Bettis, Edward S.

              CITY BEHIND A FENCE INTERVIEWS



ORAL HISTORY OF EDWARD S. BETTIS
Interviewed by Charles Johnson
March 27, 1976
Transcribed by Jordan Reed 
MR. JOHNSON: Interview with Mr. Ed Bettis, North Purdue, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, March 27, 1976, by Charles Johnson, History Department, University of Tennessee. So, that takes care of the formalities.
MR. BETTIS: All right sir.
MR. JOHNSON: Well, I’d like to just talk about you and Oak Ridge and your coming here and what it was like during the war. 
MR. BETTIS: Yes, sir.
MR. JOHNSON: When did you get here?
MR. BETTIS: In May of 1943.
MR. JOHNSON: One of the early ones.
MR. BETTIS: Yes, sir.  That’s right.
MR. JOHNSON: Where did you come from?
MR. BETTIS: Well, I came here from Illinois, but I am a native Tennessean. 
MR. JOHNSON: You’re one of the few.
MR. BETTIS: Yes. Yes.
MR. JOHNSON: From the University of Illinois, or were you working?
MR. BETTIS: I was working with Pet Milk Company as research engineer for them.
MR. JOHNSON: I see, and how did you hear about the job here?
MR. BETTIS: Well, it’s rather a strange thing. While I was working for Pet, let’s see, what is it now? I guess the Food and Drug Administration was giving the evaporated milk industry a very, very hard time about using sodium bicarbonate and some other things to add to the milk. They said, “You’re doing this to produce bad milk.” I remember Professor Summers form the University of Wisconsin gave a very scholarly defense of the thing and said, “No, we’re adding sodium because of the salt imbalance in milk.” You know you have to sterilize evaporated milk, cook it down at high temperatures and if the calcium and sodium balance is out, the milk will curdle, or coagulate the casein if there is too much calcium, but they didn’t buy this. Well, I told our people that if they won’t buy Dr. Summers explanation, maybe we can legitimately convince them but because they don’t understand radioactivity, maybe it will be a snow job. So, I wrote the University of California. I said, “Can I,” they were just working with a cyclotron then and producing radioactive elements. I said, “I would like to get from you some tagged sodium, radioactive sodium and some radioactive phosphorus, phosphate, and I’m going to try to prove where the calcium and sodium [inaudible] in the milk and prove that it is indeed a question of the salt balance, not just neutralizing bad milk.” So they said, “Ok, we’ll, give you these things, if you’ll give us the results of your experiments.” So we went ahead and they sent me the stuff and I did show that when you put the radioactive elements in that the, it had nothing to do with the serum, nothing to do with the acidity of the milk, but it did change the casein balance. Well, this took quite a little while, several months and then came the Oak Ridge project. Well, they were desperate for people and they had my name and my address and so they said, “We need you in Oak Ridge.” So that’s how it happened. I came here in May of ’43, left Pet Milk Company. 
MR. JOHNSON: Who did you work for down here? 
MR. BETTIS: Eastman.
MR. JOHNSON: Tennessee Eastman. You were in Y-12 then.
MR. BETTIS: Yes. 
MR. JOHNSON: What were you told to expect?
MR. BETTIS: I was told absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing. As a matter of fact, my interview for the job took place on the fire escape on the old Empire Building…
MR. JOHNSON: Over in Knoxville. 
MR. BETTIS: …in Knoxville, and I remember asking Worley who was the man who interviewed me, “What are we going to do?” He said, “I can’t tell you.” I said, “When will you be able to tell me?” He said, “We won’t tell you. Ever.” So that was the situation when I came to Oak Ridge. But it didn’t take, I had kind of an intuitive feeling about what they were doing and it didn’t take any time at all to figure out what they were doing after I got here. 
MR. JOHNSON: I’ve gotten the feeling from people. We just started these interviews just a few days ago, but the few people that we’ve talked to, a number of people kind of independently came to their own conclusions…
MR. BETTIS: Oh yes.
MR. JOHNSON: But they didn’t really talk to very many people about it. They decided in their own heads what was going to happen.
MR. BETTIS: It was phenomenal this situation. Nobody discussed openly what we were doing. I remember, oh, I had been here a few days when Dr. Feldman, a physicists who was in the same dormitory I was. I wrote out some equations and I said, “Bill, it looks to me like this is the situation. I’d just like to check with you.” He said, “I can’t tell you if you’re right or wrong.” He said, “Let’s burn all this stuff that you have.”
MR. JOHNSON: [Laughter]
MR. BETTIS: And that was the way it was.
MR. JOHNSON: You lived in a dormitory then when you came?
MR. BETTIS: Yes. yes, there were no houses. None at all.
MR. JOHNSON: None in May. That’s right.
