one in hiroshima, the other in nagasaki. up next, peggy bowditch remembers growing up in los alamos, new mexico, next door to robert open hierm, who became ather of the ierm, who became atomic bomb. she talks about the parties her parents hosted for famous scientists, as well as her family's relationship with the oppenheimers. this 90-minute oral history is from the voices of the manhattan project, created by the atomic heritage foundation and the los alamos historical society. i was born in washington, d.c., in 1934. my father was in the navy, so we moved here and there. i remember living in california and virginia and then new mexico. when we first arrived in new mexico, i thought it was the worst dump i'd ever seen.

having moved from tidewater, virginia, with lots of vegetation and tons of water, i couldn't believe the dust and the lack of plants and the tiny amount of water, even in something that was called the rio grande. but over the years, that came to be my favorite place of all the places i've ever lived. we'd go back from time to time, more to santa fe than los alamos. we had our children and grandchildren join us in santa fe for our 50th wedding anniversary a few years ago. but it took me time to warm up to los alamos. should i tell you about where i lived there? >> tell us how old you were and what brought your family to los alamos.

>> i was 8 when we moved there. just short of 11 when we left after the war. my father had worked on the proximity fuse, although he was a regular navy officer, he'd work science and -- from the beginning of world war ii on. general groves picked him, and he meshed with oppenheimer, so he became head of ordnance at los alamos. >> i don't think you've mentioned his name. what's his name? >> he was captain -- navy captain william sterling parsons. later, after the bomb was dropped, he became commodore and then rear admiral. >> can you spell his middle name? >> sterling, as in sterling silver. >> he has a nickname? what was that? >> deke, at the naval academy

where he was class of 1922, they gave everybody nicknames. since his last name was parsons, deacon and parsons and deacon was shortened to deek. d-e-k-e or d-e-a-c, depending. >> great. that's helpful. and your mother, tell us about her a little bit. >> she was a many generation navy kid. her father and grandfather had both been admirals and she was used to moving and taking charge. she was a natural athlete. she loved anything to do with athletics. skiing, riding, you name it. you know, you just picked up and moved. >> what was her maiden name?

>> cluverious. >> first name. >> martha. >> maybe you could say it together. >> martha. >> how do you spell it. >> m-a-r-t-h-a. c-l-u-v-e-r-i-u-s. her grandfather was admiral samson, who was a big deal in the spanish-american war. so she was a take charge type. and my father was a more quiet intellectual type. mother was a doer. he was a thinker. i had a younger sister who was full of spunk. i was shy, painfully shy. but i was good at eavesdropping and remembering what i heard. >> okay. tell us now, when did you arrive?

what time of year and what year was that? >> june of '43. and that switchbackroad up the mesa was -- it was terrifying, because the trucks that were going up, since so much was under construction, the trucks had a lower gear than the cars. they would slow further and further down, and the car would start to stall. you were on the edge of this drop. it was -- but my mother, she could handle that. we got up there, and i think this has been written about, but when we got to the first gate to come in, the guards thought they had a spy because my father announced that he was captain parsons, which was true of a navy captain. but it was an army base, and they expected somebody who was a

captain to be wearing the appropriate stuff. and they were very excited that they caught this spy. well, it was just the difference of service. and we went to -- we had a very nice house. i think it was probably the biggest house on bathtub row. los alamos had been a boy school. and there was fuller lodge in the center and then -- i can't remember the number of houses on bathtub row. we were down at the end. and we had the distinction of having two bathtubs. and that got us in a bit of trouble once. because there were only showers in all the army construction. and there was a soldier being released from the hospital. but the nurse told him that he would need to take baths. and he said, well, where?

and she said, mrs. parsons wouldn't mind. the trouble is, she didn't tell my mother. mother arrived home to find this poor soldier in the bathtub, which i'm sure embarrassed him more than it embarrassed her. we lived next door to the oppenheimers. and at times, i guess there were times of great security. and we would have somebody patrolling our house or the oppenheimers' house or two walking around together. but that was kind of hit or miss, i'm sure, dependent on something that was going on. but my mother forgot her pass once. the guard wouldn't let her in her house. it was a magical place to live. i mean, you had no fear.

at first, the army thought that patrolling it with horses would do. but the horses that they got were from kentucky, and the terrain and kentucky horses did not match. so they were left with all these stables. the horses left, but the stables remained. and the stable help remained. so they opened the stables to anybody who wanted to keep a horse there. so that was great. my mother had a horse. they bought me -- well, they bought my sister and me a small horse. and my mother thought she had -- she seemed a little swayback. they said, she has a hay belly. well, she was carrying a foal, so that was very exciting. after school, several days a week, my mother would ride over and my horse would be with her.

