Wilmington, delaware. My family had a Construction Business there, which was quite old. It is still in business. And i went to school in delaware, i went to the university of delaware. So my history basically was in delaware before i went into the service. Now i tried to enlist in the service the minute we were attacked by japan. But i was colorblind. And i could not get in. But they had what they called the enlisted reserve corps. Which they let College Students go into with the idea that you would serve a basic training and then you would go back to school, and the thinking was maybe this war wasnt going to go too far. So you would go back to school and you would start again wherever you left off. I went to try to enlist, but i was colorblind. Had to go back. Finally i got in the army. But i was restricted in what i could do. I went to texas for basic training. I spent 16 weeks in texas. They sent me from texas to the university of connecticut to continue my education. And unfortunately, when i got to the university in connecticut, i had had everything they were teaching. I had already been through it. So i reported to them that i was wasting my time. And they suggested that they would send me up to m. I. T. That is what happened. They sent me to m. I. T. I did my job at m. I. T. From m. I. T. , i was sent to nyu. And from nyu, i went to los alamos. Tell me the process of well, first of all, what were you studying at m. I. T. And nyu . Eugene i was basically in engineering the whole time. That is what i had done in college. I was a Civil Engineer. I graduated before i went to m. I. T. And nyu. Ok. And then once you finished at nyu, tell me about how did you end up at los alamos . Eugene well, i was just selected one day. The officers came to our class. I guess it was at nyu. And they interviewed us, and one of them said you are going to go on an assignment someplace else. We will just give you your orders in a few days and will be out of here. That is when they picked me to go to oak ridge, tennessee, which is where i went to, and from there i started out and went to los alamos. But i went by train, no air conditioning. We ended up in new mexico, it was about 16, 20 miles from los alamos. They picked us up in army trucks and delivered us to los alamos. That is how i got there. And the first guy we met was a major who was in charge of security. Major da silva. And of course he told us we were going to be restricted to that base for the total period that we were in los alamos. We would not be let out of there. And if we violated security anyway, we would probably end up in africa someplace. In the weeds. That is how we started off. Then, they changed their mind and eased things up. Because they found that a lot of us had not any experience at all in the service. As they pointed out, out there, some of them had trouble saluting. They didnt even know what a salute was. They just knew they were in the service, thats all. When you were sent first to oak ridge, did you have any idea what the heck was going on . Eugene no, i didnt have any idea. I was put into a barracks and just said stay there. A couple of days they came and got us and said we were leaving. I had no idea what was going on in oak ridge. None. At the point you met major desilva, did you have any idea . Eugene no. It was typical of service in that particular situation. You wouldnt believe it would happen, but you would be standing in the middle of it and you wouldnt really know what was happening. There was a lot happening that you didnt know about, yet you were part of it happening. So, i didnt know what they were doing at oak ridge. I didnt know what they were doing at los alamos. I had no idea about anything. All i knew was what i was doing. Lets get into that. After this meeting with desilva, what happened to you next . Did they bring you in . Eugene well, within a couple of days, we arrived and were screened by desilva and warned about the security. We were all called to a big Assembly Room and the physicists who were at los alamos in those days came in and began to interview. Each physicist had a list of people in their hands and they would call a name. Whoever the person was would go out and we would have an interview. And they would decide where this guy or girl was going to be assigned. In my case, it got all the way down that i was the last one in the room. When Norman Ramsey said youre a Civil Engineer, i dont know what we are going to do with you. That was my introduction. As i said, i didnt get myself out there. We worked from there. From that night, i knew what we were doing. He told me what we were doing. Of all the people i knew in that site at that time, nobody knew what we were doing except me. None of the g. I. s knew. They knew they were working in the tactical area, working here. They didnt know what they were doing. They knew a specific job they were doing it, but they had no idea why they were doing that job. Haddad he explained to you what it was they were doing . Eugene he had to tell me ultimately, after he found out i was a Civil Engineer and i was there and he was going to have to use me, he said come to my office with me. He took me to my office and said heres what we are going to do. We are going to build a big bomb and we are going to drop it. He said this im in charge, meaning ramsey, im charge of this Delivery Group of getting this bump over to japan and he said you are going to be on my team. There are only five of us on my team. Now, our first job, believe it or not, was to develop ballistics to use the drop the bomb. We did. We had a pilot and a bombardier from akron, ohio. The pilots name was shields and the bombardier was named sempel. They would come over with a plane and drop some dummy bombs. These were bombs that looked like pumpkins. They would drop them and we would photograph them. We would work backwards to find out how you have to set the bomb site to make those bombs go where you wanted them to go. We had to develop the bomb tables before we could start drop the bombs. We did that for some time. I worked on that with two g. I. s, three g. I. s. One from chicago. Two were not engineers at all. One was a young boy