MR. BETTIS: Of any kind. It was the oddest kind of situation because you saw chimneys going up. That’s what they built first, the chimney’s and there were chimneys all over the area, but nothing else, and then they built the houses around them. 
MR. JOHNSON: Did you, were you in a dorm for all the time you were here?
MR. BETTIS: No. I was married at the time. I cannot remember exactly when, but I think it was October that my wife came down. So I was in a dormitory from May until October.
MR. JOHNSON: What did you, thinking back on life in the dorm, how was it? What do you remember about it? 
MR. BETTIS: Well, it was similar to any dormitory life. There wasn’t anything unusual about it at all. There was one, when I came here, there was one men’s dormitory, and one women’s dormitory. That was all.
MR. JOHNSON: This was very early.
MR. BETTIS: Yes. One cafeteria, if you could call it that, one eating place. So it was very early. Not anything had happened at the plant site. There were no buildings at all. They were just getting ready, just clearing and preliminary operations. 
MR. JOHNSON: Do you remember the dorms being particularly crowded? 
MR. BETTIS: Not too crowded. I had a single room. I didn’t have to have a roommate. That was the case for most people. 
MR. JOHNSON: Later there got to be some doubling up…
MR. BETTIS: Yes.
MR. JOHNSON: …when things expanded as rapidly as they did. When you moved into the house where was that located? 
MR. BETTIS: Well, first I went into an apartment because the housing, and that was the one thing that was loused up about Oak Ridge and has continued to be until the town opened and became incorporated. The housing was the worst thing here, but I lived in one of these E apartments. That’s one where they have two two-story apartments in the center of the building and one one-story on each end. So we moved into an apartment when she came down. 
MR. JOHNSON: [coughs] Excuse me. Did she work? 
MR. BETTIS: No. she did not work. 
MR. JOHNSON: Did you stay in that apartment then for quite some time?
MR. BETTIS: Yes, I did until she became pregnant with our first child and she had one miscarriage and since it was a two story apartment we got special dispensation and got into a house then. 
MR. JOHNSON: Did you, I don’t know if we ought to get at it. The friends that you made down here, the people you got to know pretty well…
MR. BETTIS: Yes.
MR. JOHNSON: …did that depend sort of on where you were living or where you were working? I’m sort of interested in how sort of groups of people formed.
MR. BETTIS: Well, I would say more on the people at work, rather than in the neighborhood. Although we were good friends with the people who lived in the, right in the immediate, the same apartment house, our contacts social were mainly, came from associations with work. 
MR. JOHNSON: People that you worked with.
MR. BETTIS: Yes.
MR. JOHNSON: Did you plan on staying down here a long time, or was…
MR. BETTIS: There wasn’t much thought of the duration. We certainly expected to stay until the project was completed, but that’s about all. There were no permanent plans because nobody knew what would happen to Oak Ridge. We thought maybe that with the end of the war, it might just be completely disbanded. There was no thought at that time for a future use. So I only intended when I came here to stay for the duration of the war, until we accomplished our purpose. 
MR. JOHNSON: But you did stay beyond that of course.
MR. BETTIS: No, sir, as a matter of fact, I didn’t, because it was so uncertain after the war, what was going to happen, see the Atomic Energy Commission had not been formed.
MR. JOHNSON: They didn’t come in until ’47.
MR. BETTIS: Yes. It was still in the Manhattan District and things were so uncertain that I got an offer which I had received before, periodically over the years from Allen B. DuMont Company in New Jersey because a friend who I was with in Cornell went with DuMont as soon as he graduated. He had, well, repeatedly called me and said, “Come on up with us.” So when things were so uncertain, he called me again one night and said, “It’s over at Oak Ridge now, what about coming with us?” So I went up with them for one year. 
MR. JOHNSON: Tennessee Eastman was cutting way back too.
MR. BETTIS: Yes, yes, but I had not been cut back. I had not been in any of the reduction forces at all, but I decided to go ahead and try this thing in New Jersey and New York. So I went up there in November of 1946, but I hadn’t been there a month until I had realized I had made a terrible mistake. In about March of ’47, I got a telegram that had come to Oak Ridge and had been forwarded up there. It said, from New York, from Fairchild, that said, “You have been recommended by the Manhattan District as someone that might be interested in some work that we are doing and we wonder if you are interested.” Well, I called them up right away in New York. I said, “I certainly am interested, when can I come talk?” they said, “Oh, you don’t know anything about it yet.” I said, “You said it was Oak Ridge. I don’t give a dern what it is, I’m going back to Oak Ridge.” So I worked with them some in New York City and came back here, as a matter of fact, one year to the day after I left. I came back in November of ’47. 
MR. JOHNSON: I talked to somebody just a couple of days ago who had sort of the same experience. He left here in late ’45 and went up to Colorado and then decided that he wanted to come back here. 