she would have the reins. and then i would hop on and off we'd go. and she rode a lot with kitty oppenheimer. so that was -- they were a good pair. quite different, but they both loved riding. and i think kitty liked the fact that my mother was a take charge type and willing to give parties. so there were a lot of visiting firemen that came. and often i would be passing hors d'oeuvres at cocktail parties. i remember that one night i was told, shh, shh, someone named nicholas baker is here. but that was the code name for neils bore. i listened for a while and got both names, and i dare say i passed him cheese and crackers, but i don't remember anything about that.

and after some party, probably a dinner party, somebody gave me a taste of that liqueur, orange curacao. i was maybe 9. and then i was alone one sunday, i opted out of a picnic at bandalltband bandalier. i wassed to read. i thought, gee, i wanted more of that orange curacao. well, it was a locked liquor cabinet. i didn't know where the key was but i saw that there were two silver drawers above it. i removed the drawers and reached in until i pulled the right thing out. when my parents got home, my mother was appalled that i had been drinking at age 9. my father was delighted, because it showed i figured out how to

get the liquor. another time that it was apparent that my father favored brains over good behavior, the famous english physicist sir james chadwick was at los alamos and chadwick had twin daughters age 21 who were -- who had been evacuated from england. and it turned out that my father, who went to washington fairly often, would be taking the same train west as these two british twins. so sir james asked dad to watch out for them. well, british twins of 21 don't want some old guy watching out for them. but the last morning as they were getting up toward the station for santa fe, he sat

with them at breakfast. and they ordered two eggs boiled precisely three minutes each.

going around together and by day our object would be defined courting couples somewhere in the woodland area. and by nightfall. and it was practically every night you'd hear a quartet playing, four scientists getting together in a chamber group. having a marvelous time. it really was a fascinating place to grow up and people were -- my father, who was in

his early 40s, was about the oldest person there and the younger ones kept having babies so there were a great many babies born at los alamos, and i think that the birthplace of record was a p.o. box. and the school was very good. you could get scientists to come and have a junkie school, so it was fun, but i do remember there were iq tests given at the school, and this was something i picked up at a cocktail party. everybody was shocked. the child who tested highest on the iq test was the one who

shovelled in the morning laura and sita. i often wondered what happened to laura and sita. oh, we had -- i told you about the horses. and each day after the hired crew of -- we called them indians from the local pueblo would be carefully checked out. the daily help that could clean and then the men who did -- did wo work. they'd be carefully checked at 4:00 and bussed down to the pueblo, but at night we had first-run movies for ten cents a piece and here in the first row of the movies were all the indians who had been checked

out. they would ride their ponies up and scale the mesa just to see the movies. they weren't spying and a spy under our very roof was our babysitter, clarks fukes and he would come and take care of my sister and me and since we were 5 and 8 wei didn't need much looking after, but we had a piano and he loved playing the piano and that was our babysitter and then when i got a little older i was actually peter oppenheimer's babysitter. i mean, you shouldn't really trust a 10-year-old to baby sit, but you know, with a guard walking around outside what can go wrong? >> so what do you remember of that? can you -- >> oh, and i -- i never had any

trouble with him. i don't remember his sister toni, and maybe later, but we were pretty close to the oppenheimers and the thing that impressed me, chicken pox had been going around and he never had chicken pox so he got it as an adult and he was really sick, but even though he felt like nothing he would still go to work as soon as he was no longer contagious. i reveled in the fact that i could stay out of school with chicken pox and about the first day i had chicken pox i was lying in bed listening to the radio. my mother was out riding, probably, and they broke into

the radio programming to say that president roosevelt had died, and then they immediately went back to their previous scheduled program which seems odd under the circumstances, but i'm pretty sure that's what happened, and when my mother walked in i said, mother, mother, i heard on the radio that roosevelt had died. she said oh, nonsense, you have a fever and you probably imagined it, and i kept trying to tell people that roosevelt had died, but nobody believed me, so the next day she had an all-day ride planned with kitty oppenheimer, and she said are you sure i should go and i had planned a whole day of listening to soap operas and things. i was absolutely infuriated when all of the programming was about about roosevelt.

no soap operas, and when i finally went back to school having gotten hooked on soap operas my mother if she would listen and tell me what happened. she gave me a look as if that was beneath contempt and that was not her thing. and we had two dogs while we were there and one tom cat. in those days i think nobody thought about neutering and spaying. that came later. and our tom cat was a marmalade guy and he appeared to be the father of every litter and one day we got a telephone call from a woman said we have a litter of

kitten s a kittens and taffy could not have been the father and she turned one of the kittens over and it had an orange stomach. taffy got around. i think -- well, after -- after the war we certainly continued our friendship with the oppenheimers and went up to princet princeton. it's hard to remember how often, but the friendship continued and it was fun to go and visit them and i remember i was struggling with my geometry homework and kitty oppenheimer was the one who helped me, so -- and then in

