Interviewee(s): Robert Carter
Interviewer(s): Nick Coviello, Lorenz Iversen, and Liz Wiley
Transcriber: Nick Coviello
Date of Interview: 06/13/16
Location of Interview: Carter’s House
Interview Accession Number: SQ-2016-Carter-Robert-I-01
Feelings about the Nuclear Bomb
Liz Wiley: Did you have any idea of the weight of the project while you were
working on it?
Robert Carter: Well at the beginning of the project there was a lot of uncertainty
among the scientist whether a nuclear bomb was even feasible or whether it could
be build, or whether the certain parameters involved were sufficient to make it
function as a bomb. So, that was a large part of the investigations at the beginning.
Then when it became more and more certain that the bomb would in fact detonate,
then we started to try and understand the magnitude of the explosion and the
results of it-the mechanical effects of the explosion. So, we realized if it worked as
we had predicted it would be a huge explosion. A bigger explosion than mankind
had ever seen before.
LW: What was your emotional reaction to that?
RC: I guess it was partially scientific inquisition whether or not to go ahead and do it
if it were possible and then also, a little bit of concern for how it would be used by
the U.S. government if and when it was possible to build one. I don’t remember in
terms it being used to kill a lot of people. I don’t remember thinking that through
very much at the time.
LW: I imagine there is a great sense of pride having all of these scientific discoveries,
was that a part of it for you?
RC: That was a large part of it, yes.
LW: You seem very scholarly. You went through all of your college, and then your
graduate career. It’s very impressive. And when the bomb you had been working
on was actually put to use –when it was dropped, what was that experience like for
you?
RC: The first one that dropped on Japan? I guess I was surprised that the United
States government had actually done it on a city. And I guess I thought golly a bomb
is supposed to be used on the military instillations and military people, it’s not
supposed to be used on cities with civilians. I guess that was my immediate reaction.
Communications with Family
RC: Did your family know about the project you were working on
LW: Did you have any parameters on letting them know, or were you not allowed to
communicate?
RC: We weren’t allowed to tell anyone what we were doing, and all of our mail- we
were allowed to exchange mail, but all of our mail was kind of censored. What was
done was that there was an office at Los Alamos and all incoming mail went through
that office. Military officers opened up everybody’s mail and incoming mail. They
scanned and looked through it for any comments or questions or difficulties that
might release in some way or might indicate that someone outside knew what was
going on at the project. Then the outgoing mail, all the mail that we sent out- we
were not allowed to seal the envelopes. We would post it into a special mail box,
which would go through that same office, and they would look through it to make
sure we weren’t releasing some kind of classified information. So my mother and I
exchanged information- letters, I guess not very frequently. I wasn’t a very good
correspondent.
LW: You had a lot of learning to do.
RC: Well not only that but I was kind of lazy as far as correspondence was
concerned, but we exchanged mail. Actually one event did happen that was kind of
unique and connected with me, and that was a letter that my mother had sent to me.
It went through the security people. They cut out a few words that were in my
mother’s letter to me, and when I got it then I remember I opened it and I held it up
and there were 3 or 4 of us sitting in an office. So I held it up and said “look what
they did to my letter” and one of the professor level people looked at it and said
“Bob come on” and he grabbed me by the hand and we ran to Robert Oppenheimer’s
office and he was the director of Los Alamos laboratory program, and we ran to his
office. I remember he had an inner office and a secretary in the outer part of his
office, and this man and I came running in and she said “can I help you?” and this
man who had me by the hand said “no” and we burst right into Oppenheimer’s office
and my friend held the letter up and said “look what they did to Bob’s letter”.
Oppenheimer jumped up and the 3 of us went over to the office that was in a
different building where the censor people were, and I remember Oppenheimer
pointed to the officer who was in charge of that office and said “Don’t you dare ever
do something like this again!”. Then he said “find all the pieces that have been cut
out of this letter”. The poor man, he was a major, or a lieutenant colonel in the army,
and he said “I’m sorry he pieces were probably put in the trash and I have no way of
locating them now” so I never did find out what was cut out of my letter, but I was
not much a historian, and over the next several months I had thrown the letter away.
Whereas if I had kept it these days it probably would be a priceless relic from the
war.
Leaving Los Alamos
RC: After the two bombs had been dropped on Japan, within about a week Japan
surrendered. And when the bombs were dropped there was a lot of publicity in the
news media about it all. In the U.S. all the newspapers were given handouts to
publicize the existence of these nuclear bombs. So, the whole world knew about
them then.
And the people in the laboratory on the whole decided, okay, our work is
finished. The war’s ended, the bombs worked, the war’s ended, and that’s what we
were here for. So, now we’ll go back to our real lives. And a large fraction of the
employees at Los Alamos had been professors at universities in various fields, like
physics, chemistry, mathematics, metallurgy, and things of that sort. There were
various scientific disciplines required to make a successful nuclear bomb.
So, a large fraction of them said, okay, now I’m going back to my university. I
was on leave to work on this war effort. A lot of them packed up within a couple of
months or so and left. And, I had decided I wanted to go back to graduate school.