MR. BETTIS: Yes.
MR. JOHNSON: Apparently, that was not uncommon. 
MR. BETTIS: No, it wasn’t.
MR. JOHNSON: People after they left wanted to come back.
MR. BETTIS: That’s right. That’s right. Of course I had two reasons really, having been a native Tennessean already and having known Oak Ridge, and absolutely detesting New York and that whole environment, I wanted to get back by any way possible. 
MR. JOHNSON: So it was the area of Tennessee, as much as Oak Ridge that you were coming back to?
MR. BETTIS: Yes, that’s right. That’s right. 
MR. JOHNSON: There aren’t very many of the people who came here who worked for Eastman and the rest who were native Tennesseans.
MR. BETTIS: That’s right.
MR. JOHNSON: Most of them were from the outside.
MR. BETTIS: That’s correct. 
MR. JOHNSON: Did you, during the war, did you leave the area very often? 
MR. BETTIS: Not very often at all, except to go back to Morristown because my father was bedridden at the time and I’d go up there when I could, but that’s all. That’s all, just from here to Morristown.
MR. JOHNSON: But you didn’t have the experience that some people did then of when they left the reservation, left Oak Ridge feeling that they were in a pretty different environment, one that they weren’t used to. You get somebody come here say from the University of Chicago, background in Chicago. When he went to Clinton, or when he went to Knoxville, it was a pretty different world, as far as…
MR. BETTIS: No, I didn’t feel that way because being a native here, I felt quite at home. Incidentally, I felt sorry for Knoxville because Oak Ridge, there were no facilities here and all of this terrific influx of people from all over the world, literally, but certainly all over the United States, they would just bombard the Knoxville stores and buy everything and Knoxville really detested Oak Ridge. I could understand it. 
MR. JOHNSON: That makes sense.
MR. BETTIS: Yeah. Surely I could understand it. I felt sorry for them. The one characteristic that I’m sure you’ve picked up from other people, one characteristic of Oak Ridge was mud, that thick. The people would come into Knoxville, literally coated with mud. They, I think, very logically resented, they didn’t know what was going on. There, all of the facilities in Knoxville were taxed, to the limit by this completely foreign population out here and I sympathized very much with the people of Knoxville.
MR. JOHNSON: Of course, I imagine it was the way to lay blame if you were out of something. Say you had a store in Knoxville and you were out of something and somebody came in and complained, you could say, well it all went  to Oak Ridge, whether it’s true or not. 
MR. BETTIS: Well, there was more truth in it than lack of truth. 
MR. JOHNSON: Do you have the feeling that in establishing the town and running it, that the Army did a pretty good job? Or was it as many foul ups as…?
MR. BETTIS: Well, that’s a little bit difficult. Of course I guess there was no other way to do it. You know, the Army, they took all of the best, in housing and everything else. We had to make do. There wasn’t, in my opinion, there wasn’t a very good feeling between Oak Ridge and the Army, and it was made no better when the secrecy wraps were finally taken off because we would get these communiques from the Army saying, “We have told so much. Do not release anything that we have not released. Do not talk about anything.” And yet, they kept inferring, well, not inferring, kept stating that we knew and nobody else knew. We were the ones in the know and everybody else wasn’t and this was the farthest thing from the truth. Yet, we were bound to take this kind of, well…
MR. JOHNSON: [Inaudible].
MR. BETTIS: The word escapes me right now. Well, cavalier attitude…
MR. JOHNSON: Oh.
MR. BETTIS: …on the part of the Army, and this, well I personally resented very much because whereas indeed the families in Oak Ridge for the most part did not know what was going on. A great percentage of the people in the plants, although they had never been told, they knew what was going on. And this even went down to some of the hourly workers. They understood what was going on and the fact that the knowledge was so generally shared accentuates the miraculous way that the secret was kept.
MR. JOHNSON: Apparently the people knew, but they didn’t talk.
MR. BETTIS: Not at all. Not at all.
MR. JOHNSON: Did you get the feeling that they were not talking because they were afraid something bad would happen to them if they did, or…?
MR. BETTIS: No. No, sir. Not at all. There was a spirit that is hard to explain. I was just talking to somebody the other day and I said, “I do not believe if we had to do a similar thing today, I just do not think that there would be the…” Well, I hate to use a rather… the patriotism and dedication that existed then, I just don’t think you could get it now. People just don’t have that kind of a feeling. At least that’s my opinion, but no, it was not out of fear. It was out of consideration for the job that had to be done and the fact that it was necessary to keep a secret. 