december of '53 my father heard at a cocktail party that oppy had been separated from his youth clearance and he was so upset that he came home and began a heart attack which he checked with the encyclopedia britannica which was his idea of where you go, and it didn't sound as if he had a heart attack and the next morning mother took him to bethesda hospital and he died a week after his 52nd birthday, and of course, oppy did lose his security clearance, and years later when he was reinstated by

being given the feremy award, well, just 50 years ago, just after jfk was assassinated linden johnson chose to present him with the award and mother went to the gathering and of course, there were many, many scientists and people she'd known and all of a sudden secret service man came into the room with a hundred or so people and he said is mrs. parsons here? she thought, what have i done? because of the friendship they wanted her to come in and be with them when the johnsons and the family quarters and then they took her into the award presentation and there's a new book and there she is in the background with the oppenheimers

as he got the award, and i had three little kids then and we were watching on television and there was their grandmother up there in the limelight. but she continued to go and visit the oppenheimers after my father died and one day they said we're going over to the george school in bucks county where peter was a student. i guess he was a boarder, and i suppose everybody who was at this picnic was aware that oppenheimer was somebody special and kept kind of looking at him and mother said she was really embarrassed because oppy got up from the table and said martha, i've got your very favorite thing and mother looked surprised. she said a heineken's beer and the quaker school picnic, that's

not exactly the drink of choice, but it was a lovely thing to have done. any questions? follow-ups? >> yeah. these are great stories. i want to ask about everybody and everything. let's start back with what it was like to live on bathtub row. were you one of the only children there? >> oh, no. no. i think it's hard for me to remember the bradburies were just up the way. they were on bathtub row and lois bradbury, when i first knew her had two boys, james and john and then when the third child was with one of the scientists at the party said you have to keep with the jay js so how abo

jesus and jamath, and it turned out to be, i believe, david, but everybody had young children on bathtub row. the younger unmarried ones were living elsewhere and in pretty miserable housing. we had an asparagus bed, a fenced-in vegetable garden. we had quite a nice place. and -- >> so what special locations do you remember? did you ever go down to otowee bridge? >> oh, yeah. yeah, too. not to have dinner there, but if i had been as far as i can remember, a really well-behaved

child for a year i would be taken to santa fe to the the -- no, sorry, that was pueblo. to la fonda for lunch. that was the big deal. so did that happen? were yoi you a good girl for a year? >> i was a nerd. i was boringly good. i don't think my sister ever got taken because she was more adventurous and naughty. >> what kind of adventures did she -- >> oh, god. all you had to say was don't jump off that, and she would do it. she fell off her horse early on, so i was the rider and she was not, but you know, i remember we were going to some kind of potluck supper at school and my

mother had made devilled eggs. so, of course, my sister and i'm sure it was an accident, she stepped in the devilled eggs. so that -- that made life a little difficult for her. i did try to cook at los alamos. our mother was not a cook and i would get a cookbook and my sister would be the lookout. when mother came home she didn't want to catch us messing up the kitchen, but i would try to make -- i can't remember if it was brownies or fudge. probably brownies because they had to rise and following the joy of cooking which was not written for that altitude, i made the worst mess. even my sister and i couldn't eat it and when she called out that mother was coming, i would quickly ditch the pan of failed

brownies on a lilac bush outside the back door and then quickly clean it up and since mother didn't come in the kitchen first thing, we had time to clean up, but years later when i went back to the house i think it was 12 years later i checked the health of the lilac and apparently it liked my cooking even though it was inedible, but fairly often, and it's hard for me to remember how often, although there was rationing, you could go to fuller lodge and have a very good dinner. roast beef, i mean -- we didn't suffer the way the rest -- i think they wanted the scientists to be well fed. and i can't remember whether that dinner at fuller lodge was

open to everybody or not. general groves would show up now and then and he was a terrific administrat administrator. i mean, he got the pentagon built and then he was the head of the manhattan project, but he was basically, i would describe his personality as bully, and there was an army colonel, maybe. whitney ashbridge who i think was a graduate at westpoint and a very nice fellow, but groves was a regular army officer and ashbridge was maybe engineering duty on light so groves looked down on him. and one morning at inspection time he and groves were marching along, the soldiers were coming

by and grove saw a piece of trash blowing and ordered ashbridge to pick up the trash in front of the troops which was really demeaning, and i remember my father talking about what a nasty thing that was, and after the war my parents would still see groves, and they would play tennis with groves and his daughter. groves was the kind of tennis player who did cuts and nasty shots. his daughter gwen, she was a good player, but i remember general groves asking me -- he said would you like me to send your father back to los alamos? well, since i loved them. yes, yes, yes. he was just fooling, you know, typical bully type, taking advantage of a kid's enthusiasm.

