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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
George and Marjorie Kraemer
Location
The location of the interview
Washington State University Tri-Cities
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p>Victor Vargas: Okay.</p>
<p>Robert Franklin: My name is Robert Franklin. I am conducting an oral history interview with George and Marjorie Kraemer on December 9<sup>th</sup>, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I will be talking with George and Marjorie about their experiences working at the Hanford Site. And for the record, can you state and spell your full names for us, starting with George?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: George R. Kraemer and Kraemer’s K-R-A-E-M-E-R.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Marjorie Kraemer, K-R-A-E-M-E-R.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. And George is G-E-O-R-G-E?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yes.</p>
<p>Franklin: And Marjorie?</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: M-A-R-J-O-R-I-E.</p>
<p>Franklin: Great. Thank you. So tell me how and why you—did you both come to the Hanford Site together?</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Mm-hm.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay, so tell me how and why you both came to the Hanford Site.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: I was at the University of Wisconsin--</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: --in 1955. And I had a friend that was out here. And he told me about all of the deer hunting and the fishing, and all the good things. And he enticed me to come out.</p>
<p>Franklin: There wasn’t much of that in Wisconsin?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Oh, yeah. But going out West—</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, right, okay.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: --that was new. And so I drove out in April of 1955. I already had a job out here.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: And I stayed at the dorms—M-5, as I remember.</p>
<p>Franklin: And what was your job?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: I was a lab assistant first.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: From April of ’55 to May of ’56. And then I transferred to drafting department.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: This was at General Electric. And I was in there for—oh, from ’56 to December of ’65.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: And then I was asked to take another position. With—it was actually with Isochem. And it was—oh, engineering analyst, shop engineer, I went through all of those where I worked in a shop where they built vessels for Hanford—for PUREX, for REDOX, B Plant, T Plant—must be one more in there. And I did inspection of them. Fantastic job. Did that for—oh, quite a few years. Then in April of ’75, for another two years, I was a shop planner. I planned the activities of the shop—fabrication shop. And then in July of 1977, I was asked to be manager of this facility—of the shops. They had six separate shops, you know, like machine, tool and die, boilermaker, sheet metal, rotating equipment, welding lab, and all that.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: A fun job, too.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: I kind of liked that; that was down my alley. Then in April of ’81, I was asked to manage activities of the design drafting group in 200 Areas. And I had—supervising the unit managers, engineering designers, drafters and engineers. Then in April of ’84, I was manager of specialty fabrication design and fabrication engineering support group. Again, this had drafting, designers, checkers, a few engineers. Then Westinghouse came. And I was asked to be the manager of design services which had all the drafting for Westinghouse.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Did that for a number of years. And then--[LAUGHTER]—then my manager was a director, and I told him one day, you need an assistant. I said, I’m going to retire in due time, and I said, you need an assistant. And he looked at me kind of odd. But anyway, six months later he called me up, and he says, would you be my assistant? Had a good job. Nobody reporting to me. I did engineering quality counsel, the PRICE program, and Great Ideas, employee concerns, Native American outreach, the Signature Awards for Westinghouse. I wrote a few speeches, some for the president of Westinghouse.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, wow.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: It was kind of a good job! Then I wrote a little note here, I retired after 36 years on July 31<sup>st</sup>, 1991. 36 years, 3 months and 19 days, or nearly 9,500 work days, over 106,000 hours at 8 hours a day and over 6 million minutes at Hanford.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow, you really broke that down to the very last second.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: But what I’m most proud about, except for that first transfer, all of my jobs, I was asked to take.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: I thought that was—said something for me, anyway.</p>
<p>Franklin: And Marjorie, how did you come to Hanford?</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Well, he came out, so—[LAUGHTER] And so we were engaged, and I came out in May. And we got married out here.</p>
<p>Franklin: May of—would that be—</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: 1955.</p>
<p>Franklin: ’55, okay. And you guys were married here in Richland, or--?</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Yes.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Oh, in Coeur d’Alene.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.</p>
<p>[LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Coeur d’Alene, beautiful up there.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yes.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: I didn’t work that first summer. I came in May. And then I got a job at General Electric in September, in the finance department.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: And I worked in the 700 Area downtown. And then they reorganized—or disorganized, I used to call it—[LAUGHTER]—and split up. And then I had to go out to the 200 Areas for a few years. And then I quit at the end of 1958 and had our children.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: After they—our son was in kindergarten, I went to work for a doctor in town, a pathologist, for ten years. And then I went to work for Exxon Nuclear, Advanced Nuclear Fuels. Which was eventually bought out by Siemens, whom I retired with in 1991 also.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, wow. And when did you start with Exxon Nuclear?</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: 1975.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay, so you spent a significant amount of time—</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah, right.</p>
<p>Franklin: And did you also do finance and accounting there?</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Yes, yes, in the accounting department.</p>
<p>Franklin: How—did you face any particular issues as being a woman in the workplace from the ‘50s—</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Well, let’s see.</p>
<p>Franklin: Especially in that early era, you know, where women were first kind of—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: You couldn’t work overtime.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: I remember when I worked out in the areas, in the 200 Areas, women couldn’t work overtime. For some reason. I don’t know if it was a union thing or a company policy or the federal government.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: You couldn’t work alone, anyway.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Right. You couldn’t work overtime. They didn’t want you to work out there then.</p>
<p>Franklin: And you couldn’t work alone, either?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Well, in overtime, I remember when I was manager over there, if some of the ladies had to work, we had to have somebody around.</p>
<p>Franklin: Like a male supervisor or just a supervisor?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yeah, somebody. Another worker even.</p>
<p>Franklin: All right. Interesting.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: And it was different, living in Richland, because it was a government town.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: And you had to—you probably interviewed people where you get on a housing list to get a house. And your name comes up, you go down and you look in this little glass deal where they had the list—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: They posted of the new—</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Posted them, and when you--</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, really? I hadn’t heard that. Could you describe it in a little more detail?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yeah, we put in for housing as soon as we got here. That was, well, in May. They had a posted board. Every week, they’d put a posting out there on the board and say who was eligible for a house. Finally, being the lowest peons out there, [LAUGHTER] we were eligible for a two-bedroom prefab.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay. I live in one of those now.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: [LAUGHTER] Do you? Okay.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: So we got to look at two or three of them. Had to do it real promptly. And we choose one. 706 Abbott.</p>
<p>Franklin: 706 Abbott, okay.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: In Richland.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: We lived there in town, yeah. It was different, because, well, the house came with appliances. Refrigerator, stove and—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: What was it, $26?</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: $27 a month or something.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: $27 a month or something for rent.</p>
<p>Franklin: And how was that comparative to—like, is that a pretty average rent, or was that a pretty good deal?</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Well, it was cheaper because it was government.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: It was cheap. Of course, I didn’t make too much money back then, either. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Of course if something went wrong, you just called up housing and they came and fixed it. Or they gave you a new one. [LAUGHTER] You know, a new stove or whatever.</p>
<p>Franklin: Were they pretty prompt?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yes.</p>
<p>Franklin: Like, was the service—</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah, they were.</p>
<p>Franklin: --pretty good?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: They had a special group, that’s all they did was maintain the homes.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. And describe that atmosphere of living in a company town where everyone worked at the same place and, you know, it was landlords of the government. I wonder if you could kind of talk about that atmosphere.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Well, every Friday afternoon, <em>The GE News</em> would come out. You’ve probably heard of the GE News.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, we have copies of <em>The GE News</em> in our collection.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: It was the local one, and that was reading, and they had the want ads in there, which you always went because people were buying and selling a lot of things in that era. The—like she said, I remember the water. The water was—we had both irrigation water and house water. Two separate spigots there. And that was kind of interesting. That all come with our $26 or $27.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: After about, oh, I don’t know how many years it was, we got a—no, we bought that house. That’s right.</p>
<p>Franklin: In ’58, when they—</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah, ’58.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yeah, we bought that house. I think we paid $2,200 for it, as I remember.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: They were appraised maybe $3,000 and then they gave you a discount.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: And not too long after that, we moved into a two-bedroom—three-bedroom—</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Three-bedroom, precut.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Three-bedroom precut.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: That we bought on our own through the realtor.</p>
<p>Franklin: Was that one of the newer constructions?</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Well, it was better construction.</p>
<p>[LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: It was better construction?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: The prefabs are made out of two-by-twos instead of two-by-fours for structure.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: And plywood—quarter-inch plywood on the inside and outside, and some—insulation wasn’t too good in it, but it had a little bit.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, the insulation leaves a little bit to be desired.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: It’s some sort of paper product, two inches thick.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right. Well, yeah, because those were made, originally, for the Tennessee Valley Authority.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Right.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: And they were supposed to not last very long.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Short-term thing.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, yeah. And they’re still—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: And they’re still in use, yes.</p>
<p>Franklin: Still around, yeah. Yeah, mine has been pretty extensively remodeled, but it’s still—still standing.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: I do remember when we first came here that Richland had the highest birthrate and the lowest death rate of anyone in the nation.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: We were part of that.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah, right.</p>
<p>Franklin: And it was likely due to the medical care, right?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: The medical care, a lot of young people—</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: And everybody worked at Hanford and so they—you know, they were younger. There wasn’t any grandma and grandpas around. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, other people I’ve interviewed have mentioned that, that when they—especially—</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: There wasn’t older people, you didn’t see them in Richland.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, there was no one who was retired or—</p>
<p>Marjorie: Right, right.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: No! You’re right on.</p>
<p>Franklin: So it was mostly probably people your age.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Mm-hmm.</p>
<p>Franklin: And then children of varying ages.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yes.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: You talk about the other things went on. We had limited places where we could go out and eat.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Like we had the Mart building. That was a popular place.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Well, they had a grease—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: It had a drug store.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: It had a little diner in it or whatever.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: A little dining area, things like that.</p>
<p>Franklin: Little greasy spoon type of thing?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: And where was that?</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Well, it was on the corner of where the post office used to be, on that corner there, across the street. And of course it was kind of like a Quonset hut.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yeah, it was like a big Quonset thing.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: And of course it’s been torn down.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Remodeled, anyway.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, yeah. Quonset huts haven’t lasted somehow.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: When I lived in the dorms, M-5, for a month? Two months? Before we got married. And I was out here with a friend and she wasn’t out here yet. And then trying to get our food every night, we had to go eat in restaurants every night. It was kind of interesting. Very limited.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Compared to what you have nowadays.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, or even perhaps where you had come from in—was that University of Wisconsin, is that Madison?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yes.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. I imagine a college town would have probably had a little bit more to—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Oh, yes.</p>
<p>Franklin: --for, you know. And so what about the night life? Did you ever partake in night life in Richland, or was there much of night life?</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: No. We just—we played, you know, cards and things with friends.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yeah, a lot of cards. We had a couple friends out here already. And then we made new friends pretty rapidly. As I said, we had a lot of cards.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Played cards.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Camping. Did a lot of camping. I had a ’49 Ford—</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: --at that instance and timeframe. And the first summer we were here we were about camping every weekend.</p>
<p>Franklin: And where would you go, often?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Oh, the Blue Mountains, north above Spokane—</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Mount Rainier.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Mount Rainier, a lot. That’s one of my favorite places.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: White Pass.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, it’s really pretty up there.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: So that took a lot of our time in the summer.</p>
<p>Franklin: I bet.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Winter times were—well, we didn’t go camping. But, again, that’s mostly—we had a lot of cards and games that we played with our young friends.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: And you hunted a lot.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yeah, I did a lot of deer hunting and a lot of fishing.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, yeah. Well, you said that’s what brought you out here.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yes.</p>
<p>Franklin: I’m wondering if each of you, starting with Marjorie first this time, could describe a typical work day when you worked out on Site.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Oh. Well, let’s see. When I worked out in the Area it was a little different than in town, because I had to ride the bus. And of course, I think I got off about 6:00, and of course it was dark. And walked a couple blocks to the bus, and you paid a nickel for each way to go out to the Area, which was about 27 miles. And when you got there in the wintertime, it was dark. And you went in, and I worked in the B Plant, it was. And it was all cement, no windows. So you went in and it was dark. When you came out to go home, it was dark. So you never saw the sunshine until the weekend.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: [LAUGHTER] In the summer, it was awful because not all the buses were air conditioned.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: None of them were. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Oh. Well, we had a few, I think, that were.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Not then.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah, gosh. You were just soaked, you know, because it was so hot. 100 degrees, riding in this bus.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: And they allowed smoking on the buses. That was not good for us that didn’t smoke.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh you guys—both of you didn’t smoke?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: No.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: No, no.</p>
<p>Franklin: Seems to, probably in the ‘50s, have been more of a rarity than a—or at least, seems like a lot more people smoked then.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: True.</p>
<p>Franklin: Especially, I can imagine, in the wintertime with closed windows, that would be pretty oppressive. So George, what about you? Describe a typical—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Well, I worked at 2-East for the first nine months or so. And that was like her. Our 222-S lab, no windows in there. Get up early, ride the bus, go to the—where Stores is now, at the big bus lot there. So all of the buses would go into there, and you would get off your bus and take the appropriate 200 Area bus or whatever, 100 Area bus. And likewise, when you came home, you’d come back to that bus lot, get off the buses, and get to your route.</p>
<p>Franklin: Was that time on the bus included in your work day?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: That was my time.</p>
<p>Franklin: It was included in your time. It was not included in your time?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: No, it was not included in--</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, it was not included.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: No, no.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: No.</p>
<p>Franklin: So that was just considered part of—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Was that a pretty fast transition though, from catching the bus by your home to go to the lot to then get on the other bus—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: It was fast.</p>