MR. JOHNSON: From that it sounds as though people generally worked very hard and…
MR. BETTIS: Oh, they did. Yes, sir. And I noticed one of the questions that you sent out, you asked about if there were any strikes or unions. That never came up at all. I know particularly in the construction there undoubtedly were people there who had lived most of their lives, professional lives, as union employees. There was never any question about whether or not an individual belonged to the union or not. Everybody worked, from the construction people on up through the town. It really was a phenomenal attitude on the part of everybody that there was a job to be done and they just pitched in.
MR. JOHNSON: You think that grew out of the kind of patriotic…
MR. BETTIS: Yes, yes.  I know as, for an example, I know Eastman had only a very few of their employees that they put here. They had to recruit all the others, and I know that some of us that they called “key personnel” were given training in the policies of the company and, well I guess that’s the only thing, just policies, how the company was run, and we in turn had to indoctrinate others. I’ve gone out many times, although my job was day job, I’ve gone out many times at 2 o’clock in the morning to conduct these training classes in Eastman policy and I was just one of many. We were glad to do it.
MR. JOHNSON: You did get the feeling though that at least some of the Army officers were doing maybe better than they should have in terms of housing and…
MR. BETTIS: Oh yes. There’s no question about that. There’s no question about that. I know now some of the Army officers I had direct contact with and they were very, very able and decent people. I know I told Bill Willard, Captain Willard, I said, “I wish I were in the Army.” He said, “Why do you say that?” I said, “Because if this project succeeds the Army will take all the credit and if it doesn’t succeed people will look at the civilians out here and say, “What were you draft dodgers doing out there on that boondock?” [Laughter]
MR. JOHNSON: Well, it did succeed. 
MR. BETTIS: Yes. 
MR. JOHNSON: And the civilians at least got some of the credit.
MR. BETTIS: That’s right.
MR. JOHNSON: Did you have much to do, or did you have much contact with Roane Anderson Company?
MR. BETTIS: Yes. That was another question that I thought quite a bit about. You asked whether I thought Roane Anderson did a good job, and at the time, I guess Roane Anderson came in for general criticism.
MR. JOHNSON: They took a lot of heat.
MR. BETTIS: Everybody, everybody. But in retrospect, I guess they did a pretty good job and here’s why I say this. Everybody who was really capable was taken on by the operating companies, either Eastman or Carbide or Monsanto, and Roane Anderson had to make do with just what they could get. When you take that into consideration and the fact that it was a terrific job, the pressure from the Army and griping by all the people here, I have to say that I guess that Roane Anderson didn’t do too badly.
MR. JOHNSON: What sort of things did people gripe about for Roane Anderson?
MR. BETTIS: Well, of course the main thing was housing, and that was loused up from the word “Go”. Probably because of the Army, but housing allocation was made entirely by political pull and pressure and there was just no equity at all in the housing situation.  I remember too, they had all the maintenance and on two or three occasions, somebody just came to our apartment and opened the door and walked in. My wife was there. They didn’t do anything but just walk in. Well, I took a gun down to the police department and I said, “I want to register this gun. It’s not registered in Oak Ridge because if Roane Anderson continues to come into my house, somebody’s going to get shot. I don’t want it to be done without a registered gun.” [Laughter]
MR. JOHNSON: What was their response? 
MR. BETTIS: Well, they just registered the gun. That was all. 
MR. JOHNSON: Did you have any more trouble with Roane Anderson?
MR. BETTIS: No. 
MR. JOHNSON: Word got out.
MR. BETTIS: Word got around.
MR. JOHNSON: Did you have much contact with the police? Did there seem to be a lot in evidence of either police or Army guard?
MR. BETTIS: Of course they were around everywhere, but not anything of, well, we certainly did not get the idea that it was a Gestapo operation or anything of the kind. Not at all. Not at all.
MR. JOHNSON: Even though there was the fence around it and the guards at the gates.
MR. BETTIS: Oh yes. Oh yes. 
MR. JOHNSON: Did you, one of the things we’ve, it’s a hole in our research that we haven’t filled yet and we’ll find out. We were wondering about voting in elections, local elections, or national elections. Do you remember during the war whether you voted here in Oak Ridge, or whether you went to Clinton to vote, or whether you voted by absentee ballot, or…?
MR. BETTIS: The only time that I was here that I voted, I voted over at Claxton School. I think that there were no polls in Oak Ridge, but I can’t be positive about that.
MR. JOHNSON: We talked with a teacher a couple of days ago who told us that  her earliest memory of voting here in Oak Ridge was taking a car out to, she was in a car and they went out to Claxton school to vote. That was her…
MR. BETTIS: That’s where I voted. Yes, sir. I think that there were no polling places in Oak Ridge. 
MR. JOHNSON: We kind of have gotten the feeling that the people in Clinton and the political powers in Anderson County weren’t really happy about all these people coming into Oak Ridge.
MR. BETTIS: I think that’s true.