um -- i don't think i have anything more, but -- >> tell me about the relationship between your father and groves. they had worked together before the war? i don't think so. i think groves asked bush for his suggestion and first, of course, being in an army base they wanted an army ordinance expert, but bush said the guy you need is parsons. well, groves was more interested in somebody who could do the job than somebody, and my father ended up with quite a few people from dahlgren which was a navy base because he knew their capabilities, and ashworth was navy. bradbury he brought from

dahlgr dahlgren, and the trouble was the army and the navy ranks don't match up. so my father when he went off the base was required to have a driver with security clearance, and he would call for a driver, and he'd say this is captain parsons. the guy at the other end at the motor pool would say no cars for captains because -- so eventually that would get worked out, and i remember one hair-raising trip. there was a secured driver. he had the right clearance, but he didn't know how to drive properly. so we got through the guard house and the minute we were out of sight my father said son, you sit here, i'll drive. so that -- but since my father's family lived in new mexico we

would go with permission to albuquerque for thanksgiving once or twice and -- there was a lot of social life. there was squaredancing a, and think bernice brode and they had squaredances and they would invite the indians and the alfonso pueblo to come up and observe the squaredances and then we would be invited to go down there to see their dances and so a lot was going on and one night i came home from a dance and got violently ill. apparently, i'd been bitten by a black widow spider playing outside, and i was taken to the hospital in an ambulance.

when you're 10 that's a big deal, and of course, my parents feared for my life, but i just thought, hey, this is exciting. and, you know, i recovered in a day or two, but that was the best, yes, about what had happened. there was a pool at los alamos, a pond and a child about my age drowned and the pond. so they built a wonderful swimming pool and we had lessons and could do that, but mostly for me it was riding, and i just lived at the stable. i mean, waiting for the horse to produce the foal, but being the nerd i was when it was 8:00, i had to go home and the foal was born at 9:00. so i missed it, but that was

fun, and probably my judgments of adults were skewed because there was a famous scientist, george castowski and he had a very nasty horse. so i assumed he was a nasty man, but probably not so, but the people who rode just -- i'd forgotten whether you paid $9 or $18 a month to keep a horse there and practically every horse had its own stable boy and when my horse's foal turned out to be male we named him for our stable boy, charlie, who was a delightful guy. >> were these stable boys -- where did they come from? were they -- they were army. they -- i think maybe they'd

come from kentucky, but they adjusted better to los alamos than the horses that they brought from kentucky. and i guess i just didn't know what was going on nor did my mother. my father came and went. he went to washington quite often and groves -- i don't know whether he was nervous, for some reason he was nervous about air transport, so you always traveled by train and that was considered safe and the trains were pretty nice then, and i never got to leave los alamos except to go to albuquerque or santa fe, but who cared to leave? it was paradise. and in my years there i never saw a rattlesnake. i understand there are some

there, but i guess that's -- >> did you feel that you were living, you know, in a highly secure and military-run place? were you aware as a child of this? since we'd moved from dahlgren where there was a guard house it seemed normal to me. there was the inner sanctum called the technical area where the man worked and my sister, of course, hooted with superiority when she couldn't say it properly and she called it technic malaria, but you know, you just felt safe, but i'd felt safe in other places, and i --

and when my father left for the test and then to go to drop the bomb, you know, it was just another absence and there were many sort of false v.j. day and the rumors would go around that the japanese had surrendered. not so. i don't remember that that -- we were more interested than v.j. day than v.e. day, but -- i vaguely remember my father had been on the mission and you know, so can i ride today, mom? kind of thing and because he died so young i never really talked to him much about it. the one thing i learned later, was there a physics lab named for him at johns hopkins, and i

got a tape of the dedication and he described the hiroshima run as a typical person's job. my father was every possible, the worst-case scenario planning and everything went like clockwork partly because of the planning and partly because of luck, and then i realized that that must be in some way a genetic treat because when i'm going some place i plan it all carefully and worst-case scenario and i think yeah, he was dropping the first atomic bomb. i'm just going to do errands, but if you're genetically made up that way you -- that's the way you behave. i did see oppenheimer once

fairly late in his life. i was working at harvard after i graduated from college and oppy came to give lecture, and i believe it was 1957 and of course, he was mobbed. the theater was they had to broadcast it to other buildings, but my mother had said i had to go speak to him afterward, and still being i was -- being a nerd you do what your mother has told you. so after this jam-packed lecture i went out and he was surrounded by the top physicists in the inner circle and then many concentric circles and i stood on the outside and since i look exactly like my mother, he looked through all these people

and said is it peggy and the multitudes parted and we had a sort of cryptic conversation about los alamos and people and physics students followed me out of the lecture. who is this woman? so that was fun, and i could call my mother and tell her that i'd spoken to oppy, but that was the last time i saw him. and he was just -- well, he was god to the fiphysicists and to e people who knew him and just casually like me. so the stories are that 23 kitty was not disposed to be the host for a party that it would go to your mother and your parents. how would this work and what were those parties like? well, as long as i didn't spill

the hors d'oeuvres i was passing. i think my parents' parties were more stayed. those were the parties for visiting firemen like neil spore and everybody behaved and i think the scientists worked so hard all week and you worked saturdays and then saturday nights the parties for the firemen which were not held at our house were pretty heavy drinking and -- yeah, but fun and a way to relax the tension. i don't -- i never heard of anybody being described as an alcoholic, but there were plenty of heavy drinkers, but that was just maybe saturday night. so -- but i wasn't passing any hors d'oeuvres at those parties.

