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2005 Manhattan Project Reunion at Oak Ridge |
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Veterans From Around the Country Attend
The recent Manhattan Project reunion that was
held in Oak Ridge last month was an overwhelming
success. Military and civilian veterans from
most of the operational units of the Manhattan
Project attended. The 4 day event included
presentations by many of the veterans as well as
the family members of a few deceased veterans.
One hi-light of the reunion was the first ever
tour of the Beta III Calutrons inside the
present-day Y-12 National Security Complex.
Veterans and family members were required to
have birth certificates as well as photo ID's
before they would be admitted.
Veterans were met by friends and co-workers
that they hadn't seen for close to 60 years.
Others spent hours talking about mutual
acquaintances and shared experiences. We have
many photos that were taken at the reunion and
these will be posted to our web site in the next
couple of weeks. As ususal with these types of
events, we didn't have the time to do half the
things we had planned. We wish to give
recognition to Kathy Moore, the Oak Ridge
Heritage Preservation Assoc. and the Red Hat
Society for the tremendous assistance they
provided to us during our visit.
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60th Anniversary of the Trinity Site Test |
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July 16, 1945; 05:29:45 Mountain Time
The atomic bomb detonated in the New Mexico
desert at 05:29:45 local time on 16 July, 1945,
"lit up the entire world". That is how Private
Daniel Yearout, one of the few remaining
eyewitnesses some 60 years on, recalls the
morning the powers of the atom were first
unleashed.
Daniel Yearout, a member of our organization
and an attendee of the recent Oak Ridge reunion,
was interviewed by the BBC about his experiences
at the Trinity test. Dan is one of the few
survivors who witnessed the first detonation of
an atomic bomb. Other organization members who
also witnessed the Trinity test are Albert Brehm
(SED), Deb Johnson (SED), and David Rudolph
(SED). To read the BBC interview with Daniel
Yearout, please click on the following link:
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SED Book Project Announced |
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History of the Special Engineer Detachment
We would like to take this opportunity to
announce that work has been underway since late
last year on a 2-volume book which will
chronicle the history of the Special Engineer
Detachment. To say that the SED's have largely
been ignored in all that has been written about
the Manhattan Project would be a vast
understatement. Our mission is to set the record
straight once and for all. Volume I will cover
the history of the SED's at Los Alamos, the
Project Alberta team on Tinian Island, Operation
Crossroads in 1946, and the Military
Intelligence branch. Volume II will cover Oak
Ridge, the Met Lab at the U. of Chicago, the
Radiation Lab at Berkeley, the SAM Lab at
Columbia, MIT, the Philadelphia Navy Yard, and
other corporate locations.
As one might imagine, this is a giant
undertaking and we have spent the past several
months conducting interviews. We still have
close to 70 individuals who we will be
interviewing in the coming months. To the more
than 120 SED's that are members of our
organization, if we haven't contacted you
already for an interview we will be doing so
shortly. For those of you who are not members or
for those subscribers to our newsletter who may
be a relative of a member of the SED, we would
like to hear from you so that we can include as
much information as possible about this
remarkable group of men. There were more than
2,000 men assigned to the SED's and we have only
been able to track down a little more than 10%.
More information will be posted to our web site
shortly but in the meantime if you know of a
member of the SED and you would like to include
his information in this book, please contact us
as soon as possible at support@mphpa.org or call
us toll-free at 1-888-299-4494.
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New Interactive Message Board |
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One of the best things that we have added to the
web site recently is a new interactive message
board. On this message board we have many new
forums and topics where our visitors can
directly post queries, responses to queries,
viewpoints, and other important information.
This feature allows our visitors to post
questions and comments and receive replies
without us being involved in the process. In the
past, we would receive the questions and
comments from visitors and then add them to our
web site. When we received a reply we then had
to locate the person asking the question and
forward the answer to them. We receive dozens of
questions and comments each week and it was
consuming an extraordinary amount of our time.
