Manhattan Project workers around the country were usually not allowed to travel home for vacation - even for Thanksgiving. Top scientists had important meetings on Thanksgiving, preventing them from spending the holiday with family. The communities banded together to celebrate Thanksgiving. New traditions were begun, new friends made, and a good meal was had by all. In these stories, Manhattan Project veterans and family members recalls the unique Thanksgivings they shared during World War II.

Crawford Greenewalt

We are pleased to announce the release of a never-before-heard audio interview with Dorothy Scarritt McKibbin taken in 1965 on the Voices of the Manhattan Project website. Known as the "Gatekeeper to Los Alamos," Mrs. McKibbin was the first reassuring face that fatigued Manhattan Project recruits saw upon arriving in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The rare, hour-long interview provides novel insight into the mind of the woman who became one of the most beloved figures on "The Hill." 

McKibbin, a recent widow, decided to move to Santa Fe with her young son Kevin in 1931. She recalled her first encounter with the director of the Los Alamos laboratory, J. Robert Oppenheimer, in the lobby of La Fonda: "He had on a trench coat and a pork-pie hat," she remembers. "He walked sort of on the balls of his feet. I think that he had a pipe in his mouth." When he introduced himself, McKibbin was mesmerized. "I did not get the name; I wouldn't have known anything about it if I had," she admits. "He said about five words and then he turned and went on. I turned to Joe Stevenson [Oppenheimer's aide] and said, 'I'll take the job.'"

On March 27, 1943 McKibbin moved into her new office at 109 East Palace Avenue in Santa Fe. The building, constructed as a Spanish hacienda in the 1600s, became the administrative hub of the Manhattan Project. As the Project continued to grow in the final months of 1943, 109 East Palace was flooded with new recruits from across the country. "We averaged about sixty-seven people in there per day and 110 telephone calls per day," explains McKibbin. "We were really very busy." Her warm smile and engaging personality reassured new recruits that they would be taken care of. She also gained the confidence and respect of Oppenheimer, who invited her to attend private parties at his house on Bathtub Row.

Dorothy (left) with Oppenheimer

 McKibbin could not help but notice Oppenheimer's special relationship with Los Alamos. "He was much more at home out there in those deserts spots than any of the other men who were with him," she recalls. "He loved this country. He's a part of it. Everybody here loves him. The Indians love him! The natives love him! They feel that they can have access to him. They can talk to him."

For many Manhattan Project veterans, it was McKibbin's friendliness and reassurance that made her one of the most beloved people on the Hill. "She was a very warm, generous, smiling woman who immediately put you at ease," recalled Rebecca Bradford Diven, a chemist who worked on the Project. "She became a lifelong friend of everybody who ever went through her office."

Every November 11th, America celebrates the service and sacrifice of the millions of veterans who have defended the country throughout its history. While the Manhattan Project is typically remembered for its pantheon of brilliant scientists, the creation and delivery of the atomic bomb would not have been possible without the work of thousands of enlisted soldiers and airmen.

Led by Brigadier General Leslie R. Groves, the United States Army Corps of Engineers oversaw the administration and direction of the top-secret effort to build the world's first atomic bomb. In addition, men and women from the 509th Composite Group and the Special Engineering Detachment (SED) provided critical technical support to Manhattan Project installations in Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Wendover Airfield in Utah, Tinian Island, and other sites around the country. Members of the SED were selected from the Army ranks for their outstanding aptitude and training in science, math or engineering and quickly became indispensable to the project's success. 

SEDers Kirby, Frohman, Henry Linschitz, & Frank Holden at Los Alamos

General Leslie Groves' Interview - Part 8: In this interview, General Groves discusses his relationship with Vannevar Bush, the head of the Office of Scientific Research and Development [OSRD], and James B. Conant, the President of Harvard and a member of the National Defense Research Committee [NDRC]. Bush and Conant both played key roles during the Manhattan Project, acting as liaisons between Groves, the physicists, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

KT Keller was appointed President of the Chrysler Corporation in 1935, having served as Vice President since 1926. Keller entered the automotive field as an apprentice without any previous education in engineering or mechanics. His intelligence, hard work, and mechanical skills enabled him to advance all the way to the top of Chrysler, where he guided the company through World War II. In Part I of his interview, Keller discusses his childhood and how he became involved in the automotive industry. He also discusses Chrysler's involvement in the war effort and recounts a visit from President Roosevelt, who took a tour of the company's tank facility.

General Kenneth Nichols was a US Army Engineer who served as Manhattan District Engineer in the Manhattan Project, overseeing the uranium enrichment at Oak Ridge and plutonium production at Hanford. He worked underneath and alongside General Groves, and collaborated with a number of well-known scientists. He discusses what it was like to work with scientists like Eugene Wigner, Leo Szilard, Arthur Compton, and others, as well as some of the project's conflicts among scientists. He also discusses the complex administration of the Manhattan Project, and why he got along better with scientists than General Groves did.

Emilio Segre was an Italian-American scientist who won the 1959 Nobel Prize in Physics for his contribution to the discovery of antiprotons, a subatomic particle. He was an integral member of the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos as head of the P-5 Group, which focused on radioactivity. It was Segrè's discovery of the high rate of spontaneous fission in plutonium (a discovery that he discusses in this interview) that forced the Project to abandon a plutonium-fueled, gun-type bomb. In this extended discussion, author Richard Rhodes asks Segrè about his close relationship with Enrico Fermi, his decision to return to academia rather than work on a thermonuclear weapon, and his opinion of the storied career of Edward Teller.