Day, James (Jim)

              
ORAL HISTORY OF JAMES (JIM) DAY
Interviewed by Don Hunnicutt
Filmed by BBB Communications, LLC.
December 17, 2012
 
MR. HUNNICUTT: This interview is for the Center of Oak Ridge Oral History. The date is December 17, 2012. I am Don Hunnicutt in the home of James H. Day, 137 Claremont Road, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, to take his oral history. Jim, please state your full name, place of birth, and date of birth.
MR. DAY: James H. Day, born in Sneedville, Tennessee, February 6, 1923.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was your father’s name, place of birth, and date?
MR. DAY: His name is Anderson James Day, but he was known as Otto Day and born in 1894. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall where his place of birth was?
MR. DAY: I think the same place.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Sneedville?
MR. DAY: Sneedville.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your mother’s maiden name, place of birth, and date?
MR. DAY: Jenny Irene Livesay and her birth was in Missouri.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall the date?
MR. DAY: About 1895.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you remember about your father’s school history?
MR. DAY: Not much.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How about your mom’s school history?
MR. DAY: I don’t remember much about it either, not really.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you have sisters and brothers?
MR. DAY: I have one sister living.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And what is her name?
MR. DAY: Joan Boyer; she lives in Morristown.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about the others, deceased?
MR. DAY: They’re all dead.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What were their names?
MR. DAY: Starting out with brothers, Isaac Leonard Day, Claude Wayland Day, Mildred Evelyn Day, Elma Gladys Day, Mary Kate Day. Their names had changed of course when they got married.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Right.
MR. DAY: And Leslie Paul Day, Carl Day, and John Edward Day.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So you have quite a large family growing.
MR. DAY: 10 children.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you recall about your father’s work history?
MR. DAY: He preferred to live on a farm, but he didn’t like farming and most of his adult life was built on maintaining highways and bridges.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now Sneedville, Tennessee, is located in East—
MR. DAY: In Hancock County. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: In East Tennessee, is that correct?
MR. DAY: Upper East Tennessee, yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And what other larger city would be close to Sneedville?
MR. DAY: Well, Rogersville is not large, but it’s in Hawkins County, and then if you go on Northeast, it’ll be Kingsport. That is quite a ways up there to Bristol.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You mentioned your father had a farm but he didn’t like farming. Why did he stay doing farming work?
MR. DAY: He liked to live on a farm. I don’t know why. He did so we could work and so we raised big gardens every year, raised corn, sometimes wheat and tobacco every year that was our cash crop.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you fall in line with all the 10 children?
MR. DAY: I was in the 6th one; number 6.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you like working on the farm?
MR. DAY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What part did you like?
MR. DAY: All of it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about your other brothers and sisters, did they like working on the farm?
MR. DAY: No, they did not and most of them got off as quickly as they could. They went to other types of work.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me a little bit about your school and when you were growing up. Where did you attend elementary school?
MR. DAY: Well, in part we lived 10 years in Iowa, that’s where I started school in a small school house out from Mount Ayr, which is 80 miles southwest of Des Moines and then our grandparents got kind of sick and my father decided we’d move back to Tennessee, and so we did and the rest of schooling was at Hancock County, elementary and high school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you like to attend school?
MR. DAY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was some of your favorite subjects in school?
MR. DAY: Oh I guess, probably History and Math and we had Civics was a great course too. We had a lot of practical experience in it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, was this in Sneedville?
MR. DAY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You attended high school as well in Sneedville?
MR. DAY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Graduated from high school?
MR. DAY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall what year you graduated in high school?
MR. DAY: Probably ’40. I think ’40 probably.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, after high school, what did you do?
MR. DAY: I went in the service in the Marine Corp in ’41, in July.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And where were you stationed in ’41?
MR. DAY: Well, I went through boot camp at Parris Island in South Carolina, then after that I went to Quantico, Virginia, and radio school for a long time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: In radio school, other than being taught how to operate a radio, what else did you learn?