<p>Franklin: It was pretty efficient?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: And the buses were pretty much on time.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: For some reason, I mostly had express buses where we didn’t stop at the bus lot.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Well, later on, yes.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay. Interesting. And so then you said you’d get on the appropriate bus to the Area, and then—take me forward from there.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Okay. We get on the bus there and I went into the lab, and that was an all-enclosed building again, no windows. And I did, oh, nuclear—not nuclear but radioactive waste disposal and things like that. We’d get a bus from 300 Area about once a week or twice a week and they would—not a bus, a tanker truck. Sorry about that. A tanker truck would come in and I unloaded that into some of our special waste tanks out there.</p>
<p>Franklin: Were these the tanks in the Tank Farms, or are these different tanks?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: No, that wasn’t the Tank Farm; that was the special area just for the 300 Area waste.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. And what would you do with the waste?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Well, the tanker truck would back up to a big nozzle, and I’d hook up the nozzles and drain the tanks. Let it drain for an hour or whatever it was, and then go back out and unhook the thing and wave the driver on.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. And what would be done with the waste at that facility?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: It was just stored.</p>
<p>Franklin: Just stored. Okay.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yes. I don’t think we—outside of doing some sampling, which I didn’t do, that was it.</p>
<p>Franklin: Would that eventually go into the ground then?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yes.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. And that’s when it would eventually go into the single-shell or double-shell tanks.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Sooner or later.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sooner or later, find its way there. Okay.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yeah. And then I transferred into drafting and that was downtown in the 760 Building.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Of course that way I could ride to work or walk to work.</p>
<p>Franklin: And that’s like pen-and-table drafting, right? Like on a drafting board.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Drafting board, yes. That was kind of nice, because I could ride bicycle, walk or take the car, whatever. And I’d get home at least when it was daylight.</p>
<p>Franklin: That seems like kind of an interesting job shift from handling waste to more of a technical thing like drafting.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Well, yeah, well, what started that, my boss wanted some sketches of flow diagrams and stuff like that. I said, I can do them. I did them, and he was impressed with them, and he says, you ought to be in drafting. And he led the way for me.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay, interesting. What did you go to school for?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Engineering.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay, just engineering in general?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Mm-hm.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay, and Marjorie, did you attend college?</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: No, no.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay. How did you gain the training for accounting and bookkeeping? Was it just all on the job?</p>
<p>Marjorie: Yeah, on-the-job training. And you could advance back then. Nowadays if you didn’t have a college degree, well, I don’t think you would go as far.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure, yeah. Okay.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Another thing—I also took a lot of classes. GE at this time, they had engineering folks which would give us classes in various subjects.</p>
<p>Franklin: Is that over here in the East Building? Or was it different?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: I can’t remember exactly where it was. Sometimes—I think it was the Federal Building, I think it was.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Just various things that would help me in my work and help me in my promotions, too.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. Interesting. That’s kind of a—seems like so much was provided to workers in terms of training and housing, and I think it seems foreign to a lot of workers today to think of a company being that kind of paternal—caring, paternalistic almost. It’s kind of the vibe I get off that era of Hanford’s history.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yeah. While I was downtown in drafting there, we worked on—I was in the piping squad. We worked on facilities in the 100 Areas, 200 Areas, not 300 Areas then. So I got to know pretty much all the areas. And I went out to visit them on lots of times where you have to go out and see what is really there. You go look at old drawings and it may not be the same.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right. Because you’re not looking at the as-builts.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Right.</p>
<p>Franklin: You’re looking at the older—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Right, and so consequently, we made a fair number of trips out to the various sites regardless of where they were.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay, so you got, then, to see the whole site pretty well.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: I think I did, yes.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. Marjorie, what was—well I’m going to ask this question of both of you, but we’ll start with Marjorie. What was the most challenging and/or rewarding aspects of your work at Hanford?</p>
<p>[LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Well, [LAUGHTER] I’m not sure how to answer that. It was a good place to work. And it, you know, paid well. And I guess that’s, you know, the main thing. I wasn’t out for some big career or anything like that.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure. And, George, what about you? What were some of the more challenging or rewarding aspects of—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Well, you know, we went through a lot of companies: GE, Westinghouse, Atlantic Richfield, Isochem—maybe another one in there. But the fact is, I never lost a day of work throughout 36, almost 37 years. I was never laid off. But I think the most rewarding was being recognized for my work. Being asked to take all these promotions. I think that was rewarding, to me. Must be doing something right.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, yeah. Great. Did the nature of the work at Hanford ever unsettle either of you? The, you know, just the--</p>
<p>Marjorie Kramer: Oh, you mean—</p>
<p>Franklin: The amount of chemical or nuclear waste or the possibility of—</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Radiation.</p>
<p>Franklin: --Soviet attack or anything like that. Did that ever—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Well, you know, when we first moved here, the Army was still here.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Camp Hanford.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: At Camp Hanford.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: And they had Nike missile sites up on—not Badger, but—</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: White Bluffs, out that way, didn’t they, across the river?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yeah, White Bluffs, and—</p>
<p>Franklin: Rattlesnake?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yeah, Rattlesnake! And you wondered about that. Planes would fly over every now and then. But other than that, as far as being attacked, no. And radiation-wise, I’ve learned to respect it.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: I never got involved in any serious things even though I went into some bad places, probably. But I never had—in the various canyons and stuff of the buildings. But never had any problems.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. And same for you, Marjorie?</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah, and of course I wasn’t out there all that long. But I remember when we used to travel quite a bit. When we would travel and people would, oh, where do you work? And I would never say Exxon Nuclear; I would say Exxon. [LAUGHTER] Because they thought we glow in the dark, probably. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, that seems to be—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: That was very common, regardless of where you went. Like, say, we travel a lot and you stand up and introduce yourself. You didn’t want to say a great deal, because they figured you—they didn’t want to be around you. You glow.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: [LAUGHTER] Some people.</p>
<p>Franklin: Why do you think that endures? Because today, even today, that’s—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Ignorance. Ignorance of radiation, like in the paper here and now, they said, we’re the other Chernobyl. No! There’s not that possibility.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right. Because our problem is mostly chemical.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yes.</p>
<p>Franklin: It’s not so much nuclear. I mean, there’s radioactivity—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Oh, there’s a lot of radioactivity; there’s no question.</p>
<p>Franklin: --but it’s—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: But it’s not going to explode. It’s not that type.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, we won’t have a meltdown. At least we can say that much.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: What are some of your memories of any major events in Tri-Cities history? I’m thinking of like plants shutting down or starting up—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: President Kennedy—</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: --came out here. I can’t remember the year now.</p>
<p>Franklin: September 14<sup>th</sup>, 1963.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: 1963, yeah, ’63.</p>
<p>Franklin: Or 17<sup>th</sup>.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Anyway, I was there. We all bussed out to—was that 100-N?</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: He was out in 100-N, wasn’t he?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: 100-N, or--?</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Wasn’t it?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: 100-N, I think, wasn’t it?</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah—</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah, I think so.</p>
<p>Franklin: He came to dedicate part of the steam generating—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: You know, incidentally, I did the first working drawings, the scope drawings, of the piping of the major process piping of 100-N.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: That was a fantastic job. I know one time I did my drawings, got them and they decided, hey, that’s classified, after the fact. I had to go through, collect all of my drawings and everything and then I had to secure my drafting boards and stuff like that.</p>
<p>[LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>George Kraemer: But we did it.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: And I can remember in the 703 Building when I worked downtown in 19—I think it was ‘55 or ’56—Ronald Reagan came. Because we had the General Electric Theater.</p>
<p>Franklin: That’s right!</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: And he came through our building and was talking to everybody.</p>
<p>Franklin: Did you get to meet him?</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Yes, uh-huh.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. And did you also? Did he go to the Site?</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: No.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: I don’t—</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: I think you were out in the Area.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: I was out in the Area then. I don’t think I—I knew he was here, obviously. He was on—he toured some buildings, but I didn’t get to see him.</p>
<p>Franklin: That’s pretty—that’s interesting. I’d heard he’d come, but I hadn’t met anybody who actually really—</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah, he came through our 703 Building—</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay. So I imagine that was—</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Where finance was.</p>
<p>Franklin: --quite an interesting thing to have a Hollywood celebrity coming to Hanford. And so did you both go to see President Kennedy when he came to dedicate the N Reactor?</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: I didn’t get to. Did you?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: You were not working at Hanford then, I don’t think.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Right, no.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: But anyway, the whole company [LAUGHTER] all the people were there that could be excused. They just bussed everybody out there.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right. And were you one of those people?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yes, I was one of them people.</p>
<p>Franklin: Can you kind of describe that scene?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Well, he was on the podium which was quite a ways away from me there. And he gave quite a talk, you know. Of course the excitement of hearing your President—or seeing your President was kind of interesting. And I really don’t know what he said anymore.</p>
<p>[LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>George Kraemer: But I thought that was a major highlight. Another one, probably, is when General Electric decided they were going to leave.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right. And that was in mid-‘60s, right?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: ’65, probably.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, that sounds right.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: ’66, maybe.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah, I think so.</p>
<p>Franklin: So describe that. How was the mood around Hanford and around Richland? Because General Electric had been so prominent.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Well, it affected George quite a bit.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yeah, it affected my pension.</p>
<p>[LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Ah.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Quite a bit. You know, I worked for over 36 years, and for those ten years that I worked under GE, that’s not included in my final pay—pension.</p>
<p>Franklin: Interesting.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: So I get—I don’t know. Very little a month for those ten years. It’s in a separate pension fund.</p>
<p>Franklin: Ah. Why is that? That seems a little—</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Because you were under—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: The government works in strange and mysterious ways. And there were lawsuits and stuff like that, trying to get them to include our years in the master plan.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: It was—one of the main reasons was you weren’t 35 yet.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: That’s another thing, yeah, I wasn’t 35 yet. That was a condition to get vested.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: That was the cutoff to get that--</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, right.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: --included in your seniority.</p>
<p>Franklin: So you could start to invest, right.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Right, vested. Anyway.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: And of course the big thing when Westinghouse came over to retake all of the—together—you know, GE split up and then we had various split-up companies, and then all of the sudden we’re back together again.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, it seems like—one other person I interviewed a little bit ago remarked at how the contracting agency, the government doesn’t always seem to know—like, it tries one big contractor, and then it tries to split it up a bunch, and then they go back to one big contractor, and then they want to split it up a bunch. So I’m wondering if you—either you or both of you—can talk about that shifting of contractors and how that impacted your work and your life.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Well, in my case, same job. [LAUGHTER] Same boss, same everything. There wasn’t much new. Different name on the paycheck, obviously.</p>
<p>Franklin: But your unit stayed pretty intact throughout the change?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yes. There were no major reorganizations at first because of the takeovers of the different companies.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. And, Marjorie, what about you—so you worked initially those first few years, and then later on you worked for Exxon Nuclear, which—was Exxon Nuclear, were they a contractor or a subcontractor, or were they just aligned with—</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: They were a private company.</p>
<p>Franklin: A private company, okay.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah, they just made nuclear pellets.</p>
<p>Franklin: So they were like a service company for Hanford?</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: No.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: No.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: No, no, they made nuclear fuels for reactors all over the world.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, okay. So they weren’t a Hanford company.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: No, they were private.</p>
<p>Franklin: So they were just in the same industry—</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: But—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yes.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah, and so—and it was Exxon.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: It was Jersey—called Jersey Nuclear when I first started out.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: And then it was Exxon. And then they changed to Advanced Nuclear Fuels under Exxon.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: And then Siemens bought them in 1989, I believe.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: And I worked for them for a couple years. Nothing really changed. And then I retired with Siemens Corporation.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay, interesting.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Which was a really pretty good deal, because they have really good benefits. German companies do.</p>
<p>Franklin: They are very well-known for that, yeah.</p>
<p>[LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah, right.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, that sounds like a pretty decent deal.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: I think they worked half-time, because when we wanted to call them up in Germany and talk to them about something, it seems like they were either on vacation or they had a holiday. [LAUGHTER] They were never there.</p>
<p>Franklin: Any memories of the, like, social scene or local politics, or just any—you know, either before the great selling, you know, the privatization or afterwards in Tri-Cities? Or actually, let me be more specific. I’m wondering if either of you can tell me about some of the protest activity that took place, or if you remember that, in the beginning in the late ‘60s and end of the ‘70s. Both kind of the protests that were pro-Hanford and anti-Hanford.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: No, we never did get involved in any of them. I didn’t.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: I didn’t, either. There were no major protests that I really remember. I know one time, there was a few of them along the road when we went out before you get to 300 Area. They couldn’t get out very far then.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: But I didn’t really take too much interest in them. I figured they weren’t hurting anything.</p>
<p>Franklin: So the Tri-Cities up until the late ‘60s was pretty segregated in terms of where African Americans could live. Even though they could work at Hanford, they couldn’t always live in Richland for a while. And I’m wondering if you guys could—did you observe that kind of—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yes.</p>
<p>Franklin: --that Civil Rights action and kind of some of that segregation before the Civil Rights?</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Well, I remember that there were a few blacks—I don’t know what you—blacks going to the high school and stuff when my daughter was going. Well, the Mitchells were here, you know.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, CJ Mitchell.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: CJ Mitchell.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: And Cameron Mitchell was in my daughter’s—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Daughter went to school with him.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: And she was good friends with him, you know.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, and he was one of the first—</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah, right, and—</p>
<p>Franklin: --people to get someone to sell him a house in Richland. He had a lot of struggle getting that.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: And I don’t know what they did with the housing—government housing—if they gave it to—I guess maybe they didn’t give it to black people.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: They had no choice then.</p>
<p>Franklin: I believe they had to live in east Pasco until the ‘60s.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Yes. I don’t think they could live in Kennewick, either.</p>
<p>Franklin: No, Kennewick--</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Kennewick was very bad.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, they had the sundown. The sundown laws.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Yes, right.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yes. When we first moved here, I’d become good friends with an African. And we used to play cards with him, and go places with him. I thought we were well-accepted.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: But he lived in Pasco, didn’t he?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yes. He did not live in Richland.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, right.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: But—I said it was very plain to us, that—I say, Kennewick was very bad. And they didn’t even want to go to Kennewick, the colored folks.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: And they were supposed to get out of town before, like you say, sundown.</p>
