The 509th Composite Group was an array of ordinary soldiers trained to perform a secret and critical mission: dropping the atomic bombs. Assistant flight engineer Ray Gallagher, who flew on Bockscar, the plane that carried the Fat Man plutonium bomb on the Nagasaki mission, summed up the emotions the crew felt before the mission. "We all get on and we are all heroes. But then, when you sit in your own little individual spot and you have your own self to think about, even though everybody will help one another, I can say without a doubt, everybody is scared. But as a group, we are brave."

 

Abe Spitzer

The members of the 509th were unaware of the purpose of their training. "We knew we were working on something really important. But no one actually could determine what it was," remarked radio operator Abe Spitzer. Even after Colonel Paul Tibbets, just before the missions, revealed that the 509th's purpose was to drop devastatingly powerful bombs, the word "atomic" was never used.

 

Enola Gay tail gunner Bob Caron was the only person to guess at the true nature of the bombs. "I said, 'Colonel, is this a physicist's nightmare?' He gave me a funny look and he says, 'You might call it that.' I said, 'Colonel, are we splitting atoms this morning?'"

 

Many of the 509th veterans remember feeling a sense of relief after the completion of the Hiroshima mission. Radio operator Richard Nelson recalled his exact emotions at the time as "a feeling of elation. We all felt this had ended the war. I think we were surprised when a second drop was necessary." Nelson was not alone in his shock, as many other 509th members were confident that the second mission would not happen.

 

However, despite their surprise, the 509th veterans almost uniformly did not regret their role in history. Years later, Charles Sweeney, the commander of the Nagasaki mission, expressed his feelings on the morality of atomic warfare. "My personal attitude was, ours is not to question why, but to do or die." Gallagher, however, was more reflective. "As you get into your years and you see pictures of these different situations and people at the memorials, your heart goes out and you say, why did it happen? But it had to happen."

 

Jacob Beser and John Kuharek

Radar countermeasures officer 

In his interview, Beser said, "Eighty-five percent of the survivors within three thousand feet of the explosion suffered some form of radiation disease. This is something that people ask - didn't we know, didn't we anticipate? We did not know the extent. We did anticipate that anybody within a radius of several hundred feet would be hurt badly by radiation, but would also either be blown to hell or burned. So as a separate entity and as a prolonged aftereffect, we were a little naïve."

These powerful interviews will provide valuable resources for educators, historians, students and anyone interested in the history of these era-defining missions and the people involved. For these interviews with members of the 509th and more reflections on the atomic missions, visit Voices of the Manhattan Project.

This project was made possible by Joseph Papalia who shared the recordings he had of the 509th members. AHF is also very grateful to Crystal Trust for their generous financial support for our oral history projects.

Here are a few selections of the interviews we have uploaded to Voices of the Manhattan Project in the past month.

Author Kai Bird, Senator Martin Heinrich, and Charles Oppenheimer at AHF's 70th anniversary events in Jun

William Sturm and Robert Nobles were physicists working under Enrico Fermi's supervision at the Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory. Both physicists worked with graphite and uranium ratios and arrangements in the Chicago Pile-1. They recall the construction of Chicago Pile-1 between 1941 and 1942, and witnessed the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. Sturm and Nobles discuss Fermi's personality, noting his confidence and competence. They describe him as being one of the most brilliant physicists of his time, having knowledge of all fields of physics. The two also discuss the interactions among the scientists on the project at Chicago and how their personalities and specialties meshed together.

Dr. Joseph Katz was a chemist at the Metallurgical Lab at the University of Chicago. Katz was a part of a team that studied ways to separate plutonium from irradiated uranium. In this interview, Katz elaborates on the technicalities of the process to produce micrograms of plutonium. He explains how scientists had to speculate what the chemical structure of plutonium was. He also discusses the safety hazards associated with plutonium work, as well as his time in Chicago and experience working there. He recalls the tight security, and how scientists feared the Germans might beat them to developing the bomb.

John Healy was in charge of environmental monitoring and later worked on special studies regarding environmental impact of reactor operations at the Hanford site. He discusses the consequences of dumping materials into the river and air pollution from iodine volatilization. Healy touches upon DuPont's role, mentioning that the corporation was very safety-conscious in terms of reactor operations.

Dr. Richard Foster was the fish laboratory supervisor at Hanford. He talks about inspection of organic matter in the Columbia River prior to and after the construction of reactors at the Hanford site. Foster describes DuPont's central role in taking necessary precautions, highlighting their professionalism and efficiency. He also discusses research done at the University of Washington regarding X-ray radiation and its effect on fish. The extent to which safety and environmental harms were taken into consideration, according to Foster, was advanced for its time. The State of Washington, and the country as a whole, had very little awareness of ecology or the impacts of air and water pollution on the environment.