MR. DAY: We had to learn the Morse code and be sufficient in copying that at certain speeds, and when we graduated, we—about 15 or 16 words a minute that means 5 letters composed a word. And they’re scrambled letters so you can’t anticipate what they are. You’d have to have exact like CPRST and that’s a word and because when they encipher anything, that’s the way it comes out and then it has to be deciphered into English. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: And did you have a difficulty learning that?
MR. DAY: We have to take a test before we got admitted to that school when we were in boot camp and so 3 or 4 of us decided that’d be a good way to get out of the hot sun at Parris Island. So, we went over to take the test. I had no idea what it was, it just so many dots and dashes, and so we all passed it because they needed students. And I said, “Well, you know,” to myself, “I don’t know how that could be that we could have passed it”, because I have no idea what it was but they transferred us after we got through boot camp to Quantico to radio school.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you do to after radio school?
MR. DAY: To San Diego in California for—I was there near Camp Miramar and then after we got some new recruits and trained them, they transferred us overseas. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: And where was that?
MR. DAY: We were transferred to Hawaii; took 15 days to get over there on ship, and my job was to bed everybody down, and when I did there was no more bunks, so myself and two or three others slept on the deck all the way over there, which is nice to see the stars and everything at night.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have any problems with sea sickness?
MR. DAY: No, but now we had people that did so you had to be— get out of their way.
MR. HUNNICUTT: When you got to your destination, describe what it looked like when you got there after Pearl Harbor attacked.
MR. DAY: Well, it was still not very good, you know and we were transferred out to a camp that was probably about three miles from Pearl Harbor, and about two miles from Honolulu, in between. So, that’s where we got all of these—after we were there and got training, and we got a bunch of Navajo Indians in and we had to train them.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about training the Navajo Indians.
MR. DAY: Well, we had a lot of words that Navajos didn’t have, such as Task Force 22 or whatever. They had no words for that so they have to make up Navajo words to equate with that so we’d have these guys on here and another bunch that they couldn’t see, he would transmit this message in Navajo. The man receives it, copies it into English, and they had to be 100% correct and so that took a little doing, but after they got the new words and everything down converted to Navajo, it worked out real well and we used them all during the war then.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was this an oral transmission or was it a code—they just spoke their native language?
MR. DAY: They spoke their native language, then a man on the other end copied it in English and it had agreed 100% with the message that he transmitted because you couldn’t make any mistakes on it. And the reason we used them was it saved so much time not having to encode a message when you’re in battle. We’d just say “put Arizona on”; that meant put a Navajo on. The other end, they’d transmit a secret message through the front lines that he’d copied in English, hand it to the Lieutenant or Captain or whoever was there to receive new orders from the General. And that way you’d saved probably a couple of hours. You didn’t have to encrypt that message. Just send it Navajo. Nobody ever was able to break the Navajo language. The Japanese couldn’t and they never did break our encryption either. We did break the Japanese code and the German code both during the war but they never did it. They could not break our code.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you work on any of that code breaking?
MR. DAY: I’m going to say yes and no. The only thing I did on it—everything on that encryption back then was mechanical. All many, many gears in these machines that very few people had access to, and the people that had training in that, they went to school a long time and they were not allowed to take any notes or anything. Everything had to be up here, no notes. So, when it came time to maintain those machines; clean them, they’d take one gear out and hand it to a person. They’d go clean that thing with carbon [inaudible] something. Take it back, hand it back to that guy in there. That’s all you would ever know about those machines. Nothing.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Very secretive.
MR. DAY: Absolutely. The military could keep secrets in contrast to what we do now.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, how long were you at that particular base?
MR. DAY: Well, that was our headquarter base, so when we’d go on an operation like the first one we went was making Gilbert Islands. And then, after that was over, we’d come back to Hawaii and train for the next operation wherever it might be. We did that repeatedly. Thirty months I was over there and [inaudible], we went to Kwajalein and then to Saipan and Tinian, which they were very close together. And after Saipan operation was over, we went aboard ship and supposedly going back to Hawaii. Well, we got as far as Guam and they said, “No, you fellas have to get off here, set up a radio station, establish contact with Saipan. 
