E2 EZ EE THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 5 , 2019
isolated atoll,” she said in 2011.
“We figured it out on our own,”
said Dieter Gruen, a chemist who
had been told to refer to uranium
as “tube alloy.” “No one told us. No
one.”
Others knew more than they
could ever reveal.
Physicist Lawrence Litz was
followed on a vacation by govern-
ment agents intent on making
sure he didn’t spill secrets about
the bombs’ cores. And Army engi-
neer Richard Yalman recalls his
wife asking questions he couldn’t
answer after she discovered his
job required regular urine tests.
The project, which began in
1942, was an enormous undertak-
ing. It required figuring out how
to produce an entirely new sub-
stance, plutonium, and how to
mine and enrich enough uraniumto fuel a bomb. New instruments
were invented and fabricated; sci-
entists recruited and moved; cal-
culations made, checked and re-
checked. Physicists, engineers
and others moved en masse to
places such as Los Alamos, N.M,
Oak Ridge, Tenn., and other sites
around the United States, Canada
and the United Kingdom.
Participants’ stories range
from humorous to sobering; most
engage with both personal histo-
ries and the role of science in
creating history’s most powerful
weapons. Read and listen to 580
oral histories — preserved in a
partnership between the Atomic
Heritage Foundation and the Na-
tional Museum of Nuclear Sci-
ence and History — at manhat-
tanprojectvoices.org.
— Erin BlakemoreSCIENCE SCANtance but didn’t realize they were
helping create an atomic bomb.
Anne McCusick, who purified
uranium at Oak Ridge, didn’t re-
alize she was contributing to a
nuclear weapon.
“We didn’t know that they were
going to drop a bomb. We didn’t
know that if they dropped the
bomb it wouldn’t be on someSecret cities. Secret work. Dur-
ing World War II, about 130,000
people were involved in the Man-
hattan Project, a highly classified
collective effort that produced the
first nuclear weapons and
changed science, and war, forever.
But those working on the proj-
ect didn’t necessarily know what
they were working on. Many of
the oral histories at “Voices of the
Manhattan Project,” an extensive
collection of interviews, come
from people who understood that
their work was of strategic impor-
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
WWII’s atomic bomb program was so secretive
that even the participants were in the dark
Voices of the Manhattan Project
Oral history
manhattanprojectvoices.orgASSOCIATED PRESS
An aerial image shows the results of the first atomic explosion at
the Trinity test site in New Mexico in July 1945. The oral histories
in “Voices of the Manhattan Project” range from humorous to
sobering about the top-secret wartime project.STEFAN CHRISTMANN/WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEARYONGQING BAO/WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEARJÉRÉMIE VILLET/WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEARMANUEL PLAICKNER/WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEARZORICA KOVACEVIC/WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEARFocusing on nature
“When words become unclear, I shall
focus with photographs,” landscape
photographer and conservationist Ansel
Adams said. This quote fits naturally
with the winning images showcased in
the recent international Wildlife
Photographer of the Year competition.
Chinese photographer Yongqing Bao
won first place for a stunning image of a
female Tibetan fox and a Himalayan
marmot violently meeting. Other photos
are of penguins, eagles, big cats, elk,
spiders, eels, plants and even fungi. The
contest received more than 48,000
entries by professionals and amateurs
from 100 countries. Wildlife
Photographer of the Year is developed
and produced by the Natural History
Museum, London. The selected 100
photos will be displayed at the British
museum through May 31. They can be
seen at nhm.ac.uk.TOP CLOCKWISE: “The Huddle,” over 5,000 male
emperor penguins cluster together on sea ice to share
body heat in Antarctica, Stefan Christmann of Germany;
“Pondworld,” hundreds of frogs in a South Tyrol pond,
Manuel Plaickner of Italy; “Frozen Moment,” two Dall
rams pause during a fight in Canada, Jérémie Villet of
France; “Tapestry of Life,” a Monterey cypress tree in
California, Zorica Kovacevic of Serbia/United States;
and “The Moment,” a female Tibetan fox fatally attacks a
Himalayan marmot, Yongqing Bao of China.