were you allowed to be part of it? >> just when the parties were at our house. i mean, i was ten years old. after the war was over we moved to washington and the hardest part of leaving los alamos was being told i had to take my beloved mayor dolly out and show off her pieces to prospective buyers, that's pretty tough on a 10-year-old. there's no way you can take a horse to washington. and my mother had a rule. you traveled with your dogs and you found homes for cats and horses and that was the way it was, and it just, it's -- it's impossible to imagine what a beautiful place it was once i got used to the lack of vines and that kind of thing.

every time we go to santa fe, we take the back road through that giant -- have you ever been to valle grande? that has to be one of the most spectacular places, and a few years had gone and i'm a huge pbs fan, and i automatically turn on public television, and there was a wonderful -- i would say it was no more than half an hour long documentary called sky island about valle grande and maybe a little bit about bandolier, but it was narrated by meryl streep and a native american and it was beautifully done, but i think part of the reason that that is such a special spot is that it's probably the highest point in

the land and it somehow catches precipitation as the air rises because being a horticulture teacher, that's one of the few places where there was truly a three-layered vegetation, trees, shrubs and grasses. not close together the way they are in the east, but much more so than other places out there and that to me made it very special. we went over there once. now they have cattle raising there. when i was a kid, i'm certain it was sheep because we went once and it was during sheep shearing and i was horrified because they'd nick the sheep and the

wool would be bloody and for a 10-year-old, you don't forget that. but it would be an all-day ride to get over there, and that would be something special. >> on horseback? >> uh-huh. and mother and kitty would sometimes see mountain lions over there and then we would -- we would go to various festivals, indian things and i was always terrified. there were some indians who had obviously had a little too much to drink and would come up to my mother. she could handle anything. my father was always working, so he wasn't part of that, but it's hard to imagine a better place to grow up than los alamos.

moving to washington later was a big comedown city, schools weren't as good and that kind of thing. >> what about the hispanic community that surrounds los alamos. i understand many of them worked in the lab and -- >> yeah. there were -- well, laurencita gonzalez who had the highest iq in the school and roberto sandoval and he was offended or his mother was when he was referred to as a mexican. spanish-american was the preferred designation, so i caught on to that, and boys -- i

was a pretty good student and boys were the -- girls grow up faster than boy, and i couldn't believe some of the stupid things boys did. somebody invited me. i can't remember one of the scientists, sons invite mead to come over to glass blowing and it was boring and he ended up cutting a little place in his wrist and putting a piece of glass under, and i thought how can these -- i thought boys were next to subhuman. i mean, why did they do such dumb things? sort of like my sister, always putting your foot in the devilled eggs or something. some were nice, the bradbury boys were very nice and there was a simm allenson i used to play with and joanna. it was a nice group of kids, but

riding was my chief. riding and doing school work and -- little gardening. so -- riding in ambulances. >> so you mentioned your -- throughout your life you met oppenheimer when he was speaking at harvard. how much did you interact with him when you were a child other than serving hors d'oeuvres and you were baby-sitting. you know, he would come over to our house and we'd go there, but much more memorable are the times we went to princeton because it would be the oppys and us and me trying to do my geometry homework, and i think

kitty came down -- they came down to washington once, and mother and kitty and i went out to lunch and then kitty said she had to do some shopping so we went with her and i was absolutely astounding and our family is well-fleshed and as i remember, kitty could only buy size 5 underwear and we had bigger underwear, so that stuck in my mind, and kitty -- this was the beginning of the sort of mccarthy era, and i think kitty felt guilty because she had been a communist and she said to my mother, do you think they're down on robert because he's jewish? well, i don't think that could possibly have been the case, but the fact that his brother was communist and kitty had been a communist, she wanted to find

some other reason which is perfectly human. and -- i once asked lois bradbury when i was an adult. in fact, we had a child who graduated from college in colorado and we went down to show him new mexico after graduation, and we went to call on the bradburies, and i said to lois, why is she always portrayed as such an unpleasant person? that wasn't my memory of kitty at all and lois said that's easy. she respected your mother. she liked your mother. she was a completely different person with your mother than she was with other women, although i understand from reading a book she would have brief friendships with people and then drop them,