<p>[LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Which is not very nice.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: But, you know, it’s not nice to say, but they knew their place.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, well, yeah, they knew where they could go and couldn’t—where they were welcome and where they were not. Yeah, that squares pretty well with the historical record. Thank you for that.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: When our daughter—after she graduated from high school, she went to WSU. And then she graduated from there. She got a nursing degree, and she went to Seattle and worked. And one of her comments once when she called me up, and she says, Mom, we really led a sheltered life in Richland, you know? [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: That’s interesting. I wonder if you could unpack that a little bit more. What would have been so sheltered about Richland for her?</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Well, I think, you know, she went to Seattle and got a job. And her first job was in the King County jail. She was a nurse in the clinic. And she saw all these prisoners and—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Not the best clientele.</p>
<p>[LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Right. And that was one of her comments after she called me up—called me up and said, you know, we really led a sheltered life, after seeing all these homeless people and skid row, and—you know. It’s just different.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, because I imagine Richland would have been a pretty solid middle class, mostly white—</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Right.</p>
<p>Franklin: Still is majority, but mostly white, middle class. Pretty safe. If you didn’t work at Hanford, you didn’t live in Richland until 1958. And I imagine after that, it was pretty slow to change where most people who lived here worked at Hanford for—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: I think the police had a good—made their presence known, in a good way.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: And I think that was the difference between Seattle living and outskirts of Seattle or wherever she lived.</p>
<p>Franklin: Well, I imagine it would be in general an easier community to police where you knew everyone worked in the same place.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Right, right.</p>
<p>Franklin: Everyone knew—or a lot of people knew everyone else, and you know it was—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: But crime was very low.</p>
<p>Franklin: Sure, sure.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Right.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: First of all, you know the folks have clearances, things like that, that’s going to get a better grade of people. Because they went through all the rigmarole you have to go through.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: I saved one of those questionnaires, those Q clearance deals. I still have it. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, yeah?</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: And I left—when I filled mine out, I left two weeks of my life off of this—[LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, no.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Of course it came back and they wanted to know where I was. [LAUGHTER] I was in transit to out here or something.</p>
<p>[LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: And so they wanted to know—</p>
<p>Franklin: Those forms went back, what, like ten years or something like that?</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Oh, it was—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Renewed or unless there was a need to upgrade.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: When I first filled it out, of course I was only like 20 years old. So I didn’t have that much to have to put on it. But they went back, and people told us, you know, we were from a small town and of course they told us, these people—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Right.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: They were asking about you and all this—</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, calling around.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Right.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: They were wanting to know what was going on.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right. Yeah, I know, that’s—</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Wanting to know where you went to school and where you worked back there. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>George Kraemer: I first got an L clearance when I came here.</p>
<p>Franklin: Is that a lower or higher—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: That’s a lower grade. And then as soon as I transferred into drafting, I had to get a new clearance, a Q clearance, again. Which I had the rest of my time here.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay, interesting. Were they still any—I’m always a little fuzzy on my dates with this—were there any Atomic Frontier Days parades when you were here?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Oh, yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Or were those over by the time that—</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: No, they were here, and in fact, Sharon Tate—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yeah, Sharon Tate was in that.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: One of the first few years we were here, she was the Miss Tri-Cities.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, really?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yes.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah. Her dad was at Hanford, you know, Camp Hanford. He was an Army--</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, that’s right, because I’ve always heard she was an Army—kind of an Army brat. Oh, really? That’s really interesting. I’ve oftentimes asked—I used to ask people about that question and it would miss a lot, so I kind of stopped asking about Sharon Tate. But that’s interesting that you remember seeing her?</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Oh, sure.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yeah, I remember they had parades down the main—one of the streets. I don’t remember which ones now.</p>
<p>Franklin: And you guys went to the Atomic Frontier Days and all of that?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Why, certainly! Yes.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, those were very colorful and kind of interesting events. Kind of wish I could have seen one of those in the flesh. Great. And so—gosh, you guys have already run down so many of my questions without even me needing to ask them.</p>
<p>[LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Franklin: But I still have a couple. Could you describe the ways in which security and secrecy impacted your jobs, respectively? I’ll start with Marjorie.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Well, you just knew that you weren’t supposed to—you know, I was in finance. And so I saw all these numbers and all this stuff. And you just knew you weren’t supposed to talk about things like that. But other than that, you know, it didn’t really affect me all that much.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Well, I know, going on vacation or something like that, or going back to Wisconsin. We’d go quite a bit. And, what do you do out there? And you know, in general terms you tell them. But I was trying to remember some specifics. I’m sure there were some to do with security.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: It must have been very hard to work here in the ‘40s. [LAGUHTER] You didn’t know what you were doing, you know, you were building all this stuff.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yeah, we knew what we were doing, you know. What we were making and all this thing.</p>
<p>Franklin: You could talk about it to your coworker.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Right.</p>
<p>Franklin: And not be afraid of being evicted from your home and losing your job.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: I remember looking at an old paper. It said, big headlines: it’s bombs.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yes. Yes, that’s the <em>Richland Villager</em> from right after the Nagasaki bombing, yeah. Interesting. Do you remember, were there like searches or did they search people on the buses?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yes.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Well--</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Going home. [LAUGHTER] A lot of times you just had to open your lunch pail up, and make sure there was nothing in it.</p>
<p>Franklin: You didn’t have any atoms in your pocket or anything?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yeah.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: They didn’t always look.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: They didn’t always look, but every now and then they’d have a search day.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. Kind of keep you on your toes.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: And of course all of the cars at 300 Area where the major barricade was. You had to stop, open your trunks if you drove a car. And then if you went into the various—200 Areas, 100 Areas, you had to stop again or you parked your car in the parking lot outside and walked in. And if you went into the various buildings, like PUREX or like in the lab where I was there, you had a number and a radiation badge, and your name and a number you were assigned. When I went to 222-S, it was number ten. I must have got some big wheels for a number or something like that. I was ten. They would look you up to make sure in their file—they’d look at, make sure the picture matched you.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow, and that would be every time you’d come in?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Every time you went in the building there.</p>
<p>Franklin: Wow. That’s very tight security.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yes.</p>
<p>Franklin: When you—you said you had to go around the site a lot—how would you get around once you got—so you took the bus in, but how would you get from one area to the other?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Engineering department had cars—government cars.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. And so then you’d just—could only travel in—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: And we just traveled in government cars out to the various facilities.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. When did the bus service stop?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Good question. Let’s see.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Late ‘60s?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Hmm. Probably in that era.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Because when we built the new house, and it was in 1966, and you still rode the bus then.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: That’s right.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: So I think it was in the late ‘60s.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: I would say in the late ‘60s, it was.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Or early ‘70s.</p>
<p>Franklin: And so then—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: And there was much frustration.</p>
<p>Franklin: To much frustration?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: On a lot of people’s part. Including mine.</p>
<p>Franklin: Really? Why was that?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: I loved that bus ride. I mean, I loved going out there for—it was changed to, I don’t know, 50 cents or something. It was higher price, anyway. The nickel was just to pay insurance and liabilities. But—so I had to drive my car out or get into a carpool, or whatever.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: But then for a while, they stopped the service in town picking everybody up, and then you could go to the bus lot and catch a bus. For a while, for a few years.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yeah, they stopped the rounds through town.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. That’s such an interesting structure of life, to have everybody in one town that all catches the bus, and—</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: [LAUGHTER] And work at the same—</p>
<p>Franklin: You know when the buses are coming and everyone kind of depends on it, and—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yes.</p>
<p>Franklin: That’s just such an interesting—seems almost kind of foreign to a lot of people today. And so you said that was kind of a chagrin that the bus—is that because you liked just not having to drive, or not—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: I liked not having to drive. I knew that I had to be outside there at 6:00 or whatever it was every morning. And it was there. It was—</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: You could read, you could do work—you could do all sorts of things.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: When I was manager out there for a while, I could do a lot of work on the bus.</p>
<p>Franklin: Ah.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: I had my own philosophy. I did not like to take any work home. I had my briefcase and I would do a lot of stuff on the bus. That was 45 minutes of uninterrupted time, and I could get a lot of my work done.</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, I bet. Yeah. Interesting. What would you either—both of you, sorry—what would you like future generations to know about working at Hanford and living in Richland during the Cold War? And I’ll start with you, George.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Well, I think you’re doing part of it. [LAUGHTER] Let them know what’s going on. And you know, the kids never really knew what—really, what we were doing, I don’t think, in detail. Yeah, they knew in general. As I look back at the government—not too impressed.</p>
<p>Franklin: Really? Why is that?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: The stuff that goes on out there now—when we were—I was working, I felt I was doing a job. Things were going out—in the shops, things were going out the door. We were making things. Things were happening. I was proud of our work. Now I begin to wonder how long—you know, the Tank Farms have been undergoing their thing for years, and it’s going to be another amount of years before they do anything. It’s—not enough things are happening.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. Interesting. Marjorie, what about you? What would you like future generations to know about working at Hanford and living in Richland during the Cold War?</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Well, it was just such a different sort of life, you know. You were kind of protected, I guess. You know, everybody, like, knew everybody, and you all worked at the same place, and your kids went to the schools in town. You went to the doctors that are in town. It was just a different sort of a—</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, like your daughter had said maybe a little protected, sheltered.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Sheltered life, yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: It’s so interesting to me because—George, the thing you said about feeling like you’d done something—I’ve heard that from other interviewees who had worked in that transition period, who had worked when Hanford was producing and felt a real sense of accomplishment. And then kind of felt like it was mired down during cleanup and that the mission’s unclear, the work doesn’t progress. And Marjorie, it’s always been amazing to me to hear that, that it does seem like a really safe and peaceful place, but when you look at it kind of on—there’s a flipside to that, though. It’s amazing that there’s this safe, peaceful place next to nine nuclear reactors.</p>
<p>[LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Marjorie: And you know—</p>
<p>Franklin: And you know, like a major target in the Cold War.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Well, I guess that’s true. I don’t know. You just--</p>
<p>Franklin: But I think those two can exist side-by-side. That it could be, you know, a place of production but also of danger and a place of safety but also—you know, and of security. I just—it’s—there’s a lot of contradictions in Hanford that I think are really interesting that get brought out in these interviews. So thank you. Is there anything that I haven’t asked either of you about that you would like to talk about?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: No. I’m sure I’ll think of some when I get home.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: That’s very common. That happens all the time. I get emails a lot from people like--</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: --I wish I had said this.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Oh, let’s see. I think when I was a shop engineer out there in the shops, best years of my life out there. Again, I felt proud that we were doing something, things were going out the door. I was responsible for a lot of critical measurements and things of—the jumpers, the tanks, and everything that we did in the shop. And then troubleshooting. There was some failures out there and I would go out to troubleshoot to see how we could fix things. Contaminated vessels and things like that. But those were good years. Best years I had out there. Management was good, but there are a lot more responsibilities. But those worked out, too.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right. Great.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: And I think the schools were—you know—were good.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: The kids had a good education, had good teachers.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, I’ve heard that a lot that people—there were a lot of well-educated people that worked at Hanford and at first Battelle—Hanford Labs, and then Battelle and Pacific Northwest National Labs. So that there was a high focus on education and—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Another thing is, probably more so than now, but the school sports. Didn’t have too much else to do, so there was a lot of basketball games and football games and soccer games and all that sort of things that people went to. And they really supported the high school sports.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay. You think that’s more then than now.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: I think more then than now. There was less to do.</p>
<p>Franklin: Right, it was a little more of an isolated community.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Right. And of course this year they went to the—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Well, this year’s different. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: --the tournaments. But when our daughter and son were in high school, they were always going to tournaments. And I always had to take kids and chaperone, you know?</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, yeah, yeah. Great. Well, thank you so much for coming.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Ah, it was our pleasure.</p>
<p>Franklin: I see that you’ve brought some things. Would we be able to scan those and keep them with part of your—with your interview?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: You can have those. That’s my work history.</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay, great, we’ll scan this and put this with your interview, too.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: And she’s got some pictures there, too.</p>
<p>Franklin: Are these family pictures, or--?</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: No, these are pictures of—</p>
<p>George Kraemer: No, they’re--</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Out at Hanford. This is one when I worked out at the Area. This was a million man hours without an accident, you know?</p>
<p>Franklin: Oh, wow, okay.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: And they had a fashion show. And this is me right here in radiation outfit, you know, that we modeled the—we modeled the outfits they wore in the contaminated labs and all that.</p>
<p>Franklin: And which one are you? Are you the one in the white cowl?</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah, I’m the one right—with the—</p>
<p>Franklin: Okay.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: All covered up.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, kind of a little hard to tell. That’s great. That’s a great picture. Ah, yup, General Electric Photo Division.</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: Yeah, would we be able to scan these and put them with your interview?</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Yeah.</p>
<p>Franklin: That would be wonderful. Okay. Great. Well, thank you again, thank you both so much. ITts been a really excellent interview.</p>
<p>George Kraemer: Good!</p>
<p>Marjorie Kraemer: Thank you.</p>
<p>Franklin: You did good.</p>
<p><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://youtu.be/cnCDk351BVY">View interview on Youtube.</a></p>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:57:59
Bit Rate/Frequency
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317 kbps
Hanford Sites
Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview
100 Area
200 Area
300 Area
700 Area
703 Building
B Plant
N Reactor
T Plant
Tank Farm
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site
~1955-today
Years on Hanford Site
Years on the Hanford Site, if any.
~1955-1991
Names Mentioned
Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community.
Kennedy
Sharon Tate
Dublin Core
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Title
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Interview with George and Marjorie Kraemer
Description
An account of the resource
An interview with George and Marjorie Kraemer 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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12-09-2016
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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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2017-15-12: 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.
