildup of Hanford--we'd always had dust storms here. But during the build up of the Hanford, all the ground was been worked. And we had dust storms--you might as well just close everything down because you couldn't see, you couldn't drive there. It was just really bad. Obviously, part of it was from the dryland wheat farmer. But a lot of it was just from everything building up on that. We were offered some land to collect a debt one time. And my brother and I went out and looked at it and decided it was too far out of town and the town wasn't building that way. And so we said no, we couldn't use that for payment for the debt. That land was at 395 and 10th Avenue in Kennewick which now has got a whole bunch of businesses and PUD and that there, so--</p>
<p>Bauman: Probably a pretty valuable piece of property.</p>
<p>Silliman: Yeah. And you know everything built west to begin with. The city was able to--when Columbia Center came in--was able to slip in there and take a road, make it city property and get that in the city of Kennewick. But now it's building to the south in the downtown area. I've seen it go up and down and up and down. At one time I thought it was going to be just not livable down there. But it's changed again now. New storefronts, the businesses are filling the downtown area. When we came home in '54, my wife was not from here. So I took her around the Tri-Cities. And we start grading the areas. We graded Pasco as the best shopping area in the Tri-Cities. 4th and Lewis just had all sorts of stores around it. Good shoe stores and good clothing stores and that. Richland was nice and clean up there too. Not as many stores though. We rated Pasco first, Richland second, and Kennewick a very--downtown Kennewick a very poor third. We had J.C. Penney and that was about it. And that has changed. I would rate now Kennewick maybe as the top of the older areas there.</p>
<p>Bauman: The downtown?</p>
<p>Silliman: Yeah.</p>
<p>Bauman: What would you like for someone who maybe decades from now might be interested in watching your interview or something and learning more about Kennewick or about the Tri-Cities or that sort of thing, what do you think is most important for them to understand about the town of Kennewick that you grew up in the 1930s and 1940s?</p>
<p>Silliman: Well, it went from a strictly farm community. Everybody was either involved in farming somehow or dealing with farmers and that. And were the orchards were have been torn out. Now there's houses where the biggest grape vineyard, Concord grape vineyard was in the world. It's now buildings there. Those grapes are gone. So it's just entirely changed. The Tri-Cities is become a metropolitan type area there. And what are they, fourth or fifth in the state as far as there? You got Tacoma, Seattle, Tacoma, Spokane, and then maybe the Tri-Cities? Good place to live.</p>
<p>Bauman: [LAUGHTER] Yeah. Well, do you have any other things that you'd like to talk about or think would be important to talk about?</p>
<p>Silliman: Not that I can think of.</p>
<p>Bauman: Great. Well thank you very much--</p>
<p>Silliman: You bet. It's been my pleasure.</p>
<p>Bauman: --for coming in today and doing the interview.</p>
<p>Silliman: I'm sorry I didn't have more on Hanford. Oh, there used be a boat that went up the river to Hanford. I believe it's called the Hanford Flyer. And a number of years ago when the Tri-City Herald was repainting one of their buildings and striped the paint off, I noticed on the building, on the east side of the building, there which--and this building is just south of their main building. It had a sign up there for the Hanford Flyer.</p>
<p>Bauman: It was still on the building?</p>
<p>Silliman: Yeah. But they covered it of course when they repainted.</p>
<p>Bauman: Do you have any idea what years the Hanford Flyer was in operation?</p>
<p>Silliman: No, I do not. I meant to ask Tom Moak about that, if he had some information.</p>
<p>Bauman: And so what did it take up?</p>
<p>Silliman: I believe it took mail. And it would take passengers and freight up.</p>
<p>Bauman: That's a great story, and that it was still on the building after all those years.</p>
<p>Silliman: Yeah. There used be a couple horse troughs there in downtown Kennewick too, but they're all gone too. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Bauman: Great. All right. Well Mr. Silliman, thanks very much.</p>
<p>Silliman: Thanks for having me, Bob.</p>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:28:21
Bit Rate/Frequency
Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio)
189 kbps
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site
1931-today
Names Mentioned
Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community.
Case Family
Carl Williams
Alfred Amon
Brandland
Spike Jones
Jack Teagarden
John Dam
Geri Dam
Clint
Bill Bryce
Tom Moak
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 Ken Silliman
Description
An account of the resource
An interview with Ken Silliman 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
07-02-2013
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.
Format
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video/mp4
Date Modified
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2018-31-1: Metadata v1 created – [A.H.]
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.
1954
Boeing
Dam
Entertainment
Grain
Hanford
Kennewick
Park
River
School
Street
Sun
supplies
War
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fe432dc936185b4193f34dada1571fc04.mp4
d88e1cd2b5fbc7af387dea2d3370d34b
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F597191347c2206788f1ea5b0744d2ead.JPG
3e71992845a88984bc7c85915e72c7db
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 Franklin
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Lorraine Ferqueron
Location
The location of the interview
Washington State University Tri-Cities
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p>Robert Franklin: Victor, are we ready?</p>
<p>Victor Vargas: We’re ready.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. My name is Robert Franklin. I’m conducting an oral history interview with Ruth Lorraine Fer—</p>
<p>Lorraine Ferqueron: Ferqueron.</p>
<p>Franklin: Ferqueron. Thank you, Lorraine. On October 18<sup>th</sup>, 2016. The interview is being conducting on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Lorraine about her experiences growing up in the Richland area and the forced evacuation in 1943. For the record, can you state and spell your full name for us?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: My name is Ruth Lorraine Ferqueron. It’s R-U-T-H L-O-R-R-A-I-N-E F-E-R-Q-U-E-R-O-N.</p>
<p>Franklin: Great. Thank you. So, let’s start at the beginning. When and where were you born?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Pasco, Washington at Lady of Lourdes, May 7<sup>th</sup>, 1931. Those days, they kept the mother and the baby for ten days. So I came to Richland when I was ten days old.</p>
<p>Franklin: And where in Richland did your family live?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Well we had—during the time, we had three different farms. One was out by basically where Battelle is now. I can’t really tell you exactly because I don’t have any points to base it from except the river.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure, but somewhere where the Battelle campus is now, okay.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Mm-hmm. Actually, that area was called Fruitdale when I was little.</p>
<p>Franklin: Mm-hmm. I’ve seen that on some—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: You’ve seen the Fruitdale?</p>
<p>Franklin: --On some maps.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Some early maps—like ‘30s and ’40s maps. So you said your family had three farms—three acres?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: No.</p>
<p>Franklin: Three areas that they farmed.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Three areas of farms.</p>
<p>Franklin: Three areas of farms. So one’s in Fruitdale, or PNNL campus.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah, but I was very young when that was going on. And then we moved in to—closer to Richland and had a farm up below where Tagaris is now.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: And then the last one was out on—is it Wellsian Way that goes—not Wellsian, the road that goes to West Richland.</p>
<p>Franklin: Van Giesen?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Below the Tri-City Court Club was—we had 118 acres there.</p>
<p>Franklin: Is that Van Giesen?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Huh?</p>
<p>Franklin: That goes to—is it Van Giesen that goes to—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah, Van Giesen.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Right below the Tri-City Court Club.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: We had that until 1943, when we were forced out.</p>
<p>Franklin: Can you describe your memory of that event?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: That day? Yeah. I remember it. I was 12. These two men came to the door and told my father that they had declared eminent domain and they were taking the land. We had I think it was about three weeks to get out. There was seven of us children.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: We had a dairy farm there—well, my parents did, of course. I think we had 27 cows that Dad had to sell for five dollars apiece.</p>
<p>Franklin: And I imagine that was pennies on the dollar.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah. Well, yes. And then we were given—Dad was given—everyone was given, I think, $5,000 for their property, no matter what size or anything. That was actually owed to the bank, so we never—my father and mother didn’t have any money. And we moved to Finley.</p>
<p>Franklin: And then what did your parents—what did your family do in Finley?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Well, Dad did a lot of trucking and we had a small farm there.</p>
<p>Franklin: But more like a truck farm?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah, well, we had peppermint.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: And asparagus. We had, I think, three cows that Dad kept. Two or three cows. My brother could tell you that more than I could. And we raised asparagus.</p>
<p>Franklin: And how long did that go on, did your parents do that?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Until I was 15. We moved to the Richland Wye.</p>
<p>Franklin: And why did your parents moved to the Richland Wye?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Dad went into working in construction. We left the farm and farming. We took one cow and moved to the Richland Wye—what’s now the Richland Wye.</p>
<p>Franklin: Your favorite cow?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah, probably. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Did he work for Hanford, or in—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: No, no.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: The only one in our family that worked for Hanford that I’m aware of is my grandfather. My grandfather had a farm here. His name was Augustus Long. He was the ditch back rider. A ditch back rider is someone who rides the irrigation ditches and checks it out and makes sure everything’s going fine. Started doing that on horseback. And then, I guess, the irrigation district or somebody bought him this truck to ride it in. After they took him off—took his land, he went to court, actually, and they paid him off.</p>
<p>Franklin: Hmm.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Because they had to, to keep—it was all secret, you know. Everything at Hanford—nobody knew what was going on, even the people that worked there. He went to work for them for a short time, just to show them where everything was. He knew all the county—all the boundaries, and all the lines and where everything was. So he worked for them for a while—short time. Then he moved to Grandview.</p>
<p>Franklin: Did he receive more money in the settlement because he took them to court?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: No, no.</p>
<p>Franklin: No?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: No.</p>
<p>Franklin: He just had to go through the extra step.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah, he got extra because he worked for them for that short time. And then because he got as far as the court in Spokane, and they paid him off. In other words, they bribed him out of it.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, so, but did he receive more money in the end for going to court?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah, he probably did. I have no idea how much, but he probably did, yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure. And how long—do you know approximately how long he worked for the government—for Hanford?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Oh, it was a matter of two or three months, probably.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay, so not too significant.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah, I don’t really remember, but it wasn’t long.</p>
<p>Franklin: But he was part of that transition, though, right? Kind of showing them the lay of the land.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah, he said the hardest thing he ever had to do was cut off the water to all those farms, and they just—</p>
<p>Franklin: Watch them die.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Watch them die. And bulldozed under—they were actually bulldozed.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, many of them were.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: That’s why—I hear people today say, well, it was a sand pile when we got here. Well, of course it was.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah. That helps erase that evidence of human habitation.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Oh, yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: And make sure people don’t want to come back.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Right.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow, that’s really—so your father—or your grandfather was the only person that worked for—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s true, because—it was a very traumatic thing, because one day I had my complete family here. And three weeks later, they were scattered all over the state.</p>
<p>Franklin: Mm.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: And I lost—I could walk from our house to grandpa’s house. And then they went up to Grandview, I mean, and we just didn’t get to see them as often.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, right, because of the—not as much—farther distance, not as good of roads.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Well, eventually, he moved back to Benton City and had a farm up there. But in those days, going from where we lived in Finley to Benton City was quite a trip.</p>
<p>Franklin: I bet. I bet that would have been an all-day affair.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah. My mother told me when they were children to go to Kennewick to shop, it was all day, because they had a horse and a wagon.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, wow.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: They went to Kennewick and back and it was an all-day trip.</p>
<p>Franklin: So when do your parents and grandparents—when did your family come to the Richland area?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah. My great-grandparents came here just about the turn of the century. But as far as I can figure, about 1900. Maybe a little earlier. And my great-grandfather farmed the area somewhere between where WinCo is now and the Yakima River.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. And then did they—when they came, were there already—was there already irrigation piping here? Was there an irrigation district?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: I don’t remember—I mean, I don’t really know. I never was told. My grandparents and my mother and her siblings came—let’s see, she was born in 1905 in Nebraska, and she was three when they came here.</p>
<p>Franklin: So in 1908.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: 1908, yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. I know there were irrigation lines—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: And there was irrigation then.</p>
<p>Franklin: --at that time.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: 1900 is a little—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: A little early.</p>
<p>Franklin: A little early. Did your—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: But—</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, sorry.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: They had the Yakima River. So they had a water supply and they--</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: I know you’ve probably heard about the Rosencrans and the water wheel they had here on the river?</p>
<p>Franklin: No, no, tell me about that.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Well, I don’t really know much about it, but there are pictures of it available somewhere.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. I’ll have to look at—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: The Rosencrans family had that.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. Great. Thank you.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: And that was—that was probably the start of the irrigation right there. Around that time.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right. From the research I’ve done, it shows that kind of later in 1906, 1908, the White Bluffs Irrigation Company and the Hanford Irrigation Company, which were formed by kind of collected capital on the west side of the state laid down the irrigation piping, bought the land—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Miles and miles of it, yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right. And then sold the land to people, and then people would have to pay monthly irrigation bills.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Right.</p>
<p>Franklin: Whether they used the water or not. It was kind of a scheme to make a bunch of money.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Well, it’s still that way.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, it is. But I’ve always been kind of interested about the pre—because it sounds like there were smaller attempts by families at creating some irrigation tunnels and ditches.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: I don’t know if there’s anybody still living that would know.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, it’s—the nature of the history is—physically the evidence has been wiped off the map.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah. Oh, yeah. That was wiped out with the bulldozers and everything—that was all—</p>
<p>Franklin: So your great-grandparents that came, that would have been your father’s side?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: My mother’s.</p>
<p>Franklin: Your mother, oh, so then your mother was born in Nebraska?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: My father, on my Sloppy side of the family, I don’t really know when they came. But my father was born in Prosser—well, AmaRosa district outside of Prosser—in 1905.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: He was the third baby born in Benton County.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Well, you know, years ago—before 1905, there was no Benton County. It was Yakima County.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yup.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Then they divided it, and Dad was born after it was made a county.</p>
<p>Franklin: Interesting.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: I don’t know exactly where they came from. They did live here in Richland for a number of years because my mother and father went to school from first grade to, I believe, fifth. And then his family moved away. And then he came back in his 20s and went to work for John Weidle and Thad Grosscup. There’s streets named after them in West Richland.</p>
<p>Franklin: John Weidle and who?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Thad Grosscup.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, yeah, Grosscup.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah. Yeah, I knew both of those men.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: He was working in wheat fields all over here and Idaho and everything. And anyway, my parents married here in 1930.</p>
<p>Franklin: In Richland?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Oh, actually, married in Kennewick because the old Methodist church in Kennewick on Kennewick Avenue.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, right. And then how did your parents meet?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: In school.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, in school. Well, right, first through fifth. But how did they reconnect later—I mean, were they both in Richland at the same time, or—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah, he came back to work for Thad--</p>
<p>Franklin: Well, right.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: --in what is now West Richland. And mom worked for John Dam. You know, John Dam Plaza?</p>
<p>Franklin: Yup.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Named after him. Well, she worked for John for—right out of high school. She graduated in the old high school here in 1922, and went to work for John Dam.</p>
<p>Franklin: And what did she do?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: And Dad was in and out of the—she was a clerk.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, in—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: In his store, mm-hm.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, at his store.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah. Well, John Dam had a—well, it was like a department store. He sold everything. He was also our unofficial banker.</p>
<p>Franklin: As many storekeepers often were in those days.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Well, he gave credits through the winter to the farmers and then they would pay it off in the fall with the crops.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, yeah, no, that’s a—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: An old—</p>
<p>Franklin: A long-standing tradition in agriculture.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah. A lost tradition now.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yes. Although, sadly, sometimes, abused and—like the sharecropping system of the South. But usually not quite so much here, luckily. So graduated from Richland. Okay, wow. So you said you grew up—you lived in three different farms here.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah. And went to school here in Richland at what is now Lewis and Clark.</p>
<p>Franklin: Went to school at Lewis and Clark. Okay. And how come your parents moved so much in the 12 years between the three different farms? Do you know why they--?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: You know, I really don’t remember. Some of the farms—two of the farms were rented. So that might have been why. He found a better place. There was a time when we moved away from Richland. We lived in Corfu, which does not exist now.</p>
<p>Franklin: In where, sorry?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Corfu. It’s right across the mountain from White Bluffs.</p>
<p>Franklin: Could you—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Right out of Othello.</p>
<p>Franklin: Could you spell that for me?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Corfu, C-O-R-F-U.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay. I would not have spelled it that way. Thank you.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: And as far as we know, my sister was the only person ever born there. My mother was a postmaster there. All the outlying farmers would come in and get their mail there.</p>
<p>Franklin: Mm. Do you know if there was a store there, or was it just a—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yes, there was a store, but it was gone. It was abandoned. Actually, Corfu was founded, I think, for the railroad workers.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: To have a place to stay. And we lived in—it was a hotel, and we lived on the second floor, and, well, part of the time on the first floor. And my mother was postmaster.</p>
<p>Franklin: Interesting. Was it a functioning hotel at that point?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: No. No, we were the only residents in there.</p>
<p>Franklin: Only residents there. Oh, wow.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: We had lots of room.</p>
<p>Franklin: So it was really just the postal designation to deliver mail at that point. And was that—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: We had a lot of sheep herders go through.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, I would imagine. Interesting.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: I don’t know if you know about the sheep herds that went through. They were—oh, about four of five thousand sheep per herd, you know.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, and it was often—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: They would go up, and go across Grand Coulee Dam before it was closed to them.</p>
<p>Franklin: And it was often—I don’t know if it was this far north, but often sheep herders were Basque men? People from the Basque region? Do you know of—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: I just remembered, when my father was in his early teens, he was a sheep herder for a summer or two.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, really?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow, that’s really—in the same area?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah, mm-hmm.</p>
<p>Franklin: Is Corfu—was that where part of the Hanford reservation extends over?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: You know, I don’t know if it goes that far or not. I doubt it, but I don’t know.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: I know people are surprised when I tell them that there’s ice caves up there.</p>
<p>Franklin: Really?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah, the White Bluffs range there. Yeah. We used to go into those ice caves, and the people in Corfu and another little town up there used to keep their meat and stuff in there.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Refrigeration, yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, that was a very prized thing before electric refrigeration.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Well, it’s been there since the Ice Age.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow, that’s really interesting.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: What was the other little town?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: You know, I just don’t remember now.</p>
<p>Franklin: That’s okay. So your parents—your mother worked for John Dam for a time, your father was kind of a wheat farmer—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah, and—</p>
<p>Franklin: Then they settled down and lived in these three different farms. Now, the last one you lived in in Richland, that was one that your parents had bought?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: They were buying it.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah--or they were buying it, they had a mortgage on it.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah, they did pay quite a bit on it when we lost it. But we lost—they just lost all of that.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: So.</p>
<p>Franklin: And it was a cattle ranch?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: It was a dairy farm, yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Dairy farm, sorry.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah. As far as I remember, we had about 27 cows. We had a huge pasture. Dad rented out pasture land to horses, too.</p>
<p>Franklin: Mm. Was that irrigated pasture, or--?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: No.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, just for—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: It had a pond, but—</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, it had a pond, okay.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: I only remember that, because I was sliding around on it one time on the ice and went through the ice and cut my ankle open.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, wow.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: That’s why I remember it.</p>
<p>Franklin: So tell me about growing up in kind of this small agricultural town—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Well, it’s—</p>
<p>Franklin: And your childhood and school and friends.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Well, everybody knew you, and I was related to half the town, because I had--two uncles had places here, and at least one aunt and her husband. Well, I always say, it was so small in town that if I did anything wrong, my father knew about it in about 30 seconds, because—[LAUGHTER]—the whole town would call him and tell him, you know? But it was just a really easy-going good time.</p>
<p>Franklin: How did the Depression affect your family? Did it affect the town?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Well, about like anybody else, except we had meat, because we had cows, we had pigs, we had chickens. Mom would buy a bunch of little chicks every year. We grew—my mother canned everything. We had lots of food. Clothes and everything, that was a little bit of a problem because of the money. But we did pretty good because—and I don’t remember ever being hungry. Well, I had the kind of parents that if there was food, we got it first anyway.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right. So you might not have known at the time—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: I don’t remember it being an unhappy time at all.</p>
<p>Franklin: Interesting.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: But now I realize how much I learned from my mother of how to get by cheaply. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah! Did you ever go to Hanford or White Bluffs at all? Did you know anybody at Hanford?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Oh, yeah. We went through there. I did know them, but now—except for one teacher and I can’t remember his name—and he also taught at Kennewick later. I had him for a teacher there. That was 65 years ago that I graduated. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Of course, of course. A lot of focus is on—especially recently with the creation of the National Park and some of these stories of White Bluffs and Hanford are becoming more well-known, but Richland is also a community that was—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: --displaced by the—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: We were very affected by it. I mean, a very emotional thing. There was one man that when they told him he had to get out, he died later that day of a heart attack. Now, whether or not he had a heart attack coming on, who knows? But he did die of a heart attack. Well, that hit us all pretty hard. And then having to say goodbye to my grandparents, and my cousins, and aunts and uncles—</p>
<p>Franklin: Have you ever been to any of the—I know they had the Hanford-White Bluffs reunions—were Richland people ever included in those?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: I don’t know about—we never were included as far as I know with Hanford and White Bluffs, but we had our own. It was called the Old Timers’ Picnic.</p>
<p>Franklin: Old Timers’ Picnic, okay.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: And you could not come to that unless you were here prior to 1943. I remember one occasion there, I was living in the south at the time, in South Carolina—came out for vacation. I was 36 years old, and I’m sitting at this table, and Mrs. John Dam, who had not seen me since I was a child, came up to me and said, you must be Edith Long’s little girl. And she patted me on the head like I was a little child. I’ll never forget it. I could not believe she remembered me all that time.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: That was shortly before she died.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow, that’s something.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: She was in her 90s then.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow. Yeah, memories are funny that way, huh?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: I mean, some things we remember crystal clear, and others kind of seem to get fuzzy.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Just the other day, someone asked me, well, who was John Dam? And its kind of surprised me, because I just assumed everybody knew who he was.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: And he was county commissioner, too.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah. How much of—do you live in Richland now?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: I live at the Richland Wye, yes.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. How did you feel coming back to the Richland Wye and seeing this different town that had been—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: --created, and this kind of suburban landscape that had been placed over what had once been farmland. How did that make you feel when you came back?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Well, it made me—it was not a good thing. Bad memories. Losing—my dad’s losing his farm that he’d worked so many years and everything for—it basically shortened his life some.</p>
<p>[TELEPHONE RINGS]</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Oh!</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, it’s okay.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Well, it means I got to take a pill.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: So I need my bag over there.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, sure. Emma, can you grab that? And then we have water right here for you.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah. I forgot about it. I would have turned it off.</p>
<p>Emma Rice: This bag?</p>
<p>Franklin: Believe me, it’s all right.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Well, if I don’t, I might forget it.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, no, believe me, it’s—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: You know, when you’re 85, you’ve got to be careful.</p>
<p>Rice: No, you—[LAUGHTER] You’re good.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: I’ve got water here. I’ll be fine.</p>
<p>Rice: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: But it was also a little complicated, because living at the Richland Wye, we had one time and Richland had another time. It was an hour’s difference between us.</p>
<p>Franklin: Huh? Really?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yes. Yes, Richland city proper—property was on—an hour ahead of us.</p>
<p>Franklin: Huh! Oh, is that—that must be before they—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: That’s before the government gave out—</p>
<p>Franklin: --firmed up the time zones, right?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Interesting. That’s very—that I had not heard at all.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: We wanted to go to Richland to a movie, we had to go at a different time.</p>
<p>Franklin: [LAUGHTER] Is there any—I’ve heard there’s still a few buildings in Richland left from the pre-’43 days.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah, there’s a few houses. The Carlson house as far as I know is still here. And John Dam’s store, I think, is still here. Down there, off of Lee, where they have that roundabout with the metal tree?</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: His store stood in right there somewhere. I’m pretty sure that building is still there.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, really?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: But I’m not positive to that at all.</p>
<p>Franklin: Of course.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: It would be on the corner of Lee and Jadwin.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: But everything has changed so much. And then there’s—across the street, on Lee going into the park, on the left-hand side, I’m pretty sure that’s an original building. Well, maybe not original to Richland, but it was in Richland before Hanford. It was, I think, a bar. And something else, because I remember going in there and asking Dad for a dime so that the six of us—at the time there was just six of us—could buy some candy. And for a dime, we got a whole bagful.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: And I remember the butcher—George Gress was his name. Had a butcher shop. He was German, and he made these wonderful sausages that were ready to eat. Us kids would go down and stand in front of his store and look in the window at it. Ha! He had such a good heart. And we’d send our youngest brother in because he was so cute—in to see George. And he—Dean, my brother—would come out with sausage hung around his neck. [LAUGHTER] And we’d all have some sausage. I don’t know if my parents ever found out about that or not. If they had, they’d have put a stop to it.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, right. What was—I gather that a lot of the street names were changed when the government came in.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Oh, yes.</p>
<p>Franklin: And what was—you mentioned the John Dam store was on Lee and Jadwin, so I imagine there were streets there.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: It is now. I don’t know that there was a—if there was, I don’t remember it.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah. I would go down there to cash—I was old enough to go and cash the dairy checks that Dad got for his milk and stuff.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: And instead of him coming in to do it, or my mother—when I was at school I’d go and cash them there. But I don’t remember there being any streets.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. Do you—I know Howard Amon Park was there before the—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Oh, yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: So do you have any memories of Howard Amon Park?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Oh [LAUGHTER] yes. Well, first of all it wasn’t quite as large now. But Howard, as far as I know, gave that—he died before I was born, but I knew all the other Amons.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: But I think he gave them the lease on that land for eternity as a park. And that concrete gate they have down there, I remember that as being larger, but of course I was a child, you know, so maybe it wasn’t larger. But no, the one story I remember about that was our class had an Easter egg hunt down there one year. I was one of the tallest in the class, so I could find all the Easter eggs. They were real eggs. [LAUGHTER] I had a small washpan full. [LAUGHTER] And the teacher asked me if I’d share them with the children. And I said, oh, yeah, glad to! Because we had a farm and we had 500 chickens laying eggs, you know? And I did not want to take home a bunch of boiled eggs to my mother. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, you were probably eating enough eggs.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: But what I really remember is the winter of the egg hunt, got a chocolate bunny about this high. And I got that bunny. So I didn’t care about the eggs, I won that chocolate bunny. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Right! Can you talk a little bit about going to school in Richland and kind of just—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: You know, the teachers and the kinds of subjects you learned and the classes taught and just kind of how that experience was for you?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Well, it was just really average, except there wasn’t anywhere near as many of us, of course. One of my teachers was Miss Carlson, who was a friend of my mother’s. Now, when I came into the Kennewick School District, I had gone to school the first year in Corfu. We had a two-room schoolhouse, and I was the entire elementary school. I was the only student in the elementary school.</p>
<p>Franklin: Who—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: And there was three high school students. And our teacher was a high school teacher, and he didn’t know what to do with me.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: So he read me stories all day long. Whenever he got a chance, he’d read me stories and teach me a little bit. So when I came to Richland, I was very far behind.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: And Miss Carlson got one of the other students to spend a couple hours with me in the library to catch me up. So I caught up to the third grade, and then from then on, it was pretty easy. Pretty good.</p>
<p>Franklin: Who was the—so you went to a four-person school in Corfu—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah. Well, actually, the second year in Corfu, it was five, because my brother joined me in the elementary school. We doubled our elementary school.</p>
<p>Franklin: Doubled the elementary school. Were your family religious at all? Did they attend church in Richland or Corfu?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: No, no, we didn’t. But my mother was a religious person, and we got some there. Now, I don’t remember going to church there.</p>
<p>Franklin: Mm.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Of course, later on, I did. We all—and my parents decided that the seven of us could choose our own religions. So they didn’t push us in any particular direction. But my father ended up a Catholic.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: And my mother was baptized in the Baptist church. And I go to a Baptist church.</p>
<p>Franklin: That’s very—I don’t know—very progressive kind of stance on education—or on Christianity—on religion for that time period. Because so many preexisting—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Well, they were always very strong. I never heard my parents say “if” you get out of high school; it was always “when” you get out—“when” you graduate. I had one brother who didn’t, but he had some vision problems, and he went into the Air Force and finished in the Air Force. So we’re all graduates. And I have a couple—a brother that’s a graduate of—I guess Washington. I’m not sure. He did it—he was in the Army, so he had some education in Berlin, El Paso, Texas, wherever he could get it.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, sure.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: But education was always pushed in our family.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, that’s great.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: I mean, it’s so fundamental for success later in life.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Right. Well, it’s really the reason we left Corfu and went back to Richland, is because, obviously, my brother and I were not learning anything in Corfu. We were just not. And the teacher was not a good teacher. So they pulled us out and we came down here to—because of us getting education.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right. Are you—where are you—you said you had seven brothers and—or you’re of seven--?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: I’m the oldest of seven.</p>
<p>Franklin: You’re the oldest of seven, okay.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: I have five brothers and one sister.</p>
<p>Franklin: So I can imagine, then, that they—staying in Corfu, they would be looking at kind of a legacy of not so good edu—you know.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Right. Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, that makes a lot of—and how close are you all in age? Are you fairly close in age?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Well, let’s see. Yeah, we are, except for two of them. There’s me, and 18-19 months later is my brother, Verne, whom you’ve already interviewed. Then there’s Roy, who’s another year, year-and-a-half. And Lorne is a year, and then my sister comes a year after Lorne. And then there’s Dean and then five years after Dean—surprise, there’s Dale. [LAUGHTER] So that’s how we run. All pretty close.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right. Most families have at least one surprise.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: What did your mother do in this time, you know—did she work on the farm with your father?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Oh, yeah. She did until she became allergic to the sun.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh! There’s a lot of sun here.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: But most of her time was spent either with us children, or she was canning. She had a garden. Of course our garden was quite large. And then the farm was alfalfa and dairy. But we had a big garden.</p>
<p>Franklin: Did she or your father ever take any cash work before the government came? You know, any kind of off-the-farm jobs or anything?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: No. Well, yeah, wait. When the war came, we were still on the farm, and Dad went to work at Big Pasco. You heard of Big Pasco?</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, the holding—the supply depot.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Right, supplies for the Army. He worked there for a short while—maybe a year. I don’t remember how long. I do remember why he quit. He had a major that was a 90-day wonder, they used to call them. He’d been an officer for 90 days. And anyway, he and Dad got into it over something, and Dad says, well, I quit. And he said, well, you can’t quit, because you’re working for the Army. You’re frozen in the job. And Dad said, well, that’s just tough, and walked off. Two days later, this officer and a sergeant showed up at our house and was going to take Dad off to the Army. Well, he was 35. Dad just lined us kids up in the yard and said, these are my six kids, and there’s a seventh one on the way. I am a farmer, so therefore I’m deferred. And I remember the major getting terribly angry, and the sergeant actually drug him back to the Jeep. He was so angry! And as they were driving away,Dad said, oh and by the way, I have an ulcer. Which the Army wouldn’t touch him with an ulcer. I remember that so clearly because it was absolutely hilarious. Well, that was my father, the way he did things.</p>
<p>Franklin: Is there anything else you would like to say about Richland before the war that I haven’t asked you about?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Well, I remember the day that Pearl Harbor happened.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay, yeah.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: I was listening to the radio in the house, and my mother was outside talking to somebody, some lady. And I heard the announcement that Pearl Harbor had been bombed, and so I went outside and I asked my mother, where’s Pearl Harbor? And she said, in Hawai’i. And I told her what happened, and I’ll never forget her remark. She said, thank God my boys are little. And that’s about all I remember about that.</p>
<p>Franklin: That’s—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: That particular day.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, that’s very searing.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: But I had uncles who ended up in the war and all that kind of stuff. No, I don’t remember an awful lot about it.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure, sure.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Well, I do remember, they had a rubber drive. And we had a rubber—we had a tire swing in our yard that Dad had put up for us. And us kids, we scoured that farm for rubber and metal for the defense, you know? We were getting ready to cut the tire down, and Dad made us stop. He said, no, you’ve given enough. He said, you’re not giving up your swing.</p>
<p>Franklin: Aw.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: I do remember that.</p>
<p>Franklin: That’s really sweet.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Did things economically start to improve for your family during the war?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: They did, when the war come, yeah, yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Until, of course, the evacuation.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Right.</p>
<p>Franklin: I kind of already asked you about how coming back made you feel. When you look at Hanford and its kind of legacy, you must have an interesting—you have a different perspective from most people that came here during the war.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: I wonder if you could talk about—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Sometimes I’m resentful because of what happened with my parents and what they lost—what we all lost, everybody who ever lived here. But then again, you just kind of live with it. But I do get upset when people don’t want to talk about anything but Hanford. I want them to remember there was something here 200 years before. Because we had Indians here. We had woolly mammoths walking up and down the Columbia River, for heaven’s sake. And what about the Indian history? I don’t hear much about Indian history.</p>
<p>Franklin: No, that’s a good question.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: There was Indians living up there!</p>
<p>Franklin: Right. Did you ever have—did you ever meet any Wanapum or Yakama people?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: I never met a Wanapum until years later—in fact, about five or six years ago. But I did know some Yakamas, but not while I was living in Richland.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, that’s—several groups of people have been alienated from the land here.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Right, yeah. Oh, the Indians—they were done really rotten.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, yes they were.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Long before we were. I never could figure out—</p>
<p>Franklin: I teach—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Why do we call Indians savages when our people were really the savages? Stealing their land and everything.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yes, and indiscriminately killing them.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yes, that’s how I—well, our admiration of President Roosevelt went into the dumper when Hanford happened.</p>
<p>Franklin: Really?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah, there were a lot of people mad at him, because—I never did see it—but I’ve been told many times that there was a letter written by Roosevelt, saying that we could have the land back at the price they paid for it when they were through with it. Well, when the time came, and the government left here, he said, no, he’d never written it.</p>
<p>Franklin: Mm.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: And nobody could ever prove it. But I just heard about it; I never did see it.</p>
<p>Franklin: When you—can you describe about when you and your family found out about the atomic bombs dropped, that one of them was—part of that was produced at Hanford, and Hanford’s connection to that. How did that—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Well, it was kind of a shock to even realize it was something as powerful as that. But the day that we found out was when Dad came home with a newspaper, and it was in there. And he said, well, now we finally know what they were doing out there and why they were doing it.</p>
<p>Franklin: Did that change anyone’s feelings about what had happened, or—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: I don’t—</p>
<p>Franklin: Or not?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Some people it did. I went to a funeral a few years ago for one of the Richland—for Eddie Supplee’s wedding. It was quite a family of Supplees here. They were still bitter. He was very bitter before he died. I talked to him not long before he died and he was very bitter about Hanford, and it had been so many years. So it was a lot of people with a lot of resentment.</p>
<p>Franklin: Did you ever connect—do you know if there’s much connection between the displaced peoples of Hanford who later resettled and then the so-called down-winders, people that were affected later by releases from Hanford? Do you know if there was ever any talk between those two groups?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: No, not that I know of. Not that I’m aware of. I know one thing—when the construction workers came in—of course, they spilled out all over, because there was over 30,000 of them—</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah huge influx.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: And they were settling all over in Kennewick and everywhere. Some of them were not a good class of people. You know, they were—I met a few of them, and they were pretty bad. But when everybody left Richland, they left the cream of the crop. We got some really great people in. We got a lot of good scientists. We are really quite an area for science and everything.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: How does that make you—you sound a little—both happy that they’re there, but obviously then there’s this other side of it where—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Well, I—</p>
<p>Franklin: --had this not happened, that would still be—that your family would still have a place here.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: I’m just the sort of a person—I adjust just very easily. I’ll say, well, this is life; this is the way it’s going. Why—there’s nothing I can do about it so, just enjoy what you have.</p>
<p>Franklin: So you came back to the Wye when you—how old were you when your parents—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: I was 15 when we first came to the Wye, and I’m still living in the same house.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, in the house that had been—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah!</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Well, it was down on Columbia Park Trail. At the time it was Columbia Drive, but it set right almost on the road. In the Flood of ’48 or whatever that year was—it was about that far from our front door.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: But my dad moved it up on a little hill. And, yeah, I’m still living in that house.</p>
<p>Franklin: You are still living in that house.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Uh-huh, yeah. I still own it.</p>
<p>Franklin: So the house from—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: The house that we moved from Finley to Richland Wye in was a two—three-room house. There wasn’t enough bedrooms—it was all that we could get at the time. But behind it was a Quonset hut left over from the war.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: So Dad moved—and Mom moved—my brothers and me out there, because I was 15, and I could be out there at night to—whatever the kids—boys needed, and to keep them from killing one another. You know how that is with—[LAUGHTER]—boys.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, I know.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: So we slept in the Quonset hut until Dad moved the house up on the hill where it is now, and added to it. And they raised seven kids, and the two of them, and an uncle who stayed with us for a while, in a two-bedroom house, very small house. Bunk beds all over the place, but we made out. And then years later, my brother put a basement in there. He lives in the basement now and I live upstairs.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, wow, that’s—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: We both own the house.</p>
<p>Franklin: Neat.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: It’s only about 75 years old. [LAUGHTER] It’s falling down around us, but we’re both in our 80s, so—</p>
<p>Franklin: Was that house brought here during World War II, or does that predate it?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: It was sitting there—I don’t know what the history on it. I know my parents bought it for $1,000—that and the land under it.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: That’s under it now. Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow, that’s really—and so what were your—so you moved back at 15, and then what—you graduated from the—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Kennewick High.</p>
<p>Franklin: Kennewick High.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: ’49.</p>
<p>Franklin: ’49. And then what did you do?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: It was just a few months later I went in the Navy.</p>
<p>Franklin: Mm.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: So I was in the Navy, and went to Bay Bridge, right out of Baltimore—not Baltimore—yeah, Baltimore for boot camp. And then I went to San Diego for school, and—</p>
<p>Franklin: And what did you do in—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: I was a commissaryman. What I did was—to put it as simple as I can—is I ran a large, very large restaurant. I was a crew boss. There was actually two of us, because it was—our shifts were 18-hour shifts.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: So, I’d work five days one week and two days the next, and the other girl would take over for the opposite watch. Anyway, it was like running a huge restaurant, except I didn’t have to worry about the menu; that came out of Washington, DC. I did that for two years. Then I got married, and married an engineman from South Carolina. That’s where the Ferqueron name comes from. We traveled around quite a bit for a couple years—well, about four or five years. Had one daughter. And he became an officer—a submarine officer.</p>
<p>Franklin: Mm-hmm.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: In Hawai’i.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, wow.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: So I’ve lived in Hawai’i, I’ve lived in California—my daughter was born in California—Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Florida, and Washington. [LAUGHTER] I think I’ve got them all, anyway. That was over a 30-year period.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow. So when did you come back to the Richland area?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: In 1988—’84. ’84.</p>
<p>Franklin: 1984.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: ’84. My mother had a very mild heart attack, and I sold my house in South Carolina and came out here to take care of her. And just stayed, because she left me the house—me and my brother—the house. And I went to work for churches here in childcare. I worked for five different churches.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: And I retired from doing that, and now I do a lot of volunteer work.</p>
<p>Franklin: So when you left Richland, or the area of Richland, it was kind of this closed town.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: It was very—yeah. And small, compared to today.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, smaller and also wholly government owned.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Oh, yes.</p>
<p>Franklin: And when you came back, Richland was, you know—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Wide open, yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wide open. And then shortly after, production at Hanford ceased.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: I’m wondering if you can talk about that a bit, how you felt about that, and kind of watching that legacy of Hanford stop.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah. Well, I just—I really don’t know how I really felt about it. I just went about my way, and not too concerned. Although I wondered—all of that money and stuff in there and they’re closing it down. You know? And they might have to open it up again at some time. You never know.</p>
<p>Franklin: That’s true.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: I didn’t spend too much worrying about the past.</p>
<p>Franklin: Did you keep in touch with a lot of people from old Richland when you lived around, and--?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: No. They were so scattered that I didn’t—I lost contact with a lot of them, including some relatives.</p>
<p>Franklin: What about when you came back to Richland, did you start to rebuild those relationships again?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: No, uh-unh. No, most of my relationships, even today, are from Kennewick High.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay, right.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah, because I have lunch with the people that are still living here. I have lunch with them once a month.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure. I mean, that makes sense because they weren’t scattered forcibly.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Right, and the people who went to high school in Richland, we really had nothing to do with, you know.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, because they were—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Right, entirely different—</p>
<p>Franklin: Entirely different. And you weren’t welcome in Richland anymore, right? I mean—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Well, they didn’t understand how we felt about it. How could they understand?</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, right. To them it had been an opportunity.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah, and they came here, and they thought they built the town up from a sand pile to what it is today. You know?</p>
<p>Franklin: Interesting. Is there anything else that I haven’t asked you about today that you’d like to mention?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: No.</p>
<p>Franklin: Well—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: I do have something I have arguments with people about and that’s why the Richland Wye is called the Richland Wye. They all assume it’s the highway. It’s not. It’s an old Indian trail.</p>
<p>Franklin: Really?</p>
<p>Ferqueron: And the reasons why is because the Yakama tribes would come down from Yakima and camp at the Richland Wye. The Wanapums and the tribes up that way would come down, cross the river, approximately where we cross it now—the Yakima. They would meet the Yakama tribe there; they would go on to Walla Walla for the pow-wows, and that forms the Richland Wye.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, interesting. And where did you—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: I used to go to the meetings for the Daughters of Washington State. I didn’t quite qualify—my family didn’t come quite—or I couldn’t prove that they came quite soon enough for me to be a complete Daughter of Washington, but—</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: And then our particular section broke up. People started dying off, and—I was quite a bit younger than some of them. This is where I learned more about it.</p>
<p>Franklin: Interesting.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah. Well, they do have a marker out there now that says heritage trail, but there’s no explanation as to what it is.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: And I think the Indians should have credit for that! [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: I mean, they certainly had extensive trading and travel networks and that things we—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Oh, yeah. They did that once every year, I think.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, I believe so.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: So it formed a trail.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, there’s a lot there that we first ignored, and then the interest was in some cases too late for--</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Well, everything is focused on Hanford now. And Battelle and the companies that are here now, and the labs out there, and Battelle. I think all that stuff is great, but to me, I still see a farm out there.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, right. I mean, how could you not? I mean, you had—you grew up there.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Right. Well, from ten days old.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Exactly.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: I can still picture my grandfather’s farm just as if it was still there.</p>
<p>Franklin: Well, Lorraine, thank you so much for sharing your experiences with us. It’s been really insightful, and—yeah, I think it’s really important to have a voice of those pre-war communities and that transition period, and how there’s this other narrative of Hanford that sometimes gets lost in the telling of the story.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah. I don’t want it to get lost. I want those people to be remembered. Because they gave a big sacrifice. That was a huge sacrifice.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, it is.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Even though it was forced, it was still—there is one other story I heard, and one of the farms here was owned by a woman and her cherries were ready to pick, and they told her she couldn’t pick them. She had to get out first. And this is a story I heard from the time I was 12. She had a shotgun loaded with rock salt. You know what rock salt is?</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, yeah.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Of course. Well, she shot the FBI man. Hurt him pretty bad. And I remember everybody in town was, well, she’s going to go to jail. You shoot an FBI man, you’re going to go to jail. Nothing was ever done, she picked her cherries and moved out.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Well, it was too secret; they couldn’t.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, because if they had taken her to court, that arrest record would be—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: There would be reporters in no time. It would’ve been all over the country in no time at all.</p>
<p>Franklin: To kind of make that go away, right? Wow, that’s really something. That’s a great story.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Well, Lorraine, again, thank you so much. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation today.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Well, I want to do anything I can to make sure people remember there was a Richland before Hanford started.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, and we’re going to add this oral history right by your brother’s, and so have that as a great—again, thank you for helping expand that—</p>
<p>Ferqueron: The other children in our family are too young, and my brother Roy is so deaf he couldn’t hear you if he tried, and he doesn’t like to think about those times at all. And he was born in Richland.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: But a midwife who later became our grandmother—she married my—she had a farm here in Richland, and she lost her husband in ’35, and my grandmother lost his wife—my grandmother—in ’36. And they farmed alongside one another for many, many years.</p>
<p>[TELEPHONE RINGS]</p>
<p>Ferqueron: And then they got married. After we were all grown. So one day at school, there was a whole bunch of kids there that were just other kids; the next day they were my cousins. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: That’s really something.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah, it was interesting.</p>
<p>Franklin: Well, again, I can’t thank you enough, Lorraine.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Oh, well, I’ve enjoyed it, really.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, good! Me too. Me too. Okay, so we’ll--</p>
<p>Ferqueron: I wish I remembered more. I was only 12, 13.</p>
<p>Franklin: Well, that gives you enough, though, you know, concrete experiences that you do remember.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Yeah, there’s a lot of family names that I remember. And, well, like I said, I’ve gone to a couple funerals from there. But those are pretty much gone now. I think it’ll be my family next.</p>
<p>Franklin: Well, hopefully not too soon.</p>
<p>Ferqueron: Oh, no. Well, I just had a heart valve put in, and the doctor told me to—and I’m 85—and the doctor told me to come back--</p>
<p>[VIDEO CUTS]</p>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:53:56
Bit Rate/Frequency
Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio)
317 kbps
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site
1931-1949 1984-
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 Lorraine Ferqueron
Description
An account of the resource
Lorraine Ferqueron was born in Pasco, Washington in 1931. Lorraine grew up in Fruitdale and Richland until 1943 when her family was displaced for the Manhattan Project.