MR. JOHNSON: And…
MR. BETTIS: And understandably so. I mean, their whole way of life, I referred to Knoxville a moment ago, but the same was true for Clinton and everyplace else. They were just inundated with these…
MR. JOHNSON: Perhaps even more true for Clinton.
MR. BETTIS: Yes.
MR. JOHNSON: Clinton was so small.
MR. BETTIS: Small, yes.
MR. JOHNSON: And even closer than Knoxville was.
MR. BETTIS: Yes.
MR. JOHNSON: What sort of things, well, I can ask it another way. Is there anything special about those three or four years, those first years you were here, that you want me to know about? That particularly that I should know about, or that we should know about in writing the book? The reason I ask, you get the feeling sometimes when your reading something in an area that you know something about and my response is, “Why didn’t he say something about this?”
MR. BETTIS: Yes, yes, yes. Well, it was a very rugged time, and by no means am I trying to compare it to the GI’s who were fighting, but certainly those who came to Oak Ridge and tried to work here had a very, very different type of existence. For instance, there were very, very few stores in the early part and lines to get any kind of groceries, or any kind of supplies at all were very long. You just never went to a store where you didn’t expect to stand in a line, and particularly I didn’t have any children at the time, particularly those people with young babies had an awful time to get milk. 
MR. JOHNSON: We heard about that. 
MR. BETTIS: Yes. It was very, very rugged in that way. Then of course there were no, well, there were Army doctors, but there was no such thing, even in an emergency, getting medical help other than going to the hospital. You had to go to the hospital and that was rather difficult. I remember one time, having had a case of food poisoning, a violent case. I was in misery. I couldn’t get any help. I had to go to the hospital. Well, I went to the hospital and there were these very, very young doctors. I don’t know where he came from, but he seemed totally at a loss. Finally, I said to him, “Listen. Do you have any paregoric? Give me a dose of paregoric and put me to bed here.” Well, he did. 
MR. JOHNSON: [Laughter] Yeah.
MR. BETTIS: But that was one of the difficulties. Another thing of course, for a long period of time, there were no phones. Finally, those of us who were subject to a call from the plants, when the plants finally got operating, got phones. Then the phone was a communal operation for everybody in the neighborhood. They would come in to…
MR. JOHNSON: They knew you had a phone.
MR. BETTIS: Yes, and we expected it, were glad for them to, but phones were very, very limited. That was one of the greatest inconveniences really, until we got phones. But it was a very rugged time. Of course we worked six days a week, too, and subject to call at any time. 
MR. JOHNSON: So you were putting in an awful lot of hours.
MR. BETTIS: Yes. Yes. 
MR. JOHNSON: Did you… 
MR. BETTIS: And…
MR. JOHNSON: Oh, go ahead.
MR. BETTIS:  And of course the transportation was a problem with gas rationing and they had these cattle car buses that we had to ride. Totally crowded. I’ve taken… It’s about a five minute drive from here to Y-12 and several times I’ve been on one of those buses for an hour going from Oak Ridge to Y-12. Unbelievable traffic problems. 
MR. JOHNSON: You mean just jammed up with cars and buses.
MR. BETTIS: Cars and with these buses. I remember one time getting in one of these cattle cars. Do you know what I mean by a cattle car? You’re jammed in there, standing up and we tried to get a passenger in and the door wouldn’t open. It was completely stuck. He drove to the garage and a man from the outside tried, and tried, and tried. Finally, somebody hung on the straps like you do on the subway and just kicked with all his might and we finally got it open.
MR. JOHNSON: Kicked the door open. 
MR. BETTIS: Yeah.
MR. JOHNSON: I’d have gotten a little…
MR. BETTIS: It really was a little bit dangerous because people were jammed in there so tightly. Absolutely incarcerated. 
MR. JOHNSON: People also took those same kind of cattle car buses to Knoxville?
MR. BETTIS: Oh, yes.
MR. JOHNSON: Did you happen to have a car during the war?
MR. BETTIS: I had a car, but with the gas rationing, as I say, we didn’t use it. I’m not positive, my memory is just not clear on this point, but I think that there were no adequate parking places at the plants. I believe that all traffic from Oak Ridge to the plants was on buses. Now, I can’t be sure of this, but I have that feeling.
MR. JOHNSON: I think they had a few small parking lots for official cars and things like this, but I think most of them came and went by bus. 
MR. BETTIS: I know it did, but whether it was required, I’m not quite sure. I can’t remember. 
MR. JOHNSON: Did you happen to be in Oak Ridge the day the bomb went off?
MR. BETTIS: Oh yes. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. 
MR. JOHNSON: What do you remember about that?