Relation
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<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/collections/show/25">George and Marjorie Kraemer, Oral History Metadata</a>
100 Area
1955
200 Area
300 Area
700 Area
703 Building
Award
Awards
B Plant
Battelle
Cold War
General Electric
Hanford
Kennedy
Kennewick
Mountain
Mountains
N Reactor
PUREX
Quonset hut
Quonset huts
Stores
T Plant
Tank Farm
Tank Farms
Theater
War
Westinghouse
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fe4fc1a4c7495942bf447756ec5e85cfa.JPG
d98e592b247db687cb3749711ea3df5b
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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Douglas O’Reagan
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Mark Jensen
Location
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Washington State University Tri-Cities
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p>Douglas O’Reagan: Okay. To start us off, would you please pronounce and spell your name for us?</p>
<p>Mark Jensen: My name is Mark Jensen, M-A-R-K, J-E-N-S-E-N.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Great. Okay. My name is Douglas O’Reagan. I’m conducting an oral history interview with Mr. Jensen on March 25<sup>th</sup>, 2016. The interview is being conducted on the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities. I’ll be speaking with Mr. Jensen about his experiences working at the Hanford site and living in the Tri-Cities. To start us off, can you tell us a little bit about your life before you came to Hanford?</p>
<p>Jensen: Well, my mother moved to Richland to teach English at what was then Columbia High School, now Richland High School. She was a single mother with five children. So I started school at Jefferson Elementary in Richland in kindergarten. When I was in third grade, my mother remarried, and I was adopted by my new father. He was a long-time Hanford worker. Anyway, so I grew up in the Tri-Cities. We moved to Kennewick when I went into fourth grade, and I went through the Kennewick School District after that, and graduated from Kamiakin High School in 1974. Went to Washington State University, got a degree in forestry, thinking that would get me out of the Tri-Cities, because there aren’t any forests here. Unfortunately, there weren’t any jobs in forestry. So I came back home to live with my parents, and my dad mentioned that N Reactor was hiring reactor operators. So I applied, and got a job as a reactor operator.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: What time frame would it have been that your mother moved here?</p>
<p>Jensen: I was five, so that would have been 1961.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Okay, great. Can you tell us about the schooling, the education, the schools in the Tri-Cities as you experienced them?</p>
<p>Jensen: Well, I went to Jefferson Elementary, like kindergarten through third grade. It was in an old building left over from World War II. It was probably a grade school built as part of the Manhattan Project. That’s all long since been torn down. Then when we moved to Kennewick, I went to Hawthorne Elementary school there. Building’s still there as far as I know. And then to Vista Elementary, then to Highlands Middle School—Highlands Junior High in those days. Then the Kamiakin High School which was brand new.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: What was life like as a kid in Kennewick?</p>
<p>Jensen: It was pretty routine, I guess. Went outside and played in those days instead of staying inside for video games. It didn’t matter how hot it was outside, we’d go out and play baseball all day usually, and things like that. Then just going to school during the school year and doing whatever during the summer. When I was growing up, before my mother remarried, she would work in the summer and I was usually babysat by some of her students. After she remarried, then she stopped working during the summer. But I’m fairly certain that one of the reactor operators I worked with at N Reactor was one of my babysitters when I was second or third grade. But anyway.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: When you were sort of a teenager, what sort of stuff did you and your friends do for fun around the area?</p>
<p>Jensen: Usually, after doing our homework, we’d go outside and play basketball, every day, every night. We had a lighted basketball court. We’d play basketball all day Saturday and Sunday. When the weather was nicer, we’d play baseball or variants of baseball, since there were seldom enough people to make up a couple of teams. We used to go to baseball games—minor league baseball games—in the summer. A variety of different team names. There was a stadium in Kennewick called Sanders Jacobs Field that’s long since been demolished. That’s pretty much what we did, just mess around. Go bowling, things like that.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Do you know what your step-father did at the Hanford site?</p>
<p>Jensen: He was a chemical engineer, and he worked at N Reactor and the older reactors designing systems for decontaminating the reactors. When I was in high school, he worked at the Tank Farms in the 200 Area. He was in charge of Tank Farm surveillance, and that was when the tanks started leaking—the older tanks first started leaking. So we got frequent telephone calls in the middle of the night that there was a leaking tank. Sometimes I’d hear my dad say something on the telephone, and the next day I would see that in the newspaper, as a Hanford spokesman said, kind of thing. That was kind of interesting.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: So I guess you were aware of the future environmental issues pretty early on?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yes. Yeah.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Did that impact your life at all? Or was it sort of in the background?</p>
<p>Jensen: It’s just the way things were.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: So when you came back and were looking for a job and you first heard about this job at N Reactor, did you—was that something you were sort of excited about? Was it something you were--?</p>
<p>Jensen: It sounded interesting. I knew nothing about it. Not too many people knew reactor operators, although there were certainly plenty of them around here over the years. So I had no idea, really, what that job entailed. But it was a job, and it paid pretty good. So when it was offered to me, I accepted it.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: What kind of skill sets did it end up requiring you to gain?</p>
<p>Jensen: I had to learn a lot about how to operate complex systems, do valving in a precise, controlled manner so it was done correctly. Not so much working with pumps, other than checking to make sure they were running properly. I didn’t have to do maintenance kind of things. Then once I got my certification in the control room, I had to learn how to operate all of the systems, use the controls in the control room to do that, set everything up properly, and what to do in case of an emergency, or a reactor scram, or upset. Try and keep the reactor from scramming, things like that.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: What kind of training was involved?</p>
<p>Jensen: We started out, once we got into the certification program, we went into what we called phase one training. That basically started off with fundamentals training. We got some math and chemistry. Didn’t hurt that I had chemistry in college. It’s kind of funny—the week or two weeks we had in chemistry, I think I learned more than the two semesters of chemistry in college, because the instructor was so much better for the fundamentals class than the professor I had at college. But it might have also been because I was older and a little more mature.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Was that onsite at Hanford?</p>
<p>Jensen: It was onsite at Hanford, out at N Reactor. We had some chemistry, math, a little bit of electronics, things like that. Started learning some of the various systems at the plant. Then we went back on shift for several months. I can’t remember now how long, I mean this is almost 40 years ago, so it’s kind of hard to remember everything. So when we went back on shift, we were given a packet of stuff that we had to study on our own and learn while we were assigned to do other jobs throughout the plant. Then we went back into class, into phase two, and studied more systems, and started learning how things in the control room worked. I can’t remember if there were four phases or three phases, but each time after a phase ended, we had an exit exam. Then we went back to shift, with more stuff to do in between the regular job stuff. At the end of all of the phases, we took an eight-hour written exam. Theoretically, if you failed the written exam, they could fire you. Or they could just reassign you as a non-certified operator. Some people did that after they failed. They just said they didn’t want to continue. But generally they gave you a second chance. Well, I passed the first time, so didn’t have to worry about that.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: How long did that process take?</p>
<p>Jensen: Started probably in February or March of ’81. I was completely certified in June of ’82. So it was probably about a year and a half for the total process. But they were in a hurry to get people certified, because there were a lot of older operators who were getting ready to retire. So they needed to get people in there and get some experience before they lost too many of the older, experienced operators. So after the eight-hour written exam, we had to study for what we called the demonstration exam. That was in the control room, and an instructor would say, okay, Mark, how do you set this console up for operation? You are going to do this job, show me without actually doing it--because it was in the real reactor—how you would do it. Later on, we had a simulator that was pretty much an exact duplicate of the reactor, and then you could actually do the things in the simulator. But for my demonstration exam, it was just point out what you would do. When we passed that exam, we actually got a pay raise. We went from what we called a Grade 18 to a Grade 21, and got a nice little bump in pay. Then you studied for your oral exam. That one, you went before an oral board. There was a representative from operations, a representative from training, and a representative from nuclear safety. They all had a certain set of questions to ask, and any one of them could come in at any time with follow-up questions. So that—I think that took me six hours. And I passed that, so then I was a certified operator. Except that operations would not sign your certificate until you demonstrated that you could handle the jobs. So when I went back on shift, I was assigned to an experienced operator. So we rotated through various positions in the control room, and I followed him around. Initially, he would do things and tell me what he was doing. Then he would have me do it, but he would tell me what to do. And then when he was pretty satisfied I knew what I was doing, he would just sit back and let me figure out what I was doing. And then he must have told the control room supervisor I was ready, control room supervisor told the shift manager I was ready, and the shift manager recommended that my certificate be signed by the manager of operations. Then I could sit on consoles all by myself.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: So was there an influx of younger operators at that point?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yes, we had quite a few coming through. My certification class, we had three supervisor candidates, and I think we had seven operator candidates. One of them ended up not completing it. All of the rest passed. Some of them, it took them a couple attempts at the eight hour and maybe even the oral board to get certified. Then right after me, there was another class with a lot of other young people. So we got a lot of young people in there, and then that allowed some of the older operators to retire. I think some of them were hanging around a little longer than they might have wanted to otherwise, just because they knew they would have been shorthanded if they left.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Was this all at N Reactor?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yes.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Was it the same training program for all the reactors?</p>
<p>Jensen: Well, N Reactor was the only reactor left at the time. They had similar programs at the older reactors. But it evolved over time and got a little more detailed. We had a little more stuff on reactor physics. In the original days, it’s just, this is what you’re going to do, and nobody asked why, because it was all secret. It’s just, do this and keep this needle within this range, or whatever. Later on, you actually started to teach people what was happening. Some of the old operators complained about having some reactor physics stuff in there. Wah, we don’t need this stuff. And they were so good that it’s like, I don’t know that they really did need that. They just knew what to do when something went wrong. But the theory is it never hurts to have too much knowledge.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: How many people were working at a given time in the actual reactor?</p>
<p>Jensen: In the control room, or—?</p>
<p>O’Reagan: That, and also—</p>
<p>Jensen: It’s easier for me to say in the control room, but I’ll estimate on the other.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Sure.</p>
<p>Jensen: Minimal shift in the control room was three operators and a control room supervisor, but we generally had four. There were three positions that had to be manned 24 hours a day when the reactor was operating. One of them, the nuclear console, where you actually controlled the reactor power level, we rotated two people in and out on that: two hours on and two hours off. If you only had three, then, I think the control room supervisor could give you relief. But you weren’t allowed to be there for more than two hours at a time. The other two consoles, you could be there for the whole eight hours on a shift. After my class and the next one went through, they had enough operators that we could get six or more operators in there, which gave a lot more flexibility, both for giving breaks to people, because it can get hard to keep your focus all night long, particularly on graveyard shift, when the reactor ran itself, pretty much. You’re just looking at things to make sure everything’s normal. That gets hard to do. It doesn’t sound like it would be, but it is. It’s pretty—puts a strain on you. So we had more people to give breaks. And extra certified operators to go out throughout the plant and check things, because they could recognize problems that non-certified operators might not. So, let’s say six of us in the control room, a control room supervisor, a shift manager. They were both certified control room shift manager/operators also. So they could do anything in the control room we could. And on a typical shift, you usually had a couple of electricians, a couple of instrument technicians, three or four health physics technicians—radiological control technicians—we called them radiation monitors in those days. Plus supervisors for all of them. And maybe a handful of millwrights, pipefitters, whatever. Mostly, the maintenance people did their work when the reactor was shut down. There wasn’t very much for them to do when the reactor was operating. But there was always work for instrument technicians. They would come in, and if something wasn’t working right in the control room, we’d call them in and they would tinker with it and try to fix it. Things like that. Day shift, there were a lot more people on there. And then during a reactor outage, much more work going on, particularly or the maintenance people. Because that’s when they were tear pumps down and rebuild them and things like that. So there were probably, on days, a couple hundred people out there. On shift, maybe thirty.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Mm-hmm. So you’ve sort of been doing this, but could you walk us through a day in the life? What would sort of your average day involve?</p>
<p>Jensen: Okay. I’d come to work in the morning, a little bit before eight. And if I were assigned to the control room, I would go in and receive a turnover from the operator whose console I was taking over. We had a schedule that rotated us through. So if you’re one or two, you’re on the nuclear console. If you’re three, you’re on the double-A console. If you’re number four, you’re on the BN console, and I do not know what BN stands for. We used to joke that it was short for boring, because it was the most boring of the three consoles when we were at full power. So if I’m going to be on the nuclear console, I’d come in and there’s an operator who’s ready to leave. He gives me a turnover, tells me what the power level is, if we’re going to be raising power, if we’re at full power, we’re just going to hold power, if there’s any areas of the reactor that seem to want to lose power or gain power. So I get the turnover and then I take over. If I was on the nuclear console, I would work for two hours, and the other operator would come in, and I would give him a turnover and he would take over. And then I would usually give breaks to the other operators, unless we had enough other people to give them breaks. Anytime you take over, you’d get a turnover for what’s going on. Worked the nuclear console for two days, then you’d go to the double-A console. The double-A console controlled the reactor pressure and the primary coolant pump speed, and sending steam to the Washington Public Power Supply System. So you had this big console, went around like this and like this, and there were separate sections for each of the steam generator cells. We had six—five operating at any one time. Occasionally we ran with four operating. We never did all six. There was a reason why; I can’t remember what the reason why was. But always had one in reserve. That one was a pretty busy console during startups and shutdowns. I had full power. It was look around, look at all of the drive turbines for the primary coolant pumps and make sure they’re running at the proper RPM, look at the pressurizer level and make sure it’s at 23 feet. Got very busy on a reactor scram—lots of stuff to do there. And after the day on the double-A console, we went to the BN console. That monitored the secondary coolant system, so we had water coming back from the Washington Public Power Supply System. We sent them steam, they sent back condensate to us. Then we had a secondary system to maintain the pressure of the main steam header. So we had to watch that, plus we had to watch the rupture monitor system, which would check the radiation levels in the coolant water outlet from the reactor tubes. There were 1,003 tubes with fuel in them. The system would compare the radiation level between two adjacent tubes, and if one of them was higher than the other, a red light would come on on this panel. Then you’d go over and push the button to reset it. They’re coming on and off all the time. But if we had a rupture, that meant there was a leak in the cladding on the fuel. Usually, it was a little small pinhole; sometimes—and I never saw this—the welded-on endcap would blow off. Uranium, normally, is not very soluble in water, but when the water’s really hot, then it’s really soluble. And we’re running at 600 degrees or so for the coolant water. So if you had a rupture, you could start dissolving the uranium very rapidly. That’s got all of the fission products in it from the uranium atoms that have split, which are highly radioactive. So you could completely contaminate the primary coolant loop. So you needed to catch a rupture before it progressed too far. That was a frustrating job because those lights are coming on and off all the time. You got to look at those, and it was kind of a bad design, because that panel was here, the other panel was over there, and you had to keep looking back and forth. So that’s why we’d call it the boring console. It was pretty boring at full power. A lot of work there, again, on a reactor startup. We had to set things up to control the main steam header pressure, and that was a lot of work. So it was kind of fun, then. But full power, it was kind of boring. After we cycled through, if we had more than four operators, then we’d have two days where we’re—you could either study, because we always had to maintain our certification, and we had quarterly requalification classes and every two years we had to recertify. Or you could just be assigned to go out in the plant and do various jobs, help out—if it’s needed somewhere, help out some of the operators who were still studying to be certified operators, help train them, things like that. And then you just kept rotating through that. If we had an outage, we only had two places manned in the control room. One was the double-A console, and the other one was the communications console. So you kept contact with everybody throughout the plant, and made PA announcements if need be. Just let people know what’s going on. If we were in charge/discharge operations, you might be assigned to work on the charge or discharge elevator, to set it up for refueling the reactor. Or just—if it’s not a charge/discharge outage or we’re already done with that, you might be going in the rod rooms and doing some valving to assist the millwrights who might be repairing control rod issues and things like that.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: I saw you had some pictures there. Could you walk us through some of what those are?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yeah. Here is a picture. I found this online in the Hanford system a while back, and I was really surprised. That’s me, and I don’t remember posing for this picture. But I am on the charge elevator here. This is the wall, and it’s opposite the reactor and it’s a shield wall and each of these things here are plugs. You can open one up on the elevator side and on the other side, there was a really large elevator called the W work elevator. It actually came off a World War II aircraft carrier for lifting airplanes up to the flight deck. They could pull a plug out there, and they would run a tube through this penetration. Then you would mate it up with the process tube in the reactor. That’s how you refueled. They must have had a photographer up there taking pictures to show other people what goes on there. That was my assignment, and so I obviously posed for this picture, but like I say, I don’t remember doing this at all.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Is that your usual outfit when you were working?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yes. Those are called anti-C clothes, or—original Hanford terminology was SWP clothing, for Special Work Procedure. During World War II, you didn’t want to say that this was to protect against contamination, because this is all secret what we’re doing. So you’re doing a special work procedure, so you have to wear the special work procedure clothes.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: So that’s a second pair of gloves there?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yeah. I would be wearing two pairs of coveralls, a hood, two pairs of gloves and some rubber shoes. And underneath the rubber shoes there’s some canvas booties. So this is not a real high contamination job. If we were actually refueling the reactor, I’d be wearing plastic raingear over that. We used to wear a face shield to keep water out of our face. Later on, we had a hood with a blower unit that provided air so we didn’t suffocate, and that kept water off our face. So that’s about as good as I could get on the elevator. This picture was taken of our crew in the control room. We had started a straight day shift crew. It was so we had more time for training. We worked Monday through Thursday in the control room, and every Friday we had training. And the rotating shifts, when they came in on days, they worked Friday, Saturday and Sunday in the control room, and then during the week they had training. We formed up this brand new shift. They let it out by seniority, and there weren’t that many people who wanted to do it. Some people, strangely enough, really liked shiftwork. So I managed to get on the first crew. And on our very first day working together as a crew, we had what we call a WPPSS turbine trip—the Washington Public Power Supply System bought our steam, and they had two turbines, and one of their turbines tripped. That had happened before, and the reactor had never managed to ride through that without scramming. Well, we kept the reactor from scramming. And I was on this console here—this is the nuclear console. I was controlling the reactor power level. When their turbine dropped off, the main steam header pressure goes up. This is getting a little technical, but—</p>