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.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
10/18/2016
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
Date Modified
Date on which the resource was changed.
2017-04-12: Metadata v1 created – [A.H.]
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.)
Pasco (Wash.)
Richland (Wash.)
Kennewick (Wash.)
Irrigation
Farming
Grand Coulee Dam (Wash.)
Displacement
Yakama Indians
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/collections/show/18">Oral History Metadata</a>
Battelle
Cat
Christianity
Dam
FBI
Flood
Hanford
Kennewick
Park
Picnic
Quonset hut
River
School
supplies
War
-
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b6e2050edfa97bbc612db21101040b22
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fc9d1a57f8d88a0e009add28a9e2ba8f1.mp4
3286c8becf054ce14ec7b2b3b78954f5
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
Douglas O’Reagan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Maureen Hamilton
Location
The location of the interview
Washington State University Tri-Cities
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p>Douglas O’Reagan: My name is Douglas O’Reagan. I’m conducting an interview with Maureen Hamilton on January 20<sup>th</sup>, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Ms. Hamilton about her experiences working on the Hanford site and her experiences in this community. Thanks for being here.</p>
<p>Maureen Hamilton: You’re welcome.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: If we could start, maybe—it’d be great if you could just tell us a bit about your birthplace, where you grew up, just a little bit of biography before you got to Hanford, if you would.</p>
<p>Hamilton: Sure. I was raised on a farm in south central Illinois, not too far from St. Louis. So I was a farm girl. I went to college at Monmouth College in northern Illinois, which is where I got my chemistry degree—I got a bachelor’s degree there. I worked briefly for Dow Chemical in Michigan, and then I was working at the University of Missouri in their agricultural chemistry lab while my husband was in graduate school. So there I was doing analysis of various environmental and animal products, looking for heavy metal contamination. Then we were in Germany for a couple of years while my husband was in service, and we ended up out here starting in 1972, where we both worked onsite.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Sorry to interrupt. Okay, so you came directly from Germany to here?</p>
<p>Hamilton: No, there were a few months finding the job, once we got back. Well, at the time there weren’t a lot of chemist jobs around, I don’t think. So my husband sent out applications to several hundred companies, and Hanford was one of the places that responded. I think possibly because he was a special weapons technician in the Army, they knew—and his master’s degree dealt with some radioactive materials, so that may have been part of why he was hired here.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Were you familiar at all with the community before you moved here?</p>
<p>Hamilton: No. No, it was something totally—totally foreign to us, but interesting.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Do you remember your first impressions?</p>
<p>Hamilton: [LAUGHTER] Well, coming out of Idaho and the green into the barrenness of eastern Washington was a bit of a shock, yes. Because I hadn’t seen it, he didn’t really see that much of it when he came for the interview. But we very quickly learned to love the place. I wouldn’t live any place else right now.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: What was the area like in the ‘70s?</p>
<p>Hamilton: It was still a small farming community, pretty much. There was obviously—Hanford was the main employer, as far as Richland and much of the Tri-Cities was concerned.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Where did you live?</p>
<p>Hamilton: Well, for a couple—we had an apartment off of Van Giesen for a short period of time. Then we moved into a condo apartment out on the Meadow Springs golf course. Then in ’75 we built our own house on Peachtree Lane in Orchard Hills.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: So when you were working on the site, you were industrial hygiene chemist, is that right?</p>
<p>Hamilton: That was my position, yes.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Would you explain exactly what that is? What’s involved in that?</p>
<p>Hamilton: Sure. The employer initially was the Hanford Environmental Health Foundation, which was the medical contractor onsite. In addition to providing the doctors and nurses, they had the industrial hygiene for the whole site. Industrial hygiene is monitoring of worker health and checking the workplace to make sure that it is safe, that people aren’t being overexposed to things. We had a chemistry lab, and that’s where I was involved. So we would analyze air samples that were collected onsite for things like asbestos or lead or heavy metals or whatever types of materials—non-radioactive. The lab was located here in town at 805 Goethals, so we weren’t onsite. We also did drinking water analysis onsite, and we were doing a little bit of hazardous waste characterization.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Mm-hmm. So what would a typical working day look like?</p>
<p>Hamilton: Oh, it varied, depending on what was going on. Initially, when I started, we were pretty much—I mean, the industrial hygienists were the people who went out in the field and collected the samples and evaluated the data. The lab—we were very small—I started actually as a technician for a year before I actually became the chemist. We had one chemist, one technician. And then we eventually grew to have a total staff in the lab department of about 20. We would run gas chromatographs, atomic absorption, different types of equipment, analyzing those air and water samples that were being brought into the laboratory. I also eventually—well, initially at least—was functioning as partly a quality person as well. In 1974, the lab became one of the first in the country to be accredited by the American Industrial Hygiene Association. So, while I wasn’t listed as the technical manager or the director at that point, I was kind of the technical expertise for that portion of the company. Eventually, expanded that I did manage the lab component as well as function as their QA coordinator.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Is that similar to the work you were doing before you came here?</p>
<p>Hamilton: No, my experience before was strictly laboratory. Had no management responsibilities. And while I was using spectroscopy equipment at the University of Missouri, it was more on things like goose livers and grain and things like that. It had nothing, really, to do with human health.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Mm-hmm. So you said you went out to collect samples at some point, especially in the early career?</p>
<p>Hamilton: Just for a few months, I actually—Hanford had some offsite monitoring systems across the river for nitrogen oxides and I think sulfur oxides. It was things that would have come out of the production facilities. It wasn’t radioactive, again, it was chemicals. So once a week, we’d drive out there and change—they were liquid impinger type samples. So we’d change them out and bring them back and analyze them.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: I’ve read some accounts of local farmers who grew up remembering people coming from Hanford—scientists, to come gather samples from their farm to test for various things. Is that the type of--?</p>
<p>Hamilton: That might have been part of it, because at least one of them, I know, was set up near a barn on the top of the bluffs there, across the river. We weren’t doing any—there were a lot of other people doing radiological monitoring, that was nothing to do with what we were doing. But it’s possible that some of the people where the sites were located would remember. Because they were on private property.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Did you ever find any safety hazards?</p>
<p>Hamilton: None of what we were—no, we never found anything that was exceeding any kind of limits in those.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Could you describe the ways in which the security or secrecy of the Area impacted your work?</p>
<p>Hamilton: I mean, since I wasn’t doing radiological, it wasn’t as much so as like what my husband was doing. But if we wanted to give a paper or anything at a technical conference, it had to go through DoE for approval for release. So we worked with very little classified material where I was.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Can you tell us about what your husband did?</p>
<p>Hamilton: He worked at the Plutonium Finishing Plant, PFP. He was a non-destructive assay chemist, where he was monitoring the plutonium that was being either produced or stored there at PFP.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: That was—did his role change over the course of time he was working there?</p>
<p>Hamilton: He had a few months, initially, where they rotated him through different sites to pick a spot where they wanted to end up. But, no, he spent most of his career there.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Let’s see. So the first few decades you lived here were during the Cold War. Did you feel that impacted your time here, or was that just something in the background?</p>
<p>Hamilton: I was not nearly as aware of it as some people seem to have been. No, that just really didn’t—was some place off, had nothing to do, really. I didn’t feel like we were in danger because we were close to Hanford or anything like that, no.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Do you have any impression of whether the community around you also felt that way? Do you know if there were—I don’t know quite what I’m asking here. Was there more of an impression of that, or did people just sort of go about their lives?</p>
<p>Hamilton: I think people here were just used to Hanford as a secret place. You don’t talk about what you’re doing out there, that’s just the way it is. We did our thing and didn’t worry about the rest of the world much.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Tying back into—tell us a little bit about life in the ‘70s here. Do you feel—I don’t know—the social scene or the feel, the life in the area has changed much over the ‘70s to ‘80s to ‘90s?</p>
<p>Hamilton: Yeah, I would say that’s for sure. For instance, when we built our house out there in what’s now called South Richland, which is across the river, near<a>[EM1]</a> Meadow Springs—the road from there to Columbia Center was still gravel. Gage didn’t exist as a paved road. We were like the second house in the subdivision where we were built. It was mostly still orchards around us, so it was a lot more rural there. There was probably one, maybe, movie theater, the Uptown. And I guess Columbia Center maybe always had one. But there’s a lot more for people to do now, and there’s certainly way more people to do it.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: What was it you liked about living here?</p>
<p>Hamilton: Well, being a country girl from the start, I guess we liked the feel of a small, close-knit community. The job was good. It was very comfortable living. We had good friends. So it was pleasant. We didn’t have a lot of traffic to deal with.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: What sort of things would you do in your spare time, or with the friends in the area?</p>
<p>Hamilton: Oh, one of the things that became a big interest for us was the growing wine industry. We came just about the time it was getting started, and we stumbled into making friends with the Rauners at Yakima River shortly after we got here. So we got to actually help them at times with crushing things, to get to know all about the wine-making process. And we quickly joined the Tri-Cities Enological Society, it was called then. Now it’s just the Wine Society. So we were very much involved with that. We also enjoyed the variety of types of scenery here. Whether you wanted to do something, you were close to the mountains, you were close to the ocean, you had this nice dry, arid climate here, where you could go hiking or do things. So it was an easy, comfortable place to be. Have lots of things—options to do.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: You ever get to use your chemistry knowledge in the wine--?</p>
<p>Hamilton: [LAUGHTER] Learned enough about the wine making process to know I didn’t want to do it. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>O’Reagan: You’re—since 1999—a consultant, a public safety consultant. Is that right?</p>
<p>Hamilton: Yeah. When I retired from Hanford, officially, then, basically, I continued for five years going back, doing the same thing for them onsite that I had done as an employee on a part-time basis. But it was in ’95 that I started doing these laboratory assessments for the American Industrial Hygiene Association, which is one of the organizations that had accredited our lab here. So I still do that through—this year’s probably about the last year I’ll do that, but I’ve been doing that for 20 years.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: What’s involved in that?</p>
<p>Hamilton: It’s going to these various lab sites and making sure that they have all the documentation, the properly trained people, that they’re following the procedures and doing it in accordance with the now international quality requirement.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: So you’ve been involved in some of the historical organizations around here. When did you first start getting involved in those?</p>
<p>Hamilton: Pretty much after I retired from Hanford. I knew I wanted to do something locally, too. And I had visited the CREHST Museum from way back when it was still in the Federal Building. So that was the first thing I did. I started out reviewing some of their oral histories and then gradually, as I had more time during the day, I would serve as kind of a fill-in docent for them, and did various projects for them. Then when they were transitioned out and replaced by the REACH, I moved over there.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Mm-hmm. What is it about that work that you find rewarding? What is it that draws you to work with them?</p>
<p>Hamilton: Well, I think it’s extremely important to maintain the history of what was going on here at Hanford. This is certainly a unique and important part of our country’s history. I’m very pleased that the National Park has been designated. That will be an important part of preserving all of this. I like—people need to know their history. So I think the Hanford history is—as well as the exotic geology we have here, the effect of the Ice Age floods and everything. This is unique area, both geologically, and historically, I think.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Mm-hm. I guess it’s more common today, but do you ever feel you are treated differently as a woman scientist over your career?</p>
<p>Hamilton: [LAUGHTER] Unfortunately, yes. I had to do a little fighting to get some equal pay when I first came out here. But it was easy enough to do. And in the field of industrial hygiene, women have been moving in quite a bit, actually, there. Probably almost equal number of women as men in this field now.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Interesting. Anything else about your time working on or around Hanford that leaps to mind that you’d like to talk about? Anything that was particularly unusual, or just sort of curious, or otherwise noteworthy?</p>
<p>Hamilton: No, I can’t really think of too much that at least I wouldn’t want to talk about. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Sure. What would you like future generations to know about working at Hanford or living in this area over the course of time you’ve been here?</p>
<p>Hamilton: Well, I feel it has been a very rewarding experience, a very good place to live. I think it’s environmentally very pleasant. The work at Hanford is certainly important. The fact that the first commercial scale nuclear reactor in the world was developed here. The speed at which things were done back then. The government regulation has become extremely burdensome since then and it’s much harder, but when Hanford was a production facility, it was something you felt like you were contributing to the society and to the world.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: What haven’t I thought to ask, or should I be asking?</p>
<p>Hamilton: [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Anything? Anything come to mind? I try to go for the open-ended questions.</p>
<p>Hamilton: Yeah. I think the culture at Hanford really changed when they shut down. And now that it’s just a cleanup site, the loyalty, the sense of responsibility to the site, I think, has gone away. There’s a lot more disputes, unhappy employees, some of which may or may not be based on fact. There’s just not the continuity there was when people could work there for 30 years and know that’s where they were going to be for their lifetime. There was a lot more dedication to it. You felt like you were accomplishing something.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Of course, the cleanup may be still going in 30 years!</p>
<p>Hamilton: Well, I don’t—do not print this part—but as far as I’m concerned, it’ll never get done. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>O’Reagan: So were those documents you brought—</p>
<p>Hamilton: Well, I brought some articles out of some of the Hanford newspapers and things. I didn’t know if you have access to some of those types—I assume you do. But I just thought I’d show you some of those, if you were interested.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Yeah, we’d love to go through them. Any of them in particular that would be worth talking about now?</p>
<p>Hamilton: Oh, I don’t know. I mean, it’s mostly things like the history of what was happening there with the environmental health. You can take a look at—one of the things that I think was important when I was there yet, and the industrial hygiene function—the health and safety function was focused in one company, it was better controlled, there were records that were kept, and everybody knew where they were, and they were being maintained. The first thing they did was they took the hygienist away from—well, first they took the respirators away from HEHF. Then they took the hygienists, separated them, and moved them, spread them out all over the contractors onsite. Then they moved our industrial hygiene lab out with the environmental lab, and we became a very small thing, compared to a bigger thing. Now, if you go out—we repeatedly would do things that had already been done, because the contractors changed, they lost the records, they have no history. That just added to the jumble. I feel sorry for the workers who have to try and recreate their health histories. Because I don’t think the records since the early to mid ‘80s are anything like they used to be.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Do you feel safety was a priority on the Hanford site during your time there?</p>
<p>Hamilton: I think it was. They did what they could to the best of their ability with what they knew at the time. So I think it really was a very safe place to work. Yes, there are things that have happened. Yes, there were exposures. But then that was happening in any industry, no matter where you go. People learn because they see what’s happening. They don’t test animals on everything before they put it into practice. No, I think it was a very—you would hear of very few accidents, per se. There were asbestos exposures, there’s beryllium, there’s radiation, but it’s just part of industry. So I don’t think it was any different.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Okay. Anything else we should look through that you have?</p>
<p>Hamilton: Well, you can keep that. That’s my resume. I’d like that other—if you want a copy of that other, I can send it to you. This one had some information just about the industrial hygiene lab being recognized. I don’t know if you want any—</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Is that a picture of you?</p>
<p>Hamilton: That’s me, way back when these were—and these are all Hanford-taken pictures. So they’re ones you could get, but I could make copies of those for you, too, if you wanted them. These are just—there’s Dr. Meader, these are some of the people at HEHF. That’s about all that’s in there.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Great. Yeah, we have—we’re just setting up our scanning stations, so we might see if we could get copies of some of the pictures.</p>
<p>Hamilton: Okay. I know these I have on the computer. I can send you. There are three of these early ones of me in the lab. I could send you those.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Yeah, I know there have been a number of oral history interviews and interest in some of the women who were assigned to this, around the site, or to work on the site.</p>
<p>Hamilton: Mm-hmm.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: So I think it’d be very interesting for that as well as the safety aspects are very interesting. And then also just everyone’s experiences in the area--</p>
<p>Hamilton: Yeah.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: --are worth knowing.</p>
<p>Hamilton: One of the unique things I got to do were I got to go on one of the first People to People occupational health trip to China back in the early ‘80s.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: What was that like?</p>
<p>Hamilton: Fascinating! [LAUGHTER] There were 23 of us, I think. We stayed in places like the Royal Palace in Beijing. We definitely had Chinese people who told us where we could and couldn’t go. [LAUGHTER] We were not allowed on the street by ourselves. When we were there with the group, people were just awed by us, because we looked so different. They were all still in their blue suits and not much else. One of our people had a Polaroid camera and having an instant picture was just amazing to them. We got to go to hospitals and factories and things that normal tourists wouldn’t see.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: That was all sponsored through Hanford, or part of your job?</p>
<p>Hamilton: No. HEHF paid my way, but I’m not sure—I mean, I belonged to the American Industrial Hygiene Association, the professional organization, and somehow, they put my name on a list, and HEHF said, yes, they’d pay for it. So I went. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>O’Reagan: That’s very interesting.</p>
<p>Hamilton: Yeah.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Did you get to do other travel over the course of your time?</p>
<p>Hamilton: Well, I went to conferences and things, but nothing as exotic. Yeah.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Okay. I think that’s most of the sort of set questions that I had down, but anything else you think is worth the time to chat about?</p>
<p>Hamilton: I can’t think of too much else. I think you’ve got the overall picture. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>O’Reagan: All right, well, thank you for speaking with us. It’s been very interesting.</p>
<p>Hamilton: Sure. Okay.</p>
Duration
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00:27:17
Bit Rate/Frequency
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317 kbps
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site
1972-today
Years on Hanford Site
Years on the Hanford Site, if any.
1972-2005
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Maureen Hamilton
Description
An account of the resource
An interview with Maureen Hamilton 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.
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Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Date
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01-20-2016
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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/mp4
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2017-04-12: Metadata v1 created – [A.H.]