We are receiving more than 10,000 visitors to
the message board every month.
One of the most important uses for our
interactive message board is to help family
members of Manhattan Project veterans to locate
people who may have known or worked with the
veteran. We have several queries posted already
and we will be relocating more than 200 from our
web site to the message board in the next few
weeks. Please let us know if you can think of
any other uses or topics that would be
appropriate for this new feature.
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New Atomic Bomb General Store |
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Our On-Line Store has a New Look!!
We have just completed the first major overhaul
of our on-line store aptly named the Atomic Bomb
General Store. Here you will find just about
anything related to the Manhattan Project from
shirts and books to rare autographed photos. New
items are being added each and every month. For
July we have several new autographed photos in
our 509th Composite Group Collection plus the
following specials:
- Einstein/FDR Document Collection - 1939
- Original 1945 Manhattan Project
Military Shoulder Patch
- 1945 SED Yearbook - Oak Ridge
Our store accepts Visa, MasterCard, American
Express, and PayPal on a secure server for all
on-line purchases. For those reluctant to
provide credit card information over the
Internet, we now accept the following
alternatives. When checking out after making a
purchase you may select either Fax or Mail. This
will provide you with a form that you can then
enter your credit card information and mail it
to us or fax it to us toll-free at
1-888-299-4494. You may also use this same form
to send us a check or money order instead of
using a credit card. Keep in mind that we are a
501(c)3 non-profit organization and all proceeds
from our store goes toward maintaining our web
site.
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"Last Days of World War II" on the History
Channel |
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Only a Few Episodes Left!
This past Friday, July 15, 2005, the History
Channel covered the Trinity Test shot at
Alamogordo, New Mexico on its weekly show "Last
Days of World War II". The weekly show began
back in February and has been running parallel
to events that occurred 60 years earlier in
1945.
We are especially proud of the series since
we played a prominent role in both supplying
veterans for interviews as well as photos and
information used in the show. This past show
featured three of our veterans who were
interviewed: Dr. Ted Rockwell, Stanley Galler,
and McAllister Hull.
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Unidentified Manhattan Project Veterans |
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Please Help if you Can!!
One of the many things that we do is to assist
family members in locating information about a
loved one who worked on the Manhattan Project.
Sometimes we do this unexpectedly through our
"Unknown Veteran" gallery. Here we maintain a
collection of photos where we are hoping someone
may recognize a veteran.
A case in point happened just last evening.
We heard from a woman who has been searching for
information about her father who passed away
many years ago. All she knew was that it was
rumored that he had had something to do with the
atomic bomb program. Fortunately she was
browsing our unknown veteran photos and located
a picture of her dad in photo #7. Please take a
look and see if you recognize anyone...
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Your Support is Urgently Needed |
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Please Help Us Continue to Preserve Our Country's
Important History
Each month it becomes more difficult to maintain
our web site as more material is sent to us. In
addition, we are at the point where we need to
implement a content management system (CMS) so
that we can more effectively manage the
thousands of primary source documents and make
them searchable by multiple criteria. Costs
associated with hosting this extremely large web
site as well as rent, utilities, postage and
other operating costs now exceed $2,500 per
month. Your tax-deductible membership or
donation is urgently needed to help continue
with our mission.
You can help make this a reality by joining
our organization.
Please click HERE to join!
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Web Site Traffic Breaks Record for 5th
Straight Year! |
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Most of the success that our organization has
enjoyed involves traffic to our Manhattan
Project web site. For the 5th straight year, our
traffic has enjoyed a double-digit increase. In
fact, the first 6 months of this year is headed
for a 6th straight record.
We ended the year 2004 with 371,697 visitors,
a 18% increase over 2003. During the same
period, more than 1,940,000 web pages were
viewed. For the first 6 months of this year we
have received 242,703 visitors who viewed
1,284,235 web pages.
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Contact Information
phone: 888-299-4494
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