<p>O’Reagan: No, that’s great.</p>
<p>Jensen: The main steam pressure goes up high. That sits on top of the steam generators. When the pressure’s high, water doesn’t boil as easily. And when water boils, you get heat exchange. So we are sending hotter water back through the reactor. That is not as good a moderator as the cooler water. So the reactor power went down very fast. So I had to start pulling control rods to make up for that. In low-enriched reactors, like any of the Hanford reactors, when you lose power rapidly, you start building up a fission product called xenon which is a neutron poison. It absorbs neutrons better than anything else. At equilibrium power, we’re making xenon at a certain rate, and it’s destroyed as soon as it’s made by absorbing neutrons. So the net amount of it in the reactor is zero. But if we lose power, we’re still producing it for several hours at the old rate. But we don’t have as many neutrons in there, so the reactor power will go down and it will just make it worse. So you have to pull rods very fast. So that’s what I had to do. My part was to keep the reactor from going down so far that the xenon would take it all the way down. The other operators were working to keep the main steam header pressure from going up too high, because we had a scram trip on that, because you didn’t want to rupture the steam header. The people controlling the primary coolant loop pressure had to do work on that. It was very exciting. But we survived it, and so they took this picture as a commemoration. One of the people involved was on the nuclear console when they took the picture and he didn’t want to be in the picture. So he’s not in there. But I like this, because if you know what you’re looking at, you can actually see that the reactor’s operating. There’s some indications there that the reactor’s at its 4,000 megawatt power level. And it’s one of the few pictures I’ve ever seen where you can tell the reactor was operating. Then, almost a year later, the exact same thing happened again, and I was in the same place. It was really easy the second time, because I knew exactly what to do. So they took a picture again, for all of us. This is the double-A console. Kept these all these years. As long as I’ve got these up here, this is an aerial photo of the N Reactor complex. Let me see. This is the reactor building right here. Make sure I’m not looking at things backwards. This building over here is the Washington Public Power Supply System. You can kind of see over here there’s some lines that go over, and those are the steam lines going over to them. They bought the steam from us and then sent the condensate back after they ran it through their turbines.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: How much did you have to communicate with them?</p>
<p>Jensen: Frequently. We called them up--any time we were going to do something that might affect the power level, we would call them up, tell them we’re going to do that. If they were going to do something that might affect the condensate coming back, they would let us know. They would give us some numbers. From there, power generation, which we would compile into a daily report, I think that was the basis for how much money they paid us for the steam. Things like that. So we were in constant contact with them. Usually it was the operator on the double-A console who would communicate with the—we called them Whoops in those days. They didn’t like being called Whoops. Now it’s Energy Northwest. But that’s a habit that’s hard to break. I still want to call them Whoops. And we didn’t mean it anything derogatory in those days, but—</p>
<p>O’Reagan: When you said that the turbine tripped, would that seize it up? What does that involve?</p>
<p>Jensen: I’m not really sure why it tripped. They may have had some valves—steam admittance valves close or something. If they told us why it tripped at the time, I can’t remember. This was 1987 or so. So it was quite a while—almost 30 years ago. The second trip—not sure if it was the same cause or not. I know one time they had a turbine trip and we didn’t survive that one. [LAUGHTER] It was kind of funny. Somebody was sweeping in their control room, and the broom fell and hit a switch and caused the turbine to trip off. So on that reactor outage, they paid for everything we did to get the reactor back up. We had a special charge code. Because it was their fault, so they’re paying for it.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: That would, I guess, give the reactor xenon poisoning and they couldn’t start up for a certain amount of time?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yes. If we scrammed from full power, theoretically, you could pull control rods almost immediately and override the xenon building up. But we had a mandated one-hour hold if we scrammed from full power. And that’s so that you will make sure it wasn’t a spurious scram. If it’s something that’s actually not working correctly, so it would be unsafe to operate, you can figure that out. And by doing that—waiting that one hour, it gets impossible to start the reactor up. So our minimum downtime from full power was generally about 23 hours—23 to 24 hours. If we could figure out what the problem was and get it fixed, then we started up the next day. If I was something serious, it might take a few more days, or several days, to figure out what the problem is or correct the problem. And then when we started up, it was kind of interesting, because we had the control rods pulled almost completely out of the reactor before the reactor went critical. And then as the power goes up, you’re pushing control rods in, rather than pulling them out to raise power, until you get to a point—it’s called xenon turnaround—where you’ve burned up all of the xenon that was in the reactor, and now the reactor’s making more of the xenon and then they start coming back out. So those were actually really fun.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: How often did the reactor scram?</p>
<p>Jensen: N Reactor was getting kind of old by the time I was there. Some of the equipment was really old, old technology, and getting a little hard to maintain. We usually had two or three scrams in a particular operating run. I’m not really sure how many, because, again, it’s been so long. We would typically operate for a month. And we were in plutonium weapons-grade production mode, and so we only operated for a month, and then we would shut down and about a third of the reactor. But it was unusual to go an entire cycle without at least one scram. And usually they were spurious ones. The ones that caused a lot of them were the flow monitor system, which was a pretty old system. If somebody slammed a door or something somewhere, the instruments would vibrate, and it would give a false indication of low flow, and the reactor would scram. It only took one of the 1,003 flow monitor devices to cause a reactor scram. So that was kind of touchy there.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: And that was automated?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yeah, it was automated. You had this big panel with all these 1,003 dials. Normally, we never changed them. If we swapped steam generator cells out—like cell five was out for years until it got re-tubed, and then we put that one in and took another one out so they could re-tube that one. And we had to adjust all of those dials. Oh, that was a boring job—get them all set exactly right, and then somebody has to go through and check them all. If we ran in that mode with that same balance of steam generators, we didn’t have to do that every startup.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: In the pictures with the other operators, could you just tell us about one or two of the other folks you were working with?</p>
<p>Jensen: Okay. This is Dennis Real. Hopefully he won’t mind that I mentioned his name. He still works at Hanford. He started a little bit before me. This gentleman is Bill Terhark. He was a very, very experienced operator. He was one of the ones that you really wanted to have in the control room when things went bad, because he knew what to do all the time. He had so much experience. He went back to the 1950s, operating—probably operated at every one of the reactors. This is Fred Butcher, Jr. His dad had also been a reactor operator, Fred Butcher, Sr. And that’s me, and this is our control room supervisor, Glen Buckley.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Do you know anything about their backgrounds? Were they also—I guess the one who had most experience probably trained in reactors, but were they all engineers mostly?</p>
<p>Jensen: No, no. Dennis had been a paramedic or EMT before he started working at the reactor. I’m not sure about Fred, what he did. Bill had graduated from high school, joined the Air Force, came out of the Air Force, got a job at Hanford. Typically, in the ‘40s and ‘50s, they did not hire engineers to be—and I don’t know what Glen’s job was—or what his background was, before. Most of us, except the older operators had college of some sort or another. When I hired on, they were hiring people usually with a couple years or more of college.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: So you were there through the end of N Reactor, is that right?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yes. In 1987—well, 1986—I think it was in April, was the Chernobyl accident. Chernobyl, although really was not similar at all to N Reactor, everybody thought it was, because both reactors are moderated by graphite instead of light-water. So everybody looked at graphite—that must be the cause of why Chernobyl blew up. Well, it blew up because it was a really poor design, and it was poorly operated, and they had a really unusual transient situation and then they had a steam explosion that tore the reactor apart. Well, we decided we would make some safety upgrades. They decided we’re going to shut down on January 7<sup>th</sup>, 1987. Six months of safety upgrades, then we’d start back up. Well, we pretty much knew we were never going to start back up again. They did do all the safety upgrades, spent millions of dollars on them, but—anyway, so we came in on January 7<sup>th</sup> knowing that this is probably the last day of operation for the reactor, and it was our job to shut it down. I was on the double-A console that day. It would have been nice if I had been on the nuclear console, to be the guy actually putting the rods in, but that was Dennis. So we shut the reactor down. Took about an hour. We still had fuel in the reactor for a good almost two years before we defueled the reactor. Because we were going to start up again. And then finally they said, no, we’re going to defuel the reactor and we’ll go on wet layup. So we still had water pumping through the pipes, keep everything wet. Because if you let it drain of water and then it’s damp in there, then things will start to rust. But if you have water flowing through there, that wouldn’t happen. So we went for a few months where we kept all of the pumps running and stuff like that, but no fuel in the reactor. And then they said, well, now we’re going to go into dry layup. So we drained the primary coolant loop and all the other systems, and then we had big fans blowing hot air through there to keep moisture from condensing in there. The thought was, maybe we’ll get the order to start up again. And then they just said, nope. Pulling the plug. Reactor is abandoned, and it’ll go into decontamination and decommissioning. And it’s essentially been torn down now, and what’s left of it—the reactor block itself—is all cocooned. Just like most of the other old reactors.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: What happened to your and the other reactor operators’ careers at that point?</p>
<p>Jensen: [SIGH] Well, that was kind of a scary time. People thought we’re going to get laid off. Some people quit and went back to school. I remember one guy went to school and got a doctor’s degree in optometry and became an optometrist. There was some programs to help people with that, some money to help people go to college and get something else. Some people just found other jobs and left. And then I ended up staying. I was getting bored with being an operator at a reactor that wasn’t operating, and there wasn’t even any fuel in the reactor. But we still had all the stored fuel, and they needed somebody to be what they called the criticality safety representative, to work with operations and with the criticality safety analyst to make sure we’re still storing that fuel safely, so we don’t have any inadvertent criticality accident. Not very likely, but it could conceivably still happen. So I got that job, and in addition to that I was doing other stuff that you would call nuclear safety work. So I ended up becoming, to all intents and purposes, a nuclear safety engineer, even though I don’t have an engineering degree. And I’ve been doing that ever since.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Who is that, technically, that you were working for at that point? Was it Battelle?</p>
<p>Jensen: No. Initially I worked for UNC Nuclear Industries. That was UNC parts stands for United Nuclear Corporation. They had the contract to run the reactors. In those days, Rockwell ran the 200 Areas for the Tank Farms and stuff like that, and the processing plants. So they ran the PUREX Plant that was extracting plutonium from our fuel. Battelle operates the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and that does research and design. Right after we shut down, DoE announced that they were going to consolidate all of the contracts. Westinghouse got that contract, so I worked for Westinghouse at the time I got into nuclear safety. Westinghouse went through a contract period and then a renewal period, and DoE typically does not renew anybody’s contract—nowadays anyway—more than once. So Westinghouse left, and then they announced a bid for a new contract. The Fluor Corporation won that one, and so I worked for Fluor for several years. They went through—I think they went through two and a half. DoE gave them an extension on the second done until they could get everything in place. And then the contract was won by the CH2M Hill Company, and that’s who I work for now.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Does it make much difference when one becomes—</p>
<p>Jensen: WE used to joke the only difference it makes is in the color of the paycheck. It makes a little bit of difference, because you get some upper management coming in, and they have different ideas on how things should be done. We all joke that we have to educate them on how things actually are done. That’s only half-joking because it’s different than anything else. Fluor had some subcontractors who had never done work for Department of Energy before. So they wanted to do things the way you do it in the commercial nuclear industry. And it’s like, you don’t get to do it that way—you do it the way DoE tells you to do it. So we kind of had to educate them. But it’s a little bit different. There’s a little bit of different philosophy every time.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Was there ever any kind of either interest or communication with the commercial sector, in terms of learning or teaching any particular things?</p>
<p>Jensen: We did a little bit. I cannot remember the name of the organization, but it’s an organization that compiles knowledge from commercial nuclear reactors all over the country, and the disseminates that to help everybody. We had some people who would go to meetings there, so I guess we became a member of this group. I never was involved in that, but—So we would hear things that happened at other plants and then see if there were some lessons learned that we could apply. But N Reactor was so different than a commercial reactor that sometimes things that happened at N Reactor, they wouldn’t be able to use at a commercial reactor and vice versa.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: How secretive was your work?</p>
<p>Jensen: Not much. There were a few things—security stuff was classified. But what we were doing was no longer secret, hadn’t been secret since 1945. I had to have a clearance—it was a secret level clearance. Mostly that was just to make sure I was trustworthy and wouldn’t sabotage the plant or something. Very rarely did I actually see any information that was classified secret.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: I would assume, though, that the plutonium itself—I guess you didn’t see the plutonium until it got through the PUREX Plant?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yeah, well I never saw it. I’ve never seen plutonium. All of that stuff—how it was handled, how it was stored—that’s all part of the security thing, and that was all classified. And would still be, to this day, except we don’t have any plutonium at Hanford—not in any discrete form that you can do anything with, anyway.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: So what is it you’re doing again? Could you give us more detail on what you’re doing or what you did subsequent to being a reactor operator?</p>
<p>Jensen: I worked in nuclear and criticality safety for N Reactor until we shipped all of the fuel over to the fuel storage basins at the K East and K West Reactors and I moved over there. I worked in criticality safety for that. When they were storing the fuel, that was fairly easy, because they weren’t doing anything. Then they decided they needed to get the fuel out of the basins because they’re close to the river, and the K East Basin had leaked at least once and maybe twice in the past. So the contaminated water gets into the groundwater and eventually gets out to the river. So we needed to get the fuel off the river, so they built a storage facility in the 200 East Area. We had to build a whole system to take the fuel out of the basin and put it in shielded casks and ship it over thee. So there was a lot of work on that, and all of that had to be set up to prevent criticalities. And also nuclear safety, which is more concerned with releases of radiological stuff to the atmosphere. So you need to keep those releases down below certain guidelines that DoE provides to protect the public.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: So was this at all part of this amelioration cleanup efforts at that point?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yeah, that’s the whole goal that we’re working towards: get all of the fuel out of the reactor basins. So we got it all out of the K East Basin first, and then that’s actually been destroyed—the basin has been completely dug up and destroyed, and the area backfilled. The reactor’s prepared for cocooning, but hasn’t been, because they ran out of funding. So it’s in a safe, stable condition right now. K West Basin is empty of fuel, but it has sludge. I still do some work for 100 K, although mostly I work at the Plutonium Finishing Plant now. They’re going to move all the sludge out, and then they’ll do the same thing to the K West Basin that they did at K East. And basically, all over Hanford, that’s what they’re doing is cleaning things out, and getting them ready for demolition. So I work at PFP now in nuclear criticality safety there, and they’ve got miles and miles of ductwork. Some big pipes and some little pipes that are all contaminated with plutonium, and they have to carefully take all that stuff out. Get enough of that out so they can actually start tearing the building down.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Are there any general ways, whether it’s the type of people working there, or morale, or whatever, that the work at the Hanford site has changed over the time you’ve been there?</p>
<p>Jensen: [SIGH] During the operating days, it was fun. Actually fun to go to work and do something that you thought was productive. I mean, you can argue whether you thought we should have been making plutonium for nuclear weapons or not, but the job was very interesting. When the reactor shut down, the morale went down quite a bit, because, for one, people thought they were going to lose their jobs, and two, it’s like, well, even if we stay here for decommissioning, that’s not going to be anywhere near as interesting. And it isn’t. It has its own interesting aspects to it. But mostly, people are pretty professional and here’s a job, we’re going to get all of the fuel out of K East. So people went and worked on that, and we’re going to get all the fuel out of K West, so you work on that. While you’re doing that, it’s satisfying, because you’ve got a goal to work for. PFP—it’s a very difficult job. I think the morale kind of goes up and down. We have successes and then there’s problems you run into. But in a way that’s what makes a job interesting, if there’s problems that you can resolve and get through it, and then you succeed on this task and go onto the next one. But it was a lot more fun to operate than to do what we’re doing now.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: How much longer would you guess we’re going to be doing this--?</p>