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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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/collections/show/21">Maureen Hamilton Oral History Interview</a>
Cold War
drinking
Event
Hanford
Park
Plutonium
Plutonium Finishing Plant
River
War
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F28cd2043c9ba0ab8d30fec025de8c735.JPG
8354e6925db0dfcc31cd6233a0bf0a77
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F85523bfe18aac656aff6c2ba9818cebc.mp4
b786779793fd5e6237875cbaa5f52764
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
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Post-1943 Oral Histories
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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
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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
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Robert Bauman
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Philip Craig
Location
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Washington State University Tri-Cities
Transcription
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<p>Man one: So it’s pointing at you.</p>
<p>Philip Craig: So it’s pointing at me?</p>
<p>Man one: Yeah, yeah.</p>
<p>Man two: Exactly.</p>
<p>Craig: Oh, there we go.</p>
<p>Man two: Perfect, perfect.</p>
<p>Craig: There we go!</p>
<p>Man one: Okay, excellent.</p>
<p>Craig: Okay?</p>
<p>Robert Bauman: Okay. Let me know when you’re ready, all right? Then we’ll—all right?</p>
<p>Man one: We are rolling, so on your cue.</p>
<p>Bauman: So, let’s start, first of all, by just having you say your name and spell it for us, so we make sure we have that correct.</p>
<p>Craig: My name is Philip Craig. P-H-I-L-I-P. C-R-A-I-G.</p>
<p>Bauman: Great. Thank you. And my name is Robert Bauman, and we are conducting this oral history interview on June 24<sup>th</sup> of 2015 on the campus of Washington State University, Tri-Cities. So, Mr. Craig, why don’t we have you start, maybe, by just telling us a little bit about your background. Where you came from, how you came to Hanford, and that sort of thing.</p>
<p>Craig: Well my how I came to Hanford started back in high school. I had a high school chemistry class. I liked what I saw. And I knew that the Hanford Project was down the road—I was living in Selah, Washington, and the Hanford Project was very interesting to me. And I even wrote a term paper on Hanford, because I really wanted to work here. So, I went on to Whitman College, graduated from high school in ’56—or ’52, I’m sorry. Graduated from college in ’56, and then went on to Washington State College, then, now Washington State University in Pullman, and did a year of graduate work in chemistry. And at the end of that, I came to Hanford for my very first job. And lo and behold, that was exactly 58 years ago today: June 24, 1957. And it was quite an experience, let me tell you. The first thing that struck me, of course I had to have credentials to get in the building. And in those days, we didn’t have badges like you have today that are on a cord around your neck. We had a little plastic folder with our ID in it, and you’d pull that out of your pocket and flash it open to the guard sitting at the entrance desk. And then you could go on into the building and find your office and take it from there. The most interesting thing, I think, about it all was it was a very formal setting. For years we wore suits, ties, long sleeved white shirts only—couldn’t have colored shirts—and the ladies wore dresses. Far more formal than today’s environment. Security, of course, was very paramount. I mean, we were in the years where the Soviets and the United States was competing. And so the Hanford site, being one of the two principal sites manufacturing plutonium in the United States, the other one being Savannah River, most of the stuff in terms of total production and that sort of thing was top secret. A lot of it was not—it was secret, but security was paramount. I remember in my little office cubby hole—it was a room, it wasn’t just a cubby hole, in a big room—we had a three-drawer file cabinet with a combination lock. And I could take a piece of paper out of that file, put it on my desk and work on it. But if I had to go to the bathroom, it went back in the combination file, locked it, go down the hall and come back and you had to unlock the combination and start all over again. And the very first thing they had me do is they handed me about a three-inch black three-ring binder with a red coversheet, marked secret. This was the PUREX operating manual. Now, PUREX stands for Plutonium Uranium Extraction, and it was the chemical process that is used to take irradiated uranium from the reactors, dissolve it in acid, treat it chemically, and come up with a plutonium nitrate solution. And I had to read this manual in about a week. [LAUGHTER] It was pretty daunting.</p>
<p>Bauman: Now where was your first office? Where on site?</p>
<p>Craig: It was on in the 703 Building, which is about where the Federal Building is today. The last part of the 703 structure—it was a herringbone structure. We had offices coming off a main corridor, and there was about six tiers of those. And the very last one is still standing, and the city offices are in there. But later on, the Federal Building took over.</p>
<p>Bauman: And what was your first job title?</p>
<p>Craig: Physical—let’s see. Physical Science Administrator, I think it was. The other thing about the environment is that you handwrote all your reports, and then gave them to a secretary who typed them. There was no computers. So, it was kind of a laborious process to do that. I needed to check out a government car, which I did in the motor pool, and drive out to the Area to PUREX, and see what was going on most every day, drive back, write the daily report, mark it all secret, send it up a line to my boss. But that government car, let me tell you—it was not air conditioned. So those days were pretty warm. But we got it done. About two months later, after getting into the PUREX part of it, the fellow who was a companion office mate had been handling the plutonium shipments. And he went off to Washington, D.C. for another job. So I got the job of accepting plutonium products on behalf of the Atomic Energy Commission and the US government. So it was a very formal process. The products were in two forms. After the plutonium nitrate left PUREX, it was sent over to what is known as the Z Plant. And in that plant, by a series of chemical operations, it was converted to a metal button about this big and it fit in a tuna fish can. It weighed something close to two kilograms. So that was the first product. The second product were manufactured, machined weapon components. And I won’t talk about the exact details of their size and shape at this point. But nonetheless, Hanford was in the business of making weapon components. So my job was to accept this product and make the shipment, every couple of weeks or so, to Rocky Flats. Rocky Flats was about 15 miles northwest of Denver, and it was the receiving site for the plutonium as buttons. They would take that metal and cast it into weapon component shapes and machine those and so on. And of course the other part was the shapes themselves, they’d go up in pieces themselves, and they would go into an inspection process and eventually assemble parts of the warhead.</p>
<p>Bauman: So when you say—you’re accepting them from the contractor, or--?</p>
<p>Craig: I was accepting these materials from the contractor. I mean, General Electric Company was the contractor, and their job on a cost-plus-fixed-fee contract basis was to run all these processes. And there’s hundreds of people involved in this. But at the end of the line, I had to make that transition from Hanford to the next step. So it was a couple of months into my first job, my buddy left for Washington, and here I am, learning how to actually accept these components. Now, you need to understand that plutonium was very radioactive. It emitted some gamma radiation, but not huge amounts. I mean, you could actually handle it. But it also emitted alpha radiation. And so it had to be contained in some kind of container, like a can. And then you could hold it in your hand. Interesting. It was warm. It was—the radioactive decay—was producing heat. So this can felt like hanging onto a 60 Watt lightbulb. Now, the other part of the business of plutonium is that if you got too much of it together in one spot, you had a criticality event. And of course, the bomb itself was designed to make a lot of it go critical at the same time, and that created an atomic explosion. But the point is that if you’re handling plutonium, it had to maintain a certain degree of separation at all times. In the chemical processing plants, they used different sized columns of chemical solutions and whatnot, depending on what was going on. And that was to maintain this critical geometry, so that you didn’t have any kind of criticality event. And after the plutonium was made into these buttons we called them, and canned in the tuna fish cans, they were stored in a vault. And the vault had pillars of metal rods, and little rings on that rod that you could put a can in. But it maintained the separation. So on shipping day, what we would do is we operators of the plant would go into the vault and take these cans and very carefully put—I don’t remember exactly how many—something about five or six cans in a little red wagon. Just a little kid’s wagon. But there was spacers in there so that these things didn’t get too close. And they’d bring it down the hallway to the room that exited to the building where it then could be handled further. And this assembly area, in this room were birdcages. Now a birdcage is a metal frame that’s about this big, this big, and this big. And in the middle was a metal pot with a lid. And the idea was that you took—one at a time—one of those cans from the red wagon, and you put it in the pot. And then I think the birdcage held like three buttons. Then there was a lid, and a bunch of bolts in places where you could put a wire with a lead seal on the end. And my job was to squeeze the seal closed with an imprint and record, of course, what the identity of those cans were, and the weight, and that sort of thing on paperwork. And at the end of that, I would sign this receipt for this material, and give it to the contractor. The weapon components varied a little bit differently, depending on the size and shape of the weapon component. Eventually, those were a much bigger birdcage, and it contained a couple of pieces of weapon material.</p>
<p>Bauman: So—</p>
<p>Craig: Hold up.</p>
<p>Bauman: Oh, sure.</p>
<p>Craig: I got to collect my thoughts here. Okay. You can go back on. The business of shipping, then—I owned that plutonium for maybe 15 minutes [LAUGHTER] before the government. Then I would transfer it to armed couriers, AEC couriers. They were not only armed with side arms; they were armed with machine guns. This was serious stuff. And they would load these birdcages into a truck, and eventually ship that off to Rocky Flats.</p>
<p>Bauman: How often did these shipments--?</p>
<p>Craig: Well, every couple of weeks or so.</p>
<p>Bauman: And so, they were shipped by truck then, to Rocky Flats?</p>
<p>Craig: That was a method used in later years. They didn’t really like shipping by truck that well. We actually had another system that involved—all I’m going to say is it involved rail. Because the exact details was highly classified.</p>
<p>Bauman: And did the amount that was shipped vary significantly, or--?</p>
<p>Craig: It varied, yes. Depends on how the production was going and what the requirements were on the other end.</p>
<p>Bauman: Oh, okay. Sure. And so how long did you do this, then? How long were you--?</p>
<p>Craig: From 1957 to 1972.</p>
<p>Bauman: Wow.</p>
<p>Craig: So I shipped a lot of plutonium.</p>
<p>Bauman: [LAUGHTER] Yeah.</p>
<p>Craig: The other thing that was kind of interesting—I was explaining to you about the criticality. I hadn’t been on the job more than, I don’t know, a couple of months, shipping. I knew what to do, I knew the whole process, and I knew the sensitivity of it. One day one of these chemical operators who worked for the contractor had gone to the vault, and he came down the hall carrying about five tuna fish cans in his hand, and holding it with his arm like this. Well, that was absolutely high risk criticality event waiting to happen. And he walked in the room, and I said, ooooh. Just stop right where you are. And I instructed one of the other operators, take one of the cans from him and put it in the birdcage very carefully. And we got that shipment loaded and we were on our way. And then I went to the manager’s office—the plant manager’s office. Now, this fellow was like 60 years old. Kind of a salty southerner with—I mean, he was definitely in charge. And I’m 23 years old. Fresh out of college, wet behind the ears. And I gave him a real lecture about safety. And he didn’t like that. He called my boss. And my boss said Mr. Craig was right: you really almost had an accident today. That’s the end of that story. There was more to the whole weapons system. Since I was in the whole process, one of the small cogs—there was uranium coming from Oak Ridge. There was plutonium—some plutonium—and tritium coming from Savannah River. There was high explosives coming from Pantex. And then Hanford plutonium. This all had to be scheduled into what was known as the US master nuclear delivery schedule. It was the weapons document for all the weapons made in the country. It was a top secret document, and representatives from each of these sites got together, usually in Albuquerque, New Mexico, or at the Rocky Flats Plant. And we handwrote this schedule. There was no computers. There was a spreadsheet format, yes. But we didn’t have computers to do all that. Everything had to be balanced. This whole process had to bring all these materials together for processing at Rocky Flats. And so, about once a year we got together to do the master nukes schedule. I found I was pretty fortunate to be a part of that. I was pretty young. But it was a challenge. I had a lot of help, of course. But I was very impressed. One of the things that kind of scared me though was—and let me check on the date. October 22 to 24, 1962. That was the Cuban Missile Crisis. We were in Denver and Rocky Flats to work on these schedules. Now, that was ground zero for the Russians. If they were going to attack the United States, that probably would have been one of their targets. And it was kind of scary working there for those two days. I was very thankful that President Kennedy convinced Khrushchev to back off and no ill things happened.</p>
<p>Bauman: Were you here when President Kennedy came to Hanford in ’63?</p>
<p>Craig: Yes, yes.</p>
<p>Bauman: Do you remember that?</p>
<p>Craig: Oh, I remember that. We got to drive out and see him out at the reactor site. It was quite an experience. I think that was one of the only Presidents I’ve ever seen in person. And it wasn’t long after that, you know, a couple months or less, that he was assassinated in Texas.</p>
<p>Bauman: Do you remember much about that day?</p>
<p>Craig: It was hot! [LAUGHTER] It was still warm when he was here visiting. But it was a big event. There was thousands of people out there in the desert. But it was very thrilling experience to see the President come.</p>
<p>Bauman: Sure. So, you said you were working on the shipment from ’57 to ’72. So did that process change much over those years, other than shifting from—</p>
<p>Craig: Well, yes. In about ’66, we quit making weapon components at Hanford. And the process moved to Rocky Flats entirely.</p>
<p>Bauman: So that part changed.</p>
<p>Craig: Yeah. That part changed. But the plutonium buttons didn’t.</p>
<p>Bauman: And so then in ’72 then, how did your job change? What did you start doing at that point?</p>
<p>Craig: Well, take a break for a sec.</p>
<p>[VIDEO CUTS]</p>
<p>Bauman: Sure, that’d be great. Do you want to go ahead and do that now?</p>
<p>Craig: Hmm?</p>
<p>Bauman: Do you want to go ahead and start that now then? Start talking about that?</p>
<p>Craig: Yes.</p>
<p>Bauman: Okay. That’d be great.</p>
<p>Man one: All right, just a moment. Okay, we’re rolling again. Just start whenever you—</p>
<p>Craig: Okay. Well, let’s see, I need the face page of this. Okay, I’m ready.</p>
<p>Bauman: Go ahead.</p>
<p>Man two: We’re rolling.</p>
<p>Craig: The other significant activity that I was involved with was in 1968. The site was in a state where we had 149 single-shell waste tanks and 28 double-shell waste tanks. Actually, that’s not quite right. There were four short of that on the double-shell. And these were boiling waste tanks. The others were not boiling waste. But it was all liquid, and we were concerned about the integrity of the tanks and the lifetime of the tanks. And so at that time, the Atlantic-Richfield-Hanford Company, ARCO, was the contractor. And two of their engineers, Sam Beard and Bob McCullough and I co-authored a document that was called “The Hanford Waste Management Briefing.” And the purpose of this was to explain the Hanford situation to our headquarters—our AEC headquarters staff, and Congressional staffers who were then going to be funding what is now known as the Tank Farm projects. And this document was a briefing document, and the key—one of the key charts that we were particularly proud of is to try to show people how complex the business of the Hanford waste system was. And this chart shows what happens to a ton of uranium that’s been irradiated and then processed at PUREX, and the wastes that come out of that whole process. And some of it’s boiling waste, because of high levels of radioactivity that are in that particular section of waste, and some was non-boiling. For example, you’re dealing with—for that ton of waste—680 gallons of non-boiling waste and 220 gallons of boiling waste. And in the non-boiling tank, you have 900 pounds of salts, chemical nitrate—nitrates and so on, and about 350 curies of radioactivity. But in the boiling side, there’s 230 pounds of salt, but 300,000 curies of activity. That’s why they’re boiling. And then there was a low-level stream that had like 55,000 gallons of waste that went to a crib—a crib is like a septic tank—tile field—and the swamp, which is just an open pond. There was another 560,000 gallons went there, but their radioactivity was less than a tenth of a curie. I mean, it was just negligible. On the solid side, there was about ten cubic feet of solid waste. There was about 10 million cubic feet—I’m sorry—of gases that came out. And here’s the number that it was radio—a surprise to everyone that it was published. It was secret then, but it’s been declassified since. Out of that ton of fuel came 530 grams of plutonium and four grams of neptunium. So the chemical process that started with a ton of material and ended up with just a very small amount. So it’s kind of like finding a needle in a haystack.</p>
<p>Bauman: Right.</p>
<p>Craig: Because these wastes were boiling, we’d started building—had started building double-shell tanks. A double-shell tank is a steel tank within a steel tank within a concrete barrier. And this diagram in that briefing document showed what a double-shell tank was all about. These were million-gallon tanks. And in those days, it was about a dollar, maybe a dollar and a half a gallon to build those tanks. A million-million half dollars for one of these big tanks. Far, far, less than what they would cost today.</p>
<p>Bauman: Yeah.</p>
<p>Craig: At any rate, we made this presentation to the staffers and the ultimate activity was to remove as much as water as we could from the single-shell tanks so that we ended up with a salt cake that was not going anywhere. We isolated cesium-137 and strontium-90 by another chemical process, carried out in B Plant, to bring those short-lived emitters of radiation to a point where we could encapsulate those in steel cylinders. That was done and they’re stored. I think they’re still stored that way, but I’m not entirely sure. I kind of lost track of what’s happened since. We also built—were recommending that they build four more double-shelled tanks and that’s why the number finally grew to 28 double-shell tanks. And then, of course, it ultimately led to the pretreatment plant that’s in the process out here now, and the Waste Vitrification Plant.</p>
<p>Bauman: You mentioned one of the reasons for doing the report was there were concerns about the integrity of the single-shell tanks. Were some of them leaking at that point, or just concerns that they might leak?</p>
<p>Craig: I think at that point there were some that had displayed a little bit of leakage, yes. There’s other documents that showed some leakage, but, again it wasn’t into the concrete overpack, if you will. There was some, of course, got into the soil column, but it was not a series breach, and it wasn’t any radioactivity that got down into the groundwater. But we were afraid that it would. I mean, 1968, these tanks have been—the initial ones—had been built in 1944! ’45, ’46. So there was some that were approaching the end of life, and those tanks are still there today. And that’s why they’re so concerned about trying to remove some of the waste from these tanks and process it.</p>
<p>Bauman: So, who initiated—was this ARCO or AEC that sort of initiated the study that you helped write?</p>
<p>Craig: Oh, I think it was—collectively, the Hanford folks at engineering—folks on both sides of the contractor and the government were saying, we got to do something about this. Anyway, I think that’s about all I want to say about the creation of that document. I thought it would be interesting for you to look into if that ever showed up in the REACH literature as the kickoff document to get this thing going.</p>
<p>Bauman: Right, right. Yeah. And did you continue to be involved after this report in some of the tank—waste management end of things?</p>
<p>Craig: Yes. Actually, I had some side activities that I got into first. From 1968 to 1972, I was the plutonium leasing officer for the government. There was one in Oak Ridge for uranium, and I was the plutonium one for the US. And basically, what I was—what we did is we created a lease document, so the 125 commercial organizations, 40 government agencies, and about 450 colleges and universities could have plutonium material. And we would, in effect, rent it to them for a use charge. Wasn’t very expensive, but it was a charge. More importantly, if they lost any of it, they had to pay for it. The largest users of that lease program were the two reactor fuel contractors. One of them was Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation in Apollo, Pennsylvania. And the other one was Kerr-McGee in Oklahoma. They made reactor fuels for the breeder program at Oak Ridge, and the Fast Flux Test Facility here.</p>
<p>Bauman: Oh, okay. Interesting.</p>
<p>Craig: So that was a way for them to have this material. For the next nine years, I continued to be involved with the PUREX and Z Plant, and the management of both site materials—all of the different types of materials that we had: uranium, and plutonium, and so on. And those materials were about $500,000 to $750,000 in value. I’m sorry, $500 to $750 million in value. But it was a management process. Then later on, from 1981 to 1985, I was able to be involved in the last big development program that I had while I was working for the government. It was called the Spent Fuel Management Program. Now, during this time, the AEC had been in charge—prior to this time, the AEC had been in charge of both the Defense orientation of radioactive materials, and also the development of commercial power reactors. And there was a political hue and cry from about 19—let’s see—1974, I think it was—that the commercial reactor stuff should go to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, a new agency. And then, of course, a few years after that, about 1978 I think it was, the—oh, by the way, when the NRC was created, they changed the name of AEC. It became ERDA: Energy Research and Development Administration. And then about four years later, they changed it again to the Department of Energy. Well, now we had the government on our side—DoE had an obligation to kind of help the nuclear power industry deal with the long-term disposal of their spent fuel. I mean, as the fuel is burned up in their reactor and is no longer useful, eventually it was going to be encapsulated and sent off to Yucca Mountain. Well, until Yucca Mountain got authorized and built, then they needed an interim storage, and so we developed a concept called the at-reactor spent fuel storage. Several of us—myself and somebody from NRC, and somebody from Battelle, the contract who was working with me, and somebody from the Electric Power Research Institute, representing the power industry—I think that’s about it—we all went off to observe some dry storage in casks in Germany. We brought that technology back to the United States. We worked with the NRC to get it licensed. And now the power reactors of this country are using at-reactor storage in basically steel containers that contain the spent fuel and are just sitting on concrete pads, and the radioactive decay heat is dissipated into the surrounding environment. But all the radioactivity is very well contained in these casks. Hopefully, eventually Yucca Mountain will open. It was part of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act that I was involved with in those days. The whole purpose of this act was to create a long-term disposal. And NRC was involved in licensing that long-term disposal, and the nuclear power industry was to pay a fee for all this fuel that they were generating to help pay for this. Well, then all this got stopped because of the politics of Nevada and the—it’s going to be restarted, because there was a lawsuit that was settled recently that said that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act should be followed.</p>
<p>Bauman: Right. So, you were involved with that in—</p>
<p>Craig: I was involved in—</p>
<p>Bauman: About ’85?</p>
<p>Craig: --all that kind of stuff.</p>
<p>Bauman: Right.</p>
<p>Craig: Yes. And then I left the—at that point, this will be—okay, you can go back on. At that point in 1985, I left the government, went private, went to work for a packaging—an engineering and design company that designed high-level waste shipping containers for use on transportation. They started off—their first big project was the Three Mile Island cask, to move that waste. And then from that, I marketed to the government a high-level waste—any kind of high-level waste that could be put into a cask and removed. And then the TRUPACT-II cask for use in transferring transuranic waste, or primarily plutonium waste, from the government sites to the waste isolation pilot plant in Carlsbad, New Mexico. And from there, I got involved on a couple of other organizations. Eventually, in 1991, I went to work for Lockheed. In 1996, Lockheed, along with—well, Fluor Daniel was the primary contractor, but we were on the Fluor Daniel team, and Lockheed was to manage the Tank Farms. So we came full circle, and I helped Lockheed win that contract.</p>
<p>Bauman: Right, you did come full circle.</p>
<p>Craig: So then, Lockheed moved me from—I was then living in Federal Way, and Lockheed rewarded me by moving me back to Hanford and letting me work on the Hanford site in ’96. And I did that until December of 2000. And there I was involved in the new contracting method. Instead of cost-plus-fixed-fee contracting, it was cost-plus-incentive-fee. And what we would do was we would create a document for a scope of work, a performance agreement. And the contractor would say, here, DoE, this is what we’re going to do for you, and here’s how long it’s going to take. And DoE said, okay, if you do that, we’ll pay you this fee, and if you don’t get it done on time, we’re going to cut your fee. And if you don’t do it well, we’re going to cut your fee. And my job was to, at the end of the work performance, was to write up the actual work done in a document to present to DoE that says, okay, pay us the fee. We were very successful in getting our award fee. And then I gave it all up in December of 2000, after 43 years.</p>
<p>Bauman: [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Craig: Cut.</p>
<p>Bauman: That’s a long, fascinating career. Can I ask you questions, kind of go back?</p>
<p>Craig: Yeah, there’s a couple of transition spots I’m kind of worried about, that I kind of sound like an idiot.</p>
<p>Bauman: No.</p>
<p>Craig: I want to—is there any editing we can do?</p>
<p>Bauman: Oh, yeah, don’t worry about it. If there’s any issue we can go back to it later. It’s not a problem. I wonder if I can go back—and this is really interesting stuff, fascinating career. I wanted to ask you just about the community, when you arrived here in 1957, what was Richland like at the time? Could you talk about that a little bit? And did you live in Richland, or--?</p>
<p>Craig: Oh, yes. Yes. We were allowed to rent from the government a B house—half of a B house on Haupt. This was June 1957. And by then—a couple of months—the government started selling off the town to private citizens. And we were in the first block to be sold. The senior owners in the other end of the B house bought the B house. And at that time, we moved to the other side of town, into a ranch house, because that had been sold to its owner. This is kind of an interesting—are you recording?</p>
<p>Bauman: Yeah.</p>
<p>Craig: Oh, okay. This was kind of interesting, because the ranch house that the owner—I mean the resident who was able to buy it bought for like $7,700. And then when we bought the ranch house, I think we paid like $9,500. And of course, those ranch houses today sell for over 100. The town was very—initially of course, it was very caste-oriented. I mean, if you were a contractor, management, you got to live on the river. If you were a lowly government GS-7, you got to live in a B house. And there was a certain level of, you know, if you weren’t in this class, you weren’t part of it, you know. And I think that’s changed dramatically over the years. It doesn’t make any difference who you work for and how much money you make and all that stuff. People have changed for the better.</p>
<p>Bauman: Anything else about the community that stood out to you at the time?</p>
<p>Craig: Well, the first thing that Richland did was they had to celebrate their founding as Richland. They set off a mock atomic bomb, and it was a bunch of fanfare out in the park, and made a poof of smoke that was to represent a mushroom cloud.</p>
<p>Bauman: So, was this at Howard Amon Park?</p>
<p>Craig: Yeah. It was.</p>
<p>Bauman: Anything else that—memories that stand out, either about in community of Richland, or your work—any stories or memories that really stand out to you that you’d like to share?</p>
<p>Craig: I think I’m kind of—</p>
<p>Bauman: Good? [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Craig: Completed.</p>
<p>Bauman: All right, well I want to thank you very much. This was really interesting. I appreciate you coming in and sharing stories about your work, and all that you did out there. I really appreciate it.</p>
<p>Craig: Well, you’re more than welcome. I feel confident that this waste document that shows particularly how much plutonium was made, that was a very revolutionary thing. I mean, the idea how much of material you got out of a ton of uranium was—</p>
<p>Bauman: Right.</p>
<p>Craig: Very classified. And to see that declassified and whatnot. It’s—</p>
<p>Bauman: [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Craig: Kind of mind-blowing. But there’s the document. And it’s legitimate to talk about.</p>
<p>Bauman: Right.</p>
<p>Craig: Not sure I want it on the local news tonight, but—[LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>[VIDEO CUTS]</p>
<p>Craig: Details, but I know that he was—</p>
<p>Bauman: Yeah. So, just let me know when you’re ready, all right? We can—</p>
<p>Craig: So this was August, ’76. I don’t know the exact date.</p>
<p>Bauman: That’s all right. I mean, the exact date we have, so—</p>
<p>Man one: Okay, we are ready.</p>
<p>Bauman: Just whatever memories or knowledge you have about it.</p>
<p>Man one: We’re rolling. Whenever you’re ready.</p>
<p>Bauman: Okay. So I don’t know if you want to talk to us about the McCluskey incident and your involvement in that?</p>
<p>Craig: Well, at the time, I was responsible for the Z Plant operations. And so, one morning, early, about 4:30 in the morning, I get a call from the plant that there had been an accident out of the plant, and I needed to get out there. And so I threw some clothes on and got a government car and went out to the site. What had happened was the plant had been operating on the recovery of americium-241 as part of the reclamation activities. And it was a chemical process. Inside this chemical process were criticalities tanks, small tanks like this, long, inside of a glovebox. Earlier in that summer, there had been a labor dispute, and the plant was on strike. And so the process had been shut down. Well, what was going on was americium was loaded onto the ion exchange medium inside this long column. When the dispute was settled and we had several days of reviews, conducting interviews with the contractor people, are you ready to restart? Have you checked this? Have you checked this? Have you checked this? And finally they were authorized to start. Well, what happened is that when they poured strong nitric acid on that ion exchange column to take, you lose off the americium. The americium had decayed the resin beads of the ion exchange medium ‘til it was kind of an organic gunk. And that acid reacted with it, and that violent chemical reaction blew open that column. It breached the glovebox, and it sprayed chemicals and americium all over Mr. McCluskey. And he was taken to an initial decontamination spot onsite, and then downtown. But my job, when I got there, was to fend off the media. What had happened—as soon as this became knowledge, and the media got hold of it, here they come in helicopters, landing inside the secure area of 200 West. The guards were going nuts. I mean, here’s these people that are not supposed to be there! Eventually, they didn’t do anything but try to manage it and bring them over towards the building, the end of the building, where behind the building walls was this processing cell where everything had taken place. And they were standing there, I was standing there outside talking to the media, trying to explain what happened. And I had an alpha copy machine. I was standing there, showing them that there was no contamination on my feet, there was no contamination around. They were panning everywhere with their cameras, and they found a sodium hydroxide feed tank that had just a little bit of salt cake around the valve on the outside. Non-radioactive, nothing—I mean it was a nothing tank. And they filmed that like it was the biggest thing since sliced bread. And I remember I went through all this and—to find out that it made the national news. But I didn’t get to see it, because I was out there. [LAUGHTER] But it became a non-event. It was not a disaster, there was containment, there was—all the safety things worked as well as they should. The public was never in any harm. But that was a—</p>
<p>Bauman: [LAUGHTER] So, what happened, then, with the room, or whatever, where the incident took place?</p>
<p>Craig: Oh, they sealed that room off right away. And then it remained sealed up until very recently, when they went in and took it apart. And processed it for disposal.</p>
<p>Bauman: Did you know Mr. McCluskey at all?</p>
<p>Craig: No.</p>
<p>Bauman: Okay.</p>
<p>Craig: No. He was a chemical operator. I didn’t know who he was, hadn’t met him. But it was one of those things that—</p>
<p>Bauman: Right.</p>
<p>Craig: --Happened.</p>
<p>Bauman: Well, thanks, again for sharing that story. Glad we remembered to do that.</p>
<p>Craig: What was funny about it—I was trying to stand up. I used to be able to do this. I could stand there and hold my foot up and balance. And then I realized I couldn’t do that.</p>
<p>Bauman: Oh, watch the microphone there on your—</p>
<p>Craig: Oh, yeah.</p>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:54:56
Bit Rate/Frequency
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189 kbps
Hanford Sites
Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview
B Plant
Waste Vitrification Plant
Z Plant
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site
1957-today
Years on Hanford Site
Years on the Hanford Site, if any.
1957-2015
Names Mentioned
Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community.
Kennedy
Sam Beard
Bob McCullough
Kerr-McGee
Fluor Daniel
Mr. McCluskey
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Philip Craig
Description
An account of the resource
An interview with Philip Craig 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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06-24-2015
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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/mp4
Date Modified
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2017-29-11: Metadata v1 created – [A.H.]
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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.
703 Building
Atomic Energy Commission
B Plant
Battelle
Department of Energy
Event
Fast Flux Test Facility
General Electric
Hanford
Kennedy
Mountain
Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Park
Plutonium
PUREX
River
Savannah River
Tank Farm
Tank Farms
Vitrification Plant
Waste Vitrification Plant
Z Plant
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F2ec1506d174ea046db6843f0eaa6c1bc.JPG
2764bff7fb33c346ce02b07d1ae6b487
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
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Post-1943 Oral Histories
Subject
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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 Franklin
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Roger McClellan
Location
The location of the interview
Washington State University Tri-Cities
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p>Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history interview with Roger McClellan on September 2<sup>nd</sup>, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Roger about his experiences working at the Hanford Site. So, Roger, best place to begin is the beginning. So, when and where were you born?</p>
<p>Roger McClellan: I was born in Tracy, Minnesota, out in the prairies of southwestern Minnesota. Tracy, a little town of 3,000 people. My father was a blue collar worker. My mother came from an agricultural family. They were part of a generation in some ways contributed to but also, their lives were substantially influenced by World War II. They, in some ways, were saved economically. So my father went away in 1942 and I would faithfully write every Sunday evening to him at an APO address in New York, and wonder where he was. In summer ’43, he came home and said, hell, I was up in Canada building an air base on Hudson Bay, Churchill. Up with the polar bears and the Eskimos. And got another job at Hanford Engineering Works, Pasco, Washington. So in two weeks, I’m going to catch the train and be off. And maybe if I can find a place to live, your mom will come out and join me.</p>
<p>Franklin: So—sorry—what year were you born?</p>
<p>McClellan: 1937. January 5, 1937.</p>
<p>Franklin: And do you remember when your father left for HEW?</p>
<p>McClellan: Well, he, as I said, he spent ’42 and ’43 in Canada working on an air base. That construction company ended up being engaged at Hanford. So he came out in ’43, in the summer, and lived at Hanford, the construction town. My mother soon joined him when they found a small trailer they could live in. She worked in the commissary at Hanford. And then in the summer of 1944, they came back to Minnesota. My brother and I had lived with our grandparents on a farm for a year, and my sister with an aunt. So we got on the train and headed out to the state of Washington on a new adventure in the summer of 1944.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p>McClellan: And then that fall—we lived for the summer in Sunnyside, Washington. I remember well an eight-plex apartment, if you will. Pretty exciting. You’d go to the end of our street, take a right, go a half mile, and there was an honest-to-God Indian teepee with an Indian that lived in it. That was pretty exciting for young kids.</p>
<p>Franklin: I bet. Was that one of the Navy homes?</p>
<p>McClellan: No, that was a part of the Hanford complex, that they had built some housing in outlying areas while they were constructing new homes in Richland. So near the end of August, my father came home one day and said, hey, they finished a new group of houses in Richland, and we’re going to be moving down next week or two. Neighbors would drive us down, I’m going to come in off of graveyard shift and I’ll be at our new home, and you can meet me there.</p>
<p>Franklin: And what kind of home was it?</p>
<p>McClellan: Well, we said, well, where is it? He said, well, it’s a three-bedroom prefabricated house, a so-called prefab.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>McClellan: And it’s on 1809 McClellan Street. And my kid brother and I jumped up and down and said, gee, on our own street! [LAUGHTER] So we later learned that, you know, many of the streets were named for individuals in the Corps of Engineers. So McClellan was in the Corps of Engineers, a one-block-long street, up in the—I guess, what? Southwest side of Richland.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah. I live a stone’s throw away from—I live on Stanton.</p>
<p>McClellan: Yeah, okay.</p>
<p>Franklin: In a two-bedroom prefab.</p>
<p>McClellan: So we did just as he said. The neighbors drove us down and we got to the new house. The door was open, we went in, and there was my dad, flaked out in the bed. He’d come home from graveyard shift and welcomed us to our new home.</p>
<p>Franklin: Are you related to General—is there any family relation to General McClellan?</p>
<p>McClellan: Well, only speculation. Probably one of my more noteworthy traits is procrastination. And as you may recall, General McClellan had some problems with procrastination.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, as a US historian, I’m very well-versed in—[LAUGHTER] Especially the first three years of the Civil War. Yes, he certainly was.</p>
<p>McClellan: And he also liked the libation, and I think we shared a similar taste there.</p>
<p>Franklin: And luster. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>McClellan: But he was short of stature; I’m tall of stature.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, he looked good on a horse.</p>
<p>McClellan: But I don’t know. I’ve done a little bit of digging and I found, you know, a cluster of McClellans there in Kirkcudbright in Scotland. We actually have a Castle MacLellan. It’s more of a large manor house than a castle. But interesting.</p>
<p>Franklin: What did your father do at the Hanford Site?</p>
<p>McClellan: Well, my father initially worked in construction and then very quickly as they started to assemble the operational workforce, he went to work as a patrolman. You know, part of the, what today we call, security force. Of course, worked for DuPont. He moved quickly from there into what was called the separations department or operation. That was the unit that we learned later was involved in separating out the product, plutonium, from the irradiated fuel elements containing uranium. So he spent most of his career, actually, working in the PUREX facility.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>McClellan: Earlier he had some time in the bismuth phosphate separation plant. And then in the RADOX and then PUREX was ultimately the big workhorse separations facility for the Hanford operations.</p>
<p>Franklin: And how long did your father work at Hanford for?</p>
<p>McClellan: Well, for his total life then. I think he passed away age 62. My mother, very soon after we came to Richland, went to work in the food services facility at Marcus Whitman Elementary School, which was where we were going to school. So I do remember in the third grade, seeing my mom in the cafeteria as we went through and picked up our lunches. She was a very ambitious lady, very intelligent. She got her shorthand and typing in quick order and then went to work and became the secretary of the principal of Columbia High School. She always commented she was pleased that one of the students in the class, I think of 1948, a noteworthy graduate was Gene Conley. The trivia question is, who is one of the athletes that played for two different sports teams in terms of major sports? And that’s Gene Conley, Col High graduate who played for the Boston Red Sox and the Boston Celtics, and earlier here was a student at Washington State University.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow, interesting.</p>
<p>McClellan: So my mother spent basically her career as a professional administrator.</p>
<p>Franklin: Did she work at Hanford at all?</p>
<p>McClellan: No, she really always kind of focused on wanting her family.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>McClellan: And she really didn’t want that extra travel time. So she worked for a period of time at the United Way or Community Chest, and then back into the school system and was the administrative assistant or secretary to a number of principals in different schools in the Richland school system.</p>
<p>Franklin: So, tell me about growing up in Richland in a government town, and in a prefab, and how that--</p>
<p>McClellan: Well, I think growing up and—obviously, growing up is a unique experience. [LAUGHTER] For everyone. But we had come from a small town in Minnesota. Everybody knew everybody else. Everybody was from there.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>McClellan: Many of them had two, three, four generations living in the area. Coming to Richland was totally different environment. Everyone was from somewhere else. There were a number of people from Utah, a number of people from Colorado, Denver. Turns out all of those were connections back to DuPont, and DuPont’s operation of facilities in those areas. And there were quite a number from the Midwest and a few from Montana. Areas where there was not a lot of industrial activity. People could be recruited. Like my father, in terms of married, three children, why, he was lower down in the draft order. So, that was prototypical of many of the people. My classmates would be families of two, three, four, five kids and their fathers, in some case were blue collar workers, in some cases were engineers. New kinds of professionals that I never had experience with, even as a little kid, and later when I’d spend summers with my grandparents on the farm in Minnesota. Yeah, the professionals we came in contact with were our family doctor, the farm veterinarian, the lawyer, the banker. So Richland, one of the interesting aspects was the extent to—as a young kid I had fellow students whose fathers were engineers or chemists. In fact, one of my classmates, class of 1954 from Columbia High School, his father was W.E. Johnson.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh!</p>
<p>McClellan: He was the top guy running Hanford for many years for the General Electric Company.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah.</p>
<p>McClellan: The other thing that’s unique is that no one owned their own home.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>McClellan: You rented your home. DuPont left soon after the war ended. DuPont had been brought in because they were really a unique company. Not only were they large, but they, because of the nature of their business, producing explosives, they were in the business of designing, building, and operating facilities. That was a unique set of activities. So, as I say, you’re working with building and manufacturing explosives. You want to know that your facility—</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, and I imagine, too, that there’s a culture of safety in DuPont in dealing with such—</p>
<p>McClellan: Oh, absolutely.</p>
<p>Franklin: When your product is explosive and—</p>
<p>McClellan: Yeah. And many years later I would actually have interactions professionally in terms of DuPont, and that safety culture was present and continues today. But that was also present at Hanford. And then that ability, as I say, to make modifications in the design as new information came available.</p>
<p>Franklin: And do that in-house, too.</p>
<p>McClellan: Yeah, that was all done in-house. Then we euphemistically said that changed from DuPont to Generous Electric. General Electric was the prime contractor, and sometimes we’d refer to them as Generous Electric. Of course, they operated on a pass-through basis. It was federal dollars. That’s the other thing I think unique in terms of Richland and Richland school systems. There was no private property. So there was no private tax base. So the dollars for the Richland schools flowed through, let’s say, line of dollars that came from Washington in terms of appropriation—authorization and appropriations, and were ultimately administered by the Richland Operations Office of the Atomic Energy Commission. So if you’re in the Richland Operations Office and you’re involved in overseeing the expenditure of dollars, your kids are going to the Richland schools, you’re certainly not going to slice some dollars off the budget for School District 400, Richland. Your kids are going to be impacted. So the schools were, quite frankly, extraordinary quality. I don’t think I fully appreciated that at the time.</p>
<p>Franklin: [LAUGHTER] I don’t think any of us do at the time.</p>
<p>McClellan: Yeah. So as I told someone, even recently, you know, I’m still working off the vapor left in the fuel tank that they started to fill when I went to Marcus Whitman, then Carmichael, and Col High, and then headed off to Washington State University.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow. What else can you say about growing up in Richland that might be different from a lot of other people’s experiences in a normal—</p>
<p>McClellan: Well, I think at that time, in Richland, there was an element of kind of the long hand of Washington in planning communities. There was an interesting intersection of class, if you will, more based on, are you an hourly worker or are you a monthly payroll? So-called non-exempt and exempt payroll. And there was a recognition that there was an element of status associated with education. But overlaying that, at the intersection was the fact that when we moved from 1809 McClellan Street to 1122 Perkins, we lived in a B house. Now, that’s one of the things that’s a little different. I mean, the houses had alpha-numbers on them. A houses, B houses, one-, two-, three-bedroom prefabs. So a B house was a duplex, two bedrooms on each end. But on Perkins Street, we could look across the street and there were two L houses. Those were two-story and four bedrooms upstairs; living room, dining room, kitchen downstairs. They were pretty spiffy. So here you have this strange junction of somebody who was an hourly worker was not at first bat going to be assigned an L house to live in.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>McClellan: You were a manager. The manager that lived across the street, ultimately, would become the chief engineer for the Hanford Project. That was Oren H. Pilkey, P-I-L-K-E-Y. A senior. And he was an engineer. Grew up in Texas, trained as an engineer at Texas A&M, and then gone off to work for Chicago Bridge and Ironworks. Had a lot of experience. So I remember well—you know, I’m kind of a tall, even in those days, skinny kid, and I was playing out in the front yard, and I saw this black Ford sedan drive in to the L house that had recently become vacant, and out hopped four people. They weren’t too unusual, except they were short of stature. The two adults were about five-foot-four, and the kids were under five-foot. We soon became good friends. Ultimately, Oren Pilkey was one of my scout masters and a mentor.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>McClellan: He encouraged me in terms of mathematics, engineering, physical sciences. A love and appreciation for the outdoors. But I did many Sunday afternoon kind of engineering, or learning experiences in his study at his home. I remember doing one of those. It was a calculation of pressure in a large tank, what the pressure would be involved in lifting the lid on the large tank. Only many years later did I learn that was the double-walled steel tanks at Hanford that he was overseeing developing. On that particular occasion, I actually could best his son, who was my classmate in high school, Walter Pilkey. Walter would go on to become a very distinguished engineer and professor of Engineering Science at the University of Virginia. His older brother, who was my good friend also, Oren Pilkey, Junior, went on and very distinguished career in marine geology, was a Washington Duke professor of geology at Duke University. So, I think that kind of segueways back in terms of the educational environment. I think there was a lot of inspiration, if you will. As a young kid you could see people who were successful, and you soon recognized success was tied to education.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, I suppose it’s knowing so many people from so many different places. I guess I could imagine maybe that people in Richland were aware of a wider world than, say, someone in a small town in Minnesota or Arkansas might be.</p>
