11-02  James A. Schoke

(Cont.)   Metallurgical Laboratory to users (and maintainers) at many of the Project's other sites.

Most memorable experience:  Meeting, talking with and listening to Robert Oppenheimer, his assistant Dr. Serber and several other scientists traveling on the Santa Fe railroad between Chicago and Los Alamos (Lame',NM). These conversations took place in and around "Oppie's" bedroom accompanied by wine (furnished by him), and encompassed any and all subjects except our classified work. Dr. Oppenheimer always had a list of all project personnel and their location on the train. He sent Dr. Serber to invite everyone to this late afternoon informal get together. I was only 20 years old the first time this occurred and I have always remembered him as a model for my behavior - he was a great man with humility and consideration for others.

Favorite Manhattan Project stories:  1. In the late fall of 1943, I received a phone call while at work from someone in the local headquarters office of the Corps of Engineers located off the U of Chicago campus at the nearby "Armory". This functioned as the transportation hub and, also, headquarters for the Met Lab SED group. Someone had noticed in my Army file that I did magic as a hobby. I was invited to perform as part of the entertainment for the coming Xmas party there for the military and civilian army office personnel. I agreed and subsequently provided a heartily applauded performance. It was a crowd of about 50 or 100 people, and about one-half were commissioned army officers. About the same time the following year, 1944, I was again asked to perform at the coming Xmas party and I agreed. When the appointed day arrived, I performed, but this time the crowd was half the size of the '43 party and noticeably lacking in commissioned officers. I saw none. I was really puzzled until the week following the Xmas holiday. Then word came around via the grapevine that a secret intelligence report had been received by the top officers at the Armory army headquarters that the Germans had succeeded in making an Atomic Bomb and were going to drop it on Chicago on Xmas Day. Uh Huh!   2. My work produced several inventions that were thought to be patentable by my Group Leader and so they were submitted to the Met Lab Patent Group which was mostly made up of patent attorneys serving as commissioned officers. One of these, a Colonel, was assigned to file patent applications for the benefit of the U.S. on my inventions. Of course, filing these applications required many consultations between the Colonel and me. I do not know the reason, but instead of my being asked to go to his office, he always came looking for me. No phone call; no appointment. He would come to the second or third floor of the U of Chicago Ryerson Physics building which was then a closed, classified area assigned to the Met Lab, and start asking where he could find me if I was not in my normal work area. Soon I was the target of a lot of kidding, "Why was it necessary for a Colonel to be chasing after and need the assistance of a T3 Sergeant?"   3. During the truck drivers strike in Chicago during WWII, I was ordered to drive a good sized army truck (not a trailer truck) with an experienced union driver at my side for a couple of days to keep the flow of necessary materiel for the project flowing. I was assigned to drive a truck doing local pickups and deliveries, and I was given a '45' in a holster to wear.. I had never driven a truck before, nor had I ever carried or used a gun. Surprisingly, I got the hang of it pretty quickly with the help of the guy at my side. Every thing went well until we arrived at the local Air Reduction Co's plant. The entrance to the truck dock area was surrounded by a picket line and a large group of striking truckers, some brandishing baseball bats. I started to try to drive through the entrance gate and some of the strikers stood unmoving, blocking my truck. I inched slowly forward hoping they would give way and let me pass. I was very frightened, but we had been told do whatever we had to do to make our pickups and deliveries, so I kept moving forward. Then a couple of guys with bats came along side my door and started yelling curses and threats and waved the bats in a threatening manner. They obviously could see I was in army uniform and driving an army truck, but that didn't seem to deter them from threatening me. I lowered my window and, as previously instructed, shouted, "I'm an army soldier driving a military vehicle and I have military orders to pickup high priority material for the Army from this company. I am not involved in your strike. I have my orders and I intend to carry them out. I did not show the gun. I then closed the window and started once again to drive slowly through the entrance. The strikers continued to shout threats and curses, but they grudgingly moved aside. We got the material needed and left. I started breathing again in a normal manner. So did the regular driver sitting beside me. He had been very frightened, as well.