<p>Jensen: I, personally, or Hanford?</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Both, why not?</p>
<p>Jensen: Well, PFP is supposed to be torn down. It was supposed to be torn down by the end of September this year, but it’s probably going to be about a year off from that. The K Basin—K West Basin has sludge in it. They’re probably going to start removing the sludge in about two years. That’ll probably take about a year to do that and then they’ll start tearing that basin down. There’s still a huge project called Groundwater, where they’re pumping contaminated water, and it’s not just radioactive contamination, there’s a lot of heavy metal contamination in Groundwater. They pump that out, and they run it through processes to take the, like, chromium out of the water and replace it with a type of chromium that’s not as environmentally damaging. That’ll go on for years and years. And then there’s still—all of the old processing canyons are still there in place, and all of those are going to have to be torn down at some point. So, it’s probably decades more work here. And then there’s all the tanks. They’re going to take all the waste out of the tanks and run it through the Vit Plant which isn’t done yet. So years of work left at Hanford.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Interesting. Were you ever interested in the sort of politics of Hanford?</p>
<p>Jensen: Not too much. The politics were different. In the ‘80s, it was whether we should be making weapons-grade plutonium or not. Nowadays the politics is more like, which project do we rob from to give to somebody else? And political battles in Congress as to how much funding Hanford gets, and things like that. So I try and stay out of all of that.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Sure. So how about life outside of the work plant? Where were you living—still in Kennewick?</p>
<p>Jensen: Yes, I’ve been living in Kennewick since I moved there as a kid in 1965.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Where in Kennewick?</p>
<p>Jensen: It’s over near Highway 395 as it kind of cuts through the middle of Kennewick.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: How has life in the Tri-Cities changed in the time you’ve—</p>
<p>Jensen: The Tri-Cities is a lot bigger. It was pretty small when I first moved here. For several years, it was just slowly growing, and it’s been growing like crazy since. It’s like, they’re always building new schools, and there’s always housing developments under construction. There used to be a lot of orchards in Kennewick, all around. There’s hardly anything now, because they’ve all been cut down and there’s houses there now. Traffic’s a lot worse.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: What do you do in your spare time? Any hobbies or--?</p>
<p>Jensen: I like photography, I like to take pictures with film, which is old-fashioned nowadays. And I like to develop the film myself. So far that’s all been black and white film; I haven’t tried developing color film yet. And I like to collect old film cameras that I can still find film for and use those. Up until recently, I was playing hockey—adult hockey, which I started when I was 49, started playing hockey. I’m 60 now, so I’ve been doing that for about 11 years. However, I had quit, hopefully only temporarily because I’ve got some medical issues. My doctor said no hockey until this is resolved. And then I hurt my knee the other day, so I don’t know. That might—even if the other one gets resolved, that might be the end of hockey. I like to go to Tri-City Americans hockey games during the season. I got to Tri-City Dust Devil games during the baseball season. Like to go to plays and movies. I decided this year I was going to audition for a play, see if I could get in. I did not make it, but I’m going to try again, coming up later. Probably this summer. So we’ll see. Never done that before, either. But it always sounded like fun.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Any sort of major events or incidents, whether at work or just sort of around the Tri-Cities that comes to mind that are sort of worth commemorating, or worth just sort of mentioning?</p>
<p>Jensen: Kind of the interesting thing—back in 1986, reactor was still operating, and do you remember Connie Chung, the news—she came to the Tri-Cities to do a show on Hanford. Everybody at work was wondering who she’s going to interview. And we’re thinking they’re going to interview, like company president, company vice president, or something. And I remember joking that she should interview a reactor operator like me. And everybody laughed. And about an hour later, the phone rang, and it was the producer wanting to talk to me, and they wanted to interview me that night. And I got permission from the company. Turned out, my dad, who, like I said, had worked at the Tank Farms—he had gone to a public hearing on what to do with tank wastes. The Connie Chung crew had gone to the same meeting, because they were getting background information. My dad spoke at the meeting, and they said, oh, we have to interview that guy. When they talked to him, he mentioned that his son worked as a reactor operator. Oh, god, that’d be great, interview them both. So that’s how I got called up. The company gave me permission, and they did it in my house. I told them, it was my son’s third birthday, and I said we’re going to have a birthday party, but you can do the interview after the birthday party. So they said okay. After I got home, my wife sent me out to buy ice cream, I think. And I’m coming back. When she came back, she was all excited. Connie Chung called personally and asked if they could film the birthday party. So they filmed my son’s third birthday party, and then they interviewed my dad and I in my living room, and then—I don’t know, two, three hours of interview stuff, and they boil it all down to about five minutes. But that’s the way that goes. So that was kind of exciting. I was a minor celebrity for a while.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Any other stories leap to mind?</p>
<p>Jensen: We had some interesting scrams in the control room. I talked about the two turbine trip ones that were very interesting. The first one, like I said, I had to pull control rods rapidly to compensate for the xenon building up faster than it’s being burned out. I got that all settled out, and the power level wasn’t dropping, and I had forgotten that--when the main steam header pressure goes up, the power level goes down—well, eventually, they’re going to control the main steam header, and it’s going to go back where it’s supposed to be. And the power all of the sudden starts shooting up. So now I’m shoving control rods in like crazy to keep the power level from going up too fast, because we could scram on a high rate of rise. So I got that all settled out. The second time it happened—since I was the most experienced person on the plant on this upset, I got it settled out from the xenon, and I just got my ear open over here, and as soon as I hear somebody say, main steam header pressure’s coming down, I look over and the power level starts to go up, and I tap some rods in, and it was just like routine. Nothing to it. But another time, we had another accident—well, accident’s probably not the right word. We had another upset. We had a new control system—computerized system for controlling valve positioning. The old system we had was very ancient. It was obsolete when they put it in at the reactor, but they got a good price on it, so that’s why they did that. So we had this new computerized system, and there were two cards in the computer that controlled the valve positioning. The primary card, and a backup card. If the primary card failed, you would transfer to the backup card, and it was supposedly a bump-less transfer. The system wouldn’t even know. The primary card had failed, and so it transferred to the backup card, and everything went perfect. Well, the instrument technicians took the primary card out to repair it, and they came to put it back in. Now, this card controlled the steam valves going over to WPPSS. I was on the console controlling all of that, and I remember, jokingly, I said to the guy—the instrument tech and the engineer, when they came in, they were going to go to the rom below the control room where all of that stuff was. They were going to replace it, and I said, you aren’t going to scram us, are you? And the engineer said, trust me. And they went down—and I was just joking, because I figured, no big deal—and they went down and they put the primary card in and they told it to take over. It took over and sent its signal to the valves, but the secondary card did not relinquish control. So all of the steam valves opened up twice as far as they were supposed to. So our steam pressure goes down, and when that goes down, the reactor power goes up. And the primary coolant pressure also goes down, because you’re boiling water really well in the secondary system, that cools the water really well in the primary system, and cold water contracts. So that pressure goes down, and if the pressure goes down to far, the reactor scrams. So I’m fighting like mad with—somebody else came over to help me—to keep from scramming on low pressure. Other people are working over here, trying to keep from scramming on something over here. And other people over here, and the guy on the nuclear console is trying to keep the power level from going up too fast. We’re running around—it was very exciting. Seemed like it took hours. Probably just took a few minutes. We got it all stabilized out, and I’m looking at the primary loop pressure, and it’s kind of fluctuating and bouncing. And right when it’s going—trying to think if it was going up or down. See, if we cool—it had to have been going up. The secondary card cut out, all the valves slammed shut, and we had the exact opposite thing happen. Now, the primary loop gets hot, everything expands, and we scrammed on high pressure. And then about five minutes later, the instrument tech and the engineer come upstairs. They could tell something bad was happening, and they just looked like—it wasn’t their fault, but—</p>
<p>O’Reagan: When it actually does scram, is it actually just rods, or—I’ve heard some designs where there’s actually just balls that are—</p>
<p>Jensen: Okay. The main system was control rods. And you were going like this, like dropping down from the top. The old reactors had safety rods that dropped in from the top. N Reactor’s rods all came from both sides, and they overlapped. All the rods would slam in with hydraulic pressure. We had some hydraulic pumps that would turn on and pump very high pressure hydraulic fluid into the system, and the rods would shoot in. It would take about a second-and-a-half to go in. And you’d get all these enunciators in the control room, and if you were—mmm, it’s pretty boring here at two in the morning, and then all of the sudden the reactor scrams, you were wide awake. Got adrenaline pumping through and then you’ve got all these things you have to do to make sure everything works correctly on a scram, because it causes all kinds of things. The balls were the backup to the control rods. They had to be 75% in in one-and-a-half seconds. If they went in too slow, there was a problem. If they went in too fast, there was a problem, just because they could be damaged. But if they went in too slow, that’s what the ball system was for. There were hoppers on top of the reactor—I think there were a hundred-and-some reactors. And they were full of boron carbide balls. Boron absorbs neutrons. That’s what’s in the control rods to absorb neutrons. If you had one slow rod, it’s no big deal. If you had two slow rods in one column, you would drop balls on both sides of that rod column. If you had three slow rods anywhere in the reactor, you would drop balls on both sides of each of those three rod columns. Then there was also a thing where you could have a complete ball drop—drop all of the balls. If the reactor power level did not decay below five megawatts in three minutes, I think it was, then you would have a complete ball drop. That happened twice. Once, for real, because we had a scram and the rods didn’t go in at all—this is before I started working there. So there’s a scram trip, the rods did not go in, the balls dropped. And the other one was we were starting the reactor up—getting ready to start the reactor up and going through all of these checks on various instrumentation. The instrumentation that would monitor if the reactor power was below five megawatts in three minutes, they were doing the work on that, and they had a procedure that they would run. There were three channels and they would run it on each channel. That included having a switch to put in a couple of different calibrate positions. Basically, it put a false signal into the system so you could see if it’s responding correctly. So an operator and an instrument tech were doing that. They did channel one and it didn’t look right when they put it in the calibrate position. So they went on to channel two to see if it would do the same thing, and they did that. Well, they put two trips into the system. The reactor—what we called the safety circuit—was not made up, and so the system started timing for five minutes. These two instruments said the power level was greater than five megawatts with the safety circuit broken. When the give minutes went up, all the balls dropped. It was kind of innocuous. There was an enunciator that said, any ball hopper open. So the enunciator goes off, and the operator looks up at that. Any ball hopper open. And then he realized what happened. He told the control room supervisor, and the control room supervisor told me that. He says, I looked up at it. And I looked down. And I looked up again to make sure it was actually on. And then he said a few bad words and then he went and told the shift manager that we had dropped all of the balls.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: I heard on the old reactor designs, that had to be actually sort of vacuumed out.</p>
<p>Jensen: Yes. They used vacuum—they were steel balls, too. And they used vacuums to suck them up. At N Reactor, we had a valve at the bottom of the channel that you would open up, and the balls would drain into a hoist, and then you would lift them all the way up to the top, and put them in a hopper at the top—a big hopper—and then you would load the individual hoppers. That was a horrible, horrible job, being up there loading those hoppers. It was always hot, you had to wear plastic raingear and an assault mask, which—rubber hugging your face, and it’s hard, physical labor, and wearing the raingear and it’s already 100 degrees up there anyway. It was just miserable work. So nobody liked to do that. When we had that big ball drop, my job was to go down underneath the reactor. You could open up those drain valves remotely. So we had Bill here who smoked a lot and was not allowed to wear respirators, he was operating the control panel. But a lot of times, the valves wouldn’t work remotely. So, me, wearing all of this fresh air stuff, would stand by, but would say, 43 didn’t work. So I would have to go back there, trailing this hose with my fresh air, and go back to 43, and open it manually. It was extremely hot, radioactively, down there. I picked up my entire one week’s worth of radiation. We were allowed 300 millirem of radiation, either in a single exposure or in a seven-day period, and I picked up that entire 300 in less than an hour, going back and forth. And most of the time, I was just standing there, waiting. And I’d go back in there, and I’d pick up quite a bit, and I’d open up a valve and come back, and then I was done and left. Couldn’t work in a radiation zone for seven days after that.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: How often did you have the radiation testing? Or was it the hand-and-foot test—</p>
<p>Jensen: Oh, any time we came out of a contaminated zone, contaminated area, when we were wearing those SWPs, you have to undress in a proper sequence. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this. We had step-off pads. A red pad and a green pad. And when you get to the red pad, before you get to that, you have to remove all of your outer clothing before you step on the red pad. And then when you get to the green pad, you have to remove all of your SWP clothing before you step on the green pads. So you end up coming out there—well, in the old days when there were very few women working in the Area, you’d be coming out in your underwear. Later on they made us wear a t-shirt and shorts. But I kind of lost track of what we were saying there. Oh, the hand-and-foot counters. And then when you came out, we would step into a hand-and-foot counter or a whole-body portal monitor that would monitor our sides and front and back, to make sure we weren’t contaminated. Then usually we would also be surveyed by a health physics technician who’s got a Geiger counter, and he just slowly goes over, checks your hands, checks the bottom of your shoes, makes sure you’re not—don’t have any skin or clothing contamination. If you do, then you’ve got to get decontaminated. And that happens once in a while.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Was that ever a concern of yours?</p>
<p>Jensen: No. I did get a few skin contaminations. I had to hold over once. I got some primary coolant water in my hair, and there was a lot of radon in the water. Radon is electrostatically attracted to polyester and hair. So it latches on, and it’s hard to get off. I just had to wait until it decayed off. After about--</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Did you shave?</p>
<p>Jensen: No, no. I washed my hair several times, and then they just said—come back every hour and we’ll check, and after about three hours they let me go home. Usually, skin contaminations wash off pretty easy. If it’s your clothing, you have to wash the clothing. You don’t get to take that home until it’s passed as clean. Sometimes, rarely, stuff would have to get thrown away. But I never had any serious contamination issues. If you’re careful, if you dress correctly, and then when you come out, you undress correctly, then it’s very rare to be contaminated.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Any other sort of stories leap to mind from your--?</p>
<p>Jensen: There’s a few things that happened before I was there that were interesting. I don’t know. We had an accident. It was about three—and this one is an accident—it was about three years before I started work. They flushed a tube of hot, radioactive fuel onto the charge elevator, which is not where it’s supposed to go. It’s supposed to go out the back, and fall into the discharge shoots and then go into the basin. There were workers on the elevator when it happened. They got very high radiation exposures. Fortunately, not high enough to kill anybody. But that was just lucky, I think. So, I don’t know. That was the most serious thing I know that happened there. We did have one—before I was certified, we had one really bad accident where we lost all the instrument air to the plant. Almost every valve functions with air—they’re air-operated: air to open, air to close. A lot of pumps are—the pump speeds are maintained by air pressure, things like that. So we had a scram, and it was a very abnormal scram. But we survived it.</p>
<p>[VIDEO CUTS]</p>
<p>Camera man: Okay, hold it out so we see.</p>
<p>Jensen: --piece of fuel out of the reactor, and they pushed all the hot, irradiated fuel out, but we’d done a normal refueling after that shutdown. And, well, now, we’ve got to—we pushed out all the hot fuel, and now we’re going to push out all the un-irradiated fuel and keep it, just in case we start up again. I happened to be walking by when they got the last one out, and they were taking a picture and they said, get over here!</p>
<p>Camera man: Oh, so where are you? Are you down in front there?</p>
<p>Jensen: I am right there.</p>
<p>Camera man: Yep, that’s right.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: You’ve got the [INAUDIBLE] gear guy in back.</p>
<p>Jensen: So these guys are all dressed up in the gear and they’ve got the fuel with them. I think they’ve got the fuel with them in there. There’s another picture that I don’t have that actually shows them holding the last piece. [VIDEO CUTS] There were two certified operators when I was hired on. I think there had been some more who had left. There was another lady who was in the certification program and then she certified shortly after that. In my class, there was one woman and she did not go all the way through, and then in the class after, there was at least one woman in there. So we had a handful of women certified operators. The very first one hired, I’m pretty sure that would have been Martha Coop. I’m wondering who the guy you talked to was who hired her. Because I’m sure I would know him. I just can’t think of who that might have been. The other one was Leslie Jensen, no relation to me, and I think she was the one who babysat me when I was probably a kindergartener or a first grader. She was one of my mom’s students.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: All right. Anything else I should be asking here, any other memories that are worth preserving?</p>
<p>Jensen: I’ll probably think things when I get home.</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Sure.</p>
<p>Jensen: But right now I think I’m—</p>
<p>O’Reagan: Great. All right, well that’s been great. Thank you so much for being here.</p>
<p>Jensen: You’re welcome.</p>
<p><br /><br /><a href="https://youtu.be/vzYLT2Ds3-Q">View interview on Youtube.</a></p>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
01:16:35
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
N Reactor
200 Area
Tank Farms
WPPSS (Washington Public Power Supply Systems)
UNC (United Nuclear Corporations)
Rockwell
PUREX
PNNL (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)
K East Reactor
K West Reactor
K East/West Basins
100-K
PFP (Plutonium Finishing Plant)
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site
1961-
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 Mark Jensen
Description
An account of the resource
Mark Jensen moved to Richland, Washington in 1961 as a child and grew up in Kennewick, Washington. Mark began working on the Hanford Site in 1981.
