Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Part:         Session:         Page of 912

was there.

I never had known that uranium was what they wanted until I read that story in the New York Times after the atom bomb burst at Hiroshima. Then I put two and two together and said, “I'll bet that's what they were looking for in Arizona.”

Nothing about the Manhattan project was ever discussed in Cabinet meeting. I never heard about the project until after. I never heard of it by that name. I knew there was something going on in Oak Ridge. I didn't know it was at Oak Ridge, but I knew there was a secret plant of some sort down in that area where something was being made. I might have been a private individual and known that, because I knew two boys who were in their first year at MIT and who were drafted. Their fathers and mothers felt very sad about their having their careers interrupted. Then, within six months, they were suddenly dumped back by the Army into MIT. They were very hush-hush and didn't tell their parents, but their parents were very disturbed about it. The boys were in uniform and were being sent at the expense of the Army to MIT. Father wasn't paying the bill. They were doing some kind of special work at MIT. They were going to get their degrees too, but after about a year of it they were suddenly switched out of MIT again and sent away. “The most we can get out of Dick,” said one of the mothers, “Is that he's going to Tennesse. What would he be going down there for, Frances? Is there an Army camp down there?”





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help