<p>McClellan: Well, I think that’s true. And I think they each brought their own culture. I mean, I recall our next door neighbors in Sunnyside. They were from Oklahoma. Even as a seven-year-old, I kind of knew a bit about the Dust Bowl and whatever, and the Okies. I was admonished by my parents, we’re not supposed to call them Okies. That’s a little bit of a derogatory term. But I still remember an experience, going with my mother, and she of course had her troop of three kids. I was seven, my brother was five-and-a-half and my sister was four, and we were going downtown Sunnyside to mail some packages and shopping. The lady next door had her troop of three kids about the same age, except she had a newborn baby. So we went into the Sunnyside post office and mailed our packages and came out, and the baby started to squall. And so the lady sat on the steps of the post office in Sunnyside and opened her blouse and started to nurse her baby. Well, that was not quite what you would expect in Tracy, Minnesota. Little bit different culture. So you had different cultures. Again, my friends, the Pilkeys, their mother had gone to Hunter College in New York. Very well-educated lady. We would very frequently take trips to the public library on Sunday afternoon to pick up a new collection of books. If you went to her home, why, there’d be a book on almost every table. She was an avid reader. And that encouraged us to do the same.</p>
<p>Franklin: That’s very interesting—sorry. Go ahead.</p>
<p>McClellan: Well, so, I think the difference in everybody being from somewhere else was something that kind of pulled things apart, in terms of a community. On the other hand, the fact that everybody was in some way involved with Hanford brought people together. And overlaying that, in those days—the late ‘40s—was the element of secrecy. You didn’t really know what was going on. Things were compartmentalized. Many years later, I was taking a graduate course at what was then the WSU Joint Graduate Center. In a sense a predecessor of—</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, pretty much right here.</p>
<p>McClellan: WSU. So the individual teaching that was Doctor Lyle Swindeman, who was an environmental scientist at the Hanford Laboratories. And we were going through each of the different AEC facilities around the country: Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, Shipping Port—whatever—as to what they did, how they managed environmental activities. It was really rather remarkable in terms of the early 1960s, when I took that. One of them we focused on, of course, was Hanford. That particular evening, we had a flow chart for the PUREX facility. I came home and I was doing some homework at the table. My father came home from a swing shift and sat down with a cup of coffee, and we’re chatting and looking at what I’m doing. And he said, what the hell are you doing? Those are classified! [LAUGHTER] I said, no, no, look up there. It’s unclassified. He said, no, I think that’s classified. That’s what we’re doing all the time. So there was this little bit of a conflict there. He was not absolutely convinced that I had the unclassified version of the flow documents for the PUREX facility.</p>
<p>Franklin: Well, that makes sense, too, right, because he would have come to Hanford during World War II when secrecy was paramount. I mean—</p>
<p>McClellan: Oh!</p>
<p>Franklin: If you said anything about your job, you could easily be on the next train out.</p>
<p>McClellan: Oh, absolutely. And the other is elements—I recently had a conversation with some people in terms of plutonium workers at Hanford, which my father was one of those. Ironically, many years later, I would be studying plutonium. I was involved in the first meeting that gave rise to the US Transuranium and Uranium Registry. My father was enrolled in that. And I continue today to have an interest in plutonium toxicity and what we do to protect the workers, which, in my opinion, was remarkable in terms of at Hanford. Part of that is you have a bioassay program. Well, what’s bioassay? One of the elements of the bioassay program is that you collect samples of urine periodically, you analyze them for radioactivity, and then using very sophisticated models, go back and project—estimate—what exposures an individual may have in terms of internal deposition. Well, it was classified as to what people did, but now I can understand, if I had just gone down the street and taken a look at which addresses had a gray box on the front doorstep, which was the urine samples that were being collected, I could have identified who were the prospective plutonium workers at Hanford. I don’t know if the Soviets had anybody doing those street checks in Richland or not, but they could have identified who were the plutonium workers pretty readily.</p>
<p>Franklin: Interesting. I just wanted to come back to something, and say that it’s remarkable to hear you talk about the impact of the mixed income neighborhood you lived in, and that you identified that we lived in this mixed income neighborhood from the B house next to the L. Because that was, as you might know, that was Pherson—Albin Pherson—the man who designed the Richland village. That was his idea. That was one of the things he pushed through, was having mixed income neighborhoods, so that you didn’t have a total segregation of people by class.</p>
<p>McClellan: Yeah. Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: It’s interesting to hear your views on that and how that affected you.</p>
<p>McClellan: Yeah. No, there was that element of kind of a utopian plan community approach. I don’t want to go too far on it. There’s a book out there, it’s got a corruption of the word plutonium in it, written by an individual who puts herself forward as an academic historian. I’m not certain where she got her degree, what her credentials, but I can tell you the book is filled with hogwash, as my grandfather would say. Absolute, unvarnished hogwash. I don’t know where she got a lot of her information—it’s misinformation, as she tries to contrast and compare Richland, the Hanford Site, with Mayak in the Soviet Union. I’ve studied both of those; I know both of them quite well. And I also know the outcomes, in terms of health of workers at both those sites. She’s totally off base. I always like to call that to people’s attention. They say, have you read the book in its entirety? I say, I’ve read pieces of it, but I really don’t want to waste my money buying it.</p>
<p>Franklin: I see. So, you graduated in ’54, correct? From Columbia High.</p>
<p>McClellan: Right.</p>
<p>Franklin: And then you went to WSC.</p>
<p>McClellan: Right.</p>
<p>Franklin: So what did you go to study at—</p>
<p>McClellan: Well, we have to back up a ways.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay, let’s do that.</p>
<p>McClellan: There’s an interesting event that occurred. I’m going to be a little bit vague in this because I may not remember the specific dates. But 1948—using the royal we—the US detected airborne radioactivity on the west coast of the USA. That was not surprising; we knew that the Soviets were building a copycat facility to Hanford. When we detected radioactivity in the air, specifically radioiodine, iodine-131, that was a very good—not just clue—but we knew they were processing radioactive fuel.</p>
<p>Franklin: I’ve heard that their first facility was almost an exact copy of the one in the 300 Area, except instead of being horizontal, it was vertical. Do you know anything about—</p>
<p>McClellan: I’m not really knowledgeable of the absolute details of theirs, but again, the key element is that what they were doing is they were taking refined uranium fuel—</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>McClellan: --creating a reaction, in terms of neutrons and producing plutonium-239.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right. We knew they were doing the same thing that we were doing.</p>
<p>McClellan: Exactly. And when we detected radioiodine in the air, we knew they were processing that fuel. Now, the key is how much plutonium were they producing? That’s what we really wanted to know. And somebody said, well, gee, they’re doing just what we did at Hanford. They’re processing green fuel. Well, what do we mean by green fuel? Green fuel is freshly irradiated uranium oxide fuel with plutonium in it. And were now, rather than letting that cool down for a period of time, so the short live radionuclides decay off, were processing it almost immediately because we want the plutonium. That’s what happened in terms of Hanford when the first processing, I think late in 1944, early 1945, to produce plutonium to go to Los Alamos. So, somebody said, well, gee, if we know there’s x radioiodine in the air, what we want to know is y amount of plutonium. Well, why don’t we just repeat that big experiment? So that was Operation Green Run. That was the code name for what would ultimately be the largest—to my knowledge—release of radioactivity from the Hanford Operations. A planned experiment that went astray. They took the freshly irradiated green fuel, chopped it, added the nitric acid. I have reason to go back through the dates—my father was probably involved in that crew. And then the radioiodine started to come out the stack. But Mother Nature didn’t cooperate. We had a major meteorological inversion, and, basically, fumigated, quote, the Inland Empire with short-lived iodine-131. It has an eight-day half-life. That would create controversy over whether there were ill effects related to that. As it turned out, in terms of those releases—that was highly classified—but it led to a real push in further work at Hanford on radioiodine. They started a major study. That study involved feeding radioactive iodine to sheep each day. And along the way, they decided, gee, you know we always have this possibility of exposures on the site. Why don’t we maintain an offsite flock of control sheep? Ah, that sounds like a good idea. Who could do that? Well, gee, why don’t we have the Richland schools do that? I can’t go through all the details, but I’m reasonably certain there were discussions at rather high levels. Rather surprisingly, the Richland School District started a vocational agriculture program. I was one of the early students in that program. The school farm was located right across the road from where the WSU Tri-Cities campus is located today.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, right.</p>
<p>McClellan: We had a large tract of land, and in fact, if you were enterprising as I was, you could sublease a piece of that land. I actually had the sublease on the ten acres right at the corner of Jadwin across from the WSU campus where I grew corn and alfalfa for four years that I was in high school. I also had several orchards and a vineyard for two years. But that school farm maintained the offsite control sheep for the big Hanford radioiodine and thyroid cancer study that was being conducted. What was particularly important out of that is one of the people that WSU recruited was Leo K. Bustad. Leo K. Bustad was a veterinarian. He had been a distinguished military veteran. Had spent a significant portion of his military time in World War II in German prisoner of war camp, which substantially influenced him. He came back to WSU and pursued a master’s degree in nutrition and a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree. When he received the DVM and the nutrition degree, he was an ideal candidate to recruit to Hanford for involvement in the studies on radiation effects. I first, then, met Leo Bustad when he was a Hanford scientist and periodically would stop by the school farm and check on the status of those offsite control sheep. So, he encouraged me in terms of veterinary medicine. My friend, Oren Pilkey, across the street encouraged me in engineering. When I headed off to WSU—or WSC—1954, I actually enrolled as an engineering student. I took engineering. I took economics. I took pre-veterinary medicine. And then I decided to go down the pathway of veterinary medicine. That led me, then, to seek summer employment. [LAUGHTER] And so I was employed as a student at Hanford for three years—’57, ’58, ’59. And then Leo twisted my arm to come back as a full-time scientist in 1960, when I received my Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree. [37:40]</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow. We should note that Bustad is also one of the most well-known or prodigious WSU alumni in terms of his contributions to veterinary medicine and, you know, there’s an entire hall named after him on campus.</p>
<p>McClellan: Well, Leo is a wonderful remarkable individual. I can relate many, many stories with regard to Leo. But one of those—I’d just finished what was probably my first major scientific manuscript on the metabolism of strontium-90. Strontium-90 is an alkaline earth element. Behaves very much like calcium. So it’s readily absorbed in the GI tract, goes to the skeleton. Radio strontium, strontium-90, is a beta emitter, radiates then the bone and the bone marrow. So you’re concerned for those effects. So we were studying strontium-90 in miniature pigs. So I had finished this manuscript on metabolism of strontium-90 and gave it to Leo to review. Leo said, I’ll read through it tonight, come back tomorrow, and we can talk about it. So I came in the next day, and he said, well, this is really good. But there’s kind of a little bit of a problem with a few aspects. I said, oh, what’s that? He said, well, rather surprised there’s only one author. I knew, uh-oh. Boy, I goofed. I said, oh, well, this was just a draft, Leo. He said, well, I hope so. I thought I had quite a bit to do with the design of that experiment. I said, what else? He said, well, it’s got some statistics in here. You and I aren’t statisticians. Maybe we ought to have somebody else review this. I said, who do you have in mind? And he said, Carl. Turns out that he was sort of the top statistician at Hanford. I said, we don’t to waste his time then. He said, oh, I’ve already called him up. He’s expecting you in his office at 300 Area at 4:00. And he said, we’ll have to have it wrapped up by 7:00 because I’m going to be home for dinner at 7:30. Sure enough, I went in and we spent three hours—a wonderful experience. Very junior scientist and here’s one of the leading statisticians in the world, in fact. So I said, what else? And he said, well, we need some good editorial advice? I said, well, what are you thinking about? He said, well, what about Phil Abelson? I said, Phil Abelson, the editor of <em>Science</em> magazine? And he said, yeah! I said, well, we’re going to need some connections there, Leo. He says, we got them. He’s a Cougar! He picked up the phone and called Phil Abelson. And introduced me to Phil on the phone. And that was the beginning of a lifetime association that I had with Phil Abelson.</p>
<p>Franklin: Who also has a building named after him on campus.</p>
<p>McClellan: Yeah. And many years later, I was the president and CEO for an organization called the Chemical Industry Institute of Toxicology from 1988 to 1999. And Phil Abelson was on my board of directors. So Phil and I were lifelong friends. I was very pleased, many years later, when I was recognized as a Regent’s Distinguished Alumnus at Washington State University to actually—I knew that Phil was also an alumnus, but I didn’t appreciate he was the first Regent’s Alumnus in terms of Washington State University. And then as I went down the list further, Leo Bustad was on that list. So I’m very proud in terms of that lineage.</p>
<p>Franklin: That’s great. As a side note, your name was so familiar to me in the beginning because I did a project for them—for University Communications for a historical timeline and had to find pictures of all the Regent’s Distinguished—what year were you a Regent’s Distinguished—</p>
<p>McClellan: Golly, I think 2007, maybe.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay, I think I found your picture somewhere and put it up on the website.</p>
<p>McClellan: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: It’s funny. So, wow. You got all three degrees at Washington State?</p>
<p>McClellan: No, no, I only received one. It’s always interesting, particularly if I’m appearing in the court room. They’ll say where did you get your bachelor’s degree? I say, I don’t have one. You know, plaintiff lawyers spend a lot of time on that. I went to WSU at a time period when you could actually gain admission with the appropriate number of credit hours after two years. So I ended up going to Washington State University and completing my only degree, a Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine, in six years, and graduated in 1960.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p>McClellan: So I was 23 years old. I later—kind of on a lark—took a Master’s in Management Science—an MBA in an executive program—at the University of New Mexico. I received that degree in 1980. That was a lot of fun, because, again, it was multidisciplinary. There were engineers; there were chemists, physicists, social scientists, physicians, lawyers. I’ve alwys enjoyed that kind of interdisciplinary environment. I had that in terms of that program at Robert O. Anderson School of Management at University of New Mexico. And then later I had the good fortunate that the Ohio State University recognized my career in comparative veterinary medicine and awarded me an honorary Doctor of Science degree, which I’m very proud to have received.</p>
<p>Franklin: So you said—you mentioned that you worked three summesr at the Hanford Site and then were brought on at Bustad’s urgings back to Hanford. So how long did you stay at—so you graduated in 1960 and then came back to—</p>
<p>McClellan: Yeah. Well then I actually—I planned to stay two years until my fiancée, Kathleen—Kathleen Donnegan—graduated from Washington State. Then we’d have kind of free range. One of my understandings with Bustad when I came to Hanford is he would make certain I could visit all the schools around the USA that I was interested in potentially going to to pursue a graduate degree. He said, I won’t get you to Perth, Australia, the other one you’re considering, but I’ll get you to those five in the US. And he did live up to his bargain. Leo was a great mentor in terms of encouraging me to do lots of different things and always push yourself to the limit. He signed me up—I think the second year I was at Hanford, I was 24 years old, and he asked me to keep a day open. As I recall, it was in March ’62. And I said, well, Leo, we need to fill in the calendar; what do you have in mind? He said, well, I signed you up to give a seminar at the University of Washington on bone marrow transplantation in miniature pigs. [LAUGHTER] It was pretty heavy. But he was reassuring. As I was getting my slides together, he said, Roger, remember when you talk to that group of people, you’re going to know more about the subject than anybody in that room. That’s great advice to a young student—young scientist—to have confidence. That if you’re well-prepared, you could go before a pretty formidable audience, because you should know more about that topic than anybody in that room.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right. How was it, coming back to Hanford after it had been privatized? I’m sure you probably—your parents lived—</p>
<p>McClellan: Yeah, actually it was—when I was at WSC, my parents bought their home. So I saw those activities. And then, when I was employed, I was in the Hanford Laboratories. That was a remarkable institution, organization. The individual that headed that was H. M. Parker—Herbert M. Parker. The biology division within that was headed up by Harry A. Kornberg. Leo Bustad reported to Kornberg. I reported to Bustad. I was on a very short reporting line, if you will. Mr. Parker reported to W. A. Johnson. So I knew Herb Parker personally. I’d had the opportunity to give one of what were sometimes called the Parker seminars—individuals would be invited to give a seminar for Mr. Parker and a very small group of people in Parker’s office and library in 300 Area. Those were always with some trepidation. You couldn’t turn down that invitation, because people maneuvered to get them. But that was a pretty august audience they had at the laboratories—H. M. Parker listening to your presentation and having questions.</p>
<p>Franklin: That sounds like a very encouraging workplace.</p>
<p>McClellan: Oh, it was!</p>
<p>Franklin: [INAUDIBLE] of research discipline and hard work.</p>
<p>McClellan: And hard work was rewarded. I remember in 1962, I had a call from Mr. Parker’s office to come in. A little bit uncertain. Leo Bustad had kind of gone out on a limb in terms of encouraging me to go to an international meeting in England at the International Congress of Radiation Research. I initially took in my travel schedule and Leo took a look and said, gee, this doesn’t look very good, Roger. And I said, what do you mean? I’m going to the meeting for a week, I’m going to take a week’s vacation. It’s going to be just a month or so after I’m married. He said, oh, no, no problem with that. I’d like you to spend a lot more time there. There’s a lot of people I want you to see and meet. So he said I’ll draw up a revised schedule. So I came back the next day and he had a schedule that was four weeks! I said, holy cow! I said, Leo, this isn’t going to fly. I mean, it certainly won’t get by Mr. Parker. And he said, what do you mean? I said, well, you don’t know the saying. There’s a saying around the lab with the working troops that if you’re gone two weeks, you’re gone forever. I said I don’t want to tempt fate. He said, oh, Herb’s bark is always a lot sharper than his bite. He said, I think he’ll approve this. He thinks you’re one of our rising stars. So sure enough, Herb Parker approved it. And then just the week before I’m going to this meeting, I get a call from Mr. Parker’s office. And I thought, uh-oh, he’s going to personally tell me he’s changed his mind. So I went into his office, and seated in the outer room, the door to the strong room, if you will, open. And Mr. Parker, a rather large individual, came out with his kind of limp handshake. Hello, Roger, great to have you here. Come on in. And then, you’re probably wondering why I’ve invited you to my office today. And I said, well, I am. [LAUGHTER] He said, well, we have a program here. I like to recognize people for their contributions, and it’s a rather private matter. And he gave me a little black leather case, and it had a nice little commemorative statement in there. Then he reached into his coat pocket and he pulled out an envelope and he said, and there is a monetary award that goes with this. I’m sure that’s going to be useful on that very prolonged trip you have planned to Europe. [LAUGHTER] So, Herb could have a—he was an outstanding scientist—also had a very wry, British humor. He certainly encouraged me to become involved in activities in radiation protection. I’m very confident I would never have become a member of the National Counsel of Radiation Protection and Measurements if it had not been for the encouragement that Herb Parker and Leo Bustad gave me.</p>
<p>Franklin: Could you speak a little—just for people that might not know—could you speak a little more about Herb Parker and his work at Hanford. Since you knew him personally, Herb Parker’s working at Hanford and his importance to Hanford.</p>
<p>McClellan: Well, Herb Parker was trained as a radiological physicist in England. Very bright individual. Did some seminal work in radiological physics, particularly related to treatment of cancer, and what we call [UNKNOWN] dose curves. He developed these to estimate the radiation dose that would be delivered to a tumor, if you will, from an external x-ray beam. One of the people that he learned of and came in contact with was Dr. Cantrell at Swedish Cancer Institute in Seattle. So, he joined Cantrell to continue his work. And then World War II came along and Herb got pulled into the Manhattan Project. He was a part of a group of individuals trained primarily in physics, some in chemistry, and brought together initially at Oak Ridge. They were to be sort of the liaison between the operations, the medical community, and assuring the safety of workers. That coded, if you will, as health physics. That was done in part because no one wanted to use the term radiological in terms of this particular activity, because of the secrecy during World War II. Later, Herb would express profound dislike for that term, health physics. I agree with him. I would think it probably was a useful placeholder for a time period. So Herb was one of that early group, and he was assigned to Hanford, I think. If memory serves me, he came to Hanford in August of 1944. I said I came in September to start the third grade in 1944. And Herb had a key role in the overall design and management, ultimately, of the program in terms of radiological protection of the Hanford workers, and you could go more broadly, protection in terms of chemical agents. And not protection just of workers but the total environmental program. In my opinion, the program that Herb Parker really provided the leadership for was one of the foremost programs in terms of environmental and worker protection that was ever put in place in prospective way. Evidence of that, Mr. Parker—and it was Mr. Parker; he did not have an earned doctoral degree—set about writing with Cantrell kind of a handbook, if you will, on radiation protection. What is it? What is radiation? What does it do to the body? He wanted to see that distributed to the appropriate workers at the earliest possible date. It ran into some difficulties in terms of clearance, but it ultimately was released on January 5<sup>th</sup>, 1945. My eighth birthday. [LAUGHTER] So it’s easy for me to recall. That document is an extraordinary exposition on what we knew about radiation then. And many of the basic concepts that were outlined by Cantrell and Parker in that document are still applicable today.</p>
<p>Franklin: So he’s really a major leader in health physics.</p>
<p>McClellan: Yeah, and I would say, Herb would probably—he would prefer radiological protection.</p>
<p>Franklin: Radiological protection.</p>
<p>McClellan: Yeah, and I see it as that big picture of protection of workers and the environment from agents, whether the agents were working, processing, in terms of the whole chain of radioactive materials, uranium to plutonium fission products, or whether we’re talking about chemicals. My career, in fact, has been punctuated—I’ve been involved in radiation throughout my career, but I’ve also spent a very large portion of it dealing with chemical agents.</p>
<p>Franklin: How long did you work at Hanford Labs?</p>
<p>McClellan: Well, as I said, I came back as a permanent scientist 1960. I was very fortunate, I think, working under the leadership of Leo Bustad and Harry Kornberg and Mr. Parker, to be advanced very early to rank Senior Scientist. I soon put the graduate program sort of on the side and pushed ahead. In 1964, Leo came to me and said, you know, they’re pushing on me again to come back to Washington, D.C. on a special assignment. I’m not really enthusiastic about it because my kids are in school. But I think I’m going to suggest they take a look at you. What do you think about that? And I said, well, gee. That sounds like an interesting opportunity. So, first thing you know, I’m on my way to Washignton, D.C. and a series of interviews. We reached agreement that in October 1 of 1964, I’ll go to Washington, D.C. Well, then, all of the sudden, things started to change in the summer, basically, of ’64. The decision that General Electric is going to leave, that total operation is going to be fragmented. Sometimes I refer to that as the disparaging phrase of, maintaining employment in the face of absence of a product. Because it was pretty clear we had enough plutonium-239. We didn’t need Hanford any longer to produce any more. General Electric ran a very efficient operation. So, General Electric headed out, and they start to look at firms to run different pieces of the operation. It became known that the laboratories would be managed as a separate enterprise, and very quickly we learned that was going to be Battelle Memorial Institute from Columbus. For those of at Hanford, it didn’t take much time in the library to kind of determine that, gee, this seems to be upside-down. We ought to be taking over Battelle, not Battelle taking us over. But that’s the way it was. So I was interviewed by Sherwood Fawcett, who had been announced as the first director of what would become the Pacific Northwest Laboratories. The outcome was predictable. They said, we want you to join the Battelle team. We seem to have this problem: you’re leaving before we arrive. So I said, well, that’s just the way it is. [LAUGHTER] And he said, well, maybe we could delay your departure. I said, well, perhaps we could talk to the people in the AEC and see if they’d be agreeable. But Dr. Fawcett said, well, what would they have to do with it? And I still remember telling him, they had something to do with everything that goes on here. They certainly will have a say. Well, they were quickly agreed. So it was agreed that I would become a Battelle employee. So as I recall, January 4<sup>th</sup> or thereabouts, 1965, I walked out the door on Friday evening and threw my GE badge in the box and came in on Monday morning and picked up a Battelle badge, and that Friday I headed out on a leave of absence to join the division of biology and medicine at the Atomic Energy Commission in Washington, D.C.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p>McClellan: So the next phase is after not quite two years in Washington. I spent—I was then strongly encouraged to go to Albuquerque, New Mexico to run a research program on inhaled radioactivity that was operated by the Lovelace Foundation for Medical Education and Research, a part of a triad of a medical research institute, a private medical clinic and a hospital. And in that role, running that program, I essentially competed with Hanford in terms of a very significant research program that Bill Bair pioneered in leading at Hanford. So while I was gone from Hanford, I in a sense remained connected, certainly scientifically. And as a competitor, but a very friendly competition.</p>
<p>Franklin: [LAUGHTER] And did you ever come back to work at Hanford after you went to New Mexico?</p>
<p>McClellan: Well, I never came—well, I came for a couple weeks in the summer of ’66 and sort of bid my farewell. Wrapped up a few things. And I continued to publish some papers interrelated. I came back many times in terms of the Hanford Symposium that became a regular feature. And then I had the opportunity, more recently, to serve on the Scientific Advisory Committee for the US Transuranium and Uranium Registry. Which, ironically, I was involved in in some of the early activities initiating it in 1966. Now we’re 50 years later, celebrating the 50<sup>th</sup> anniversary of a landmark program started by group of occupational physicians, Dag Norwood, one of those small contractors in the privatized acitivites at Hanford. Then that later went over to Washington State University, and today is maintained and operated as a piece of the Washington State University College of Pharmacy.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yup. When you were at Hanford Labs, what kinds of work were you—you mentioned work on pigs, bone marrow—what other kinds of work were you doing?</p>
<p>McClellan: Well, we had a major study that Leo was wrapping up on the effects of radioiodine in thyroid cancer in sheep. I did some ancillary studies related to how we translated those results to people, to humans. One of the key pieces of work that I did—and it really fit into a bigger picture with many people involved, but—we looked at the effects of x radiation of the thyroid gland and compared that to the protracted beta radiation of the thyroid from ingested or inhaled radioiodine. That showed that the protracted radiation exposure was much less effective in causing damage to the thyroid. So that was a very important piece of work. Another major study that—the primary one I had responsibility for was one that involved miniature pigs given strontium-90. They received their strontium-90 dose each day. We had three generations of pigs. Not because it was a study of genetic effects, but that’s the way in which we could introduce additional animals into the study. It ultimately involved over 1,000 miniature pigs, essentially studied for their total lifespan. And the endpoints were the development of bone marrow discrasias, bone marrow cancers, leukemia, and a development of bone cancers. So that study continued after I left. I think, in total, it represented a very important contribution. A key finding, again, was the importance of dose rate delivery. When radiation dose is protracted over time, it’s much less effective in causing damage and causing cancer. Another key study that was done during that time period linked back to Operation Green Run. We essentially simulated a part of that in a study in which we fed radioiodine—iodine-131 to dairy cows. We followed the thyroid in radioactivity in dairy cows. We collected samples of the milk—we milked them. And then we had a group of volunteers that drank that radioiodine-contaminated milk, elements of it. And then we monitored their thyroids. So you could put together this total picture of a contamination event in terms of iodine-131. What’s happening in terms of the cow’s thyroids accumulating iodine, what’s happening in terms of the iodine-131 in the milk, and then what is happening in terms of concentration of radioiodine in the human thyroid for people ingesting that. That was a very valuable set of data to help us understand what happened in terms of Operation Green Run. It was an extraordinarily valuable piece of information we could use in terms of assessing what was happening post-Chernobyl and post Fukushima.</p>
<p>Franklin: What did that data show, as to contamination in humans?</p>
<p>McClellan: Well, it basically—key message out of that is if radioiodine is released in the event of a reactor accident, you really want to focus on what you can do to control it. You can control it multiple ways. One way is you simply take the cows off of any pasturage. You put them on the stored feed that doesn’t have radioiodine in it. And you make very certain that you simply stop the milk in that supply line. So in the case of Chernobyl, I was able to go to the Ukraine the fall after the Chernobyl accident and do some work there, reconstructing what was going on.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, wow.</p>
<p>McClellan: We could see—and I think has been subsequently borne out—in many areas the Soviets were very effective of limiting the exposure of populations. Part of that was cut off that contaminated milk supply. The other that came out of that was something we had a clue to, and that is that the stable iodine intake is very important. If an individual is in what we call a goitergenic diet, low on stable iodine, then they’re going to take up much more of the radioiodine and get a higher radiation dose, as well as, I think there’s a synergistic interaction between the goitergenic thyroid that low in terms of iodine intake, and it’s pushing to do its best, if you will, limited iodine. So that’s combination of living in an area that’s goiterogenic and being subjected to radioiodine is bad news.</p>
<p>Franklin: How would someone naturally have a low iodine intake?</p>
<p>McClellan: Well, very difficult in the USA—or in most advanced countries. Because one of the things we do is we introduce iodine in the flour.</p>
<p>Franklin: And what about iodized salt, also.</p>
<p>McClellan: Salt, yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. So--</p>
<p>McClelland: Okay. But in certain areas, you know, in the Ukraine and Belarussia, at the time of the Chernobyl accident, things were not working well politically. Areas that had subsidized practices in terms of iodized salt, iodized flour—that was gone. They were reverting back to the old ways of flour being produced from wheat grown in these low iodine areas.</p>
<p>Franklin: So they’re bodies would have been much more naturally attuned to be grabbing that iodine and storing it?</p>
<p>McClellan: That’s right. Yeah, that’s exactly—</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow, that’s really fascinating.</p>
<p>McClellan: So the people most at risk were those people living in those goiterogenic areas. In fact, that pattern was well-studied in terms of people knowledgeable of thyroid and thyroid disease.</p>
<p>Franklin: So did you know this about—you knew this about the iodine, then, before Chernobyl happened and were able to identify it, or this came about as a result of Chernobyl?</p>
<p>McClellan: Well, what happened is Chernobyl kind of confirmed our fears, if you will. An individual by the name of Lester van Middlesworth at the Univeristy of Tennessee in Memphis was a major figure in studying thyroid and thyroid diseases. Leo Bustad and van Middlesworth were very good friends. I later became friends with van Middlesworth. He understood this, alerted him to this. In fact, our study that I referred to of radioiodine in cows—cows’ milk—we actually studied the influence in a small supplemental study of changing the iodine intake of the cows. So we knew—we understood that picture then. But it was after Chernobyl that, I think, Lester van Middlesworth was a key figure in pointing out these were the areas that were going to be at risk in the Ukraine, Russia, and Belarussia.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow. The cows that were used for the study, were those cows—were those someone’s cows, or were they cows at the Hanford Labs?</p>
<p>McClellan: Oh, no, we purchased the cows. We purchased the cows at the open market. It was kind of fun. We actually had a much bigger experiment planned early on. We were going to grow and have the pastures and contaminate them and so on. But that was a multimillion dollar experiment to get shrunk down to something you could finally do. Kind of an interesting sideline is, as I told you, I came to Hanford as a summer student. I was fortunate that I fit into a program that was designed primarily for engineers. There were 100 individuals in the program in ’57. I think there were 95, 98 bona fide engineers. There was a graduate student from Wyoming and me, a veterinary medical student. But I had a—and Leo had an enthusiasm for bringing in students. So when I came back and was a permanent staff member, we regularly recruited students. So I can recall when we were planning the cow study, Leo and I had a set of resumes and applications in front of us. Leo pulled out one, and he said, I think this guy is really our guy. His name was Eugene Elafson. And I said, oh, I spotted him, Leo, and I knew you’d probably pick him out. He said, why is that? And I said, because he’s from Stanwood, Washington. That’s where you grew up! He’s another Scandinavian. And he said, oh, Roger, I knew you’d see through that. But remember, this guy grew up on a dairy farm. We need somebody to milk these cows this summer. [LAUGHTER] So we had Gene Olafson, who later was onto a very successful career in veterinary medicine. It was one of the students working with us that summer.</p>
<p>Franklin: How did you get the volunteers to ingest the milk? Did they know of—</p>
<p>McClellan: Oh, they knew that they were ingesting—in fact, they were all, as best I recall, the individuals were all professionals within the radiation protection unit at Hanford.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>McClellan: So today, whether we would have allowed them to be subjects of their own experiment, I don’t know. But I want to assure you that the radiation doses they received were extraordinarily small.</p>
<p>Franklin: I was just curious.</p>
<p>McClellan: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: You don’t hear about human subjects, generally, you know?</p>
<p>McClellan: Well, we went through a time period where there was a lot of attention given in terms of work done under the auspices of the Atomic Energy Commission and using radiation and radionuclides in human subjects. During that time period, this study was one which the people—by then, Battelle was operating the laboratories, but they had go to back and pull out all the records. I recall very well the day I received a call from an attorney with the General Electric Company and said, I’ve read your papers in which you’re a coauthor reporting these students with five volunteers at Hanford. What can you tell me about them? But turned out, our scientific papers published in the open peer reviewed literature were one of the best pieces of information that one could use to readily calculate the radiation exposure the individuals and show that it was what I would call <em>de minimis</em>.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. That’s really interesting. When did you finally retire? Or have you retired?</p>
<p>McClellan: I’m not really retired. I’ve transitioned. I think my career is one of Hanford and studies on ingested radionuclides. A very important part of Hanford that I think should be emphasized is we were involved in what I would call issue-resolving science. We were trying to develop science so that we could resolve issues, solve problems, create information that could protect workers, protect the environment. I’m concerned that we’ve, over the years, science has changed in many quarters. Now sometimes I accuse some of my fellow scientists of being engaged in issue of perpetuating science: can we keep this going until my career’s over, or my graduate students’ careers are over. And even sometimes a bit of, will this arouse enough concern on the part of the public that they’ll fund what I want to do? The year that I was involved at Hanford, it was issue resolving science. The problem, the issue, it wasn’t a random walk through the scientific thicket, trying to find something interesting.</p>
<p>Franklin: Why do you think that’s changed?</p>
<p>McClellan: Well, I think we always have tension, and sometimes the tension—we can simplify it by talking about basic versus applied science. I think that’s an artificial distinction on it. Some of the most basic, fundamental findings in science have been serendipitous findings that came out of applied science. I really am not an enthusiastic of the view that the best and the brightest can go into the laboratory and just sit down and they’ll have some great thoughts about what comes next. Some of this, I think, comes out of the high energy physics community, where there is a bit of that. I’m a strong believer, particularly in the use of public funds. That public funds should be used for science, in which we do have issues, and we want to obtain information that’s going to help us resolve those and use the science for the benefit of society. I think we sometimes get a little quite frankly maybe a little pompous as scientists that we know what the issues are and if the public would just listen to us more and give us more money, why, we’ll solve all the problems. That’s not really the way the world works. I think that science if a very vital part of the whole society. But it has to be a part of it, and it has to be interlocked and working with the other elements of society. I also think that many times we find scientists getting so wrapped up in their particular discipline that they fail to appreciate that most of these issues are so complex, they’re not solved by one scientist, one discipline. They’re really solved by a team of people. That becomes very challenging, because systems, in terms of reward, are not always designed to reward teams of people.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>McClellan: We focus on rewarding individuals. I would say, I think, at Hanford, in the time period that I had extensive involvement, there was a teamwork orientation and a balance of recognizing the value of the individual but the value of the individual contributing his part of the team to solve a problem.</p>
<p>Franklin: Do you think—do you feel, maybe, that the Cold War had an impact in how science was connected, or that kind of teamwork or purpose-driven science happened, especially in the period you’re talking about, in the early, the heightened tensions of the Cold War versus this kind of post-Cold War world?</p>
<p>McClellan: Well, I know there was a purpose. In terms of talking nationalistic.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>McClellan: I mean, we were in a war. But now we’re in a new war, the Cold War. We knew what the Soviets were doing; they knew what we were doing. I think there was a battle on—I think the other part of that that influences this is that if you go back to the tremendous contributions of science, in terms of World War II, to winning that war, and certainly in many different ways—but we can go into the whole issue of RADAR. Things were done in communication, things were done in aeronautics in terms of physiological suit design.</p>
<p>Franklin: And so on.</p>
<p>McClellan: Yeah. Development of antibiotics. All of that, the whole field of nuclear energy. My personal view is that nuclear energy has both benefited from those origins, but it’s also had a heavy burden to bear. [LAUGHTER] I can relate to the fact that I’m visiting here in Richland and I’m going to go to a football game, and that football game, my grandson’s going to be playing in one team from western Washington, and they’re going to be playing the Richland High School Bombers, and their symbol is a mushroom cloud.</p>
<p>Franklin: Proud of the cloud!</p>
<p>McClellan: Unfortunately, many people, when you talk about nuclear power and its role in meeting our societal energy needs, their first image is that mushroom cloud. Their second image is envisioning thousands of deaths in terms of people who were killed in the two atomic bombings in Japan. What they fail to appreciate is that in fact radiation is not very effective in terms of producing cancer. It is really a weak carcinogen. That being said it has a bad rap. It doesn’t get as much of a good rap, probably, as it should in terms of its value in diagnostic purposes in terms of human medicine, nor diagnostic purposes—treatment purposes in terms of ccancer. Radiation is still one of our most effective tools in terms of cancer treatment. But all of that is sort of overwhelmed in the public view. So I continue to be a very strong supporter, enthusiast, wearing my hat as a citizen, I think, with special knowledge of radiation, as to what we should be doing in terms of trying to meet our energy needs. I think nuclear power has a key role. We’ve amply demonstrated that we can handle it and control it. We have had serious accidents—Chernobyl, Fukushima—but I think we can also learn from those.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right. So I hate to—</p>
<p>McClellan: I think we’ve gone well over.</p>
<p>Franklin: We’ve gone for a bit. But I hate to [unknown] but I have an interview here in just a bit. But before you go, is there anything else we haven’t talked aobut that you would like to get off your chest?</p>
<p>McClellan: No. Well, there’s probably about another hour-and-a-half.</p>
<p>Franklin: Well, we’d—I’d be happy to schedule a follow-up interview with you. There’s still several questions that I haven’t asked you.</p>
<p>McClellan: Oh, I think there’s a whole area that we ought to go into. Because I think—I mean, I know I sound pompous, but—I think I know it probably better than anybody else. This would take us down the line of radio accidents, inhalation of radioactivity, workers and worker exposure. Really the basis for much of the work that Bill Bair and his colleagues did at Hanford. And then the work we did at Albuquerque, initially with fission product radionuclides and then with plutonium. And then worked on it at the University of Utah with injections of plutonium, strontium-90, radium, in the beagle dogs. And then the study at UC-Davis that involved ingested strontium-90 and injected radium in dogs, and that links back to the studies with miniature pigs here. Those studies collectively provide a major portion of our knowledge of internally deposited radionuclides. The part that’s fascinating out of that is when we look at our human experience, in terms of the USA, I think we can be extraordinarily pleased with the fact that we did have effective radiation protection programs that go back to Herb Parker. So if there were effects, injuries, they’re extraordinarily rare, very localized. On a collective basis, I think we—we have ample evidence—we did a good job. On the other hand, I tell you that we have evidence post-Cold War that Mayak, the Soviet, was a very different situation. In fact, we did the studies in dogs because we didn’t have human experience. And we never expected to get it. What it turned out is the Soviets at Mayak got the experience that we never thought we would see and we never wanted to see. Their human subjects, accidentally exposed, demonstrated that our dogs were great models; i.e., workers at Mayak were exposed at levels that did produce an excess of lung cancer, an excess of liver cancer, an excess of bone cancer. The lung cancers and liver cancers were really remarkably predicted from the dog data.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p>McClellan: Once you took into account two factors—one major. The dogs were clean living. They didn’t smoke, and they didn’t drink. Smoking does cause lung cancer.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, it does.</p>
<p>McClellan: And some plutonium exposure adds to that. Drinking in huge quantities can cause liver damage, and liver cancer. Exposure to plutonium increases it further.</p>
<p>Franklin: Interesting. Well, that was great. And I would love to—we’d love to—</p>
<p>McClellan: So we’ll figure out some other time when we can continue into these others. Then after you’ve looked at what you’ve got here and how much of it’s useable—</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, there’s a lot of it. Thank you so much. That was great. And I had a great time.</p>
<p>McClellan: Well, my pleasure.<br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://youtu.be/85Jpe-VRlqQ">View interview on Youtube.</a></p>
Duration
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01:32:42
Bit Rate/Frequency
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317 kbps
Names Mentioned
Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community.