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
03-25-2016
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.)
Richland (Wash.)
Kennewick (Wash.)
Nuclear reactors
Nuclear reactor accidents
Chernobyl Nuclear Accident, Chornobylʹ, Ukraine, 1986
Nuclear energy
Nuclear power plants
Nuclear fuel rods
Relation
A related resource
<a href="http://hanfordhistory.com/collections/show/26">Mark Jensen, Oral History Metadata</a>
2-East Area
200 Area
200 East
200 East Area
Battelle
Department of Energy
Energy Northwest
Hanford
K Basin
K West Reactor
K-Basin
K-West Reactor
Kennewick
Manhattan Project
N Reactor
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Plutonium
Plutonium Finishing Plant
PUREX
School
Sun
Tank Farm
Tank Farms
United Nuclear Corporation
VIT Plant
War
Washington Public Power Supply System
Westinghouse
-
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2Fdf5707b65c796346957cfed411914d46.JPG
94e537086907f482c5fde0d65917e12f
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
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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.
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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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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/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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8354e6925db0dfcc31cd6233a0bf0a77
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F85523bfe18aac656aff6c2ba9818cebc.mp4
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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
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
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
Rate at which bits are transferred (i.e. 96 kbit/s would be FM quality audio)
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
A name given to the resource
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
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
06-24-2015
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
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2017-29-11: Metadata v1 created – [A.H.]
Provenance
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The Hanford Oral History Project operates under a sub-contract from Mission Support Alliance (MSA), who are the primary contractors for the US Department of Energy's curatorial services relating to the Hanford site. This oral history project became a part of the Hanford History Project in 2015, and continues to add to this US Department of Energy collection.
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
-
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b57899b4456572c689b8c6aaa528cfed
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F583865462e4fa6396d8d362c783d5ae2.mp4
1a5d0b226d8d91e261ba39aaba60fd79
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
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
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
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
A name given to the resource
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
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
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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dc383eed74d4438fdac9c7ad9c068eca
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/omeka-hhp%2Foriginal%2F3841380e69217cef6aa70840d8479a53.mp4
e48c0d6128bcde0bbba8a20ce7f31cef
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Post-1943 Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War
Description
An account of the resource
Oral histories with residents about the Hanford area during and following the Second World War
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
Those interested in reproducing part or all of this collection should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for these items.
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Interviewer
The person(s) performing the interview
Bauman Robert
Interviewee
The person(s) being interviewed
Tyler, Bill
Location
The location of the interview
Washington State University - Tri Cities
Transcription
Any written text transcribed from a sound
<p>Northwest Public Television | Tyler_William</p>
<p>Robert Bauman: Now you can give it right back to her?</p>
<p>William Tyler: Yeah, I plan on it.</p>
<p>Man One: Exactly. All right, get this off your face there.</p>
<p>Bauman: Does your daughter live here in Richland?</p>
<p>Tyler: She lives right across the street from me.</p>
<p>Bauman: Oh, does she? Oh, there you go. Well, you can really give it to her then. [LAUGHTER] She can't avoid you.</p>
<p>Tyler: Well in fact, we work together at HAMMER.</p>
<p>Man one: I’m rolling.</p>
<p>Bauman: All right. Well I think we're ready to get started. So let's start by having you say your name and also spell it for us.</p>
<p>Tyler: My name is William T. Tyler. W-I-L-L-I-A-M, T, T-Y-L-E-R.</p>
<p>Bauman: And you go by Bill?</p>
<p>Tyler: Bill, yeah.</p>
<p>Bauman: All right. And today's date is August 28<sup>th</sup> of 2013. And we're conducting this interview on the campus of Washington State University, Tri-Cities. So let's start, if we can, by maybe having you talk about what brought you to the area. When did you come to work at Hanford, and what brought you here?</p>
<p>Tyler: We came out here on vacation from Oklahoma in 1947 to see my dad's brothers and sisters. And we were going to stay for a week or so. And my dad applied for a job here and got it, and we stayed. I thought it was the end of the world. This was not a pretty place in 1947. But I went in the Navy in 1950, got into the nuclear program and came out here in 1955. Went to work at Hanford. Worked as an HPT until '82, I believe. And then I went into management in health physics.</p>
<p>Bauman: So HPT, you mean health physics technician. Is that was HPT is?</p>
<p>Tyler: Uh-huh. Sorry.</p>
<p>Bauman: That's okay. So how old were in 1947 when you came on vacation?</p>
<p>Tyler: I think I was 15.</p>
<p>Bauman: Okay. What sort of job did your father get?</p>
<p>Tyler: He worked in transportation.</p>
<p>Bauman: And you already had aunts and uncles who came here?</p>
<p>Tyler: Yeah.</p>
<p>Bauman: So you said you thought this was the end of the world. What do you mean by that? What are your first impressions of the place?</p>
<p>Tyler: [LAUGHTER] Well, my first impression is we got here July the 5th. And my aunt and uncle had a little cafe on downtown Kennewick, on Kennewick Avenue. And it was about 104 degrees out. And we were driving down the street looking for it. And my dad says, man, I wouldn't live here if it's the last place in the world. And back then there was not a lot of trees. There was in Kennewick, and a few in Richland. But every time the wind blew, it was dusty and the tumbleweeds flew, and a lot of dust storms. In fact, they call them termination winds. Because everything was booming out in Hanford and every time the wind blew, people didn't like that and they'd just pick up and quit. So they called it termination winds.</p>
<p>Bauman: Do you know when your aunt and uncles came here?</p>
<p>Tyler: My aunt was born here in Kennewick. My uncle came out here in '37, '38, somewhere along that area.</p>
<p>Bauman: Oh, okay, so you'd had relatives here before the Hanford site.</p>
<p>Tyler: Oh yeah.</p>
<p>Bauman: And so when your family first came in 1947 and you dad got the job and stayed here, where did you live?</p>
<p>Tyler: We lived in Kennewick for a year. And then we got a house in Richland in 1948 at 635 Basswood.</p>
<p>Bauman: That was a government home then?</p>
<p>Tyler: Uh-huh. It was ranch house. And we moved in Thanksgiving Day of '48. And my future wife moved in next door the same day. I didn't know that was my future wife, but it turned out to be. And I still live on Basswood. Different house, but--</p>
<p>Bauman: So did you go to high school here then?</p>
<p>Tyler: I went to Kennewick. I started in Kennewick because that's where we lived and I didn't want to transfer. So I rode the intercity bus every day to Kennewick and back. I graduated in 1950 and then somebody in Washington wanted me to join their services. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Bauman: So how would you describe, outside of your first impression, how would you describe the community of Richland in late '40s, early 1950s?</p>
<p>Tyler: It actually—it was a very good place to live. I didn't realize it at the time. It was smaller, much smaller--probably 5,000 people in each of the cities. It was a good place to live if you could ignore the wind blowing and the dust storms and that sort of thing. But it kind of grows on you. I know I wouldn't live anywhere else.</p>
<p>Bauman: In those early years when you were here in the '40s and '50s, do you remember any particular community events that stand out in your mind?</p>
<p>Tyler: Yeah, Atomic Frontier Days, the Grape Festival in Kennewick, and then the fair. Nothing big or spectacular, but it was something to do.</p>
<p>Bauman: Can you describe Atomic Frontier Days a little bit? What sorts of things--</p>
<p>Tyler: Well, normally they had a queen and a parade of course. And it was just kind of a—I don't know how--just a parade and kind of a get together type thing for the people that lived here.</p>
<p>Bauman: So let's talk about your work a little bit now. You said you started working in '55.</p>
<p>Tyler: ’55.</p>
<p>Bauman: So can you talk about who you worked for at time and a little bit more detail about what sorts of work you did? What area of the Hanford site you worked in?</p>
<p>Tyler: Okay, I started February the 22<sup>nd</sup>, 1955. And my first work assignment was 200 West Area tank farms. And then I went up to the REDOX facility which was a separations facility. A couple months later, then I went to U Plant. And then I went to T Plant, which were all separation facilities. And then I went over to PUREX in December of 1955. That was prior to startup. We started up our first spiked run was I think March or April of '56. And I worked there until '62 I believe. When I worked there, we also was switched with the 100 Area HPTs, or RCTs, or radiation monitors for exposure reasons. Because they got a lot more exposure than we did, so we would switch with them. And I got to work in all the 100 Area reactors except N when they were running, and some of the 300 Area.</p>
<p>Bauman: So just about everywhere?</p>
<p>Tyler: Yeah, I worked basically in every facility out here except 234-5.</p>
<p>Bauman: And so was GE the contractor? What contractor did you work for?</p>
<p>Tyler: GE. They were the prime contractor. And they left here in '66 I believe. Then Rockwell and Westinghouse and Fluor Daniel and MSA.</p>
<p>Bauman: So as a health physics technician, what exactly did that mean? What sorts of things did you do on a daily basis?</p>
<p>Tyler: Well as you know, there was a lot of contamination, radiation. And our job was to set the dose rates if people were going into a radiation area. We would go in, set the dose rates, stay with them. Got to make sure that the dose rates didn't increase while they were in there. We surveyed them out when they were done with the GMs and alpha detectors to make sure they didn't take any contamination home with them. And that was our prime responsibility. We maintain control of personnel exposure rates and their contamination, if they had any, and made sure that everything was as clean as we could get it. That's the short and sweet version.</p>
<p>Bauman: Yeah. And you did that, obviously, at all these different areas you worked at on the site?</p>
<p>Tyler: Everywhere, inside, outside, burial grounds.</p>
<p>Bauman: Were there ever any incidents while you were doing this where people did have excessive exposure or anything along those lines?</p>
<p>Tyler: Yeah, there was a lot of them. When GE came here--well, they were the prime contractor. Back in those days, you really couldn't talk about your job. You could say that you worked at Hanford and that was pretty much it. But yes, there was a lot of good memories and bad memories. Some really high exposure rates almost on a daily basis, because everything was running. And what will go wrong probably does. And it was very interesting work. It was something different every day. It's the kind of job that you look forward to doing and working. I did. I really enjoyed it.</p>
<p>Bauman: So what was the process or procedure if someone had an overexposure?</p>
<p>Tyler: Well, you had your dosimetry, which—Battelle read that. So you know what they got. And that's the record that's with you forever. At that time I think we worked--[PHONE RINGING] Shit. We worked under a 50 millirem per day limits, or 300 a week. And sometimes you would exceed that. But we were issued dosimetry everyday when we came to work. And you had a film badge which was read I think once a month. But they kept a running record of your exposure. That's why when we, when 100 Area radiation monitor--[PHONE RINGING] Hello. Can I call you back, Ian? Okay, thanks. Sorry. I don't know how to turn it off.</p>
<p>Bauman: So we're talking about the dosimeter--</p>
<p>Tyler: Yeah, they kept records of all your exposures. And then every month they would send you a copy or let you know what it was. But if before the end of the year was out, if you were running short of exposure, then they would transfer people--particularly the radiation monitors--to different areas. And they what they were doing was using our exposure instead of--and letting their people cool down a little bit. It was just a way of equalizing the dose rates to the personnel. And it worked good in theory. And there was some--and I probably shouldn't say this—but there was some little minor ripples in the water, because people accused the other people of hanging back and now I got to come save you, that sort of thing. But it was all in fun. Everybody knew how serious the job was. And that was just part of their job.</p>
<p>Bauman: And so how long did you work as a health physics technician then?</p>
<p>Tyler: I think until 1982 and I went into management in health physics. At that time, they called us managers. And I was the manager of East tank farms until 1988. And then I transferred over to the West Area environmental group and took that over. My responsibilities were all of the outside radiation contamination areas. Burial sites. '89 I retired. Came back three months later and went to work in the environmental restoration part-time. And I did that until 1995. And then when Bechtel came in, I left there and went back to health physics side and become a evaluator at HAMMER for radiation protection, which I still do.</p>
<p>Bauman: So you still work for--</p>
<p>Tyler: Two to three days a week.</p>
<p>Bauman: So you mentioned earlier the sort of secrecy of some aspects of Hanford. Obviously secrecy, security were a very important part of. I wonder if you could discuss that at all, any ways that impacted your work?</p>
<p>Tyler: GE had a very rigid plan of how they wanted things to go. And security of course was top secret. If you went—and a few people did--they go down and have a beer at the bar and they get to talking. And you never know who you're talking to you. And there was cases where people didn't have a job the next morning. Because security would overhear them. And you were pretty much done. So people didn't talk about their job. They didn't even talk about it with their family. Security was very strict. When you—well, for instance, when you go to work in the morning or if you're on shifts, same thing. You would catch the bus at the bus lot. Get on the bus, go through the barricade at the Y. If I was going to PUREX, we'd go up, pull in to the front gate of PUREX. You'd get out, off the bus. Go through the badge house. Pick up your dosimetry. Go out. Get back on the bus. The bus would pull inside the gate. Get back on the bus. Go down to PUREX. Get off the bus. Go through their badge house. And they would check your lunch bucket and all that. And then go into the building. And then in the evening, just reverse that process and back out again. So they were very strict. If you drove your car, you could not drive it past the main gate of East Area. You parked outside. And when you could drive inside, security would check the glovebox and the trunk and whatever was in the car. So it was very regimented.</p>
<p>Bauman: I wanted to ask you about, in 1963 President Kennedy visited for the opening of the N reactor. I wondered if you were there and have any memories of that event at all?</p>
<p>Tyler: I was not there because I was on shift at that day, or I probably would have been.</p>
<p>Bauman: Mm-hm. Obviously, one of things that happened with Hanford is the shift from focus on production to focus on clean up. And I wonder if that shift impacted your work in any way?</p>
