12-07  Catherine S. Cordoba

We never had a clue as to what we were doing or why (except that it was very important) until after the first atomic bomb was dropped. I remember the night we went to work after the first bomb had been dropped; this news was on everyone's mind. Starting with the last employed, which included me, we were called in small groups to the foreman's office and told we had been working on the Manhattan Project and that the plant would be closing. Within a week the plant was closed except for a small maintenance crew. All of us received a pin, E for Excellence, for working there; I still have mine. Although I am pretty much of a pacifist now, I still think that what we did was right and was justified. Those who berate us for dropping the bomb, as a rule, did not live through the war and did not know the cost we would have paid if we had had to invade Japan. Japan (as my husband who served 3 1/2 years and is somewhat of a pacifist says) started it.

mp-contribution:

I have no idea. Simply showing up for work and enduring the heat made more intense by those hot summer Illinois nights. Of course, all of this was before air conditioning.

mp-experience:

Trying to learn how to operate the cranes that lifted and then dropped the metal plates into a line of vats filled with a hot "soup" of chemicals. I just wasn't that good, so I spent most of my time on the floor. I do remember on nights when the temperature got up to around 120 or more, the foreman and others would relieve those on that line about every 15 minutes. We would then go outside to the railroad siding, where the temperature was not much lower, to "cool" off. One of those foremen was one of my high school classmates who was either 4F or deferred.

mp-stories:

In spite of the controversy surrounding this project and the attempt by some to depict it as a shameful episode in our country's history, I have no regrets or apologies for participating in a small way in it. I think those who were a part of it are now some of the most responsible people for curbing proliferation and urging the elimination of nuclear weapons.

biography:

I was a college student when I worked one summer in 1945 on the night shift in the plating department of a plant involved in the Manhattan Project. My brother and sister also worked there. We were sworn to secrecy about the work, and because we were quite patriotic, we never discussed our work with each other. In spite of some of the controversy surrounding this project, I am proud that I had a very small part in it. I finished college, married a veteran, raised two children. I later returned to graduate school, became a clinical social worker, and had a very rewarding career. I now support, fervently, strict control and elimination of nuclear weapons.