Gene Conley
W.E. Johnson
Oren H. Pilkey
Walter Pilkey
Oren Pilkey
Doctor Lyle Swindeman
Albin Pherson
Leo K. Bustad
Kathleen Donnegan
Herbert M. Parker
Harry A. Kornberg
Dr. Cantrell
Sherwood Fawcett
Dag Norwood
Lester van Middlesworth
Leo Bustad
Eugene Elafson
Gene Olafson
Hanford Sites
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300 Area
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site
1944-today
Years on Hanford Site
Years on the Hanford Site, if any.
1960-
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with Roger McClellan
Description
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An interview with Roger McClellan 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.
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Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Date
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09-02-2016
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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/mp4
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2017-15-12: Metadata v1 created – [A.H.]
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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.
1954
300 Area
Atomic Energy Commission
Battelle
Cancer
Cold War
DuPont
General Electric
Hanford
injuries
Los Alamo
Los Alamos
Manhattan Project
Park
PUREX
School
Street
Sun
War
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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 Franklin
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Stephanie Janicek
Location
The location of the interview
Washington State University Tri-Cities
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p>Victor Vargas: We’re rolling.</p>
<p>Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history interview with Stephanie Janick?</p>
<p>Stephanie Janicek: Janicek.</p>
<p>Franklin: Janicek.</p>
<p>Janicek: Just like it’s spelled.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay, Janicek. On January 24<sup>th</sup>, 2017. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Stephanie about her experiences growing up in Richland and working at the Hanford Site. And for the record, can you state and spell your full name for us?</p>
<p>Janicek: Stephanie Anne Dawson Janicek. Stephanie is S-T-E-P-H-A-N-I-E. Anne, A-N-N-E. Dawson, D-A-W-S-O-N. Janicek, J-A-N-I-C-E-K.</p>
<p>Franklin: Great. So tell me how and why you first came to Richland.</p>
<p>Janicek: My family came to Richland in 1949 when I was seven years old and I was in the first grade. My father had been a Montgomery Ward’s manager in the ‘40s and he managed stores all over the state of Washington. And he was so successful that they wanted to promote him to a regional position where he’d be traveling a lot, and he said I don’t want to do that. So he and another Ward’s manager who decided to be a silent partner talked to officials in Richland and decided that they were going to be the first store to open in Uptown Richland. The area had been set aside, there were no buildings; it was just empty lot. And the downtown area was too small and crowded, so they wanted to develop Uptown as sort of an outdoor mall, if you will. Dawson Richards was the first store built and opened. And it opened in June of 1949.</p>
<p>Franklin: What was your father’s name?</p>
<p>Janicek: Grover Dawson.</p>
<p>Franklin: And was Richards the silent partner?</p>
<p>Janicek: Jim Richards was the silent partner. He owned an orange grove and walnut trees in California, and so he was down there. They owned the store 50/50 for many years until my brother bought out Mr. Richards. And he would come up occasionally to see how things were going. But Dad was doing a great job, and everything was going well.</p>
<p>Franklin: So tell me more about Dawson Richards store. What kinds of products did it sell?</p>
<p>Janicek: Dawson Richards started out as a men and boys clothing store. And they had a little logo of a man wearing a suit and a hat and a little boy with a cap and a coat, because boys wore coats in the old days, you know, when they went to church. It said Dad and Lad. That was one of the early symbols of the store. And so it was a really interesting store, because my father wanted to cater to all the men in the area, most of whom worked at Hanford, regardless of their station in life. And so, for instance, he had two lines of suits; the expensive suits were made by Kuppenheimer and the less expensive were made by Timely. He had two lines of shoes. The good shoes—or the more expensive shoes, rather, were Florsheim’s, and he had Winthrop shoes for the everyday guys. And he did the same with sweaters and pants and shirts and neckties and pajamas and socks and everything you can think of. He also had—because there was almost nothing. Everybody had to go to Seattle or Spokane or maybe Yakima—I don’t know what was in Yakima in those days—to get their clothing. And especially the managers at Hanford. So they were tickled to death that they had a store that they could shop at and be very finely-clothed. And he—my dad—specialized in, oh, talls and shorts and stouts. He catered to every single size, and if he didn’t have your size, he would get it for you. And I remember one of the signs in the store said, OshKosh, because my father carried OshKosh B’gosh overalls. He really wanted to have clothing for everyone. Regardless of their station in life. And it became a wonderful gathering place. People would just come in to talk. My father was very outgoing, and we would have gatherings of high school kids, because he also carried letterman jackets, letterman sweaters. He sold the chenille letters and numbers for the cheerleader and song leader outfits. When Christ the King opened their Catholic school for kids, the students wore uniforms, and my father sold, at very deep discounts, the corduroy pants and white shirts and navy sweaters that the boys wore at the school. He really wanted to provide whatever the community needed and it worked out quite well.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay, great. So there wasn’t—were there any men’s stores or stores of a similar type in Pasco and Kennewick at the time?</p>
<p>Janicek: There was—I don’t know how old the Sid Lanter’s store was in Kennewick; I think that was probably there most of the time. I don’t know if it preceded Dawson Richard’s or not. There was a small men’s store in downtown Richland. I might be able to remember the name of it later on. But just at this moment, it is—oh, was it something like Harvey’s or—I don’t recall. But my father’s was such a good sized store that he had wonderful variety. He had Pendleton woolen shirts and jackets, and he had Jantzen’s sweaters and swimsuits. Carried a lot of name brands that people were comfortable with.</p>
<p>Franklin: And you said that was the first store in the Uptown area?</p>
<p>Janicek: Yes, it was. And the next store that opened was a sporting goods store right next to Dawson Richard’s and it was originally called Frank Barry, which was the name of the owner. And a few years later that was sold and it became BB&M Sporting Goods, which was owned by three gentlemen with the last names of B and B and M. And then some years later they moved up the street. Dawson Richards was on the Jadwin side of Uptown Richland, and they moved farther up the street. I don’t know—is there a—I don’t think there’s a BB&M now, is there? No, it’s gone. Okay.</p>
<p>Franklin: I’ve only been here a year, so—</p>
<p>Janicek: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>Franklin: My memory is—</p>
<p>Janicek: Okay.</p>
<p>Franklin: I don’t have a long institutional memory.</p>
<p>Janicek: And you know, if we had time, and I’m sure we don’t, I could walk you around the entire Uptown area and tell you most of the stores that originally were there. The other oldest store was the Spudnuts shop. God bless them, they’re still there.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yes, they are.</p>
<p>Janicek: And still the same family owns it.</p>
<p>Franklin: And still very delicious.</p>
<p>Janicek: Yes, yes.</p>
<p>Franklin: So the Uptown was the first commercial—major commercial district in Richland, right?</p>
<p>Janicek: Yes, it was. And because they had wonderful, big parking lots all the way around the stores, people could just park and walk all the way around the square and get everything they needed. We had Stanfield florists and Parker hardware, and banks, and there was once a grocery store there, we had a theater—we had—everything you needed, you could get somewhere. And several shoe stores, jewelry, china and silverware—just—they just filled in everything that a person would need so that nobody had to go to Spokane or Seattle to shop anymore. Unless they really wanted to.</p>
<p>Franklin: How long did your family own Dawson Richards?</p>
<p>Janicek: Let me think. My father sold to his manager, his long-term manager, George Anderson, and George’s family. They bought out my father in the early ‘70s. And the store actually closed—ironically, the store closed in 1999 on its 50<sup>th</sup> anniversary.</p>
<p>Franklin: So it was open for exactly 50 years.</p>
<p>Janicek: Yes. And the gentleman who bought it—it’s now a much smaller store. The gentleman who bought it retained the Dawson Richard’s name, which tickled me to death, and he still sells tuxedos and letterman sweaters and jackets. And he also rents out tuxedos for weddings.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>Janicek: Then there were years when my father bought out the building—oh, I don’t know, bought or rented—the building next to Dawson Richard’s and they opened a women’s department called Lady Dawson. And so from inside Dawson Richard’s, you could just walk through to the ladies’ department. That was successful for a number of years. Eventually, they closed the boys’ department and then they closed the women’s department, and in the end, Dawson Richards was just men’s clothing.</p>
<p>Franklin: Was that, probably, just because of competition from larger department stores?</p>
<p>Janicek: Yes, we knew when Columbia Center was built that there would start to be more competition. Just a lot of people were going over to Columbia Center and while they were there they did all of their shopping. So a lot of people made a point of coming to Dawson Richard’s for one reason or another, but not necessarily for kids’ clothes.</p>
<p>Franklin: Ah, it stopped being the destination in terms—</p>
<p>Janicek: Correct.</p>
<p>Franklin: Because there was now competition.</p>
<p>Janicek: Yes, yes, yes.</p>
<p>Franklin: Whatever part of Richland that is.</p>
<p>Janicek: Yes. My dad had a policy of hiring as many high school kids as he could to sweep the floors, giftwrap at Christmas and Father’s Day and special events. So it was a really interesting gathering place not only for high school kids, but also they would come home from college and come back to see everybody. You know, if you wanted to see who’s who. And my father’s birthday was on Christmas Eve. And so everybody would come back and anybody who had ever worked at the store and not goofed up too badly, he would hire them just for two weeks. And they would see each other, and it was—and everybody came to see who’s home from college. And they would stand around and sing Happy Birthday during the day, and he’d have cake and punch in the backroom. It was very celebratory. Just lots of fun. A lot of fun to work at Dawson Richard’s or to just hang out there. The girls came in to get the chenille letters and numbers for their pep club and cheerleader outfits. People came in whether they bought anything or not. And he didn’t care, because he just loved people. It was a fun place to grow up.</p>
<p>Franklin: Did anything change in terms of the store, Uptown, or—when Richland became a private—yeah, a privately-owned city?</p>
<p>Janicek: Not specifically that I can think of. I was in high school at the time, and I remember that Richland became a Model US City. We had a day at Richland High School where a number of the seniors shadowed a Richland official for a day. So we had somebody shadowing the mayor and each of the city council members and the fire chief and the police chief and the city engineer and all of that. And went to—I was the city librarian for a day. And we all went to the city council meeting, in celebration of Richland becoming an independent city. And the other thing that I remember is that we were able to buy our house. Because always we rented. Richland was very much subsidized by the government. We had free garbage and free utilities and—I don’t know if the phone was free, but—just a lot of things that they took care of for us in the good old days.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right. But you said they—do you think the attitude was more celebratory, or did the people miss some of those amenities that had been provided for?</p>
<p>Janicek: I’m sure that people missed some of the amenities and realized it was going to cost them more money to live than it used to. But they—I think they also appreciated having choices. Originally, when we came, you can’t live in Richland unless you had a job, because everybody rented their house from the government. If you didn’t have a job, you left. So if people went to jail or were alcoholics and just didn’t—excuse me—[COUGH]—didn’t measure up, then they were booted out of town. So there were a lot more choices for people. We—old Richland, no one had a garage, because the city—the government didn’t build garages; they just built houses. And so nobody had an attic. Nobody had grandparents living there. It was all young families. Which was interesting way to grow up. I’m sorry. [COUGH]</p>
<p>Franklin: It’s okay, and there’s water right next to you, too.</p>
<p>Janicek: Oh, splendid. I didn’t even see it.</p>
<p>Franklin: What other kinds of civic activities or business activities was your father involved in?</p>
<p>Janicek: Well, as I said, he started out with being on the city council and being elected mayor, because he was very outgoing and because of his experiences as a store manager for Montgomery Ward’s, he was kind of a natural leader. So he was involved for a few years with what later became United Way. He got on the school board in about 1951, and he was there for 13 or 14 years. The people on the school board kind of took turns being the president, but he got involved in a lot of school things. He was a co-founder of the Bomber Boosters. He was instrumental in the first and the second remodeling of Richland High School and the building of the Dawald Gym. And he was one of the schoolboard members who advocated for building Hanford High School, which was very controversial, because a lot of people just wanted all their kids to grow up as Richland Bombers. That was kind of a sacred thing to be in the old days. It was sort of like, those other people, they have to go to Hanford. But that worked out. Hanford was an unusual school, because it was high school, junior high, and grade school—all 12 grades, well, plus kindergarten. Then later, when Sacajawea was torn down and rebuilt up in the Richland Village, then they removed the grade school from Hanford. And then Chief Jo Junior High School had been closed for a number of years, and they remodeled it and reopened it. And then moved the junior high kids out of—I don’t think—I think Hanford is just high school now, and all the junior high kids are back in either Chief Jo or Carmichael, which is what it was when I was growing up. So he was mostly involved in things having to do with kids and families. He sponsored a Little League baseball team, he sponsored and after-high school basketball league for young men who lived and worked around the Tri-Cities, and—what else did he do? Oh, his business sponsored all of the broadcasts of the Richland Bomber football and basketball games. He was very close friends with all of the coaches at Richland High School. In the old days, when the Richland Bombers went to the state basketball tournament, they were driven in cars. And so my dad and the coaches would put a couple of boys in the back of the car and drive over to Seattle. It was a four days, double-elimination, huge tournament at the Hec Edmundson Pavilion at the UW campus. So, he got to know all of the players as well as the coaches. Just loved that—more of getting to know everybody in the community. He just was that kind of guy. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. Well, that’s great. So tell me about growing up in the government town of Richland and what kind of—what your impressions were when you first moved—</p>
<p>Janicek: My earliest impressions—we lived in south Richland for the first year and a half. We lived in an F House, which is a single-family two-story. And our street was only one block long—Atkins. My first recollection is that there were no garages, so everybody parked in the street. But everybody—families only had one car. The men didn’t drive to work at Hanford; there were buses that came through. There were three shifts, so Hanford was running 24 hours a day. There were three shifts: the day shift, the evening shift, and the overnight shift or graveyard. So the buses would come through and pick up the workers at corners and guys would all be there with their metal lunch pails and you’d see them going off. And then they’d come back, I don’t know, nine or ten hours later and drop them off, because it was quite a drive to Hanford. So the family car stayed at home, but a lot of them—and most of the mothers stayed at home. Very few women worked; some of them worked at Hanford or in some of the businesses, but most of them didn’t. And a lot of them didn’t drive. So the cars just sat there all day and were only used after Dad came home from work, or to go shopping on Saturday, or to go to church on Sunday. There were a lot of churches in the community, which I thought was kind of interesting. Lots of denominations. My family was Episcopalian, and it was a few years before we got our own church, and so the Richland Lutheran church let us have our services in the basement of their church. So our services were on folding metal chairs with little kneeling pads on the cement floor. It was a little chilly, but it was very kind of them to let us do that until we had our own church. But there were—and we had a lot of Protestant churches called Central United Protestant, Southside United Protestant, Westside United Protestant. But actually, if you asked someone or looked carefully, one of them was more Methodist, one of them was more Presbyterian; some of them, I didn’t know what they were. They weren’t in my neighborhood and I didn’t know kids that went to them until I got to high school. It was a very insular community in a lot of ways. You knew all the kids in your neighborhood, and all the kids in your school, which was—they were neighborhood schools. If you went to church, and most people did, you knew the kids that were in your church. But as a young child, we had no idea what everybody’s father did. We knew that most of them worked at Hanford, but we had no idea whether the father was a truck driver or a manager or a clerk or a—you know, scientist. That was beyond us. We never asked, and nobody ever talked about it. So, the kids in my class—when my class graduated in 1960, there were about 417 of us. And for the most part, if you didn’t ask, you didn’t really know what the other parents did. I knew most of the business community and a lot of those people had kids. People that owned the stores, and groceries and gas stations. One of my best friends in high school was the step-daughter of the man who managed the Desert Inn, which is now the Hanford House. It was neat to sleep over at her house, because she lived in the hotel. [LAUGHTER] And you could swim in the pool, and you had all your meals in the hotel dining room.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, wow.</p>
<p>Janicek: It was really different. Most of the time, there was no public transportation. There were a few years when there was a city bus, and I don’t know—I was young; I was maybe fourth grade, fifth grade, and I remember taking the bus in the summertime to the city library. And I would sit and read books all day in the library, and then I would come home at dinner time. It was one of the things I loved to do, because I was a very bookish person. And then one year, they stopped having the buses. I don’t know whether they—and it only cost—I don’t remember if they were free, or they cost a dime or something, but it was certainly not restrictive in any way. That was fun. I remember just—even as a pretty young kid—that the Richland Community House on George Washington Way had pool tables in the back for the adults, but every Friday night they had square dancing for the kids. So all the kids would go and learn to square dance. There were a number of callers and you’d be there for a couple of hours. That was a really fun community thing to do, and that was a way to meet people who didn’t live in your neighborhood or didn’t go to your school. The town was full of young families with young children. I think the only older people who were there were either highly skilled technical men who came with their wives and either they didn’t have children or the children had already left home before they moved to Richland. Then some of the older couples, the man was in management. A few of the older couples, the women were scientists or engineers or technologists. There were some, you know—we now are learning—some highly skilled women out there that kind of disappeared into the woodwork. Nobody knew anything about them. One of the curious things that I did not realize for many years is how—I don’t know what to say. Almost everybody in the community when I was growing up was—I hate to say it—but they were white. And I didn’t know any—I didn’t know any, any blacks, any Asians, any—well, there was one Hispanic family that went to my high school, two girl cousins, that were in my class in grade school. And then I guess they must have moved to another part of town, because then I didn’t ever see them in junior high or high school. There were a few black families that I got to know, partly because they would shop in my father’s store, and partly because—when I went to Chief Jo Junior High, the PE classes were separate: girls’ PE and boys’ PE, and they had a big curtain they drew down the middle of the gymnasium so that we wouldn’t see each other in our shorts or whatever it was. But there would be a six-week session where we danced. And we all learned how to waltz and, I don’t know, whatever the jitterbug had evolved to in the ‘40s—or in the ‘50s, rather. That’s when Fats Domino and Chubby Checker were coming out, and eventually Elvis. So we were all learning to do the twist and all those things—they were fast and loud. And that was fun, because if you had that in PE for six weeks, you learned how to do that stuff, and you didn’t feel like such a dorky wallflower. There was one boy in my PE class who was black. And so when it was time for the dancing, everybody would choose their partners. And I was the tallest girl in the school and wore glasses until the ninth grade when I was the first person to get contact lenses. But anyway, so he and I were usually left close to the end of who choses who for a dance partner. Which was perfectly fine with me. I didn’t care. I didn’t have any prejudices, any reasons to feel any different about him than about anybody else in the class. And he was actually polite and nice and, you know, dressed nicely and cleaned up. He didn’t talk much; I think he was probably more shy and scared than I was. But it was an interesting experience, because—it was fine with me, you know? We danced, talked a little bit. But it was the only time I ever saw him. I didn’t—I don’t think we had any classes together. So I didn’t run into him very often.</p>
<p>Franklin: Did he go to the school with you?</p>
<p>Janicek: Oh, yeah, he went to Chief Jo. Well, you have to remember that when I first moved to Richland, there was Camp Hanford that was a military camp north of town. And there was a—at one time Richland had the largest trailer park in the country. And I’ve forgotten now—I think it was 50,000 trailers. I think, for the most part, those trailers didn’t have kitchens or bathrooms, because people ate in—maybe they did. I don’t remember, because I wasn’t in them. But they had big mess halls where people ate and they fed—I mean, they had constant food. They were either cooking or cleaning up all the time because they couldn’t feed everybody at once. And then they had bathhouses in among the trailer camp where people—just kind of like when you go to an RV park, you go to the toilets and sinks and showers. And I don’t know—maybe some of the larger trailers had those things. But I know there were small trailers that didn’t. They looked like campers, with no plumbing and—I don’t even know what they did for lighting. But between the military and the construction workers who lived north of town, there were some black families. And so I have no idea what that fella’s family did. But then we had the Brown family. When I was in junior high and high school, we had two basketball stars. And basketball was as big at Richland High School as it was in the state of Indiana. [LAUGHTER] We were Hoosiers West, maybe, I don’t know. But Norris Brown and his younger brother, CW Brown, were outstanding basketball players. They played on the Richland basketball teams, and they were among those basketball players that my parents and the coaches drove to Seattle for the tournament every year. They were the nicest guys. Now, the—I don’t think there were any black girls in Richland at that time, but there were a lot of black people who lived in Pasco. And so they did their socializing, I think, with people who lived in Pasco. And I didn’t know for many years that Kennewick was a—I don’t know, they call it, now they call it a sundowner town, that all the blacks had to be out by the time the sun went down. Had no idea! But there was a place where kids went to dance on the weekends and it was called Hi-Spot. And they would advertise on the radio, and everybody listened to the radio. That’s how you found out what all the popular music was. And so they would advertise: everybody come to Hi-Spot for dancing and—I don’t know. I never went, so I don’t know, but I’m guessing maybe they had light refreshments there. Anyway, everybody was invited to come. So, Norris and CW Brown went with girlfriends who I’m assuming were from Pasco, and they were thrown out because it was after dark, and this was in Kennewick. Richland was horrified. I mean, number one, we had no idea that Kennewick had these laws. And number two, these guys were our heroes. They were winning basketball games for us, and they, number three, they were extremely nice and polite and good students and—you know, there was absolutely no reason that you wouldn’t want to have them at a teenage gathering. I think—and this is only my person opinion—but I think that that’s where a good deal of the Richland/Kennewick rivalry started. Because the Richland people were so incensed that our heroes were thrown out of town. And that was in the late ‘50s. Let’s see. CW was one or two years ahead of me—two, I think. So that would have been, like, I don’t know, ’56, ’57, ’58. And Norris had graduated, but CW was on the team that in March of 1958 won the state basketball championship, which was just the hugest thing that had happened to Richland, probably since the beginning of time. It was just a really big thrill. And I was at that tournament, and I was at that game. And it was the biggest thing that had happened to me, too. I was so excited for my team. Because always the state had been dominated by all of the Seattle and Tacoma teams, for the most part, and sometimes a couple from Spokane. And so poor little old Richland that was stuck out in the desert and nobody knew about Richland in particular and nobody wanted to go there. [LAUGHTER] What are these kids doing in our sacred basketball tournament? And we won the whole thing. And that was just very exciting. And CW Brown was on that team. Another member of that team was John Meyers. John Meyers was this—he was built like a Douglas fir. He was just big all over—tall and large. And he was the star of my dad’s Little League baseball team. His father was the assistant manager. And he regularly hit homeruns and broke the bat. Regularly. I used to go to a lot of the Little League games, and that was really fun to watch. John Meyers was a star on the basketball and football teams at Richland High School. He played at least two sports—I’m not sure about baseball—but at least he played two sports at the University of Washington where he went for four years, and then he was drafted into the NFL. He played most of his career for the Philadelphia Eagles. So we had a local celebrity. One of several local celebrities that we had. So that was a really—I just loved following sports, and then, I, myself became a Washington Husky. Went with them to the Rose Bowl which John Meyers played in, in January of 1961. And then I ended up marrying a guy from Notre Dame, and so we’re big football fans. [LAUGHTER] We’ve had Seahawks tickets for 19 years. [LAUGHTER] Just was destined to be, I guess.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah. What do you remember about civil defense in the Tri-Cities? Do you remember going through defense drills at school?</p>
<p>Janicek: What I remember—there are two different aspects that I remember. When I was—most of the time, after the first year-and-a-half of living in south Richland and going to Lewis and Clark, we moved to north Richland and I went to Jefferson grade school, and then Chief Jo Junior High and Richland High School, which we always called Col High, and most of us in our hearts, it’s still Col High and not Richland. But we would have air raid drills maybe once a month at Jefferson. And we would—every class would march out into the hallway where we would lie down on the floor next to the wall. We would lie absolutely flat on our stomachs with our head resting on one arm, and I think maybe that was partly to protect our eyes. And then the other hand behind our necks to protect our spinal cord, I guess. I’m not sure that would have done any good if the Russians had actually bombed us. Because we truly believed that there was a good chance that we were going to be bombed by the Russians. We truly did. And so those were serious, civil defense drills.</p>
<p>Franklin: You mean we as in you believed the Russians would bomb America, or Hanford specifically?</p>
<p>Janicek: Well, we thought that the Russians would bomb America, but that Hanford was a really good target. Because of—by then it was known that we were creating the plutonium for bombs and all of the nuclear activities going on out there. And we thought that, if Russia really wanted to take over the world, that they would want to take out all of the nuclear facilities so that we wouldn’t be able to fight back or build up our defenses to eventually fight back. The other thing I remember—excuse me—[COUGH]—about civil defense is that every so often, we would have drills where every neighborhood was told where to go, get in your car and drive out into the desert to get out of town, get away from Hanford. And they would have those—I don’t remember—maybe once a year. I don’t think we had them more often than that. But you were always cautioned to keep your gas tank at least half full, because there wouldn’t be time to go fill up if we all had to evacuate town. Now, I suspect that there was a second reason for those drills, and that is in case anything went wrong and something blew up at Hanford, like Chernobyl. We had an inordinate amount of faith in our government and our scientists and engineers and our leaders at Hanford, and believed they would keep us safe. And Hanford actually has an amazing safety record. Very few things went wrong and caused any difficulties. But I suspect that if something had happened at Hanford, that those evacuation routes would have—and those evacuation routes were marked for a number of years. Eventually the signs all disappeared. But you knew where your neighborhood was supposed to drive to.</p>
<p>Franklin: Interesting. Where was your neighborhood supposed to drive to, do you remember?</p>
<p>Janicek: Well, it was long before I was old enough to drive a car: I was in grade school. And I didn’t even know where I was when I was out of town. I didn’t know which way was up, down, or west, or south. I’m guessing, since we lived on McMurray in north Richland, we probably went west.</p>
<p>Franklin: Ah. And when we moved up to north Richland, did you also live in an alphabet house, or did you—</p>
<p>Janicek: Yes, we lived in a Q house. The houses on McMurray were all Qs and Rs. And they were all three-bedroom, one-story houses with a full basement, whereas the old houses—the old alphabet houses, As and Fs and many of the others—had a half-basement and then a three- or four-foot high wall in the basement of cement blocks, and then there was dirt behind that. And then some people, after they bought their homes, would dig out—it was called digging out—the basement. But we had a full basement, and really nice backyard.</p>
<p>Franklin: And is that the house that your parents bought when Richland—</p>
<p>Janicek: We were living in that house and then bought it, yes, when Richland sold. One of the tough things about living in Richland is that there was no air conditioning. The houses had swamp coolers, which also were called squirrel cages. They were great, big, huge things that attached to a window and made a lot of noise. It sounded like metal blades going around, very noisy, and water ran through them to cool the air. Well, that made the houses not—it didn’t cool the houses that much, but it made them very humid. So, sometimes, you forgot you were living in a desert or a semi-arid desert, because it was very humid along with the heat, and very uncomfortable. But my father’s store had refrigerated air conditioning. It was one of the first buildings to have that. I’m guessing that the hospital and—well, no, the hospital used to be little funny buildings. I’m guessing maybe the hotel had it, and maybe some restaurants. But, yeah, that was another reason that people liked Dawson Richards, because it was cool inside on hot days. [LAUGHTER] But that was difficult. And we had a lot of summers when the temperature was over 100 degrees. And, like now, we had some winters when it got down far below freezing, down to -10 or even 0 a couple of times. One of the other interesting weather things about living in Richland in the olden days is when you had the big dust storms, or the termination winds as some people called them, you would have great big huge clumps of sagebrush flying through town about five to ten feet off the ground. And one time, a sagebrush—I have never seen this since—a sagebrush as big as a Volkswagen lodged in front of our front door, and we couldn’t get in and out our front door. Because it had blown in and was kind of stuck to the doorknob and whatever we had around the front door. And we couldn’t budge it. We couldn’t grab a big enough piece, or reach in far enough to grab one of the main stems or limbs of the sagebrush to pull it out. So we’d all have to run around and go in and out the back door. But the worst part of the winds, or one of the worst parts, was the dust, because it got in your eyes. And people were starting to get contact lenses. And that was just absolutely murderous, to have all that dust blowing in your eyes and getting behind your contacts. And people would go around with tears running down their faces from--[LAUGHTER]—from how painful the dust was in their eyes. And people wore sunglasses day and night to try and protect their eyes. Of course, as Richland built up and got more civilized and more of the empty lots became houses with yards and grass and trees and flowers, then the dust was not as thick as it used to be. Some of the dust storms were blinding. They were like blizzards. Oh, and that reminds me. My first winter in Richland, the winter of ’49-’50, we had a blizzard that was so bad they would not let any children leave the school until their parents came and picked them up. Well, the dads worked at Hanford and travelled by bus, so it was a while before—I imagine they probably let them go home early to get their kids. I don’t know that, but I’m guessing. And we would all be waiting at the school until the parents showed up. It was not a problem for my parents, because I’m sure in a blizzard they weren’t selling any clothing, so they just came and picked us up. But it was really bad. I just read—the old Richland Bombers have an online Sandstorm. The Sandstorm was the school newspaper, and we have an online Sandstorm that comes out every single day of the year. And it mentions birthdays and anniversaries of people—married classmates—and announces deaths of classmates and also of favorite teachers. Somebody in the online Sandstorm only a day or two ago wrote about—and I never heard this story before, so I do not know if it’s truly true—but wrote about a father who came and picked up his little boy at school during the blizzard, and didn’t have a car. And so they were walking home and they got lost in the blizzard and were found frozen to death the next day. I had never heard that before, but I could believe that, because you could not see anything. Absolutely. It was dreadful. I remember that. I have a real good visual memory, and I remember exactly what that looked like. It was fearful.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p>Janicek: Yup.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p>Janicek: Yup.</p>
<p>Franklin: So you said you graduated in 1960.</p>
<p>Janicek: Yes.</p>
<p>Franklin: And then later on you came back to Hanford?</p>
<p>Janicek: Yes, I went to University of Washington for four years. And I developed this passion for Afghanistan. So I decided the only way—and I had spent a summer in Europe and did all of that and had a good time. But I don’t know why, I really wanted to go to Afghanistan. I had studied about it, I had written reports, read books. So I joined the Peace Corps and I said, don’t send me any place but Afghanistan. Well, in those days, you took all the tests and if they decide you were qualified—they’d never had anybody ask for Afghanistan, but they had programs in Afghanistan. So I went through Peace Corps training for three months and then went to Afghanistan. And I taught English in a girls’ high school. While I was there, I met and married my husband, who was from New York and Notre Dame, and I never would have met him if I’d stayed in Richland or even in the state of Washington. So we had this very unusual Afghan wedding that was written about in the paper last year when we celebrated our 50<sup>th</sup> anniversary. So we came back and he went to graduate school at Purdue. So we lived in Indiana from ’66 to ’78, twelve years. And our three children were born there. And then we lived in Indiana. His parents were in New York and mine were in Washington, and the kids never knew any of their relatives, they never got—and we said, well, this isn’t good. So we want to go one way or the other. There were a lot of reasons why we didn’t want to live on Long Island. It was overcrowded with traffic and polluted air and polluted water, and just a lot of reasons it didn’t appeal to us. So we came out to visit my parents, and my husband interviewed at Hanford and got two job offers. So we ended up moving to Richland in 1978. So for marrying a guy from New York who you met in Afghanistan, I never would have thought that my children would graduate from my high school. But they did. So we had three little Richland Bombers in the family besides their mom.</p>
<p>Franklin: And where did you live when you came back to Richland?</p>
<p>Janicek: When we came back, we moved into an A house on Thayer. And it was an A house—that’s the two-story duplex—but it had been converted by the previous owner into a one-family house. So we had more bedrooms and more living space and an unusual-shaped yard, and lived on Thayer, a half a block from Van Giesen.</p>
<p>Franklin: What did you and your husband do at Hanford? Because you said you—</p>
<p>Janicek: Well, he’s a mechanical engineer. So he started out doing mechanical engineering things. He was involved in robotics. He spent most of his career in the Tank Farms and was a design authority for a number of years before he retired. I began as a tech editor. Became a tech writer editor, and then had several stints as a manager of editors and word processors. And we were producing all of the huge reports coming out of Hanford, mostly reporting on cleanup. Cleaning up spills in the ground, cleaning up buildings—goodness. I worked on documents that were 6,000 pages long. Mostly online editing. When—at the height of the publications flurry at Hanford, we had 100 employees in our department. About 50 editors and about 50 word processors. But as time went on, the editors started editing online, and then we didn’t need word processors. Originally we would edit with a red pen, and then the word processors would type in all of our changes. But that morphed into just editing online. I absolutely loved my job. For 27 years, I worked with engineers and scientists and technical people. I felt like it brought me closer to my husband, because I had no technical background at all. But I had very good communication skills and had studied three other languages, and so I have a lot of good ideas about how English should be spoken and written. And really enjoyed doing that for 27 years.</p>
<p>Franklin: 27 years. So then you retired in 2005?</p>
<p>Janicek: No, I retired—he went to work in ’78; I went to work in ’80. So I retired December 2007.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. And how many different contractors did you work for?</p>
<p>Janicek: Well, when I originally came, we both worked for Rockwell. And in fact I worked on the Rockwell proposal when their contract was up. And that was a fascinating experience, because I got to work with national vice presidents of Rockwell. We spent the last three months at a secret facility in Downy, California putting the proposal together. I got to walk through a mockup of the shuttle—the space shuttle that they had built. Oh, now I forgot the question.</p>
<p>Franklin: The different contractors.</p>
<p>Janicek: Oh, yes, yes, yes. So after Rockwell ended up—it was a political thing, and Rockwell lost that contract. The contract went to Westinghouse and Boeing. Westinghouse was already here, but they won the larger contract that Rockwell had. And then the computer functions, including the editing and the graphics and all of the communication things were given to Boeing as a subcontractor to Westinghouse. So then my second employer was Boeing Computer Services. And then the next eight years or so later, the contract was up again, and that was when they went to about 13 different contractors, half of them inside the wall so to speak, and half of them outside. And at that time I went to work for—my job was still the same, and all of my management was the same, but it was just a different name on the paychecks for the company that owned us, and that was Lockheed Martin. And I was still working for Lockheed Martin when I retired.</p>
<p>Franklin: How had Richland changed from when you had graduated to when you came back and began to work for Hanford?</p>