MR. BETTIS: I remember being, having one of my strongest feelings of resentment toward the Army in that we heard of it by public announcement over the radios and our families in Oak Ridge heard in and called in. I remember exactly where I was…
MR. JOHNSON: One of those days…
MR. BETTIS: …on the day when I heard it. I also remember that Colonel Rudolph was the Army man in charge of Y-12 at this time. They changed. Kelly was the first in charge, but in July I remember going into Colonel Rudolph’s office in the Administration Building and saying facetiously, but not totally so, “Colonel Rudolph, if I don’t hear something very soon, I’m going to find the largest fire cracker I can find and bring it in here and set it off in this Administration Building. This was in July. Then of course August 6, I guess it was, we heard that…
MR. JOHNSON: What was the, do you remember any kind of general feeling about that day? Was it a day of celebration?
MR. BETTIS: Yes, it was. Yes, it was, because everyone felt that their efforts had finally amounted to something, and I think without exception the general feeling was, well, now the war will end. 
MR. JOHNSON: This will be the end of the war.
MR. BETTIS: This will be the end of the war. I know that I had recommended. We talked, this Captain Willard, this Smyth Report, two or three works, I guess, before anything happened. Bill said, “I have a mimeographed copy. It’s the only one in Oak Ridge, but if you want to read it. If you will read it here in my office, I’ll let you read it.” So I did. Between the hours of about midnight and four in the morning, I read the Smyth Report, which was just between the first experimental bomb at Alamogordo and Hiroshima. I had working for me in Oak Ridge a Navy lieutenant, who left here and went to Albuquerque, and he wrote me a letter. It says, what was it he said? “July will be an interesting month.” That’s all it said, but I knew that something was going to happen in July by means of an experimental test of the thing.
MR. JOHNSON: So you knew it was coming pretty soon. 
MR. BETTIS: Yes, and that’s why after nothing, I didn’t hear and didn’t hear, that’s the occasion I went off about the firecracker, but I knew that something was coming. Soon.
MR. JOHNSON: One of the things that we have been kind of interested in is the question of race relations in Oak Ridge during the war and shortly after. The black community and Scarboro was it pretty much separate from the rest of the community.
MR. BETTIS: Yes. Yes. Almost totally so. I don’t know, I was not aware of any difficulties. Although at that time, the blacks were blacks and the whites were whites. There was no co-mingling between them at all, but there was no animosity that I was aware of either, not at all.
MR. JOHNSON: We’ve run into a few small instances of trouble on a couple of buses that were coming in from Maryville, Alcoa, but we haven’t seen much evidence of it at all. It was just one of the things I wanted to ask you. 
MR. BETTIS: I really had no personal knowledge of anything of the kind at all.
MR. JOHNSON: [Papers shuffling] Let me check here and see… When you did go to Morristown, talking to people there, did they wonder where you were, what you were doing?
MR. BETTIS: Oh yes. Oh yes. Oh yes, but everyone just said, “We can’t talk about that.” We were very open about it. They didn’t press. I used to have one fellow who was in the Army who thought it just couldn’t be that I wouldn’t tell him what I was doing. I just said, “Sorry, we don’t talk about it.” that was universally true. Universally true. 
MR. JOHNSON: When you had some free time, granted there wasn’t a lot of it.
MR. BETTIS: No, there wasn’t.
MR. JOHNSON: What did you do with your free time? Go to the recreation hall?
MR. BETTIS: That’s right. That’s right.
MR. JOHNSON: Or visited with friends?
MR. BETTIS: We visited with friends in the homes. There was a remarkable feeling of comradery among all the people here and there was practically no case of cliques or segregation into, you don’t belong in this group here. Everyone associated very freely.
MR. JOHNSON: So it was easy to…
MR. BETTIS: Easy, yes, sir.
MR. JOHNSON: …strike up a conversation  or get together with people.
MR. BETTIS: Yes, sir. Totally so.
MR. JOHNSON: Did you have things like, oh, picnics and these sorts of get-togethers?
MR. BETTIS: Yes. Of course there were ball teams. I played softball all the time when I was here with the Eastman team. There were other athletic… and as you say picnics. The rec halls were frequented by everybody. 
MR. JOHNSON: Did the churches play a fairly important role in social activities?
MR. BETTIS: I guess more than I originally thought. I talked a while just yesterday with Joe Culver who incidentally said that he had just been busy and failed to answer your letter, but if you wanted to talk to him at all, he would still be glad to talk to you, but he did not respond at all. Joe started out, he was a Californian and he started out with the project at the University of California. I did not, although I was asked to. I didn’t say that at the first. At the time, I was doing some work for the ordinance department and they wanted me to finish it in making dehydrated concentrated foods and in recovering ammonium nitrate from bum bombs, duds. And so I passed it up and sent my cousin out there to the University of California, but Joe was out there and he came here. He went out to Berkeley in, I guess, March and then came to Oak Ridge in August of ’43, but he might have some things of interest, but I was talking with him and I kind of played down the influence of the churches and he took a rather issue with me. He said, “I think that the churches played a bigger part than you give them credit for.” I suppose after talking with him that he is correct. Of course, there was only one church here. The Army built the Chapel on the Hill.
