My retrospective

My Retrospective

On my eighteenth birthdayI (January 24, 1943) I was an undergraduate engineering student who went to my draft board to volunteer for the Army. I was concerned that they might draft me for the Navy and I didn't think I could swim well enough when in trouble but could dig a fox hole as well as anyone.   I was mysteriously deferred (as a convenience to the government) and told to stay in engineering school until called.

Eventually I wound up at Los Alamos, helping cast lenses for the Fat Man  In recent years at the end of a presentation on my experience, I am frequently asked if the use of atom bombs were the right thing or the wrong thing to do.  I then describe this as a question with moral connotation and killing is always wrong.  However, I prefer also to answer this mathematically, if it were the correct or incorrect thing to have done  This usually ends the discussion --  something can  be morally wrong but surely mathematical correct.

Where I grew up in Nashville, neighboring mothers on all sides had Gold Stars in the windows.  My older brother was in the Air Corps but remained in the US on another science project.  Harry Denham from the home immediately on the left was a Marine who survived Guadalcanal but was killed at Tarawa.  Bill Hager, across the street, survived D-Day with serious injury. Johnny Ozier immediately to the right was on a B-17 that did not return to base.  Conrad Jamieson, immediately behind us was killed on D-Day.  Across the street and down three houses lived John Manchester, a Navy Aviator like George Bush Senior, except he didn't make it back to his Carrier.

I could not have been more exhuberant  when Japan surrendered and we immediately stopped making the lenses for the Fat Man.   Who could possibly imagine (at that time!) that we would ever need a single bomb that could destroy a whole city!