<p>Janicek: Well, first of all, when I came back, a lot of the business had moved to Columbia Center, and there were empty buildings, and aging businesses in downtown Richland. It had spread out a lot in all directions. People were living in West Richland and in South Richland and in North Richland and all over the place. And that’s just Richland. I mean, Kennewick grew enormously; Pasco has grown enormously. So I had to kind of get used to driving and living in a much bigger city. And I have to laugh at myself, because even today, I mostly drive—I have it in my mind, a skeleton of the roads that I used when we lived here, when I first got my driver’s license in high school and drove around the Tri-Cities. And I kind of stick to those roads, because they’re the ones I know the best, and you know, they’re my old favorites. But one of the things I noticed is that a lot of people moved into the Tri-Cities who didn’t necessarily work for Hanford. And so you didn’t have that little small town, we’re-all-in-this-together feeling. You know, when people first came to Richland to work at Hanford, as I said, there were no grandparents, no relatives. We all kind of stuck together because nobody knew anybody; we all came as strangers and we came from all over the country. And so there was a real closeness. And I see that in the older classes that write into the online Richland Bomber Sandstorm every day, the alumni newsletter. By the time my kids were in high school and graduating, a lot of that closeness was gone. You didn’t know everybody in your neighborhood; you didn’t know everybody in your church if you went to church; you didn’t know all the kids in your classroom; you didn’t necessarily know the parents; you didn’t know whether your friends had younger or older brothers and sisters. It just was a lot more socially scattered, I would call it. One of the things I’m pleased about is there’s a lot more diversity in the Tri-Cities now. You have people from all parts of the world, all races, colors, creeds, religions. Which is really good. I have to laugh at my kids, because we made sure they grew up without any prejudices. They have had friends—they’re all adults now in their 40s. They have had friends of all different colors, races, and creeds. It tickles me to death that we succeeded in raising them that way, because it’s only right. What else is different about the Tri-Cities? Well, every day I open the paper and I read about businesses I didn’t know were there. All the years I worked at Hanford, I didn’t have time to go driving around and shopping and looking around. So I—there are dozens and dozens of restaurants I’ve never been to. One of the things that really confuses me is, because the Tri-Cities has grown so rapidly, there are many, many, many neighborhoods that I’ve never heard of the street names before. And when I hear about something being on a certain street, I have no idea where that street is. I have to get out the phone book and hope I can find it on the map. And I’ve also noticed that there are—in the old days, there was a lot more respect for Hanford than there is now. There are a lot of people in the Tri-Cities who are very anti-Hanford. They think either it’s evil or—well, it’s dangerous. That’s always true. We had—when I lived—when I worked at Hanford, we had a really good safety culture. We had safety drills, we knew what all the different sirens meant, whether they meant shelter-in-place or get out and run for your life. What’s going on and what are you supposed to do about it. I think some of that safety culture is lost, because the people who lived and worked here forever have been laid off or have retired or moved on one way or another. We don’t have that close confidence anymore that we’re all doing the right thing for the right reasons, and keeping each other safe. Some of that has been lost, and I see sometimes that people—new hires come in—and I saw this when I was working there—that sometimes new hires would come in, and they wouldn’t take safety as seriously as we thought they should. And, you know, once in a while somebody does something careless that gets them in trouble. There were very strict rules, and I edited a lot of those safety documents about procedures: how you did things, how you had to do things, double-checks and triple-checks on things that sometimes people kind of rolled their eyes and thought, oh, yeah, here we go. But in fact, those things kept you safe if you followed them correctly.</p>
<p>Franklin: It only takes one accident to—</p>
<p>Janicek: Yes.</p>
<p>Franklin: Do you think that that record of safety or the view of safety and the approach to safety changed as Hanford’s mission changed from one of production to a little more kind of opaque mission of cleanup?</p>
<p>Janicek: I don’t think so, because the people actually involved in the cleanup or, like me, I was reading about all of the dangers in all of the cleanup as I was editing the documents. I think that a lot of us were always impressed with how dangerous it could be and how close we were to somebody goofing up and causing an accident. And certainly, I think right before we came here was when they had the McCluskey incident where Harold McCluskey was badly exposed. It’s just astounding to me how well they were able to clean him up and keep him alive and how long he lived, and he actually died of a condition that he had before the accident ever happened. And that actually boosted my confidence that they were doing all the right things. I’ve been in buildings—I had a Q clearance for a while—I’ve been in building that were very restricted and—not passwords, but keypads and patrol and safety people and intelligence people and all kinds of things to try and prevent terrible things from happening. Whether it was just luck or whether it was good management, those things, for the most part, didn’t happen. I mean, Harold McCluskey was the only one—there have been some accidents where people have fallen and died or have been badly injured. Or I remember one time when they were cutting into a pipe that they didn’t—either they didn’t have the correct information or they didn’t take it seriously. And they cut into this pipe that was supposed to be empty and harmless, and it was full of hot burning steam. It hit these two guys right in the face. I don’t remember if they lived or not; I’m suspecting maybe they didn’t. But I’ve—that was a few years ago when—I just don’t remember now. Many of us have always been aware of the potential for accidents. Sometimes people coming in from other places, if they didn’t work in dangerous situations before, they had to adjust their thinking or they might get in trouble if they—every once in a while, either a person or a company self-reports that we screwed up and didn’t do something right. And they don’t do that often enough. I mean, we have whistleblowers with personal issues, and we have whistleblowers with true concerns and who have honestly seen something that needs to be corrected. I’m sure it’s very difficult to keep all of that in mind. We recently toured B Reactor, which was a fascinating experience. When you look at that huge, big thing and all of those fuel rods. And if you think about what little, innocent thing could have happened or some switch accidentally flipped and what it could have caused. You know, we all remember Chernobyl. I worked—I was in a volunteer group called the Hanford Family that was formed when they were shutting down N Reactor and it was about the same time that Chernobyl happened. A lot of people were really scared and concerned that the same thing could happen at Hanford. So I became their editor and communications person for this group. And one of the things I did was research and interview an expert and find out why it couldn’t happen here. And one of the things was the difference between boiling water reactors, BWR, and pressurized water reactors, PWR. And what they did at Chernobyl, you couldn’t do here. The reactor would not let you do it or it would shut down. And how these guys had overridden their own safety controls. Again, they didn’t take safety seriously enough or they didn’t understand the principles behind what they were doing and what they were causing. It was a terribly frightening time. But I published this lovely three-fold pink brochure about why Chernobyl can’t happen here, what’s different about our reactors from—and then we were just down to N Reactor and the power reactor, the Hanford Generating Station at Energy Northwest. It was an interesting experience to learn that stuff and to put it in language that regular people could understand and to hand it out at functions. We went to a fair in Yakima; we had a couple of things—big—I don’t know—exhibitions or shows that occurred in the Tri-Cities, and we had our little booth and handed out our information and told people about why that couldn’t happen here. That was an interesting experience. For a non-technical person, I appreciated getting information and putting it into a form that regular folks who didn’t work at Hanford or have any technical background could understand. I have no idea how effective the brochure was. But it was interesting to do.</p>
<p>Franklin: Interesting. Did you do any other public relations work when you—at your job at Hanford? Or was that a—</p>
<p>Janicek: Well, most of the time, I was editing big reports. I started after a very short period—I worked for several years with the BWIP project—Basalt Waste Isolation Project. That was the concept where we were going to bury the waste deep in the basalt. I first edited and then managed the editors who edited the environmental restoration—no, environmental assessment document and the—oh, goodness. Now I’ve forgotten what it was called. Two different versions, one of them was six volumes long about how we were going to safely contain the waste, and some of it had to do with Nevada, which has since [LAUGHTER] In fact, a lot of the waste was going to go to Nevada, and Nevada shut that off. I did have a very interesting experience. I was on a national committee that worked with DOE orders and directives. It had to do with information management, because Hanford and the other government facilities that did things nuclear had to send copies of their reports to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where they were kept and managed by the government. Some of them were classified and some were not. Most were not. This group would get together sometimes once a year, sometimes two or three times, and go over the DOE directives and bring them up to date on how to manage all this information. And I ended up writing parts of a DOE directive and editing other parts. I think you can still get those online. And I can open that up and see my very own words there. It kind of tickles me to see that. That was a really interesting project. And I got to go see—I got to go to Bethesda, Maryland and see where all of the energy reactors, like the one that we have at Energy Northwest—how they have to report in—I don’t know—I think every hour to let them know that everything’s all right. And I got to sit at this huge, big console where all of these Hanford and Oak Ridge and Argonne in Illinois and WIPP project in New Mexico and the Nevada Test Site and—anywhere there was a reactor, all the lights flashing and the buttons and the hourly reporting in. They actually monitor that to be sure that nothing—there are not going to be any surprises or any Chernobyls. That was kind of an interesting thing to see.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, cool.</p>
<p>Janicek: It was.</p>
<p>Franklin: Is there anything that I haven’t asked you about that you’d like to talk about in your interview?</p>
<p>Janicek: Oh, I remember the Columbia River floods. Before we had all the dams and maybe even before the dikes were built—I’m not sure when they were built. The year before we moved to Richland, I lived—we lived in Vancouver, Washington. And there was a little community on the floodplain between Vancouver and Portland on the Columbia River called Vanport. When the river flooded, the spring of ’48, the water came up—maybe to the roof lines of those—it was low income housing and I suspect it was for guys who had just gotten out of World War II and were trying to build their lives and they had young families. The flooding was—it was just really terrible. I remember that and the pictures, partly because my father was one of many people who volunteered to patrol against looting. They would go out at night in motorboats. And he had a pistol that he kept for years. [LAUGHTER] We knew where it was hidden, but we never told our folks that we knew. [LAUGHTER] And we never touched it. Because they had to evacuate everybody, of course. And I have no idea whether people died or were injured during that flooding. But one of the memorable aspects of it was that there was a Jantzen Knitting Mill in that same area. And Jantzen’s old logo was of a woman in a one-piece bathing suit and a swimming cap diving. And she was—it was a huge sign and it was on top of the Jantzen building, and when the flooding came, the Jantzen Knitting Mills flooded and she looked like she was diving into the water in the flood. It was just really cool! [LAUGHTER] It was a picture they showed all over the United States. So then the next year, we came to Richland in the spring of ’49 and people were all talking about the ’48 flood and how bad it was. But I remember a couple of floods that were just about as bad after we moved here. At that time, the only way to get between Richland and Kennewick was on what we called the old river road, which goes through Columbia Park now. And so that road completely flooded. You couldn’t get through there. So leaving Richland, you would have to drive south over the hills and there were just—I don’t know, farm roads, probably—and go all the way around to get to south Kennewick and then come back into Kennewick. And even worse if you had to go to Pasco. Because the flooding really messed things up. And then some of those river floods would pick up a lot of trees and limbs from the shoreline, as the—and they would have rattlesnakes on them. For some reason, because of how the Columbia River turns when it gets to what was then called Riverside Park and is now called Howard Amon, a lot of those trees and tree limbs would lodge into the bank and all of the sudden we had rattlesnakes all over the park. So that was kind of interesting. [LAUGHTER] Scary! Opportunity for people to go out and see snakes or capture snakes or get rid of them, because rattlesnakes are serious business. But that was one of the things I remember about some of the problems with climate that we had in the good old days.</p>
<p>Franklin: The good old days.</p>
<p>Janicek: Oh, goodness. What else do I remember?</p>
<p>Franklin: Did you go to any of the Atomic Frontier Days?</p>
<p>Janicek: Oh! Yes! Well, especially after we moved to McMurray and I was going to Jefferson School, because Jefferson was right across from the Uptown area and I walked that area every day, knew it very well. And we would have parades for Atomic Frontier Days on George Washington Way. And in the really old days, when there was still a Camp Hanford in North Richland, that parade included—I remember a huge, big—I think it was called Red Dog—looked like a missile or a rocket or something. And then there were some smaller rockets, weapons. And they would haul them through town as part of the parade. And that was kind of fun and interesting to see, because my dad didn’t work at Hanford and wasn’t involved with the military. So that was all new to me and fascinating to see. They had a beard-growing contest. I think the Richland Atomic Frontier Days were usually in August and all the guys would grow beards for the month of August, and they had—I don’t know, some things for kids to do and things for adults to do, and clowns and a few floats. You know, you always had a Miss Atomic Frontier Days, which later became Miss Tri-Cities. That was a rather special event that happened. People would go by and throw candy on all the kids—kids would be there with their tricycles. We would decorate our tricycles with crepe paper strips, or put playing cards in the wheels so they would go click, click, click when the wheel went around and decorate. Sometimes they would decorate up the wagons and put wagons behind the tricycles. So we’d have a lot of tricycles and some bicycles lining the streets of George Washington Way as the parade went by. That was a fun thing to do.</p>
<p>Franklin: Neat.</p>
<p>Janicek: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Well, Stephanie, thank you so much for talking with us today and sharing your stories about growing up in Richland and working at Hanford. They were wonderfully detailed and I really appreciate it.</p>
<p>Janicek: Oh, well, thank you. I love to think back to the old days and just reading the online Sandstorm everyday kind of tweaks my memory and—old teachers and old friends, and like to pass these things on to my kids who grew up in such a different time and they don’t understand about being afraid the Russians were going to bomb you. [LAUGHTER] Some of the other things that went on that led to me being who I am today and led to Richland being what it is today. And I enjoy talking about it, and I realize that because of my father’s position, not as part of Hanford, but very much as a part of a community, that I have a lot of great memories. Because I’m fortunate to have a good memory, I still remember a lot of people’s names, a lot of businesses’ names, a lot of things that went on. When my father was on the school board, there was a little town and school at Mattawa, which—and those people served—that was when they were building Priest Rapids Dam and Wanapum Dam. So the school board, once a year, would get special, special, special permission to drive—they probably were escorted—to drive through the Hanford Site and go out to Mattawa and they would have one school board session that the teachers and the parents could attend who lived at Mattawa because they had no way of getting in to town for it, and that was part of the Richland School District. Now, today, Mattawa’s completely gone. I mean, everybody left and the buildings are pretty much all gone and doesn’t exist anymore. But I always thought that was very nice and very thoughtful that they arranged to be able to go out there once a year to meet with the staff and the families and see—address their concerns for educating the kids.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah. Neat. Interesting. Well, thank you.</p>
<p>Janicek: Welcome.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Vargas: That it? All right.<br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://youtu.be/js2YwuGWbrw">View interview on Youtube.</a></p>
Duration
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01:12:24
Bit Rate/Frequency
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317 kbps
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site
1949-1960
1978-today
Years on Hanford Site
Years on the Hanford Site, if any.
1980-2007
Names Mentioned
Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community.
Grover Dawson
Jim Richards
Sid Lanter’s
Stanfield
Parker
George Anderson
John Meyers
Harold McCluskey
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
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Interview with Stephanie Janicek
Description
An account of the resource
An interview with Stephanie Janicek 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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01-24-2017
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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/mp4
Date Modified
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2017-04-12: Metadata v1 created – [A.H.]
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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.
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/collections/show/28">Stephanie Janicek, Oral History Metadata</a>
B Reactor
Boeing
Cat
Dam
Desert
Energy Northwest
Event
Hanford
Kennewick
N Reactor
Park
River
Rivers
School
Sport
Sun
swimming
Tank Farm
Tank Farms
War
Westinghouse
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https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F74b26e06751e61230844cf404b522e0c.mp4
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Dublin Core
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Title
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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
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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 Franklin
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Tony Brooks
Location
The location of the interview
Washington State University Tri-Cities
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p>Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history interview with Tony Brooks on February 8<sup>th</sup>, 2017. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with Tony about his experiences working at the Hanford Site and his lifetime in the health physics profession. And for the record, can you state and spell your full name for us?</p>
<p>Tony Brooks: Antone Leavitt Brooks. A-N-T-O-N-E L-E-A-V-I-T-T B-R-O-O-K-S.</p>
<p>Franklin: Great. And so let’s start at the beginning. Where and when—where were you born and when?</p>
<p>Brooks: I was born in Saint George, Utah, which is the fallout capital of the world.</p>
<p>Franklin: Is that—that’s southern?</p>
<p>Brooks: Southern. Right as you’re going towards Las Vegas, it’s the last city in Utah before you leave, head out across the Nevada Desert.</p>
<p>Franklin: And why is it the fallout capital of the world?</p>
<p>Brooks: Because we shot off 103 atomic weapons aboveground at the Nevada Test Site. Normally, the weapons would be shot so that the fallout would go north across the Nevada, then turn and come east across Utah. There were a couple of shots that didn’t do that, that came right straight east to Saint George. And so we had some of the highest fallout levels recorded. When we were little kids, we’d be out playing basketball, and they’d say, hey, fallout cloud’s coming over, go in the house. Come on, you know? We’re playing ball here. [LAUGHTER] Or I’m up to bat next, I’m not going in the house.</p>
<p>Franklin: So you had an early connection, then with—</p>
<p>Brooks: Radiation.</p>
<p>Franklin: With radiation and atomic testing and atomic production.</p>
<p>Brooks: Right, right, right, right.</p>
<p>Franklin: So how did you get involved in radiation testing and health physics?</p>
<p>Brooks: Well, see, what I did then, when I went to University of Utah, got a bachelor’s degree there and then I got a master’s degree. And a guy named Robert Pendleton had just gotten a grant from the old Atomic Energy Commission to study the movement of fallout through the environment and into people. I did my master’s degree then following fallout. We set up a series of dairy farm stations. Each week we’d go and we’d sample the milk, we’d sample the grass, we’d sample the people, and count and watch the fallout move through the ecosystem into people. And so that was my master’s degree.</p>
<p>Franklin: And what year was that?</p>
<p>Brooks: In ’62.</p>
<p>Franklin: ’62, okay. And then that—</p>
<p>Brooks: They shot the last of the aboveground tests then. The atomic bomb ban—testing ban came in about then. But one of the last shots they shot was called Sedan. And Sedan was designed to see how big of a hole you could make with a nuclear weapon. So they buried it out in the desert, dug a serious hole with it. And the fallout came right over up across Salt Lake City.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p>Brooks: And so I was there, working on my master’s degree at that time. So we got a good dose of fallout from that also.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow. And does that kind of—I know that there were also those pathway-into-human experiments here at Hanford, as well. Does that kind of—does that mirror—is that around the same time?</p>
<p>Brooks: Yes, yes, yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Brooks: They used to have the old Hanford Symposiums up here, and we’d always come up and participate in those.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh really?</p>
<p>Brooks: And so we knew the people here; they knew us. We were doing the same kind of work. In fact, the guy who was one of the big ones here, a guy named Leo Bustad and Roger McClellan, okay?</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, we’ve interviewed Roger before.</p>
<p>Brooks: Well, Roger was my boss.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Brooks: So when I got my master’s degree, I went on to Cornell University. It was everywhere, okay? Fallout was everywhere. It was in everything, it was on everything. My concern, then, was, are there health effects? Are there health effects? Are we causing damage? Are we all going to die of cancer? Okay?</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah.</p>
<p>Brooks: That was a big concern. And at that time, we didn’t have a whole lot of data on internally deposited radioactive material. So I went to Cornell University and got my PhD there, studying chromosome damage. The chromosome is the most sensitive indicator of radiation-induced damage that we had at that time. You could look down the microscope and see the breaks and the rearrangements caused by the radiation. So that’s what I did my PhD. Then Roger McClellan hired me to go to the Lovelace Foundation, where he was the new director. I was one of the first two people he hired at Lovelace. So that’s how Roger and I got together.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, right. And what did you do at Lovelace?</p>
<p>Brooks: Well, Lovelace—see, I wanted to continue my studies on internally deposited radioactive material, and that’s what they did. They had animals inhale, inject, ingest all kinds of radioactive material. So what I did was study the chromosome genetic damage as well as cancer induced in those animals.</p>
<p>Franklin: Does that also kind of mirror—that mirrors some of the testing done at Hanford Labs and PNNL on—</p>
<p>Brooks: Oh, sure, oh, sure, oh, sure.</p>
<p>Franklin: --animal. First with the pigs and beagles—</p>
<p>Brooks: See, they had a big dog program here, we had a big dog program at Lovelace. They had one at Utah, they had one at Argonne, they had one at—so they had all these programs that were well-coordinated, studying effects of radiation on animals.</p>
<p>Franklin: So, were you all studying different areas of that—</p>
<p>Brooks: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: --or kind of all studying the same, trying to work towards the cracking of the—</p>
<p>Brooks: Each one—each laboratory had kind of an assignment. University of Utah, they inject—they started first. They injected the animals with radioactive material. Well, we don’t get injected much, so, University of California at Davis fed the animals radioactive material. Lovelace and Pacific Northwest Lab had the animals inhale it.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Brooks: And so the route of administration was different. But once it got inside, and once it went where it was going to go, then the effects were very similar. So there was a lot of coordination. Every year we’d have a meeting sometime—most—a lot of the times up here. They’d have the big Hanford Symposiums. I came up to those faithfully every year. And so the people up here were well-acquainted with the people down at Lovelace ITRI.</p>
<p>Franklin: And what did you find as a result of—</p>
<p>Brooks: Well, what I found primarily is that radiation is a very good cell killer. Okay? Radiation kills cells. That’s why we use it in therapy, right?</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>Brooks: If you’ve got a cancer, what do you do? You radiate the sucker, right? Why do you do that? To kill the cells. The other thing I found was that radiation is very poor mutagen. I spent a lot of time trying to look at mutations induced by radiation. It kills too many cells. It’s not very good at mutating. See, about that time, another thing came along that hit here as well as there, and that was Jimmy Carter says, okay, national laboratories, we know a lot about radiation. But we don’t know anything about chemicals. So we’re going to assign each of the national laborites a chemical process for producing energy and let’s look at what that does. We were given diesel exhaust and fluidized coal combustion at Lovelace. Pacific Northwest Lab was given another—I don’t remember exactly what theirs was. I think it was something to do with coal. Okay? And so we went through and took all these techniques and technology we’d developed for radiation and applied them to chemicals. Man, there’s a lot of good mutagens in chemicals.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah?</p>
<p>Brooks: You better believe it. So you get all of these chemicals from burning, chemicals from—you know, I’d take petri dishes and I’d put a bunch of cells on them. I’d irradiate them. Could have put 100,000 cells, radiate them, there’d be 4,000 or 5,000 left to be mutated for radiation. Chemicals doesn’t kill them. It just mutates them. So you get benzopyrene and methylcanthrene, all these really hot environmental chemicals. And so I said, oh, jeez, radiation’s a poor mutagen. It is not a good mutagen. A lot of other things are really hot mutagens; it’s not.</p>
<p>Franklin: And these chemicals were mostly from like carbon and fossil based—fossil fuels--</p>
<p>Brooks: Well—</p>
<p>Franklin: --based applications?</p>
<p>Brooks: Yeah, they were, but Lawrence Livermore Lab was given food, okay?</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Brooks: Cooking hamburgers, folks. Overdoing—burning things.</p>
<p>Franklin: Like, the carbon.</p>
<p>Brooks: The carbon, right, and all the products there. There’s a lot of good stuff in there. And about that time, a guy named Bruce Ames developed what we called the Ames Test. The Ames Test was designed to test mutagens. And we all jumped into the Ames Test. Chemicals are really good at producing mutations in the Ames Test. Radiation didn’t produce any.</p>
<p>Franklin: Interesting. That’s interesting because that kind of contradicts the cultural pop idea of radiation as causing massive genetic disorder or kind of positive disorders like superheroes, you know?</p>
<p>Brooks: Right, right.</p>
<p>Franklin: And stuff like that. But also negative like 50-foot ant, or you know.</p>
<p>Brooks: We all know where the Incredible Hulk came from. We all know Ninja Turtles, we know where we got those. That’s all radiation, folks. That’s all radiation. But in reality, radiation is not a mutagen.</p>
<p>Franklin: It just would have killed them.</p>
<p>Brooks: Sure, sure. [LAUGHTER] It might have mutated them—see, there was a big, big project down at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. They called it the Megamouse Project. Now, Megamouse Project was designed to look at mutations induced by radiation. So they took a whole bunch of male mice, radiated them almost enough to kill them. Let them recover, irradiated them again almost enough to kill them, and then bred them. They had hundreds of thousands of offspring of mice from those. How many mutations? 17 extra.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p>Brooks: And so when we started setting standards, the International Council on Radiation Protection and the National Council on Radiation Protection. But when I was young, mutation and cancer were about deemed equal. But as the data came in, mutations kind of went away. Okay, so mutations kind of went away. Cancer was still a big concern. So that’s what I try to do, is take my mutagenesis assays, short-term assays, and link them to cancer induction. So I treat an animal, check through his chromosomes, check for the mutations, then look for cancer in them. And so we were trying to make those links so I could do a short-term test and do a prediction, say. But, again, the more I worked, and the harder I worked, the more I understood, radiation is not a very good carcinogen, either. Otherwise, when we radiate people to cure cancer, we’d make more cancer than we cure. We don’t. The people who are radiated are cured. Some additional cancers come up, but not many.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>Brooks: See, you look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki—it’s the thing I always like to talk about—is here we are—boom, you know? We drop two weapons, kill 200,000 people. Radiation’s a good killer. We had 86,000 people survive. We followed that 86,000 people for their lifetime. We know what each and every one of them died of. How many extra cancers did we see in that 86,000 people? 40,000 controls and 40,000 exposed. How many extra cancers? Had a great time, once, I was talking in a ninth grade class, telling them about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They were all about asleep, you know? They weren’t too enthused about it. So I said, okay, here we got two populations. 40,000 exposed, 40,000 controls. How many extra cancers were there in the exposed? I whipped a dollar out of my wallet and said I’ll give the kid a dollar that comes the closest. You think every hand come up?</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah.</p>
<p>Brooks: [LAUGHTER] Every hand came up, you know. So I start writing them on the board. Oh, everybody—everybody died of cancer. No, no, you get run over by a truck, you get—everybody doesn’t die of cancer. I started trying to talk them down, trying to talk them down. Well, half of them. Three-quarters, half, a quarter. Trying to talk them down. Couldn’t. Finally some wiseacre rises his hand in the back of the room and says, nobody got cancer. I handed him the dollar because he was way closer than anybody else. So in those two populations, 40,000 people—you got to remember that 25% of us die of cancer. Radiation, no radiation, nothing. That’s a given. About a fourth of us die of cancer. So in the 40,000 without radiation, about 10,000 cancers. That’s about what we expected, about 10,000 cancers. The radiated people, how many extra? That’s always the big question. About 500. So we had 10,000 in one population, 10,500 in the other. No question, radiation increased the cancer frequency.</p>
<p>Franklin: But by a pretty small percentage. By—not—I think—</p>
<p>Brooks: It’s not huge.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, not a huge—</p>
<p>Brooks: It’s not huge. And most of the people who got the cancer were the ones in the close-in zones that just about got killed from the blast and the heat and the fires.</p>
<p>Franklin: What about UV radiation and skin cancer?</p>
<p>Brooks: Well, that’s a complete different story that I don’t have much expertise in.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, sure. That’s like the only kind—</p>
<p>Brooks: But—yeah—ultraviolet light causes DNA adducts that causes skin cancer. No question. You go out and sit in the sun—see, now, the other part of this story—the rest of the story—is that since I’m from southern Utah, I’m a Downwinder, just like a lot of the Downwinders here, okay? So if I get cancer, I get $50,000. No questions asked. I was actually invited to be the distinguished scientist one year at the Health Physics Society meeting. And I’d just gone in to have a bunch of skin cancers removed. I’m not blond. Saint George is a hot place, man. Skin—peel and burn, man, peel and burn. Over and over. So anyway I get a lot of little skin cancers, and I’d just gone in to the doctor to have those removed when I was given this award. And so I was there in front of the group. This guy, Dr. Toohey, Dick Toohey, who’s in charge of reimbursement, came up after my talk and says, hey, what you got there? Well, went to the doctor, had a bunch of skin cancers removed. Well, what kind were they? Well, I told them the kinds. Well, how many did you have? I told him, had three. He says, you know, if you get five, you get your $50k. Okay? [LAUGHTER] Two more skin cancers, I get my $50k. But what are the facts? Is there an epidemic of cancer in southern Utah where the fallout was where we’re getting paid? Utah has the lowest cancer instance in the nation. Southern Utah, where I live, the county where the biggest fallout was, has the second lowest cancer rate in the state. But we still get paid. So I go down there and give a talk and I say, oh, jeez, you know, if they didn’t cause it, why are they paying us? Why are they paying us? That’s a hard question to ask and answer. Because that’s what they ask. Why are they paying us? So what do you tell them? I tell them, well, you had a good senator. Senator Orrin Hatch got legislation through the Senate that said southern Utah had been abused. We had fallout, no question. We had exposures, no question. So, we decided to reimburse you. Well, how many get reimbursed? Can you reimburse everybody exposed to fallout? No. Russia set off a whole bunch of nuclear weapons. We set off a bunch of nuclear weapons. We contaminated the Northern Hemisphere. Brits, they were smart. They went down to Australia to set theirs off. They contaminated the Southern Hemisphere. So, we’ve all had it, okay? So we can’t reimburse everybody, can we? So how many are we going to reimburse? Well, you know, these four counties, this county in Nevada, this county in Arizona, 25% of us get cancer, that’s about right. The same way here at the Hanford Site, you know? Downwinders. People that worked at the Site. Military people. See, so they’ve set up all these programs to pay people off that were damaged.</p>
<p>Franklin: Interesting.</p>
<p>Brooks: [LAUGHTER] So I come at it from a little different position than—</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure.</p>
<p>Brooks: What I ended up doing—I’ve taken you through more than you probably ever wanted to know.</p>
<p>Franklin: No, not at all.</p>
<p>Brooks: But what happened, see, is after I left Lovelace, Roger McClellan left Lovelace, I left Lovelace. I came here and Bill Bair hired me to work out at Pacific Northwest Lab.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, and what year would this have been?</p>
<p>Brooks: It was ’98.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Brooks: So—no, it wasn’t ’98. ’88. Excuse me.</p>
<p>Franklin: That’s okay.</p>
<p>Brooks: Anyway, I came here to work at the Pacific Northwest Lab. So I worked here for about ten years at PNNL. And I don’t know how much of that story you want to hear. Probably not too much, but—</p>
<p>Franklin: Well, I’d love to hear about that.</p>
<p>Brooks: But I worked at the cellular molecular biology group at Pacific Northwest National Lab.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. And what did you do there? Similar to—</p>
<p>Brooks: Well, similar. Spent a lot of time on radon.</p>
<p>Franklin: Ah, the home radiation.</p>
<p>Brooks: The home radiator. We had a big radon program at PNNL, and I was the head of that.</p>
<p>Franklin: Doesn’t Spokane have really high levels of radon in the nation?</p>
<p>Brooks: They do. They’re one of the high ones. The Reading Prong in the east, Spokane, several places have quite high radon. And so we did a lot of experimental work on radon. Again, trying to link cancer induction to [UNKNOWN] changes. So we’d have animals inhale radon, we’d look for the chromosome damage and all that. Then we’d try to look for the cancers in them. And a guy named Fred Cross—you probably have interviewed Fred Cross. You surely should have if you haven’t.</p>
<p>Franklin: I think we—I think we might have. I’ll have to go back.</p>
<p>Brooks: Anyway, because Fred Cross ran a great big radon program for exposure to animals of radon. So when I came here, I got talking to Fred and I says, hey, Fred. Rats get a lot of lung cancer when they inhale radon. But not one case of trachea or nasal cancer. You inhale it, it goes down your trachea, into your lungs. How come you don’t get tracheal cancer? You inhale—have hamsters inhale radon, you don’t get anything! Now are we humans more like rats or hamsters? [LAUGHTER] That was one of the questions, you know?</p>
<p>Franklin: [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Brooks: Are we rats or are we hamsters? So I went ahead and started studying that at the cell and molecular level. When I asked a guy named Tony James, said, hey, Tony, how come rats don’t get tracheal tumors? And he says, well, maybe the dose to the trachea—the amount of radiation to the trachea is very different than the deep lungs. You inhale it, maybe it goes and stays better, and maybe that’s what it is. And I says, well, can you help me with the dose? Well, you tell me the diameter of the trachea, you tell me the velocity of the airway, you tell me the particle size, you tell me the branching angles, you tell me this—I can tell you what the dose is. I says, crap, I can’t tell you all that. I’m a simple biologist. So I went ahead and looked at the cells and see what they tell me. So we have the animals radiate, inhale the radon, go in, look at their lungs, look at the trachea, look at the nose, see how much chromosome damage there is. Same all three places. Same amount of dose, no cancer nose or trachea, lots of lung cancer. Same amount of dose. Same amount of damage. Same number of mutations. Huh! So I look at the hamsters—Chinese hamsters, Syrian hamsters. Same thing. Same amount of dose, no cancer in hamsters. Lot of cancer. So I decided that maybe mutations aren’t that important. There are other processes going on besides that. And this was something that really—a lot of people did not like.</p>
<p>Franklin: Why?</p>
<p>Brooks: Because they always thought that mutations make cancer. You got a mutation that releases itself from its control, it goes ahead and it does this, this and this. Before long you have cancer. But, hey. Same number of mutations, no cancer.</p>
<p>Franklin: So why, then, was the cancer—same level of dose, all three areas, same level of mutations, why was the cancer only happening in the lung?</p>
<p>Brooks: Yeah, that’s a good question. And so, what happened then—and this is the last part of my career—is I left Pacific Northwest Lab and came to Washington State University. My office was down the hall about four places on the left down there. And when I left PNL, they were going into the molecular science center, and they closed down the radon program. So I had a couple million dollars’ worth of funding in radon, and they closed it down. Oh, Brooks, you don’t have any funding. No, I don’t, do I? So what are you going to do? Well, I’m going to try to write some grants to get some more funding. No, no, we don’t have time for that. So anyway, I changed positions over there from biology into risk assessment. And I knew that I wasn’t a risk assessor. So I spent my nights and weekends writing grants. I got a grant from NIH, National Institute of Health; I got a grant from the Department of Energy; I got a grant from NASA to study radiation in space, and to study cell and molecular changes. So I hit on three grants, so I came over here and says, hey, you know, I got some money. Is it all right if I come over here? What do you think they said? Oh, yeah, we’d love to have you.</p>
<p>Franklin: Open arms?</p>