MR. JOHNSON: Chapel on the Hill.
MR. BETTIS: But it was used by the Jewish congregation on Saturday night, and by at least five different congregations on Sundays. In addition to this, there were other groups that met in school buildings and some of them even started out in homes. So I guess that the churches really were more active than I gave them credit for being in the early days.
MR. JOHNSON: Did you have much in the way to do in terms of concerts and plays and this sort of thing?
MR. BETTIS: Yes. Yes. The Oak Ridge Little Theater Group was formed very early, but I was not. I have been active since, but I was not active in the Little Theater Group. Under other adverse circumstances they did a good job and if you wanted to follow any of that, I don’t know whether you, Ms. Bridges. Does that name…? 
MR. JOHNSON: We’ve got that.
MR. BETTIS: Well, she was very active in the Little Theater Group.
MR. JOHNSON: Jane Bridges.
MR. BETTIS: Jane Bridges, yes. 
MR. JOHNSON: We haven’t talked with her yet. We plan to make an appointment to talk with her.
MR. BETTIS: Well, you can get all of the Little Theater activity from Jane.
MR. JOHNSON: Great! We will. 
MR. BETTIS: But, concerts, not in the early days do I remember any significant.
MR. JOHNSON: Looking back on it, do you remember any times when you got so fed up with things you felt like quitting, just packing it in and…
MR. BETTIS: No. No, sir, and I believe that I’m not alone in this. I think that most people felt that there was such an investment, that it was crucial and it had to be finished. 
MR. JOHNSON: Were you aware that the Germans were maybe working in the same direction?
MR. BETTIS: Oh yes. Yes. Yes. As a matter of fact, of course, they named people, never went by their names as you know.
MR. JOHNSON: Right.
MR. BETTIS: And in the very first cafeteria, at the Town Site, one day I was standing in line. You always did as I said. 
MR. JOHNSON: Yeah.
MR. BETTIS: I looked around me and I just couldn’t believe it because there was Arthur Compton and I can’t think of his name right now, but the MIT Compton, and [inaudible], and…
MR. JOHNSON: Fermi maybe.
MR. BETTIS: Fermi and Eugene Wigner and Ernest Lawrence. I don’t remember others, but I just almost dropped my teeth. I said if something should happen to this cafeteria…
MR. JOHNSON: Right now.
MR. BETTIS: …what in the world would be the result? I remember one time being in Y-12, a conference, in the inner most part of one of the buildings there and I got there first. I didn’t really know what all was going on and then the door opened and in came this fellow. He said, “I’m E. O. Lawrence.” I said, “Yes, Dr. Lawrence, I know who you are.” [Laughter]
MR. JOHNSON: You must have then just, from all sorts of things, gotten the feeling that there was something pretty big going on here. That this…
MR. BETTIS: Oh well, I knew.  I knew, yes.
MR. JOHNSON: But the government was making a major effort here.
MR. BETTIS: Oh yes.
MR. JOHNSON: I guess also from just the size of the plants and the whole, size of the whole operation. 
MR. BETTIS: Yes. As I say, I knew what was going on within, well, certainly within ten days of being here. 
MR. JOHNSON: I guess I was making a distinction between what they were trying to do and the amount of effort they were going to put into it.
MR. BETTIS: Yes. It was a terrific effort.
MR. JOHNSON: And looking back on it, you’re glad you came, you’re glad you were a part of it all?
MR. BETTIS: Yes, I am. I am. As I say, I recommended in the conversations that we had, very, very carefully again with these fellows in the Army, I said, “What I think we ought to do is to, through some diplomatic circles, arrange for a demonstration with the Japanese and get them to come and watch and detonate this bomb and let them see what, but not drop it on Japan.” There were several that felt that this was…
MR. JOHNSON: We’ve heard of a petition to the Secretary of War…
MR. BETTIS: Yes.
MR. JOHNSON: …that was signed by a number of people…
MR. BETTIS: Yes.
MR. JOHNSON: …not only here, but in other places.
MR. BETTIS: Other places. That’s right.
MR. JOHNSON: You’re familiar with that.
MR. BETTIS: Yes. Yes, sir. That came after this. I remember when I made this suggestion, but then I for one felt that after they did make, after Truman did make the decision to drop it and it was dropped, I did not have a feeling of guilt or remorse. Now some did. 
MR. JOHNSON: We haven’t gotten too much of a sense of that from the people who were here. Some of it came later maybe, but there were some at the time who did. 