from chicago. So there were five of us working on that. Tell me how you ended up at wendover. Eugene i ended up at wendover just because they were going to open up a test site. They brought this Bombardment Group that had been in europe flying b17s. They came to the United States, picked up a bunch of b17s and they were sent to wendover. They had to have somebody to run wendover and i had no idea. I happened to be standing in the right place at the right time, for me. They just said one day, you are going to leave los alamos tomorrow. You are going to do this and that. You are going to end up supposedly in wendover. I took a devious route to do that. I had to go to albuquerque. I had to change from g. I. Clothes to civilian clothes. I went out and got on a c47. Then, we leave and we file a flight plan for Salt Lake City, from las vegas. Before we get there, the pilot changes the flight plan and we turn off and we go to wendover. Los alamos thinks we are going to las vegas and they dont know we were going to wendover. That was part of the security. And then, of course, from wendover, i flew down to salton sea, california. Ultimately, salton sea was developed so they could take off from wendover with b29s, fly over to San Francisco, down the west coast and fly in over salton sea and make the bomb dropped on a target that was floating in the sea. The idea trying to replicate a long flight from that bomb into bombay. Meantime, they are making all the measurements up in the plane to make sure the bomb is riding the way it should and we are on the ground with cameras waiting for them to drop that bomb so we could take a picture to see how it lands and how accurate they are. Checking the readings that we have been giving them to use on the bomb site. Occasionally, we would not only drop the bomb, but we would go back, if it missed the target by a sizable amount, we would go back in the desert and dig it up. We would dig down 25, 30 feet and bring it back up and see if we can figure out if the tail bent or Something Like that. That was all part of it. Meantime, i lived in the officers quarters down there, wearing civilian clothes. These young guys used to shove cue sticks in my face. Bang my newspaper magazine because they thought i was a draft dodger. But, they didnt know so it didnt matter. Even the people didnt know you were u. S. Army. Eugene nobody down there knew. They could. I would go from there back to salton sea. Once a month, i would go back to los alamos had to go back to get paid. I would go back, get my sergeants pay. The next day, i would go back down again. Captain winslow would put civilian clothes on me and i would take off for wendover again. That went on once a month until almost the end. How long were you at los alamos before they send you to wendover . Eugene i probably worked at los alamos for six months or so, working on we had machines that they use in hollywood to slice film in the movie industry. Transmissions from the airplane that was dropping the dummy bombs. That way we could work backwards to see where the bomb left the plane and where it hit the ground. You develop figures that way. I probably spent six months or so. Did you say you were married at that point . Eugene no, i got married at the end of the war when i got back. That is how i got back. I talked the general into letting me come back and get married in berkeley, california. Tell me a little bit more before we go on from there. What was it like at los alamos . All these people there and nobody could talk about what they were doing. Eugene los alamos, basically in the first place, it sat up on top of a mountain. It was a boys school at one time, very exclusive. To get there, you had to go up the side of the mountain. If you went off the side of the road, you had a nice roll down the hill. Once you got to a gate at the top, a guard gate where they stop you and got your identity and so forth. From there, you go on in. The first thing you came to was the Technical Area, the beginning of the Technical Area. It was up on the level part of the property. That is where a drugstore was and a Grocery Store and so forth, and where the original boys school used to be. You came to that first. Then, when you went over that hill and on down the bottom, that is where all the military personnel live. The engineers, the military what do you call them . Special you know, the army police. Mps . Eugene the mps had their barracks. In you went all through that and you went all through that. You go to the bottom of the hill and then you begin to get into the various areas where everything was restricted. You couldnt go there unless you worked there. There were many sites back in these hills where only the people that worked on that particular compound could go to work. I could not go wandering around somebody elses site. Site restricted to my where i worked. So, the place spread out quite a long way. I have been back since. Of course, it is much larger now. Is that where you met your wife . Tell me a little bit about that and her and what she was doing there. Eugene as i said, she worked for the university of california through the aviation lab at berkeley. She was a single girl. My recollection is when i met her, she might have been working at a bookstore. Im not sure. She had gotten her degree from the university. She was working for the university and she had a side job working in a bookstore in berkeley. I met her there. The you sooner the university of california asked her to go to los alamos. She was single and had nothing else more important to do, so she said what do you want me to do when i get there . Well, you are going to be a secretary to admiral parsons and ramsey. You will work in that office. One thing, she had the talent. She could do anything in the secretarial field, plus a college degree, so she was the lead person in the office. There was another girl by the name of hazel who was also a secretary, but she was not college material. That is how mary claire got started. Then, i met her just walking back and forth in the halls. As i pointed out, i stopped and gawked at her one day and she wanted to know what the hell i was looking at. And i