One of the professors I had worked with there at Los Alamos invited me to go to the
University of Illinois, where he was a full professor – that was his career, he had just
taken a leave of absence to work at Los Alamos during the war. So, he was going
back to University of Illinois, and I went with him as a graduate student. In about a
year, year-and-a-half, I met a fellow graduate student. Whom I married.
She and I were both graduate students then, and in about a year we had a
baby. And for various reasons I decided not to continue my graduate work, but to go
back to work at Los Alamos.
The man I had worked with mostly out there wanted me to come back. He
stayed. He did not go back, and he had been a professor at Purdue; he stayed at Los
Alamos the rest of his career. And he wanted me to come back. Which I did.
So, I went back to Los Alamos with my wife and child, and we had other
children. We stayed there for about fifteen years. I was working in the laboratory.
After another fifteen years we moved to Bethesda, [Maryland], in the early
1960s.
It was not easy, and I had mixed feelings about leaving at the end of the war
to go back to graduate school. You know, I enjoyed the country side, the living
conditions, the working conditions, the type of work, the people I was working with
– all of these things at Los Alamos. So, it was a little bit difficult to leave all of that to
go back to mundane Illinois…and study again. Studying was fun, but it was so much
different than working at the laboratory in Los Alamos.
It defined the rest of my life.
Buildings on Washington College Campus
RC: William Smith (Washington College), and the three dormitories [East Hall,
Middle Hall, West Hall], Reid Hall, the old Cain Gymnasium, and Hodson Hall, were
the only buildings [on campus], when I was there at first. And then Bunting, and
Dunning Hall were built, I think, my sophomore year.
So, my freshman year, and the beginning of my sophomore year, the classes
were in William Smith Hall – even the laboratory stuff. And the library was in the
basement of William Smith Hall. And I had a campus job.
In those days there was a federal program, I think it was called The National
Youth Administration, and it provided money for colleges to employ students; it
provided the money for paying the students. Basically, I was the janitor in the
library.
Everyday, late in the day, I’d go to the library, and I’d vacuum in the stacks,
and sweep, and do janitorial work.
My sophomore year, when Bunting Hall was built, it was built as a library.
The librarian called me in, in the fall, and she said, “Bob, I want you to plan moving
the books to the new building.” And I thought, “How do I – I don’t know how to move
books!” But I thought about it.
There was a caretaker, who lived just off campus. And, he had a big shop
where he made pieces, and parts, and things for if something broke on campus, in
one of the dormitories or in one of the buildings. So I went and I talked to him and
we designed and built some carrying boxes to carry the books. They were boxes
about two feet wide and about three feet long, with bars nailed to the sides so two
students could get between them and carry them – one in front and one behind. I
built several of those. And then I hired some of the students to come back at
Christmas time, to be laborers, to carry the books from William Smith to Bunting
Hall. It worked.
I also was not large enough, or fast enough, to play football, but I enjoyed the
game of football. So, I volunteered to help the coach with carrying equipment out to
the field, and things like that. After a game, when the players would take off their
sweaty, dirty jerseys, and stuff, I gathered them up and sent them off to the laundry.
I did that all four years. Except, my senior year, I was in charge of that kind of
activity. I was, what was called, the Student Manager of the football team my senior
year. I went to all games, and was in charge of collecting the fare at the home games.
I was sort of an assistant to the coach, in a way – making sure the team had all their
equipment, and making sure the footballs were properly inflated.
I don’t know for sure what happened, but there were very few males
students in 1943, 44, and 1945 too, when the war was going on, because most ablebodied men of college age were drafted. So, there were very few males students who
were physically capable of playing football. I think the football program died during
that time. Soccer sort of replaced football after world war two.
One of the boys who started the soccer program had been my understudy in
soccer during high school. Then, after the war he went to Washington College and
helped started the soccer program as an undergraduate student.
Effect of Rationing on Washington College
RC: We were allocated sugar, and, I think, coffee, and maybe some other items. We
were allocated tickets in order to be able to purchase some. My memory is, we had
to turn them over to the college, because at that time all meals were served at
Hodson Hall. There was no cafeteria system, it was sit-down meals at tables. And
students were waiters. I worked as waiter quite a lot of the time in Hodson Hall. I
earned my meals by working as a waiter. I had several jobs; I didn’t have much
income, my dad didn’t have much income. So, I had quite a few jobs.
Campus along the Chester River
RC: The head of the business office – the comptroller, I guess he was called – I think
it was the end of my sophomore year – he called me in at final exam time. He said,
“Mr. Carter, you still owe us some money. And the college rules are that you are not
allowed to take your final exams until you’ve paid all your bills.” He said, “I’m sorry I
have to tell you this, but, you still owe us some money.”
And I remember I said, “I don’t have any money, and I’ve talked to my dad,
and he doesn’t have any money. I guess I’m not going to be able to take my exams.”
He reached into his desk, pulled out his check book, and wrote a check to the
college for the balance that I owed.
Three weeks later, at the end of June, I went back to Chestertown and took
his son camping along the Chester River. One of my many jobs (chuckles).