<p>Tyler: Yes. Like I said before, I was the manager of East tank farms. And my office was at Semi Works, which is in 200 East Area, which was a pilot plant for PUREX. Semi Works was running. We were doing strontium cesium runs. But then when the edict came out that we were going to phase out and clean up, one of the first facilities--well I think it was the first facility—that we started tearing down was Semi Works. And D&D did the work. But we shut it all down and demolished the building and just imploded it in place. Built a dirt berm over it, cleaned it up. Most of the cells and the tanks are still in place, but they're full of grout. And then there's concrete over it. And what we did was tear down—this was approximately a three-story building with three stories underground. So when we tore down the building—it had a lot of piping and columns—we tore down the building and left the west wall standing. And we filled everything we could get inside like the basement and concreted it in place. And then we undercut the west wall. And this is probably four foot thick. And got a couple of Caterpillars and chains and hooked it over the top of the west wall. Pulled it down over like a lid. And then dirt berm over it, and there it is. And the stack that was there—the exhaust, the big stack—they imploded that and laid her right alongside the building. One guy did that. We deconned it first, and he came in, and a dynamite expert told us where we was going to put the stack and put a stick out on the end in the ground like they do now on the TV. And laid that stack right down on that stick, all by himself. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Bauman: So that definitely did make for significant changes then, the shift from production?</p>
<p>Tyler: Very significant, because that was kind of pilot test for all the other anticipated deconning and decommissioning they we're going to do, which is still going on.</p>
<p>Bauman: Let's shift now and talk a little bit about HAPO. I wonder--I know you've been involved with them quite often. I wonder if you can talk about your involvement when you became involved in HAPO and how that came about?</p>
<p>Tyler: Well let's see. First, HAPO was a GE acronym which stands for Hanford Atomic Products Operations, which was the name of GE's part of this. GESA, which is another credit union down the street, was the General Electric Supervisors Association. GE was very particular about their managers or supervisors were a step above the blue collar worker. And I think they still maintain that. If you were a supervisor, it's white shirt and tie. And you don't fraternize with--So when the credit committee wanted to get started, that's the name they chose, just HAPO. And it's '53. And I was looking at one of the early--the record book. And I think there's five or six of the charter members of the first—that I worked with that were radiation monitors just like I was. But I never joined HAPO until my wife was--she likes C First. And I never joined HAPO until I think '71. And then a friend of mine that I worked with talked me into getting on the committee that approved loans, credit committee, which I did. And then I got invited later to go on the board of directors and got voted in and been there ever since. I really enjoyed it. It's a great credit union.</p>
<p>Bauman: So is it the board of directors then, primarily is it either current or former Hanford employees?</p>
<p>Tyler: No. It used to be when we were federal, you had to work out here to join HAPO. And then they relinquished or changed the bylaws so that anybody could join HAPO. If you give them $5 and signed up, you were a member for life. But initially it was you had to work here to join.</p>
<p>Bauman: And you said you didn't join until '71. What led you to decide to join at that point?</p>
<p>Tyler: The guy I carpool with, one of them, convinced me that I should do that. [LAUGHTER] And I didn't like C First. I never did like C First. But my wife liked them because you got at the end of the month, you got all of your checks back. And she liked that. But I joined HAPO and started my own checking account. And then she finally joined shortly after I did. And now the rest is history. [LAUGHTER]</p>
<p>Bauman: So, I know you weren't part of the formation of the credit union. But I wonder if you can talk about it a little more? If you know more, were the employee unions at Hanford involved in the credit union, establishing that?</p>
<p>Tyler: Yes.</p>
<p>Bauman: And anything you can talk about that?</p>
<p>Tyler: Helen Van Patten was one. GESA started it first. And then the blue collars said well, we got to have one of those. The first store was down by the Spudnut Shop. I think we had one or two employees. And everything was in a ledger, handwritten. Joe Blow borrowed $25. It was very basic. But fortunately, it kept growing and membership increased.</p>
<p>Bauman: So the unions saw it as a way to provide credit union opportunities--</p>
<p>Tyler: Right.</p>
<p>Bauman:--for blue collar workers or laborers or whatever? Okay. So I want to—going back to your work at Hanford, what are some of the more challenging aspects of your work, and maybe some more rewarding aspects of your work?</p>
<p>Tyler: That’s a good question. Probably one of the most challenging was the responsibility when you're out on a hot job where the contamination levels are great and the radiation levels are great, and you have a whole crew of people. It challenges you to--it's always in the back of your mind that something's going to happen and I'm not going to see it, or I'm not going to catch it. And somebody's going to get overexposed. And that's always in the back of your mind. Because--and I have to beat my own drum here for a bit—radiation monitoring and health physics now, whatever they are, it's a very challenging job. You're responsible for--you're taking care of people. And they trust you. And they expect you to look out for them. And it's a lot of responsibility, but most everybody accepts that gladly, because they know how important it is. Because you're responsible for--you could get somebody really overexposed, and who knows what the consequences are? As far as rewards for that, I think is the satisfaction of when the job is done, that you knew you did your best job. Nobody got hurt. Nobody got overexposed. Nobody got contaminated. And the job got done.</p>
<p>Bauman: Were there any events or incidents or anything, sort of unique things that happened during your time working at Hanford that sort of really stands out to you?</p>
<p>Tyler: When I first hired in, like I said, I went to REDOX. One of the problems they had shortly before I got here was they had a ruthenium—they ran some ruthenium and they played it out in the stack. And then it broke loose. And it kind of went out in the desert and on the ground. And you had ruthenium chunks of—it looked like white paper that built up on the inside the stack and then finally broke loose and fluttered out and went everywhere. And one of my first jobs with a GM and a walking stick was walking out through the desert and finding these things. Little specks, big specks, didn't have any trouble finding them. [LAUGHTER] They were very hot. And I remember we used the KOA cans from T Plant, which were little round cans, metal cans about that big around, about this high with a snap-on lid. And that's what we put them in, with dirt for shielding. And then buried them. But there's been a lot of incidents of hot burials from PUREX. I remember some where we used a burial string. We used a locomotive, a whole bunch of flat cars. And then at that time, they'd build big wooden boxes. And I recall one big one that had enough lumber in it to build two B houses. Huge—it sat on two flat cars. And we put it in, and we took readings over the top of the tunnel as it went out of the tunnel towards the burial ground. And it read greater than 500 R. And as you know, 500 R for an hour is a lethal dose rate to 50% of the people, 60%. And then you go down the railroad track behind B Plant, pull it across the highway which patrol barricaded the road. So you pull the string across the road and then back it into the burial ground. And then you had to sink—this box was built on skids. And a big long steel cable lay on another flat car, three or four flat cars away from it. So you would pull that. And you would pull it down into a burial trench. And the Cat would be down there ready. And the train would back up and they would grab that cable, put the eye on. Hook it to the Cat. And then the Cat skinner would pull the cable off. And the train would move up until the boxes sit here and the cables here. And the Cat's down here pulling. And then we'd get up to the--and there was a dock where you could slide it off. And you would turn that box and pull it in. Pull it down into the trench, down to the other end, wherever you wanted it. Unhook the Cat. Leave it. Pull the Cat out. And then they would backfill that box. And that's the way they did the burials. And it worked great except when the box collapsed unexpectedly.</p>
<p>Bauman: Then not so great.</p>
<p>Tyler: Yeah, that's not a good--that happened once or twice.</p>
<p>Bauman: During your years working out there, were you ever concerned about your own safety, health, protection, in any way?</p>
<p>Tyler: Well as stupid as it may sound, no. I never was. Because I always figured I knew what I was doing. And I received some very good training in the Navy, which helped. But I never worried about it. I always trusted me.</p>
<p>Bauman: Were you a member of a union when you were working at Hanford? And what union was that? And I guess, what sort of relationship did the union have with management here at Hanford during the time you were here?</p>
<p>Tyler: Good and bad. [LAUGHTER] I used to be chief steward for the radiation monitors. I went through two negotiations. And after the last one, I decided I didn't want any more of that. Chief steward's a thankless job, but somebody's got to do it.</p>
<p>Bauman: What does that mean exactly? What—chief steward--</p>
<p>Tyler: Well, you're the union rep plant wide for all of the HPTs. And I had this grandiose idea that I could just change everything. It's a great idea, but it doesn't work. It's a job that somebody has to do. And it's a job that is thankless. Because somebody's always mad at you. Whatever you do, in some of the people's eyes, you could always do better. And it's just not a good job. [LAUGHTER] But I enjoyed it. You learn a lot. And you learn both sides of the fence--how the company thinks and how the union thinks. And then you try and compromise.</p>
<p>Bauman: Were there ever any times you were here where there was a strike or any sort of--</p>
<p>Tyler: Two--'66 and '76.</p>
<p>Bauman: And were those sort of across the site?</p>
<p>Tyler: Yep. And in '66, after we settled the '66 strike, GE left.</p>
<p>Bauman: Was that one of the reasons they left?</p>
<p>Tyler: Yeah, well, they had planned to leave. And then that's when--because when GE was here, they were the only contractor. And then when they left, they kind of broke it up into the 200 Areas and the 100 Areas. And it's always been different contractors, not just one prime contractor.</p>
<p>Bauman: Do you remember what some of the key issues were in '66 and '76 in terms of--</p>
<p>Tyler: Wages. Wages were always the key issue. Well, I take that back. '66 or '76 was, they were going to do away with the buses. And that was a key issue for everybody. It didn't happen, but it was a--that was when they spent all the money redoing the bus lot. And then a couple years later, they did away with the buses anyway. But we did get air conditioned buses. Before we had old buses, the old green buses. Well like the ones sitting down at--</p>
<p>Bauman: The CREHST Museum?</p>
<p>Tyler: Yeah. Those were some of the newer ones. The older ones were international buses that looked like a truck. Cold in the winter and hot in the summer. But they worked. When they did away with the buses, see, that did away with a lot of jobs in the bus lot. Maintenance, everything there, which was a lot of people.</p>
<p>Bauman: So part of that was about jobs and issues of transportation?</p>
<p>Tyler: Mm-hmm.</p>
<p>Bauman: Anything I haven't asked you about that you'd like to talk about or that you think we should talk about?</p>
<p>Tyler: Well, we've covered pretty much every--well, we've covered pretty much everything I think. I don't really know what you're looking for.</p>
<p>Bauman: Just your experience. That's why I wonder if there's something that you experienced some event or something that I haven't asked you about yet that you think would be important to—</p>
<p>Tyler: Well. When I retired, I took the first early out and then got bored to death and came back. When I was in the environmental group in West Area, a good friend of mine was an environmental manager outside the site. But he talked me into coming back part time and become a waste shipper and a waste handler. Which was--I'd never done it. I knew what it was. But I finally relented. I enjoyed it. It's entirely different. Because I was kind of burned out on radiation protection, and I wanted to do something different. Didn't want to retire, but I wanted to do something different. So I went to the classes and become a certified waste shipper and a waste handler. And we took care of all of the sites outside of 200 East, 200 West. All the burial sites, all the drilling sides, the river, pretty much everything. And it was very interesting. Until '95, when I decided I didn't like the contractor. [LAUGHTER] And I went back to health physics.</p>
<p>Bauman: Most of the students I teach now were born after the Cold War ended. Obviously most of your career, the Cold War was going on during most of the time you were working at Hanford. So I'm wondering what you think would be important for young people today and people in future generations to know about working at Hanford during the Cold War?</p>
<p>Tyler: I'm trying to remember. We had the strike in '66. And there was almost another strike four or five years later. In fact midnight was the deadline when we were supposed to go on strike. And at 11:30, we got a notification that the President had put a stop to the strike because of the situation with the Cold War thing. And I think that's the first and the last time that ever happened. But as far as--</p>
<p>Bauman: So then about 1970 or so?</p>
<p>Tyler: Early, yeah, '71 or '72 maybe. No, it was before that, because I was still on shift. It was probably '68, '69 maybe. But as far as the Cold War, it's still going on in different forms—my personal opinion. You look back at history--and I've lived through a lot of it--nothing has really changed. Like what's going on now, and the Bible says there'll be war and rumors of war. And that's correct. Because whatever our President does—whatever he does is going to be wrong in a lot of people's eyes. It's kind of like if you don't do it, you should have. And if you do do it, you shouldn't have. [LAUGHTER] It's a different type of cold war. Instead of—we used to worry about Russia. And I'm not too sure that—maybe we should still be worrying about Russia and a lot of other countries that--Things have changed. But they haven't—the basic things that caused the Cold War hasn't changed. There's all kind of weapons. I don't know.</p>
<p>Bauman: All right. I think that's all the questions I have for you.</p>
<p>Tyler: Okay.</p>
<p>Bauman: I want to thank you for coming in today.</p>
<p>Tyler: Thank you for having me.</p>
<p>Bauman: Pleasure to talk to you.</p>
<p>Tyler: Good.</p>
Duration
Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.)
00:47:27
Bit Rate/Frequency
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244 kbps
Hanford Sites
Any sites on the Hanford site mentioned in the interview
200 West Area
U Plant
T Plant
100 Area
300 Area
200 East Area
Tank Farms
Years in Tri-Cities Area
Date range for the interview subject's experience in and around the Hanford site
1947-2013
Years on Hanford Site
Years on the Hanford Site, if any.
1955-1995
Names Mentioned
Any named mentioned (with any significance) from the local community.
Kennedy, John. F
Dublin Core
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Title
A name given to the resource
Interview with Bill Tyler
Description
An account of the resource
An interview with Bill Tyler conducted as part of the Hanford Oral History Project. The Hanford Oral History Project was sponsored by the Mission Support Alliance and the United States Department of Energy.
Creator
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Hanford Oral History Project at Washington State University Tri-Cities
Subject
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Hanford (Wash.)
Hanford Site (Wash.)
Richland (Wash.)
Nuclear weapons plants--Environmental aspects--Washington (State)--Hanford Site.
Nuclear weapons plants--Health aspects--Washington (State)--Hanford Site Region
Nuclear weapons plants--Waste disposal--Environmental aspects--Washington (State)--Hanford Site.
Nuclear waste disposal
Date
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2013-8-28
Rights
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Those interested in reproducing part or all of this oral history should contact the Hanford History Project at ourhanfordhistory@tricity.wsu.edu, who can provide specific rights information for this item.
Date Modified
Date on which the resource was changed.
2016-07-18: Metadata v1 created – [RG]
Bechtel
Building 200 East
Building 200 West
General Electric
GESA (General Electric Supervisors Association)
HAMMER
HAPO (Hanford Atomic Products Operations)
Reduction-Oxidation Plant (REDOX)
Richland (Wash.)
T Plant
Tank Farms
U Plant