<p>Brooks: Yeah, come on. As long as you realize that we’re not giving you any money. But you got your own money, come on. And that was wonderful, it was. It was really good. I came over here and as a result of getting the grant from DOE, then, they started what they called a Low Dose Radiation Research Project. And the Low Dose Radiation Research Project, Senator Pete Domenici out of New Mexico said, hey, we’re spending billions of dollars cleaning up waste, we’re spending billions of dollars on concern over medicine use. We’re concerned about nuclear weapons, we’re concerned about terrorists, but we don’t know much about low doses. We know what happens up here at this high dose region, where we really kicked the devil out of you, you get cancer. What about the low dose? Of course, at that time, we’d sequenced the genome, we had all of these new tools and techniques where we could go down and look. So DOE started what they called the Low Dose Program. They had what they called the Chief Scientist for the Low Dose Program, and I got that. So I sat here at Washington State University and ran the Low Dose Program out of Washington, DC with a lady named Noelle Metting. So, my job was the best in the world. My boss was in Washington, DC. I was here, sitting down the hall. And we helped them run this program where we had about $25 million a year. We distributed it to the very best scientists we could find anywhere in the world. We didn’t just limit it to US scientists. If you had an idea or a technique that was unique, we’d give you money. We gave money to Grey Lab in England where they had a microbeam where they could shoot individual cells. We gave money to the Australians where they were able to look at mutations in animals at very, very low levels. We gave money over in the Ukraine where they went over and studied a lot of the rodents after the Chernobyl fallout. And so we had all the very best—I thought—the very best cell and molecular biologists in the world studying the health effects of low doses. And my job, along with the lady named Leslie Couch, who worked here with me, was to run the program and to take the abstracts and take the information and put it in a kind of language that the lay people could maybe understand. We scientists, we don’t care. If I can talk to my two best friends, that’s all I care, you know. [LAUGHTER] I don’t care if the Rotary Club understands what I’m doing. But that’s one of the problems we’ve had. See, the public’s perception is way over here. The real world is way over there. And we as scientists have not done the job. We have not done the job. So that was my job here for about ten years, at Washington State.</p>
<p>Franklin: So what did you find?</p>
<p>Brooks: We found that the response of cells and molecules at low doses is very different than high doses. At high doses, you’ve got injury, you’ve got repair. At low doses, a whole different set of genes gets turned on, whole different processes are upregulated. But the wisdom of our political system killed the system, shut the program down. I retired and went to White Pass and ran a girls’ camp for a couple of years. And Bill Morgan came to Pacific Northwest Lab and took over at the Low Dose Program. Now, I don’t know if you’ve—Bill passed away last year. Huge loss. So Bill came and took over my job that I had as the chief scientist. And then I got running the website for them, see? And so they gave the website to Pacific Northwest Lab. So while I was running [LAUGHTER] a girls’ camp, plowing snow, which I did yesterday—went up and helped them. [LAUGHTER] Trying to keep the roads clean. Then Bill was running the website here for two years. It’s really interesting because the website really got quite popular. Because we were putting all the new information into it, and publications—lots and lots of publications on what happens at low doses and how different it is than high doses.</p>
<p>Franklin: What constitutes a low dose?</p>
<p>Brooks: Well, what you have to realize is that we live in a sea of radiation, okay? There’s a background amount of radiation that we all have. The higher in elevation you get, the more you get. If you live in Denver, you get way more than you do here. So what usually people do is say, well, here’s the background, and some value above that must be a low dose. [LAUGHTER] How fast you give it is the other thing, is how fast you get it. The body’s able to recover and repair. So if you give 100 rads or one gray all in one second, that does a lot more damage than if you give that over a year. Your body repairs and eliminates the bad cells. And that’s the other thing we found: a lot of protective processes that we didn’t realize existed.</p>
<p>Franklin: You mean the body’s own protective processes.</p>
<p>Brooks: Sure. The body has a built-in system, man. We’re being insulted by all kinds of things all the time, and, golly, we’re still alive. We should have been dead, see, if it wasn’t repairing. So anyway, I ran this Low Dose Program and then I went up to Camp Zarahemla. When I got there, I still had money left in my grant from the Department of Energy. Then I talked to Dr. Metting and I says, look, Noelle, I can send this money back to DOE if you’d like. Or you can let me keep it and I’ll write a book on the history of the program. And so the two years while I was at Camp Zarahemla, I spent every morning writing the history and so I compiled all of publications, put together the history, and got that all published just as I—all put together—just as I came out of there. And they made a website, put it on the website, so it’s been on the website for a while. But I couldn’t get her to publish it. And so, the bottom line on that is that DOE has finally given Pacific Northwest Lab some money to help me get that published. And Washington State University is publishing it.</p>
<p>Franklin: Great.</p>
<p>Brooks: And it’s supposed to be out in April.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, wow, cool. Congratulations.</p>
<p>Brooks: So anyway. [LAUGHTER] But anyway, that’s the history of the DOE Low Dose Program. That’s what I did at the very last of my career. Now, when I got back from Camp Zarahemla where we were running the girls’ camp, Bill Morgan says, you know, this is a lot more work than I thought it was going to be. Why don’t you come and help me? So Bill wrote a contract for me as a private—I set up a company and we—DOE says, well you can run it through PNL, or you can run it through Washington State, or you can set up a private company and run it there. They had a set amount of money that they were willing to give me. I thought, oh, PNL has an overhead rate of a little over 100%. Washington State has an overhead rate of about 40%. My company has no overhead rate. I think I’ll do it that way. [LAUGHTER] So anyway, Bill was very nice, and he helped me set up and get funded through PNL. So I worked, then, for PNL on the website for a number of years after I got back from camp. Then of course Bill passed away and the program there has gone down to where there’s not much left. So that’s where I am today. I still—PNL gave me some money to get the book published, so that’s very nice. And I work for EPRI, the Electric Power Research Institute, where they’ve been paying me some money to write some papers. I got a very nice paper published with two real good people, Julian Preston, who’s a geneticist and David Holm who’s an epidemiologist, where we looked at dose rate. See, now, how important is dose rate? Now, this is a big argument now, whether, if you give dose over a long period of time, it’s less effective than giving it all at once. All the data says that’s true. The Germans, on the other hand, have eliminated nuclear power, and they have decided that there is no benefit of protracting the radiation.</p>
<p>Franklin: Of what?</p>
<p>Brooks: Of protracting it, extending it out in time. In other words, if I give you one unit of radiation in one second, or if I give you one unit of radiation in ten years, the effect is the same. Does that make sense to you?</p>
<p>Franklin: It doesn’t if the data doesn’t support it.</p>
<p>Brooks: Well, the data doesn’t support it. Because every cell in your body is whacked when you give it all at once. You give it over time, the cells are turning over; any individual cell doesn’t see much. All he sees is a very low dose. He responds differently to that than he does this whack.</p>
<p>Franklin: The whack turns on different—</p>
<p>Brooks: Turns on a different set of genes, turns on a different set of processes. I’m trying to survive up here, okay? We found, for example, if you take—we developed a microbeam here at PNL—Les Braby did—where we could take and shoot individual cells with alpha particles. So we get under a microscope, get a bunch of kids that were good with video games, shoot that cell, and move, shoot this one, and shoot that one. We knew exactly which cells we’d shot. We knew exactly how many alpha particles we’d shot them with. Then we look at the response. That was what I was doing, looking at the response. It was really kind of neat, because you’d hit one cell, cell over here would responded. Of course! We’re talking to each other. We’re not a single cell. We don’t have eyes in our liver, you know. Come on. When we develop—and so, that was what we call the bystander effect. This is one of the things we found at the Low Dose Program. You hit one cell, the whole tissue responds.</p>
<p>Franklin: Trying to prevent the damage, right?</p>
<p>Brooks: Yeah, what does it do? It’s trying to prevent the damage. So if you hit one cell, it sends out messages: I’ve been hit! Help! What do the other cells do? Pew! Kill it. You’re out of here. It’s called apoptosis, or spontaneous programmed cell death.</p>
<p>Franklin: You hit the whole tissue at once, then they all can’t respond.</p>
<p>Brooks: Right, everybody’s damaged, folks. But if one cell gets hit, the whole tissue responds to try to save the tissue, not the cell. They’ll kill that cell. It’s called selective apoptosis, where you just eliminate that guy. And so there’s a lot of that—really fun. I just had a great time at it.</p>
<p>Franklin: That’s great. Did you ever find out why the rat lungs were prone to cancers, whereas the esophagus and the trachea were not?</p>
<p>Brooks: Well, you know, the thing that we found in the Low Dose Program was the cell communication. The cells in the trachea and esophagus are nicely arranged in nice little columns. And the communication is very nice between them. In the lung, you get this thing spread out. You kill a cell over here, you stimulate another over there, you do this, this, that. Very different project. And so I think that what’s happening is that the cells that are able to maintain communication, maintain structure—if you have an inflammatory disease, okay, esophageal reflex. What do you get? You get esophageal cancer. No radiation, no mutations. Inflammatory disease. So any time you get tissue disorganization, inflammation. We did that with the lungs. We’d have these animals inhale radioactive material. If you gave them enough, you’d kill them. They’d die, pneumonitis, fibrosis, the lungs would fill up with water and they’d die. If you give them a little less than that so they didn’t die of that, almost every one of them got cancer—lung cancer. If you go down a little lower, but still an awful lot, but protracted over a long period of time, almost nothing.</p>
<p>Franklin: And why did the Syrian or Chinese hamsters not get the lung cancer when they were exposed to the same amount?</p>
<p>Brooks: Well, that’s what we call genetic variability, okay? You and I are different. You and I are different. Every one of us has our own genetic difference. As you looked into these animals, they had different pathways. They have different ways to repair. They’re different.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure, sure.</p>
<p>Brooks: If you look at the human population, we’ve got sensitive people, we’ve got resistant people. I think the sensitive people are more like rats and the resistant ones more like the hamsters. That’s one of the things that we’re starting to unravel. What are the pathways and what are the ones that are important? That’s when the program was killed. And so that’s one of the things I’m pushing really hard and working with a lot of people now to see if we can get money back into that program. It’s really a critical thing.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure. I believe you. I mean, it sounds like understanding—because we all live with low dose and varying amounts of low dose.</p>
<p>Brooks: That’s right.</p>
<p>Franklin: And especially as we don’t have that kind of constant testing of radiation anymore, we might get exposed to different variabilities, right?</p>
<p>Brooks: Right, right.</p>
<p>Franklin: I’m wondering if you could talk about the consequences of that. Because I’ve heard a little bit about it, of the loss of the generations that kind of ingested the radiation from atomic weapons testing. Do you know what I’m talking about?</p>
<p>Brooks: Not for sure.</p>
<p>Franklin: That there was ways to kind of track where people were, based on the amount of material in their cells that they had ingested from the atomic weapons testing, and that now there’s a generation that has grown up since the ban and doesn’t have those kind of genetic markers anymore.</p>
<p>Brooks: No. Yeah, I don’t know. I think, of course, once you take the radiation—and we’re very, very good at detecting radiation. That’s one of the things that we’re really good at. And that really impressed me when I went from working with radiation to working with hot chemicals. Radiation—if I spill something—I knew right where it was. Chemical, I spill something, I don’t know where it was. So we’re so good at testing and detecting. My generation, I can go in and get counted today, and they’d tell me how much strontium I’ve still got in my bones. I had thyroid. We counted people all over the state of Utah that had fairly significant amounts of radiation in them. Chernobyl, Fukushima. Lots and lots and lots and lots of people have ingested lots and lots and lots of radiation. And so it’s not a mystery box anymore. The mystery box is the fact that it hasn’t been very effective. And I’ve just been really grateful for that. Because when I was growing up, I thought, oh, crap, you know? We’re going to have a cancer epidemic in southern Utah the likes of which you’ve never seen before. It didn’t develop. Chernobyl, we went over there and set up a study. Guy named Admiral Zumwalt was a Navy admiral. He knew the Navy admirals over in Russia. So we got all of us together and set up a big study to study Chernobyl. We had each of the Russian countries matched with the United States group. We had Ukraine and Belarus and Russia, all matched with Fred Hutch, one group, Texas, another group, Boston, another group. So we got all our best people, matched them with theirs, to go over and look at that. Chernobyl had just happened. We wanted to find out, again, are we going to have terrible cancer epidemic in Russia? And now it’s been 20-plus years, 30 years, after Chernobyl, huh? 20-something years.</p>
<p>Franklin: 30. A little more than 30, because it was 1986, right?</p>
<p>Brooks: Right.</p>
<p>Franklin: April of ’86.</p>
<p>Brooks: So, ’86, I was still a youngster. Anyway, I was sitting on this committee. Been sitting on it for years. When we started, our prediction was that we were really going to have some serious problems with cancer, especially leukemia—especially childhood leukemia. And thyroid. See, the Russians didn’t need people telling people in Pripyat that they had a problem for several days. So they were there sucking in the iodine-131—thyroid getting really kicked. So all of our models, all of that, said, boy, we have a serious problem here. The longer we did it, the more measurements we made, the longer we followed it up—where are the cancers? Where are the cancers? Zero excess solid cancers, with exception of cancer of the thyroid of children. Huge increase in cancer of the thyroid in children.</p>
<p>Franklin: And is that a result of the radioactive iodine?</p>
<p>Brooks: It is the radioactive iodine, very high doses.</p>
<p>Franklin: And we’re talking about people in the surrounding area, not talking about the responders.</p>
<p>Brooks: No, no, no, no, no, no, no. The responders, they got zinged. They got zinged. We killed a bunch of them. You know, the Russians, they had a very different philosophy than what we have. It’s like me having a great big bonfire here and saying, why don’t you go stand in the middle of that bonfire? You know, I’d rather not. They knew how hot that was. They knew going in there was going to be lethal. But they sent them in. See, we wouldn’t have done that. Okay? But, yeah, first responders—</p>
<p>Franklin: So why the children and not adult—if they were all in the same environment, why the children and not the adult?</p>
<p>Brooks: That’s really a good question. Why the children and not the adults? Children thyroids are developing. There’s lots of cell division in there. There’s lots of opportunities for things to go wrong. Adult thyroids are just sitting there, doing their thing. Almost no cell proliferation, almost no cell division, no differentiation. They’re just sitting there. Now, you take the liver, which just sits there—I did a lot of work on liver. Liver cells, you can radiate the devil out of them as long as you don’t make them divide, they seem to be fine. But you stimulate them to divide—I could go in and flop out part of the liver, make the liver divide, up come the cancer. So there’s a lot of processes, but the children’s thyroids were sensitive.</p>
<p>Franklin: And it’s the—so then is the cancer then carried in the division? Is that how it multiplies? [INAUDIBLE] establishing a link--</p>
<p>Brooks: Either that—carried or expressed.</p>
<p>Franklin: Carried or expressed, okay. So does the action of division make it—the cells more likely to turn cancerous? Or do we still—</p>
<p>Brooks: Well, cell tissues that have more rapid cell division have more cancer in them.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure.</p>
<p>Brooks: Bone marrow, GI tract, lung.</p>
<p>Franklin: Skin?</p>
<p>Brooks: Skin, yeah, skin. But you look at the liver, almost never divides. Radiation doesn’t produce much in the way of brain cancer—cells don’t divide. Muscles, nothing. Bone marrow, gut, skin—all of those dividing—rapidly dividing cells. If the exposure is given acutely.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Brooks: But if it’s protracted in time, it’s very different.</p>
<p>Franklin: Interesting.</p>
<p>Brooks: Because the cells are dividing, and one cell gets hit, its great-grandson maybe get hit. But if you get them all at once, and they have to all divide, and they have to all survive, and they have to all repopulate, that’s where it comes.</p>
<p>Franklin: Gotcha. Well, thank you, Tony.</p>
<p>Brooks: Well, that’s probably more than you ever wanted to hear.</p>
<p>Franklin: No, I think it’s really instructive. And it definitely complicates—complicates our idea of how radiation affects the body, but clarifies and I think kind of dispels some of the misinformation and myths that surround—</p>
<p>Brooks: Yeah, fear is a really important part of this whole thing. We had a meeting up at Leavenworth where we brought in scientists from around the world and spent a week up there, trying to decide and discuss what we could do about the fear of radiation. We had a guy from Argentina, we had a guy from Germany, we had a guy from Australia, we had three of us from the United States, and we spent a week up there. It’s really difficult to decide what makes people so afraid of anything. I’m afraid of snakes. Okay. You can tell me that snake’s not going to bite me, but don’t put it on me.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure.</p>
<p>Brooks: [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Well it’s tough, right, because fear is a natural human response to keep us alive. It’s a safety feature. Yeah, fear of the unknown. Tony, is there anything that I haven’t asked you about that you’d like to mention in the interview?</p>
<p>Brooks: Well, I don’t know, other than it has been really an exciting career for me.</p>
<p>Franklin: Great.</p>
<p>Brooks: We’ve had a wonderful time, got to do a lot of interesting things, meet a lot of interesting people. I can say the main thing that I’d like to be able to help with is to help people know that if you go in and the doctor says you need a CT scan, take it. The radiation dose from a CT scan is so low that you don’t worry about it. If you need an x-ray, take it. If the dentist wants to look at your teeth, take it. Because the risks are so very small.</p>
<p>Franklin: And that radiation doesn’t automatically cause cancer.</p>
<p>Brooks: Right.</p>
<p>Franklin: It depends on the time of the dose and the amount of—</p>
<p>Brooks: Right. And, see, that’s the public perception, that if I get radiated, I will get cancer. If I get cancer, the radiation caused it. And that’s a hard perception to break, because it’s absolutely not true.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure, okay. Well, great, thank you so much, Tony. I really appreciated the interview.</p>
<p>Brooks: It’s been fun, I can say.</p>
<p>Franklin: Well, I’m glad we could get this for—and that Parker didn’t have one with you—Parker Foundation. So I’m kind of glad that we could kind of get you in with all those other voices about radiation and health safety. Because you have a lot of—a lot of what you said was really instructive. And you said it so easily that—you know, I’m a historian, an archivist. I’m not a radiation expert. I know I’ve been working on this project about some of the basics, but it was very easy to understand. And so you spent your life dedicated to that; you’re a trustworthy source.</p>
<p>Brooks: Well, that’s right. I’ve invested my life, basically, trying to do that. And I started off scared to death of it. Okay?</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah.</p>
<p>Brooks: And the more I worked and the more I’ve studied and the more I’ve seen, all the way from the animals to the humans to the tissue to the cells to the molecules, everything tells the same story.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah. Great, well, thanks so much.</p>
<p>Brooks: Hey, thank you, man.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, thank you.</p>
Original Format
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mp4
Duration
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00:52:33
Bit Rate/Frequency
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317 kbps
Years in Tri-Cities Area
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1988-today
Years on Hanford Site
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1988-1998
Names Mentioned
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Leo Bustad
Roger McClellan
Fred Cross
Pete Domenici
Noelle Metting
Leslie Couch
Bill Morgan
Les Braby
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Title
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Interview with Tony Brooks
Description
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An interview with Tony Brooks 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.
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Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
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02-08-2017
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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/mp4
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2017-13-11: Metadata v1 created – [A.H.]
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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.
Adult
Atomic Energy Commission
Cancer
Children
Cook
Department of Energy
Desert
Hanford
Livermore
NASA
Park
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https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F82ba25b80eee33668ba65ff5f01064ef.JPG
adfe3b554307d8be1e998288231177cf
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Title
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Post-1943 Oral Histories
Subject
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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
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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
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Robert Franklin
Interviewee
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Wanda Munn
Location
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Washington State University Tri-Cities
Transcription
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<p>Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin. I’m conducting an oral history interview with Wanda Munn on November 2<sup>nd</sup>, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I’ll be talking with Wanda about her experiences working at the Hanford Site. And for the record, can you state and spell your name?</p>
<p>Wanda Munn: Wanda Iris Munn. W-A-N-D-A, last name M-U-N-N.</p>
<p>Franklin: Great. When and where were you born, Wanda?</p>
<p>Munn: I was born in Brownwood, Texas, which is 17 miles from the geographic center of the state on September 13<sup>th</sup>, 1931. I was a Depression baby. So I had all that background and the joy of being a native Texan.</p>
<p>Franklin: [LAUGHTER] How and why did you come to the area to—how and why did you come to work at Hanford?</p>
<p>Munn: Well, in technical terms, I’m a retread. I decided in midlife that I needed to finish a college degree, and I wanted to do it in some discipline that was really challenging and had great contribution capability for the planet and especially for my nearer community. When you make those decisions in your 40s, you have some knowledge of what you’re doing. And it was not an easy one for me to do, although I did an asset-liability framework in my mind of what I could do, what—I was a divorced mother of two children and had the responsibility for a declining mother and a dependent sister. So it was incumbent upon me to do this as quickly as possible. I only had about a year’s worth of actual college credit, most of it at the University of Texas, much earlier in life. When I decided that I was going to go for nuclear engineering, my friends and colleagues were actually horrified. They all could understand my going out to find myself somehow, but a technical degree like nuclear engineering was a real stunner to them. They were fond of saying to me, but Wanda, you’ll be over 40 by the time you get your degree! And my response was, I’m going to be over 40 anyhow. I’d rather have it with this degree than not have it with this degree. So because my prior material was not actually engineering, it had been medicine, I really had to start from scratch. I didn’t have any money and essentially sold everything but the children, and I couldn’t find a good buyer for them. [LAUGHTER] But I tried to do a four-year curriculum in three years and managed to do it. But it wasn’t easy, and I don’t recommend it. [LAUGHTER] Nevertheless, by the time I had finished my engineering degree at Oregon State University—I was living in Corvallis at the time—I had fallen in love with breeder reactors. This was in the mid-‘70s, and in the mid-‘70s, the big game in town as far as breeder technology was concerned was right here at Hanford. The Fast Flux Test Facility was in the process of construction at that time, and it was the most exciting technical thing on the horizon. I was delighted to be able to come here and interview for a position there. And that’s exactly what I did. I became a member of the Westinghouse Hanford team that was constructing that reactor. And never looked back. It was a wonderful choice for me. A very exciting time, building on the shoulders of the giants that we’d had here three decades earlier. And I have never regretted a day of it.</p>
<p>Franklin: Excellent. So, tell me what kinds of work did you do at FFTF?</p>
<p>Munn: I was—for the most part I was a cognizant engineer. Westinghouse had an excellent program at the time of rotational program where you had an opportunity, if you chose to do so, to work in three different aspects of the construction, design, startup process. I originally chose to go into plant operations. It seemed the most exciting to me and we were actually building the structure at that time. We—I did two other rotations which made it possible for me to go all over the site, actually. When I say the site, the site that I’m talking about right now is the FFTF site, what we refer to as the 400 Area. It did not include the old production reactors and the waste projects that were underway by Rockwell Hanford at that time. I had been the cognizant engineer for the reactor system for a variety of the other head compartment systems. For the longest period of time, my responsibility was the sodium systems, especially the sodium testing system and the gas sampling systems. During a long period of time, I also worked in nuclear safety, which, again, took me literally all over the plant. It was a very exciting time. The Fast Flux Test Facility was a flagship. There’s no question about it. It was the most advanced research and development reactor in the world. Not only at that time, but no one, to my knowledge, has exceeded the capability that we had, nor the type of long-term vision that we had at FFTF. It was a specialized group of men and women. More men than women, obviously. That, of course, was another aspect of the times. And if you want me to talk about that, I can a little bit. It may or may not be interesting to your audience.</p>
<p>Franklin: I would love for you to talk about that.</p>
<p>Munn: As anyone who lived through that era knows, a woman with a technical degree was not welcomed, nor did they actually have access to many portions of the engineering technology. There were a few. I was not what I think of as a first wave, but I was certainly the second wave. The first—whoa. Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to—</p>
<p>Emma Rice: Overload the circuit?</p>
<p>Franklin: Overload the circuit.</p>
<p>Munn: Cause—yeah, I didn’t mean to overload anything. We—</p>
<p>Franklin: Did we—yeah, I was going to say—so we--</p>
<p>Vargas: No, we’re fine on the camera.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>Vargas: It’s battery-powered.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, great.</p>
<p>Munn: Okay, very good, that’s fine. We just—I had as my mentors women, several of whom had had careers in the military. It was one of the few real engineering doors that were open to them at the time. And the woman who was the technical vice president for Westinghouse Hanford at the time was Lieutenant Colonel Arminta Harness, recently retired from the Air Force and NASA. She had worked on the Space Program and had known me as a result of our interaction in the Society of Women Engineers. We called her Minta. Minta was the last of the two-year-term national presidents for the Society of Women Engineers. And she and her colleagues had been among those who were not allowed to go into other forms of engineering in the public sector, because they had two routine answers that they heard from potential employers. One was, we don’t have a women’s restroom in our building. And the other, that I thought was probably closer to the truth for most of them was, we accept the fact that you could do this work—not can, but could do this work. However, if our clients knew that the work was done by a woman, it would never be accepted. Now, that probably had some ring of truth to it, but nevertheless, it was almost an insurmountable barrier for those women. But as anyone who knows anything about the social history of the United States knows, in the ’60s and early ‘70s, there was a real revolution in this regard. I think it’s a spin-off of what happened during World War II. It rather astonished people that women could take the jobs that men had left and had done such a fine job with them while the men were away from the country. But it was just assumed that when they returned, of course, they would return to their positions, whatever they were, and that the women would go back and put their aprons on. There’s nothing demeaning about that, except it was pretty infuriating for the women who had shown for five years that they could do these jobs and had done it very, very well, to be told now that—not that they—they would no longer accept that they couldn’t do it, but they were told that they should not do it. And therefore were not going to be allowed to. These were the women who had daughters who were not going to accept that as an answer. So as the social process began to move, and the legislative process began to bring itself to bear, more and more employers were finding it necessary to hire a certain number of women in order to fulfill the requirements of a government contract. This was both an enormous opportunity and a terrible detriment for those of us who were living in that time. That social action, as a matter of fact, was a part of the reason why I had decided to go into nuclear engineering. It was the first time the doors were really open to do that. But the two-edged sword was very easy to see if you stood back one step and looked at it. That is, these women were going into a milieu where the individuals who occupied those spaces had thousands of years of history behind them, of being world leaders, commanders of all they surveyed, and they had only two interactions, they—well, I take it back—three interactions they’d ever had with women throughout their entire lives from the time they were infants. The women with whom they had ever interacted had either been caretakers, sexual objects, or clerical employees. There were no other options. That was their interaction. Now, women had been doing reasonably well in small entrepreneurial businesses of their own for quite some time. But this was a different thing. This was high technology. The fact that people like Admiral Grace Hopper were making the beginnings of the Digital Age come to life were not seen by the general public. That was such an outlier; it wasn’t commonly known. But as those of us who came into this profession during this period of time learned very quickly, the people in power were all masculine, as one would expect. But they had no experience in how to deal with a female colleague. Females, yes. They had females around them and a basic part of their lives forever. But dealing with a woman on a level playing field in a technical way was not an experience that they even knew anyone who could relate to them. So the first thing they thought was, one: you’re only there because you got a leg-up; you’re being given a free ride because you happen to be female. And the other thing they thought is: and if the free ride gives you as much power as we’re afraid it’s going to, you’re going to take my job. So as we went in, we had to do two things. One, we had to prove we really were engineers; we really could do the work. And two, we had to prove to them that we were colleagues of theirs, not interlopers who—we all know the general story about how women got ahead in that time. We had to prove that wasn’t on the slate, and that we were not going to take their jobs. This ain’t easy. And I’m very, very glad that I was older at the time this occurred, because I’d been accustomed—you know, I’d grown up with these guys. I knew who they were. I knew what they were like, and I understood what their lives were. So, it wasn’t hard for me to understand the disturbance that was going on in their intellectual world. But younger women coming in at the time didn’t understand that. They saw this as being some kind of real repression of some sort—an attempt to keep them from fulfilling their potential. This, in my view, was not the case. I still see that quite often, that sometimes women in technical fields have a tendency to think that they’re playing the minority card. But that is, in my view, no longer true. The concerns that I had at that time have long since passed, and I’m glad that’s true.</p>
<p>Franklin: What was—I’d like to step back a bit, and thank you for that. I think that was a really illuminating aspect, and I might have you come lecture my US History class on women in the workplace at some point.</p>
<p>Munn: I’d be delighted to do that.</p>
<p>Franklin: What was—so, going—coming back to your motivation to go back to school, what was it—was there a moment, or when did you realize that you wanted to—when and why did you realize that you wanted to go back to school?</p>
<p>Munn: Okay, now this is really getting down in the weeds here, but that’s okay. The reason I left the University of Texas was to marry. [COUGH] Excuse me. As I think I mentioned. I was in pre-med. I had grown up with great ambitions. It had never occurred to me that there was much that I couldn’t do because I was female. It occurred to me that there were limits to what I could do because of my intellectual prowess, but I had always been drawn to medicine as a child, and had actually hoped to go into psychiatry. Which I’m glad I didn’t do. But that’s not the issue here. The issue is, I left the university to marry. I was 18. Because I had graduated from high school at 16. I had chosen pre-med because that’s what had been in my head for a long, long time. It was science, it was technical, it was beneficial: it was all the things that I wanted my life to be. But marriage interrupts that kind of thing. It takes you to a different kind of world, a different kind of setting. My then-husband was in the Air Force, and so I followed him in the Air Force. He was an enlisted man. He was from a working class blue collar family. No one in his family—a large family—no one in his family had ever gone to college. This made absolutely no sense to me—why one would not advance their education in a period and in a place where it was difficult, but it wasn’t all that difficult to find a way to pay tuition. You know, why not? There’s state schools all over the United States. Choose something and go there. So it was rather difficult on my then-husband, because he was not prepared for college work at all, and I was just fairly insistent that he was going to do that. So he had a great deal of remedial work to do, and this essentially meant that I had spent about seven years of my life trying to assist him in his studies, and essentially support the family in doing so. He did finish not only his bachelor’s degree but also his master’s degree and was in the education field. During all that period of time, I was essentially doing professional work of one sort or another for individuals who held authoritative positions, but whose shoes I could have filled easily. I did not have what I call my union card: I didn’t have a college degree. Further, I did not have the technical training to do the kinds of science and technology that really and truly interested me. So in the ‘70s, I found myself the divorced mother of two, as I said, and with considerable family responsibility. I knew that I could not continue to support what is now a rather large number of people on the salaries that I was able to get as a glorified administrative assistant. By the way, there’s been a change of terms. In that period, the term administrative assistant did not mean a secretary, although my secretarial and clerical skills were very high. That was not the real reason I had the post. I actually was an assistant to the person who held the title, whether it was physicians, accountants, insurance people, academics—that’s what I did. But there’s a factor of about two, sometimes three, in the monthly salary of those individuals and in mine. So you don’t have to be a follower of Dr. Einstein to be able to work out the math. You know, it doesn’t take very long. I needed a professional salary. And besides that, intellectually, I had been spinning my wheels for 20 years. And I was tired of it. I was absolutely tired of it. I wanted to be doing something that was challenging me, and in which my contribution was a contribution. Not a contribution to the person who was doing the contribution. It isn’t that I wanted to be recognized for that; I’ve always been of the school that it’s amazing what you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit for it. I didn’t care who got the credit for it. I just wanted to be on the ground floor. That’s all.</p>
<p>Franklin: So for all the degrees—the things you could have chosen in what we now call the STEM fields that would make a solid difference, why nuclear engineering?</p>
<p>Munn: Can you think of anything else that’s more challenging and more imaginative? I can’t. At the time, it took me a while to measure down to engineering. I started with thinking of medicine, still. But when I realized the amount of time and the amount of money that was going to be necessary for me to do that, not to mention the time—the concentrated daily schedule that’s necessary for that kind of thing, given the family duties that I had—it seemed like an impossibility. So I had to rule out medicine. Besides which, it would have taken me seven years to get to the point where I could actually get to hands-on anything. That—I didn’t have that much time. I had to do this in—and I had no money. As a result of that, I really had to do something in a much shorter time. And it seemed to me that three years was all I was going to be able to handle. Now, when you take that away and you start looking at the other science things, the biggie at the time also was computer technology. We were just getting out of the room full of server stages, and every college campus finally did have a computer center where you could go in the dead of night and run your deck which you had typed. [LAUGHTER] It was still unknown to the general public. I happened to own the first 35 that was sold at the Oregon State University bookstore—the first handheld computer. [LAUGHTER] It’s still on my desk, as a matter of fact. But that was—it was an exciting time then, but I—what little I knew about computer technology, I knew the detailed precision that was necessary to do this. I’d already known—had the experience of trying to make a computer do what I wanted it to do instead of what I had told it to do. And knowing that the misplacement of one character could demolish the efforts of a whole deck just did me in. I couldn’t handle that kind of concept. I knew I would not be a good computer engineer. Too much real detail oriented in that. Being a big picture kind of person makes a difference. So I set that aside. The other thing that really seizes the imagination is something that so many people don’t think about—that is the basic requirement for any life anywhere is not food, clothing and shelter. It’s even more basic than that. It’s energy. If you don’t have adequate energy, there is no way you can do any of the things that you have to do to survive. The energy picture right there right then was easily as muddled as it is now, and possibly even more. I had looked—thought about mining, too. It just really sounded dull to me. Just dull. I’d been raised in Texas. Petroleum engineering was a big thing at the time. Oh, for crying out loud, you look around in the dirt, you find oil, you think you might have oil, you drill for oil, you either have it or you don’t have it. Then you either have success or not and you move onto another well. That just—that didn’t sound like much of a thrill to me, either. So long as I couldn’t be there to watch the well come in, what’s the point? This gets—there was, of course, a great deal of hoo-ha about solar, wind, ocean current—all those things were very big in the human imagination at the time. I kept thinking, really? No. Not really. Excellent for specific purposes. Useful? Oh, my, yes. Pursue it by all means. But the biggie? No. I already knew that there were only two concentrations of energy that could possibly serve an industrial society. And I’m all for industrial societies. And I knew that that was carbon-based fuels and nuclear. Well, let’s see. Which is the most interesting of those? Gosh, it didn’t take me long to figure that out. So, to me, it was just a pyramid. You start at the bottom and you work up, and the star of the fleet as far as I was concerned was nuclear engineering. How fascinating can you get?! My word. Totally unknown until less than a few decades before. And now the most incredible amount of power. Energy that we’ve never even been able to imagine, we’ve got it, we know how to control it, we can do whatever we need to do with it. With breeder reactors—hey. The only place I know you can make enormous amounts of electricity and still be creating more fuel at the same time. Don’t know anything else that does that. Highly imaginative, and not getting good press at the time, either.</p>
<p>Franklin: I wanted—and I think you might have answered some of the question, my next question. But you mentioned that your friends and colleagues were terrified that you chose nuclear engineering.</p>