but that was not the case with my mother. i don't think she was a natural mother, and i gather she drank too much, but it was hard on wives because husbands worked so hard and luckily kitty had riding, but -- >> it sounds like your mother was also very energetic and engaged so she -- >> yeah. she took well to the isolation -- >> oh, yeah. from the time she was a kid she had grown up on navy bases and having a husband or a father who was away a lot of the time so it was a natural. i do remember, and i can't be sure just who this was, but i

suspect that since ashworth was the weaponeer on the nagasaki flight it had to have been his wife and she heard that ashford, my father, that he had decided to be the weaponeer on the first and ashburn on the second and this woman who i knew, but not well, came over one night and she burst into tears asking my father to change his mind and not send her husband on this dangerous mission. well, an adult bursting into tears? i didn't know adults cried and so that made a big impression on me, and of course, that flight was fraught with peril for various reasons. and allen bradbury was thinking

of making a move owe that flight and it was interesting because it didn't go like clockwork and barely made it back. it was really the been that you would like to see a movie about because so much happened. i think one of the planes, as allen said, one of the planes that was supposed to rendezvous at a certain altitude got the altitude wrong and circled and circled. meantime, the other planes were using up fuel circling at the stated altitude and finally the plane that had gotten it wrong figured the others had not made it, turned, headed home and eventually broke radio silence and said the other plane his never arrived. therefore, it was assumed that they'd gone down at sea.

so, did allen tell you this? yeah. good, because i thought that was a fascinating story, and they landed practically on fumes at the end, and were not expected back. so -- >> she was right to be worried. >> yeah. right. >> indeed. did your father ever talk about being the weapon ear on a noah gate? >> well, the thing that amused me, he armed the bomb in flight, and my father literally could not fix a leaking faucet. so the irony of his doing that and then he brought home two fuses, a green and a red one that he had taken out and then general groves came out to take my mother out to dinner when she was a widow and he said i want

to take those and have them cataloged. of course, that was the last we ever saw of those, and i dare say that was right. they belonged in a museum, but when i went down to see the right at the smithsonian, you know, sure enough there were things like that so i wrote a little note saying those matched up with my recollection. slipped it in the suggestion box which probably went in a circular file because i never heard anything more about it, and then we went out at that huge museum outside washington and saw the -- i'm afraid i always sort of pooh poohed tibbits' role because he spent the rest of his career on the basis of having been a pilot.

on the other hand, when i saw the nola that was one impressive plane and he must have been the best of the best, but i always thought they were the delivery crew and not the bomb people. he was speaking in philadelphia once, and i certainly wasn't going to go and hear that and pay to hear it. so scientists, i certainly respected and once i saw the inola, and i guess the b-29s were not that safe either, so it really was -- it was something. i'll give him his due, at last, now that he's dead. i wonder if there were any

people on that mission who were still alive? >> one. >> one? >> dutch van kirk. >> he was the navigator or what was he? >> i'm sorry? >> was he the navigator? >> i think so. >> okay. >> yeah, but -- let's see -- i guess your father also was in a small plane to be the scientific observer at the trinity test? >> he never talked about that and there was the old loose lips sinks ships and then one ironic thing, i went to the post office one day and they were taking down posters and replacing them

with some other war poster and i asked if i could have one and i put it over my bed and i can still remember what it said. wipe that jap off the map, and i thought, gee, prophetic. i mean, in those days all you cared about was ending the war and i've heard scombrap these people saying that it was a good thing that we dropped the atomic bombs because that saved american lives and certainly american, but i have mixed feelings about that. we are the only country in the world that ever used atomic weapons. so i fit right in at a quaker retirement home. >> did your -- i guess your

father didn't talk much so you didn't have a sense of what he felt. >> i don't think he ever regretted having worked on it and at one time as a little kid i said i was maybe 11. i said, how did the atomic bomb work so we got out physics books and we went through. it went over my head pretty quickly. another time i asked him how to play chess, and he didn't want to sit down and do something. elementary, he got out the encyclopedia britannica and they had all the moves of the world chess championship of the year, the latest year and the encyclopedia britannica had been published, the one we had and he said now you do this and i do

this. and i was infuriated at the end and he said oh, i won. i thought at least he could have given me the winning. so that was my first and only chess game. how to kill a kid's interest in one easy step, but he took everything we asked seriously, so -- and my mother was forever trying to teach us how to play games. my sister was a better athlete than i was, but -- horseback riding was about all i mastered and then flower shows in later life. >> tell me about -- you mentioned on the phone, sunday picnics at the bandolier national. >> oh, yes. we used to go.

we'd pack a lunch and go off in the jeep and not always to bandolier, but the trouble was my mother would take a new york times along to use this fire, fuel starter and we'd pick up and my sister and i would be sent out to find small ticks and things. the trouble was my father, although beawe'd already read t new york times before he burned it she'd have to re-read it which infuriated my mother and we'd have hot dogs or hamburgers or something like that and the strange thing was that the two things that were his bibles, the encyclopedia britannica and "the new york times," after the drop on hiroshima, the new york times published his picture.