told her the best looking legs in los alamos, and that did it. I asked her for a date, she wouldnt go. She called me about 10 days and said ive got a free night. That was all i needed. Tell me about you talked about him a little earlier. Tell me about working with him, what he was like. Eugene when i met him, he was a commander. He was no little guy like i was. He showed up in the office, he introduced himself. He had a great big english bulldog he had with him. As long as he was in the Technical Area and not someplace where dogs wouldnt be allowed, he had this english bulldog. He began he was a weapons , officer. He told me he was going to start running this particular part of the show and i was going to be working with him, which was perfectly fine by me because he was one of the finest guys i ever met in my life. So, i began to work with him. I particularly remember he would have an english bulldog with him, the dogs tongue would fall out and he would take his tongue up and put it back in his mouth. When we started down in salton sea and wendover, he stayed mainly in los alamos. Although, he did direct what was going on at salton sea. In wendover, he was doing it through me. He was giving me orders and telling me what to do. But he was a great guy. What rate where you at the time . At thenk were you time . Eugene i was a sergeant. Tell me about the meeting you had with ramsey, getting you civilian clothes in delaware. Meeting your father and all that stuff. Eugene i told you that they decided i should be traveling in civilian clothes. They didnt want me traveling in uniform. One thing we had, there were a lot of people in wendover i mean at salton sea and los alamos, who worked around the country in various capacities who traveled, for instance, in uniform. An ordinary civilian would go, if he was going to go. The bomb release mechanism was built byand tilt the Dupont Company in wilmington, delaware. The engineer in charge would put on an Army Officers uniform, maybe as high as a major. He would go to wilmington, inspect the work that was being done, identify himself as major soandso. And that was the way was accepted and that was the way it was accepted. In my case, we did it the other way around. I was the only one i knew in los alamos who went around in civilian clothes and did what i did. To the best of my knowledge, nobody else went from uniform to civvies except me. Now, when these guys went where they went the fella i was telling you about who went to delaware. I came from delaware, i knew the Dupont Company, i knew exactly where he was going. When he started telling me, i was describing where he was going to be. He just worked on the development. Tell me about you go home to get your clothes. You cant tell your mom and dad whats going on. Tell me about what your father thought. Eugene i pulled in. When i went home, they sent me home my recollection is i got on a c47. Now, im having trouble. I might have gone back to delaware on the train. When i got to delaware, i showed up at my fathers house, knocked on the door. He opened the door and almost dropped dead. He wanted to know what was i doing and why was i there . Of course, i said i got to get some civilian clothes. Then, immediately, he starts, i dont understand. You are in the army, why do you need civilian clothes . Im not supposed to tell him about that. So, we spent a good day and i told him i had to go to philly the next day because i could not get the quotes in wilmington. Wilmington. Es in they told me not to do that. He bugged me the whole time. Why am i doing this . I dont understand it. Are you sure you didnt do something wrong . I dont think this has to be part of the story, but while he was doing it, he was pulling out 20 bills. I think i had died and gone to heaven. The next day, we got in the car and we went to philadelphia. My recollection is it was a place called bond. I had been there before. We just went in and bought these clothes, paid for them, walked out. Then, i had trouble with the policeman which ended up being a nonevent but it tripped my father up. He really got to the point where he was suspicious. He thought something really wrong was happening. We talked about it offcamera, but tell me what the Police Officer did and how you got out of that situation. Eugene the Police Officer was right. I had gone through a red light. I realized when i did it. It was one of those things where you are going too fast, the light changes, you cant stop. I went through it. He immediately jumped on it. He had me. He pulled me over. First, he looked in the car and said, how come you are not in the army . I said im just not in the army. I dont understand. A guy your age and you are not in the army . No, im not. Well, you just passed a light back there. You ran through a red light. Well, ok, if i did, i did. Im sorry. I did not mean to do it. I knew i had slipped through. I didnt mean to. He said, well, i dont understand this. Everybody is in uniform and you are sitting there at your age with no uniform. So, i was told before i left los alamos, i was given that car and they said if it gets to the point where it gets a little sticky, hand him the card. The card says this person is representing the United States research and development, blahblahblah. It had a name on it. Please do not delay him. Whatever he is doing is legitimate. He read that and he looked at me for a bit and he almost threw the card at me and said i dont know what you are doing, but go ahead. That started my father wanting to know what the card said because i had not shown it to him and i wouldnt show it to him. One thing when you do these kinds of things, some of the rules you have to kind of make them up yourself. They cannot give you every detail. I knew i shouldnt hand him that card, my father. Of course, he was absolutely adamant he had to see that card. After buying me civilian clothes, he had to be suspicious anyway wondering what the hell is happening. So, that was the way that worked. Tell me about, a little more about wendover and what that was like. You were talking about wearing civilian clothes. You get there and overseeing this project with a bunch of military guys. Tal