MR. BETTIS: A few. Now I think, I know that Bob Oppenheimer seemed to have one of the greatest periods of, well, guilt, but he was a very, very peculiar individual. Certainly, I have no doubt that he was the most brilliant mind that I’ve ever had personal contact with. I know on one occasion he seriously considered suicide. This was before all this came. He did play such a prominent part in the project that he felt that the scientific community really was morally responsible and had fallen down morally. I did not detect a significant reaction of that kind here in Oak Ridge.
MR. JOHNSON: I think that squares pretty well with what we’ve heard from various places. Is there anything else you think that we need to talk about?
MR. BETTIS: I don’t know whether there is anything. You asked in the questions that you sent whether there was ever any hint of spies. Of course, this was always an ever present thing. And whenever anything ever happened in one of the plants, the Army descended on you in mass and you had to give a detailed account of just what happened. 
MR. JOHNSON: Accidents, you mean.
MR. BETTIS: Yes. Yes. I know once I was called up and said, “We have reason to expect that the plant will be sabotaged tonight. We want you to go out and take whatever measures you think will be appropriate.” You see, at that time, I was responsible for all the electrical part of Y-12, and since it was all electrical, the technical part was my responsibility. So I remember on a crash program, getting flood lights set up around the transformers, which would be the, the external transformers, which would be the major focal point, if they wanted to...
MR. JOHNSON: The most vulnerable.
MR. BETTIS: Yes, and then the entire night I spent patrolling, personally, Y-12 from the ground floor of one building to the roof, over the roof back, and down into another building, up to the roof. Nothing ever happened and I never was able to tell whether they were just checking to see what we would do to guard against sabotage, or whether they really had a good grounds for thinking…
MR. JOHNSON: You’ll probably never know.
MR. BETTIS: Never know, never know nothing, but I know that the place was, really got cooperation because we were having trouble. I said to Mr. Chambers who was the Manager of Engineering at this time who had been with TVA, “Mr. Chambers, our voltage is getting down to a point where the plant is not where we are going to drop some load. We have to have better voltage. Will you please get in touch with TVA?” So, he got in touch with TVA. They said, “There’s not anything we can do, given everything we can.” I said, “Well, what about Norris? They said, “Well, Norris is not putting out any power.” I said, “Well, tell them to put Norris on.” So he put Norris on and then the whole Norris Lake went down by 18 inches that entire reservoir in 10 hours, but it kept us on. It kept us going. 
MR. JOHNSON: Exciting to have that kind of cooperation and that kind of authority, you know, to say…
MR. BETTIS: That’s right.
MR. JOHNSON: …”Do it,” and have it done.
MR. BETTIS: On the other hand, of course, I told you I was in Personnel at the start of it, and if you recall at that time, it was very difficult for a person to transfer from one place to the other. You had to have a real good reason for leaving. You could not recruit except in approved areas. Well, they were shutting down the Lexington Signal Depot and anybody with any electronic experience we were trying to get here at Y-12. So they sent me up to Lexington, but for some reason or other, the wires got crossed and they didn’t clear it. I was up there recruiting and this colonel who ran the thing got word of it and he popped me in the pokey. I had to call back here to Dick Byrd and said, “For gosh sakes, get me out of here. You didn’t clear this with this guy and I’m in the slammer.” [Laughter] Recruiting was pretty much, it too was exciting in a way because you couldn’t tell them what they were going to do. They’d ask, “What are we going to do?” “Can’t tell you. Just an important job. Can’t tell you a thing.” 
MR. JOHNSON: Once you got down here and got settled in, did you get the feeling that you were in kind of closed place…
MR. BETTIS: Oh yes. Yes, sir.
MR. JOHNSON: There were those people out there who were in here.
MR. BETTIS: Yes, sir. Definitely that is true. That is true.
MR. JOHNSON: Because of the fence and the gates, or just because you were all doing the same thing, or…?
MR. BETTIS: I guess mainly because we were so involved in what we were doing. Of course there were the gates, now the gates and the fence were not without some value. You were never surprised by visitors. You could always say, “I can’t get you a pass.” So, you had a degree of privacy and isolation that wasn’t all together bad. 
MR. JOHNSON: But you were I’d imagine pretty glad to see the fences go down and the gates open up.
MR. BETTIS: Oh yes, by that time, yes, that’s right.
MR. JOHNSON: I think that covers just about all the ground that I needed to. 
MR. BETTIS: Well, I can’t think of anything of significance that I might interject by way of voluntary comments. I think that, well, yes. Let’s put this in.
MR. JOHNSON: Ok. 
MR. BETTIS: And that is if there is any good to come from a war, which is self-debatable, but we would never have developed nuclear energy without the necessity of the war. My friend, if it had not come along, we would have been in one awful spot for energy because this is…
[End of Interview]