only they got -- they asked the navy for a picture and it was the wrong william s. parsons. my mother found that hardly amusing. >> and he -- how did he find out? i don't really remember. i knew, you know in those days mothers had the responsibility of raising children so -- and with hardworking fathers that was a natural and i dare say there were a fair number of working women at los alamos, but most i knew were housewives. and they were the mothers of my friends. so was lois bradbury a good friend of your family? >> yeah. i think because they -- they'd known each other in algren,

virginia, and my father had gotten norris bradbury to come, but yeah. i would say probably her closest friend was kitty because of the riding. i mean, if my mother wasn't hitting a ball or skiing she wanted to be on a horse, so -- and luckily i was good at riding. >> did peter ride or was he too little? >> he was too little, i think. and kitty -- she wasn't a natural mother. i mean, the kids stayed with babysitters and she would go off. and i dare say my mother was perfectly intelligent, but no intellectual. kitty wasmore intellectual than mother, but that's not a barrier

when you're on horseback. and let's see -- anything else i can remember about the -- going to see my friends at the army apartments they did not have it -- those apartments were not very nice places to live. and it must have been a struggle to cook and all that, but i was -- you know, i wasn't aware of that. who worries about that at age 10? >> so how many children were in the school at your age? you were older than the other kids born, obviously. >> i was in fourth, fifth and sixth grades and all i remember were these boys who were not paying attention.

they didn't study for the spelling tests and that kind of thing, and it just, well, we certainly had one -- i believe it was a high school, but i don't know. i left in sixth grade and because there were no houses available in washington, we lived in wooster, mass, for three months and i had three months in los alamos, three months in wooster and then three months in washington, at the end of sixth grade, and that leaves great gaps in your education when you keep changing schools. i have yet to study grammar any place. it was either the thing that they had just finished studying when i arrived or were about to study when i left, so it's -- but you certainly, i think, get

an education living in different parts of the world. and hearing that you're not worth much if you can't understand why eggs aren't cooked after boiling three minutes at 7,000-some hundred feet altitude. >> you had mentioned something -- you didn't talk about that, sorry. any more comments on claus fukes? >> all i remember is the man simply came and played the piano while my sister and i could get to all sorts of stuff upstairs, but i really have very little recollection of him except that he was there and my parents felt comfortable going off with him playing the piano.

who played the piano in your family? i did a bit, but the piano came with the house, i'm pretty sure. we would not have moved a piano out from virginia. now, i was reading the notes that katrina mason had made on you, and other children. she talked about john bradbury who talked about the stress, pressure and urgency of the project as it was passed down to the kids. you get the sense of that. >> i never felt that. >> okay. actually, no one will -- here are my questions so it might not and maybe you can say. well, he may have been more in tune with things and i certainly was much more in tune with daily

life, and my father came and went so much that i just accepted that and perhaps the closest i came to sensing stress was when oppy had to go to work despite the fact that he was just trying to recover from chicken pox. that seemed a little strange, when you have a long time at home listening to practice, and this man has to go to war. >> the designer of these things, i think oppy would have enjoyed listening to soap operas, but i didn't even know why they were called soap operas. it was because they were for housewives and the advertisements were for soapbox, a doll and things like that, so that's why they're called the soaps. i am not -- i'm a pbs listener

now. i don't do series. >> actually, i think we've done a great job. >> well -- >> can i ask a question? >> yes, please. >> what about oppenheimer made your father respect him so much? >> oh, i think the fact that he was such a serious scientist and also a good administrator which nobody -- nobody knew, you know, when he was hired, who knew he would be a good administrator and he was also a wonderful role model and an inspiration for the other scientists which certainly helped with things so that was -- it was hard to know since

my father was rather a quiet person and didn't ever share emotions. i guess i'm relatively clueless, as my children would say and even my grandchildren. >> so, but your father and oppenheimer had a very close relationship, is that correct? >> yeah. and i guess my father in some ways was oppy's deputy so they talked a lot and i'm sure there were disagreements about how to proceed with this, that and the other, and they probably talked over things, and i knew the fair maze. i mean, for years, every time a

famous scientist's name appeared i thought oh, i knew him. >> so do you have any recollection about >> i remember laura fermi. i don't think they lived there. bathtub row went to people who came first. and fermi was at the university of chicago so he maybe came later. certainly he was a very highly respected scientist. it just seemed that mostly you knew the people on bathtub row and the people who had children your age, that was the natural way. and your parents' friends so. and, as i say, the only social

life i saw among adults was the visiting fireman that my mother would do. she wasn't much of a cook. i can't imagine what she served, but i think drink was more important than food at those things. and of course, i don't know whether this has been written about, but the effect of alcohol at that altitude, it hits you much faster if you're not used to drinking there. so visiting firemen would be disarmed quickly with a few drinks. >> when you use the expression visiting firemen, what are you -- >> well, somebody like niels bohr who wasn't there. it's hard for me to remember just why we gave those cocktail parties.