<p>Munn: Yes.</p>
<p>Franklin: Why was that?</p>
<p>Munn: Too hard. Underwater basket weaving, popular psychology, you know, art, the many of the social sciences, the things that do good things for society but don’t require that much in the way of focused knowledge of some sort. That’s—you know, it takes a lot of work, but it takes a different kind of brainpower. We really live in two worlds, you know. C.P. Snow pointed that out in his books quite some time ago. We live in an enumerate world and an innumerate world. There’s nothing wrong with either of those worlds, it’s just that they don’t communicate well. And a significant number of people are math-phobic. Have been most of their lives and probably will be most of their lives. But the only way you can explain most things in science is numerically. So you either see that as a form of language, or you don’t. And I was able to see it as a form of language. Please don’t misinterpret me; I am not a good mathematician. But I do see the mathematic relationships in things. I see the mathematics in color spectra. I see the mathematics in music. I see the mathematics in what we’re doing here right now. And many people don’t see the relationship between these technologies and mathematics.</p>
<p>Franklin: You had mentioned earlier some of the challenges that women of your generation—or in the generation—the time at which you entered the workforce, you mentioned some of the challenges that women were facing. Did you—were there any of those challenges specifically at FFTF, or can you kind of describe how that was to be a woman at this newly—this brand new reactor?</p>
<p>Munn: Yes. One of the things that was very frustrating about it was that we did have a number of women who, in their lexicon, were breaking barriers, and I was glad they were there. They were doing semi-technical jobs. Many of them non-professional jobs, but nevertheless requiring interaction with the hands-on people who were on the floor putting things together, and doing cool things, like being able to stand over the open reactor before it was filled and feel how far it was from one wall to the other. Those are the kinds of things people don’t get to do. I got to do those things. It was wonderful. But we had a couple of things. Women had never been taught anything but dress codes. And knowing how to dress in a true working engineering facility was not a common thing. We would, for example, one of our Society of Women Engineers sections when I was visiting had a woman come and talk—a popular topic of the day was dressing for work. Dressing for work essentially meant dressing like the woman who was speaking to us who was an attorney. Now, the toughest physical barriers that she faced in her workplace were the carpet in the courtroom, trying not to slip down on marble floors. This is not the challenge that we faced in the workplace that we were talking about. So clothing alone became a big item for many of our young women who were coming in. They had been taught to dress attractively and a little bit sexy, you know. Always that little bit of come-on. And it was a bit of a challenge to convince them, first of all, that if you were going to be working in a plant, you don’t even consider wearing a skirt. I’m sorry, you just don’t. You’re not going to be able to walk across the grids. You are not going to be able to climb ladders. You are not going to be able to go where your male colleagues have to go to do their job. If you’re going to do this job—you can’t do it while you’re worrying about your femininity. I’m sorry. You can do that if you want with color. We lucked out there, didn’t we? It’s okay for women to wear any kind of color they want to. So you can be very feminine in your clothing, in terms of color. But I’m sorry, the long tresses that are so popular today? You’re not going to go in a working plant with this lovely, flowing hair that looks so good in a commercial, but is rotten when you’re walking around operating machinery. You don’t want to get pulled into that headfirst. No kidding. So—and there’s the business of the shoes. Even after my plant—the plant that the FF team put together—even after that was completed, in order to get there, if I didn’t want to walk two-and-a-half miles around the plant on concrete, I was going to have to walk across crushed rock. This is an operating plant. You know, we’re not dressed up for Sunday best. We’re working here. So why do you have on those heels? You’re going to have to walk across crushed rock. Why would you do that? I know it looks nicer with this particular outfit—fluff, fluff. But I’m sorry; that’s not why you’re here. So I had—the woman that I mentioned earlier, one of my favorite mentors, Arminta Harness—had what she called the Ten Commandments for a Woman Engineer. Most of them were humorous, but none to me was more humorous than what I believe was number seven, which said, Thou shalt not be sexy at the office, even if thy cup runneth over. I thought that was extremely humorous, and it still remains my favorite commandment to young women going into engineering. Thou shalt not—that’s—wherever else you want to be sexy, you may, but please don’t bring that to the workplace. So I have had one or two confrontations with—in each case, they were a technician or a runner for some of the construction people—but young women who insisted on wearing provocative t-shirts, especially. I’ve made a couple of them rather angry by telling them that I spent a great deal of my life trying to teach the men who are working here that I am their colleague, I’m an engineer, we’re building something together here. What I may think of you or what you may think of me otherwise has no bearing on why we are here. We’re being paid to do this very important job, and it will be done right. Don’t distract these guys with something like this while I have to come along behind them and tell them that this has to be done in a different way. And they’re not listening to me. They’ve still got you hung up in their mind. Tsk. Don’t do that. Those are—they seem a little strange now, given what transpires in today’s workplace and given the clothing that we have now. Frankly, I’m a bit disappointed as an individual that we as women have finally been allowed by the males who occupied those positions to allow us to use the capabilities that we have to perform the same kinds of functions, and yet you have—it never occurred to me that dress, as we see it now, was going to devolve into this, and to me devolve is the appropriate word. Never occurred to me that we would get so far afield from keeping our eye on the ball and staying focused on the task at hand when we’re in professional positions. But, hey. The world moves on. Brave new world.</p>
<p>Franklin: Indeed. Were there any—did you face any kind of discrimination or attitude from your male colleagues at FFTF at first? Or was it—it sounds like you’ve described a pretty congenial relationship. Were there any instances that stand out?</p>
<p>Munn: Well, there were one or two. But they only happened once. When they happened, I felt it was my responsibility both as an older female worker and as a real professional person to clear the air and make it very plain—not try to send double messages ever. And I think—when you’re dealing with human—rational human beings, you don’t have to keep doing the same thing over and over again. All you have to do is clear the air, make the straight statement that needs to be made, and you’re fine. And I have had to tell a couple of my—of people in my management chain, look, the last thing I want to be is where you are. At the time, it was assumed that a woman with a technical degree and an MBA was a really hot ticket. So of course, naturally, what the idea was—came to work at FFTF, and a year later started working at the Joint Center for Graduate Study, which is the origin of the facility we’re in right now. It’s now morphed into Washington State University Tri-Cities. It’s wonderful. But at the time, there were four regional colleges that had been pulled together, interestingly, by one of the people that was very instrumental in that was a man named Leland Berger, who was just—we just lost Lee last week. He was one of the people who were instrumental in putting together the conglomerate of universities to make it possible for the people who were working on the Hanford Site at the time to be able to pursue graduate degrees. It was a difficult proposition for someone who came here, especially if they were going to be a long-term worker, individual leader, here on the Hanford Site. They’re very far removed from any campus. So doing master’s work was very difficult to do. The whole concept of the individuals at the time who put together this consortium of universities was so that people could live here and, sure, it takes longer because you’re working full-time, but evening classes that are taught by fully-accredited universities made it possible for us to do that. So my MBA’s from the University of Washington. Go Huskies! Sorry about that.</p>
<p>Franklin: It’s okay.</p>
<p>Munn: Nevertheless—I’m not forgiven. Nevertheless, it was a concerted—a really concerted program, and it was almost impossible to take more than six hours a term, because you’re working full time. And at the time, we were in acceptance, testing and startup at FFTF, which meant that my days were easily ten hours long, and I don’t mean four tens. [LAUGHTER] I mean, work days were easily more than ten hours—ten hours or more. And whenever we had actual tests running, when we had things that were going on 24/7, quite often through the holidays and through weekends, we worked. But that meant classes were relegated to evenings only, and you didn’t have any spare time to do a lot of off-campus work. So we did have a challenge in that regard, but I think most of the people who were trying to do all of those things at the same time recognized that the benefits outweighed the problems that we were having to face in doing it. Scheduler problems are very hard. I was a fortunate person in being able to get by with about five hours’ sleep a night. Did that for a long, long time without any real detriment. But you do burn out on that after a while. We’ve been fortunate in so many ways in this region. The academic opportunities that we’ve had, despite the major problems that we have—not the least of which was isolation, geographically. Not isolation, but harder to get from here to there than it is a lot of places.</p>
<p>Franklin: Mm-hm. Can you describe—</p>
<p>Munn: Did I answer your question? I’m sorry.</p>
<p>Franklin: No—yes.</p>
<p>Munn: Good, all right.</p>
<p>Franklin: You did, and then you actually answered another one I was going to ask you.</p>
<p>Munn: Another eight or ten. Yeah, sorry.</p>
<p>Franklin: So, can you describe a typical work day at the FFTF?</p>
<p>Munn: Yes. Typical work day. Up at 5:30 or 6:00, something like that. Breakfast for the kid or kids still at home. Out the door before 7:00, because the traffic was terrible. The traffic was not just the work folks going out to Hanford; we also had three private sector commercial nuclear plants being built at the same time. So the construction traffic going out to the Hanford Site was pretty scary. You needed to take plenty of time, because heaven knows what was going to happen on the way. By 7:15, needed to be through security. Security is not often a time-consuming thing, because you do it every day and it’s routine. But you know that anything that you’re carrying has to go through the x-ray, and you know that you, yourself, have to go through x-ray. You are likely to need steel-toed shoes whether you take them on or off—whether you put them on at work or whether you put them on beforehand depends on whether you want to take off heavy boots and walk through barefoot or not. And it depends on whether or not there’s any real hang-up on the way in. Usually there isn’t. But, nevertheless, you have to take time to assure that you’re going through security or not. Then the place that you parked was never—it was impossible to park in a place that was near to the security gate that you had to go through. So, there’s a little bit of a walk to get to security, and then from security, there’s a little bit of a walk to where you’re going to be. You’re expected to be in your workplace and working at 7:30. Not just arriving at the facility at 7:30. So if you’re going to get coffee or if you’re going to have to wait a little bit for your computer to boot up, any of those things, you need to be in your office by 7:15, because at 7:30 you are truly expected to be ready to go. Much of the management in my part of the world was ex-Navy nuclear trained, and precision, as far as time was concerned, was important to them. So you learned fairly early that it became important. You didn’t have the enormous amount of flex hours that I observe people having now. That just didn’t exist. By 7:30, you had either documents that you were having to deal with on your desk, or you were dealing with the material that was being incoming by that time on your computer. If you had a computer on your desk, interestingly, it was—I had been onsite for probably five, six years before engineers actually had computers on their desks. That was—we’re so accustomed to that now, it’s interesting to think back, how—in my lifetime--comparatively recently, it’s been. And I was one of the few people who was ranting and raving about that, because most of the new engineers who were just coming out of school had just learned—they’d just been computer-trained. This first batch of computer engineers who were computer-trained at school. The others were completely on the ground for those. So there were very few literate people in terms of computers around in the mid-‘70s. There just weren’t a bunch. We had access to the computer facility down the hall, but you had to get computer time much the way you did in college. There was only one real server, and you had to go there to do what you needed to do. One of the first things I did in the circles that I moved in—the engineering circles I moved in—the first thing that we did at FFTF was the Plan of the Day. We called it the POD, and the Plan of the Day was usually at 8:00, which meant you had time to get your hardhat and walk from wherever you were to wherever the POD was being held. And I took—I had a hardbound journal about this size that I kept notes in. You had to keep notes, because too much was happening in too many different ways and it affected you in one way or another. You need to remember who said that and when it was going to be done. So you took your journal, you put on your hardhat. You had to have your hardhat everywhere you went. I’m sorry about the hairdo. That’s tough. You had hardhat hair if you were working onsite. POD could take anywhere from half hour to 45 minutes. They didn’t like to tie people up, because they wanted—the object was to try to get you to your workplace with your instructions for the day by 8:30. But that’s sometimes hard to do. Nevertheless, Plan of the Day, POD, was first thing. After the POD—not everybody attended. It was rare for me not to attend, for one reason or another, whatever position I was in, something was usually happening and I was required to be there. Certainly, after I went into nuclear safety it was a daily thing. I didn’t have a choice. I needed to be there, had to be there. And the plan of the day often—the individuals who were way up the management chain from those of who were there, quite often would appear to give specific instructions about some aspect of what we were doing at that time which was very crucial. We all were aware of what the timeline needed to be. Project management was key to how things were done in that particular facility. And they were done on time and in budget. There wasn’t any question about it. It didn’t matter what it took, you stayed and did it. And it was a team effort. I was never privy to any discussion about doing it any other way. This was an enormously devoted team. So, after the Plan of the Day, you had your marching orders for the day; you knew what you had to do. And you went to wherever the action was for you that day, and you did that. We took a half-hour for lunch. Depending on where you were, for a brief period of time, you had access to cafeteria food. We had a cafeteria in the 300 Area when most of the planning and engineering was going on there. We had a cafeteria for a short period of time in the 400 Area during construction. It didn’t continue. As many people brown bagged as not. Almost all of us had a lunch pail, and it was not uncommon for an entire group, an engineering group, to remain at their desks and working through the lunch hour—through the lunch half-hour. It was expected that you take a 15-minute break for coffee, twice during the day. Once in the morning and once in the afternoon. It was expected, otherwise, that you’d be at your desk, or if you were going to leave your workplace, in every engineering group I was in, we had a sign-in/sign-out board at the door of our group structure, wherever that was. And you always wrote where you were going. If you weren’t going to be obtainable at your desk, then you had to be reachable at wherever you were going. So you signed out at the time, and when you signed back in, you erased it. I got tired of writing Reactor Facility when I was going to the reactor, and started writing BRT. This was an enigma for about a week, until finally my immediate manager couldn’t stand it anymore, and he said, all right, Wanda, we know where you’re going but what does BRT mean? It meant Big Round Thing. But it became a common usage. We were going out to the big round thing. We were very fond of the big round thing. We were going to make sure it was built right and that it operated right.</p>
<p>Franklin: And what is the big round thing?</p>
<p>Munn: The big round thing is the containment dome in which the reactor—the Fast Flux Test Reactor itself was located. It’s quite a structure. Probably the safest place that I could find myself. I can’t think of a safer place to be, actually, than in that particular facility. I was—there was never any trepidation about going there, either in terms of construction or machine activity, or in terms of nuclear safety. Never concerned.</p>
<p>Franklin: How did you transition into nuclear safety?</p>
<p>Munn: How did I--?</p>
<p>Franklin: How did you trans—you mentioned that you had started during construction and that later on you started working in nuclear safety.</p>
<p>Munn: Oh, well, it’s seamless.</p>
<p>Franklin: Seamless, okay.</p>
<p>Munn: Absolutely seamless, yes. During the first years, we did not have an engineering building where the engineers themselves could work and stay. It was all constructing the facility itself. It’s a very exciting time, because just moving the huge vessels that had to go inside that containment building had to be barged up the river, offloaded here in North Richland, and taken by tractor across—directly across—the desert to FFTF. Because they weighed so much that it was impossible to do it in any other way. They were in a J sling, transported across. And the lamps and cranes were some of the largest and most spectacular in the world at the time. Those lifts were—placing those huge vessels was a sight to see if one has not been privy to that, then you’ve missed a very exciting—it’s slow. It’s like molasses. Nothing happens quickly. But it was done in a remarkably precise way. But it was entirely seamless. If you were in engineering at FFTF, then as the actual operation of the facility proceeded, your location and what your responsibility was likely changed as well.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. When did the FFTF shut down?</p>
<p>Munn: Shut down in the late ‘80s. Only operated for about a year. We went critical for the first time in early 1980. And we did our first power demonstration later that year. So 1980 was the key year for startup at FFTF. You bear in mind, we didn’t operate the way a commercial power plant operates, because we were a research facility. And what we had going on inside of the reactor was experimentation. We were proving that all of the materials and all of the equipment that were necessary to operate a fast reactor could be done safely and within the bounds of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s licensing agreements. So that this could move from a research and development technology to a commercial technology. That’s what we were doing at the time. So we started up and shut down according to what the tests were in the reactor at that time. It was very important that those materials have the length of exposure and the density of exposure that was necessary in order for us to show how that particular equipment or that particular material reacted under the worst possible conditions.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. And so how long did the facility operate for as a research facility?</p>
<p>Munn: It operated about a decade.</p>
<p>Franklin: About a decade.</p>
<p>Munn: Uh-huh, yes. And it was closed down in increments. There were a number of individuals and organizations that tried very hard to persuade the Department of Energy that the Fast Flux Test Facility should be continued to be operated as a producer of medical isotopes. It was one of the few facilities that could do that, because of the enormous range of flux that we were able to provide to the material inside. Although it had not been built specifically for that purpose, we were able to show that we could have produced a number of very unusual, very rare, very much needed isotopes. And could pay for about 70% to 80% for the operating costs of the FFTF. The response that we got back was, no, we won’t consider that unless the entire cost could be covered. This didn’t make any sense to me, because the many—there was no other facility in the DOE complex that paid its own way completely. You know, that just—that wasn’t why. The organization was funded by Congress. But we never quite understood the politics. There was general consensus among the folks that I knew that the shutdown was a political activity and not really and truly a technical one. Because we had fulfilled our mission. The original mission was to prove, as I said, that the materials and machinery that’s necessary to operate an advanced reactor could be—could meet NRC requirements. We’d proved that we could do that. And what we were attempting to do was to convince the establishment that there were other extremely beneficial uses for this machine and that we should continue to run it. But since the decision had been made not to pursue the advanced reactor concept in the US—I really shouldn’t get into that, because I get pretty rabid when I think about the terrible destruction that was done to the nuclear technology in the United States during that particular period. But that’s water under the bridge and can’t be undone. But because that advanced program had been shut down, and we had fulfilled the original purpose, then the position was, you’re toast.</p>
<p>Franklin: Was this work taken on in the private sector, then? Because you mentioned—</p>
<p>Munn: It would have been taken on in the private sector. Now, what we do in this country is a little odd. We have over 35,000 procedures a day in the United States that require manufactured isotope of some kind. We get over 90% of those isotopes from other reactors outside the United States. So, we in our medical profession and maintaining the health of the nation rely heavily on other nations’ ability to produce these and to transmit them to us in a period of time where they’re still useful. Because when you’re talking about medical isotopes, you’re talking about short-lived isotopes. They have to be—they have to give off their energy quickly in a precise way in order for it to be useful. If you’re going to keep them for long periods of time, the high density of energy that you need has dissipated because of the half-life of isotopes. Now, we could talk about that for a long time, too. But the sad thing is that we could have had that facility operating right up to this day, in my personal opinion, producing isotopes. And we opted not to do it.</p>
<p>Franklin: Can you—or are you willing to speculate on the political motivations for shutting the program down?</p>
<p>Munn: I think the political motivation is—was then, and still is—more fear than any other single thing. The most commonly misunderstood physical phenomenon in this world, of which I’m aware, is nuclear radiation. We have—we, being the technical community and the nuclear world—have allowed other people to define our terms and define our reality. It was a serious mistake. We spent the first 20 or 30 years of our existence telling people that this was an extremely technical science they shouldn’t worry their heads about; we’ll take care of it. And then when you’re dealing with an educated public—and we do have an educated public here—you’ve sold them short. And you’ve allowed them not to be learning on the same curve you’re learning on. That—to me, that should have happened. And we have technical people arguing about whether or not one additional millirem or gray or whatever unit you want to use is more dangerous than it actually is. And how one of anything can begin a huge cascade of cancer in anybody—this is all statistical garbage. It’s not true. It cannot be. But that aside, you know, we send people to policy-making positions—we elect people to policy-making positions who attempt to do a good job but who don’t know how things like radiation work. And when we have folks with concrete financial agenda going to them saying, these frightening things are happening to people and they’re happening because of this dreadful thing we call radiation, and it needs to be stopped. Then how can you expect a policy to allow an advanced technology to continue when the basic response to the word is fear? We’ve done it to ourselves to some degree. But we’ve allowed policy to continue when it just should not be—perhaps I’m overstating the case, but I don’t believe so. I truly believe fear of radiation is what has hamstrung humanity’s best hope for a continuation of adequate energy supply indefinitely.</p>
<p>Franklin: What about the linking between nuclear and weapons, that was strengthened—started in World War II and strengthened throughout the Cold War? Do you think that might have a role in people’s perceptions of nuclear power?</p>
<p>Munn: Oh, of course it does. One of my favorite comments is the one made by someone much more observant than I that if the electric chair had been invented before the electric light, we would have no electricity today. And I think that may be an apt comparison. We also have a tendency to believe that the effects of that—of nuclear weapons—are much more long-lasting than they actually have been shown to be. But that’s not a good headline, you know? Why bother with that? That doesn’t raise anybody’s ire and doesn’t even start a good argument.</p>
<p>Franklin: It’s not quite as bad as you thought, but it’s still pretty terrible.</p>
<p>Munn: It’s pretty terrible, yeah, there’s no question. So are wars of all kinds. I wouldn’t want to be in Syria right now, either.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah. When did you retire from the Hanford Site?</p>
<p>Munn: I left with Westinghouse. I always said that I would. The political and managerial aspect of what transpired changed rather radically when Westinghouse took over the large responsibility for the full site in 1986. Prior to that time, Westinghouse Hanford had been a rather small organization. We only had—what—3,000 or 4,000 employees, and we concentrated in the 400 Area. We were research and development. When the bid was made for the larger contract that covered all of the Site and took in the waste sites, the old production reactors, took on all of the legacy of the World War II—of the original Manhattan Project, a great deal changed in how things were operating. Then, later, in that period when we—when the decision was made to go back to having multiple contractors rather than just one or two, then it became very uncertain in my mind what one was likely to be able to expect to do to fulfill their job requirements. And I had said, always, I came here for research and development on advanced reactors. I have been a part of that throughout our ability to do it. That’s now gone; Westinghouse is leaving the area, so am I. So that means that the end of 1995, I retired and ran for city council.</p>
<p>Franklin: And did you win? Did you make it to city council? Were you city council?</p>
<p>Munn: Yes. Yeah, I was. The next four years, which was a very interesting period in Richland city planning, as well. That’s another whole program. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Can you tell me about some of your professional service? I see that you are a member of Health Physics chapter and a member of the American Nuclear Engineers and a member of the Society of Women Engineers.</p>
<p>Munn: Yes, I’m a fellow of SWE—of the Society of Women Engineers. In 1976, when I became a senior in the department at Oregon State University, I was carrying an incredible load, trying to get through that last third year. But we had been, for a couple of years, we’d had a group of females—female engineering students—on campus that we had wanted to morph into a student section of the Society of Women Engineers. I was elected chair of that group, and that year we did become a full-fledged student member—full-fledged student section. So I was the initiating chair of that student section. The same year, the fellow who had chaired the American Nuclear Society’s already very well-established student section just made the announcement, oh, Wanda will take this for me next year, because we’re having a regional conference and there’s a whole lot that needs to be done. So Wanda can do that. Oh, good. So I was chair of both student sections on the Oregon State campus during the ’76-’77 year. And we did, as I said, we chartered the SWE section and we held the regional meeting for the ANS section. And somehow I managed to survive that. I’m not sure how. But when I came to—I came here—the Joint Center for Graduate Study had an interesting program that allowed an internship during summer for students. And so, as an, actually, still as a sophomore in the summer of ’76, I was here as an intern working in the FFTF offices at the time. And that was the year that this professional section, the Eastern Washington section of SWE was chartered as well. So I happened to be here during that charter. So for all intents and purposes, I’m a charter member of the current section. The Health Physics Society—in both organizations, I have been active throughout my life, both locally, regionally, and at the national level. I was inducted as a fellow of the Society of Women Engineers a few years ago. And I’ve served as—on the nominating committee and a couple of the other national committees for that organization. The American Nuclear Society—I’ve held all of the local offices and still remain in the position of—I’m called the historian. It’s kind of an honorific sort of thing. But I’m still very active in the local ANS section. I’ve chaired the National Environmental Sciences division for ANS. And I’ve received the national award for public information from ANS, along with a couple of other accolades of one type or another. The Health Physics Society, I’ve never belonged to the national organization, but stay closely connected to the membership and to the local Columbia chapter of Health Physics. The two—the American Nuclear Society and Health Physics Society overlap each other in interests so strongly that it’s almost impossible to be busy in one and not busy in another. So those three organizations have been a constant in my life since the mid-‘70s.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. Can you talk a bit about—I understand that you were invited to—that you’ve had your hands in both helping with the NIOSH and the EEOICPA.</p>
<p>Munn: Oh, yes.</p>
<p>Franklin: And so I was wondering if you could both tell us what those are and then kind of talk about your involvement. And I guess we’ll start with the NIOSH.</p>
<p>Munn: Okay, NIOSH I think is an acronym that I think is familiar to most people in the technical world. It’s actually the National Institute for Safety and Health that applies to everybody who works—has a workplace—in the United States. NIOSH was chosen to be the governing agency—I should say the administrative agency for a bill that was signed into law during the very latest days of the Clinton Administration. It was put together as a legislation to compensate workers in all aspects of the Department of Energy’s weapons sites during the entire period from the 1943 early activities here to the present. One thinks of the weapons complex as being the three major DOE sites: Hanford, Los Alamos, and Oak Ridge. The truth of the matter is there are over 230 sites that are covered by this particular act, because there were institutions that ranged from just over a mom-and-pop shop to Bethlehem Steel that were involved in one way or another in what we term the weapons complex. PANTEX in Amarillo is a huge facility as well. The Portsmouth facility. There are—you know, it—as I said, it goes on more than 230 sites. The concept here was that there were people who had been seriously—whose health had been adversely affected by their work in these communities. And of course, there is some of that that’s true. But the real impetus of this bill was to compensate people who had cancer as a result of radiation exposures that they had suffered. Now, one needs to begin, from my perspective, by understanding that there is no evidence of a statistically significant increase in cancers in any of these populations. And yet our Congress says—states that they believe folks have been dying like flies as a result of having been exposed to the radiation that they worked in. This organization was then, in accordance with the law, put together during the first years—first two years of this century. And President George Bush was charged with the responsibility of putting together an advisory board for this group as required by law. So, that was done in 2001. Our first meeting—I was requested by the White House to be a member of that group. I accepted, and became one of the original members of the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health. This is supposed to be the citizens’ advisory portion of the energy employees act with the long name to which you referred.</p>
<p>Franklin: EEOICPA?</p>
<p>Munn: Yes. Energy Employees Occupational Illness and—</p>
<p>Franklin: Compensation?</p>
<p>Munn: Compensation Act, right?</p>
<p>Franklin: Something like that, yeah. We missed the P, but—</p>
<p>Munn: Yeah, that’s—I’m not sure. That activity has gone on now from that time to the present. I’ve been a member of it during that entire time. It has now distributed more than 13 billion, with a B, dollars to people across the United States who have a situation where they both have cancer and they also have worked at one of the complexes for more than 250 days. And this is not the appropriate place for me to state my real concerns about that. But I do not believe that this is a reasonable approach. The local newspapers are—I shouldn’t say newspapers—the local newspaper is a member of a national newspaper chain. And that newspaper chain just last year or the year before ran a series of articles about this particular action with a great deal of really, really heartrending material about people’s lives that have been ravaged by cancer. And there’s no way one can shortchange that. But I take issue with the assertion that those things are a result of workplace when there’s no evidence to show that’s the case. Nevertheless, that’s a continuing concern, and one of the frightening things that people continue to say over and over again with respect to our technology.</p>
<p>Franklin: Mm-hm. What would you like future generations to know about working at Hanford and/or living in Richland during the Cold War and afterwards?</p>
<p>Munn: It was, I like to remind people, a cold war. The purpose of all that was the assumption that if you work from a position of absolute strength, that you can deter the use of the weapons that we don’t want to use by someone else. And that if we’re assured, ourselves, we’re not going to be first strikers, then it gives us a feeling of protecting ourselves by being strong. That is a reality of the time in which we live. It can be changed in a number of ways. And politically, probably will morph into other things continually throughout human history for as long as human history continues. But being here during that time, was—would seem frightening to many people. It was never frightening to me; quite to the contrary, it was interesting in the extreme. But you must bear in mind that I actually was not involved in the nuclear proliferation issues. Quite to the contrary, the technology that I was dealing with was utilizing plutonium—we used mixed oxide fuels—was utilizing plutonium as a fuel to create electricity and to make nuclear isotopes—medical isotopes. And it used the plutonium and the other weapons materials as a fuel to create energy that we needed domestically and at the same time generate more fuel that can be used to continue to generate electricity ad infinitum. That seems like pie in the sky to so many people, but it is not pie in the sky. It’s a technology over which we have control, and we can do it. So, the way the weapons program is viewed is not something I can truly address appropriately, simply because that wasn’t a part of my life. I didn’t—I wasn’t horrified by it. I felt that it was a necessary part of the historic time in which we were living. I agree that we’ve done a good job of ramping that down in terms of nuclear arsenals. But the concept of not maintaining strength in that regard is extremely unwise to me. Being in Richland is living in a cocoon. It’s very much like living in an advanced university community. The people with whom you interact and the things about which you talk, the way your lives are lived is connected to, but not the same as, what transpires outside the cocoon. Because it is so densely populated with people and with ideas that are concentrated on a limited number of activities. So I’ve never felt anything but extremely safe in Richland. I have a hard time getting my mind around the fears that we—in my efforts to provide information to folks, I’m continually running across people like educators and physicians, especially in the Seattle area and in the heavy-population corridor on the west side of the state who are fearful of driving down Highway 240, for absolutely no reason except that they think there’s a mysterious ray of some kind that reaches us all. And they can’t understand what I’m talking about when I say, hey, the heaviest radiation you’re getting is—you’re absolutely right, it’s from the biggest reactor. We can’t control it; it’s completely out of our hands. You call it the Sun; I just call it a great big reactor. Yeah, that’s where you’re getting your radiation. Whether you’re driving down the highway that surrounds the Site, or whether you’re on the beach in Waikiki. It doesn’t really and truly matter. You’re being irradiated.</p>
<p>Franklin: Or if you fly on a plane, right, you’re exposed to higher background—</p>
<p>Munn: Oh, absolutely, absolutely.</p>
<p>[VIDEO CUTS]</p>
<p>Munn: If you live in Denver, hey. Or I can move from Richland to Spokane and almost double my external exposure. Because we have very low exposure here in Richland, contrary to popular belief. But the sad thing about this entire time, from my perspective, is the facts don’t matter. What people feel in their gut matters. That’s what’s driving us as human beings; apparently, it always has. Living here is a true experience. I’ve enjoyed it. I’m always surprised when people say there’s nothing to do in Richland. My problem is—probably because I’m continually invested in technical activities of some sort—my problem is, I don’t have enough time on my calendar. But it’s true. It’s an interesting, interesting place to live for a technical person, and I’ve enjoyed it immensely. It’s been a fascinating period of life. I’m very fortunate to have lived to be an ancient old lady. Very long in the tooth. And unfortunate that so many of my colleagues have already gone to their reward. Many of us feel highly rewarded, however, for having been here, having been a part of history. I have no feel for how much of this history is going to be written and how much of it’s going to be accurate. We all know, history’s written by the people who write history. And that’s very rarely the technical folks. So, what you’re doing with these oral histories, in my mind, is exceedingly important, not just to the technical community, but I think it’s very important for us now and in the future to hear the actual words of the people who were there. Remember the old—you may be too young to remember the <em>You Are There</em> little snippets of history that we used to get in the movie houses from time to time, and later on television. It’s nice, I think, to see the folks who were there, hear their words, and get some feel of the perception they had of their reality. It’s been a great ride, all the way from Model As to joint activities and the space crafts.</p>
<p>Franklin: Well, Wanda, thank you so much for such an enlightening and well-delivered interview. I really appreciate it.</p>
<p>Munn: Thank you. It’s been a wonderful, wonderful time to be here. Appreciate you, appreciate what Washington State University, and the national system are doing. It’s been a delight. And thank you to the long-gone Westinghouse Hanford Company. That was—and the Fast Flux Test Facility was and will always be an outstanding member of the research and development community. A facility like no other. We were very honored to be a part of it.</p>
<p>Franklin: Great. Well, thank you so much.</p>
<p>Munn: Thank you.<br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://youtu.be/RXmA9oJF9IU">View interview on Youtube.</a></p>
Duration
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01:35:43
Bit Rate/Frequency
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317 kbps
Hanford Sites
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300 Area
B Reactor
K Basins
K Reactor
T Plant
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site
late 1970s-today
Years on Hanford Site
Years on the Hanford Site, if any.
1980-1995
Names Mentioned
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Minta
Admiral Grace Hopper
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
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Interview with Wanda Munn
Description
An account of the resource
An interview with Wanda Munn 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.
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Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Date
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11-02-2016
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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/mp4
Date Modified
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2018-31-1: Metadata v1 created – [A.H.]
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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.
Relation
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<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/collections/show/24">Wanda Munn, Oral History Metadata</a>
300 Area
Atomic Energy Commission
B Reactor
B Reactor Museum Association
Bechtel
BRMA
Cold War
Department of Energy
Flood
Floods
Hanford
K Basin
K Basins
K Reactor
K-Basin
K-Basins
Manhattan Project
Mountain
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Park
River
Safety
Savannah River
supplies
T Plant
War
Westinghouse