the niels bohr one sticks out in my mind. and figuring out the liquor closet kind of thing, but, my mother having this military background, she was a natural to organize things. >> so how did she communicate with folks when it was time for a cocktail party? did they send notes around? >> i have no idea. >> was there a telephone? >> oh, yeah. mm-hm. >> was it a party line? >> i don't remember that it was. we had party lines in maine, but i don't, i think that was my first experience with a party line. and once my mother was permitted

to go and visit her father back in massachusetts, and my sister and i both wore braids. and she said, can you braid the girls' hair, and my father said yes. and she laughed, and he said, i guess it was knitting i knew, not braiding. so i don't know who braided our hair. but pigtails were the way to go. and we had some really nice teachers. i think the school was set up by a chicago -- i don't know whether it was a private school, a lab school, something like that. but they send a whole batch of teachers, and they had built a nice, instead of the junky apartments and quonset huts, we had a nice school. >> and where was the school located?

>> well, i don't know. i just walked there every day. and then usually rode after school. so my mother could come. one of the dogs would sometimes come with us on the rides. and i hung around the stables a lot. the stable boys were extremely friendly and pleasant. and the horses, except for hojnowski's horse. >> was his a different horse? >> well, the explanation given was that he had been castrated late in life.

he was either angry about it or still had the charge. you stayed away from him. and mares with foals he would not be very nice to the foals. so i suspect that's as good as an explanation as any. but, histi liked him, so. >> alice, do you have any questions you'd like to ask? >> could you maybe talk a little bit about how your father became such an expert in ordinance? do you know anything about that? >> well, he was a regular line officer in the navy and eventually had a cruiser division. but he was, he was very bright

guy in the science over the, over literature. and i think he taught that at the post graduate school of annapolis when he and my mother first met. and certainly, when they needed someone to work on the proximity fuse, and he was the naval proving ground in dahlgren, you're ordered to go up, and he drove to washington every day, which was no mean feat in those days, so i saw very little of him. and then, because of that, he was picked for los alamos. and when he died, he was deputy chief of the bureau of ordinance, so it all came together.

>> so, do you think we've covered everything? >> certainly everything i can think of. >> you did a wonderful job. >> well, anecdotes. >> yeah. this is nice. it helps create a nice portrait of los alamos. >> and i was, you know, a month or so short of my 11th birthday when we left, so it, i think your memories are skewed a bit, but i, i remember a lot. i asked my sister if she would be interested, and she said no. it was too early in her life. she wouldn't remember stepping on the devilled eggs, i'm sure. she's blocked that out. >> you had said the d-day and japan was a big day. >> yeah. >> were you aware of what your dad's involvement was?

how long after? >> i guess my mother field me. but it was matter of factly. but vj-day was, first all these false vj-days. and then finally the real one. and fireworks. i mean, that was, that was it. i probably still had wiped that jap off the map on the wall behind my bed. so. but, you know, when you're a kid, you're so involved in your own life. you don't sort of, and what your mother says goes, and your father comes and goes. so i do remember when he went to the tests at bikini after world

war ii was over, i've forgotten when the bikini tests were. and we were in maine that summer. and we didn't have a telephone. but we went to the little store that was a short walk away, and there was a telegram. and the poor man at the store knew our family well. and the ranking naval officer, i guess, at the bikini tests was an admiral blanding, and the telegraph operator who sent the telegram that the poor man had to hand to my mother, it said flying east with blondie. and my mother thought nothing of it. she figured out what it was, but the poor man just, he was so embarrassed. he thought my father was flying

east with a bimbo. i remember his embarrassment. a nice maine guy having to deliver this awful news. you're watching american history tv. all weekend, every weekend, on c-span3. to join the conversation, like us on facebook @cspanhistory. >> many of the republican and democratic presidential candidates visited this year's iowa state fair in des moines. coming up, we look back to the 1988 presidential race where seven democratic candidates participated in a debate at the fair. speakers include joe biden, al gore, richard gephardt, jesse jackson, bruce babbitt, paul simon, and michael dukakis who went on to win the democratic nomination but lost to vice president george h.w. bush in the general election.

this is two hours. >> thank you. i, too, would like to welcome everyone to the economics of america debate. the forum we believe will help iowans be better informed about some of the presidential candidates prior to the iowa caucuses. getting down to the business, let me introduce the candidates and may i ask that there be no applause in the interest of saving time. with that in mind, starting on my immediate right, senator joseph r. biden jr. of delaware. please, we save time for the candidates to speak. next to him, we have former arizona governor bruce babbitt. jesse jackson. massachusetts governor michael dukakis.