So, we arrived on Guam after that island was secured and I think they killed about 7,000 Japanese after it was officially secured and everyone in our organization but one, one guy named [inaudible] from Chicago; I’ll never forget. Everyone else got dengue fever. Dengue fever is like malaria except it doesn’t reoccur. You get very sick, terrible diarrhea and when we came back finally after we got through in Guam, came back to Hawaii, nobody knew us. We’d lost weight, our hair was long, no barbers and it was a good experience I guess, in retrospect. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you see some of the damage from the attack on Pearl Harbor?
MR. DAY: Not—well, we went over the [inaudible] Islands; yeah you could see some of  it. It’s still there and of course, the Arizona is still there. They put a monument on top of it but I think the bodies are still, I don’t think they recovered the bodies out of Arizona.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was the Arizona more visible then than it is now, do you recall?
MR. DAY: No, it wasn’t. It was sunk, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You could still see the aftershock of the buildings or the devastation? 
MR. DAY: Some of them but we often wondered why they didn’t attack more, you know. That [inaudible] barracks or big Army base; they could have wiped it out. They could’ve come in if they wanted to. They didn’t know that, I guess but they didn’t.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, you showed me an article of Iwo Jima. Show me that picture again of the flag raising on the Iwo Jima.
MR. DAY: Oh yeah, made that guy famous.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Hold it up and let the camera take a look at it.
MR. DAY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, you were on Iwo Jima. Where you located related to that flag raising?
MR. DAY: Right down at the bottom of that mountain, which was an extinct volcano; Mount Suribachi was the name of it. This is a posed picture here—the first one they raised was just an old pole and a ragged flag and this photographer, I forgot his name now, anyhow it’s in here. Pat said, “We’ve got to do a better job of this.” We got a good flag pole, and a flag, and raising that made national news; a historic picture.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How long were you on Iwo Jima?
MR. DAY: I went in on February 19th. I probably got off about April, we went in the first day.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, you visualized all the conflict that went on?
MR. DAY: Not the front line but this is something—we were down at the base of this mountain. Front line was up a little ways in front of us and they’d give those guys a rest to come back to rest and then they were shelling us with big artillery and so those guys said, “We’re not coming back to rest. It’s more restful up on the frontline than it is here.” They’d rather face smaller arms that they would artillery.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, how far away from the frontlines where you located?
MR. DAY: Oh, not very far. It depends; the frontlines moved, they kept advancing, you know against the Japanese. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: And so your job as a radio person was what?
MR. DAY: To keep messages, make sure all of what our guys was sending whatever messages needed to be transmitted to the frontline, and to the ships, and everything else. That’s what we did and a lot of times we’d used—most of the time we used a Navajo to transmit any message to the frontline. That we didn’t have to encode it or anything. So, much faster, more efficient.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And where did you go from Iwo Jima?
MR. DAY: From Iwo Jima, we came back to Honolulu. Well, our base there, and then we went to Japan right after they’d declared the war over, and I forgot the exact date we went in there, but it was I think the war is over like on August 8th.  I remember that because I had extended my enlistment for two years on July 8th thinking that the war is going to last another two years at least, and I got money for doing that, and so I said, “Hey, I’ll be smart and do that”, well, and about a month the war was over because they dropped the two bombs. So, we went to Japan and we went in at a big Japanese Navy Base, Sasebo on Kyushu Island, which is the most southern island in Japan. And we were stationed there and that was 90 miles from Nagasaki, and also it’s a little bit further to Hiroshima. Now, all these people on TV and everything called that Hiroshima, but everybody over there call it Hiroshima, and that’s what I call it. I don’t know what it is, but that’s what we always referred to it. And when we went in there, all the people that we saw was in the Japanese military, all the women and children had gone to the hills because they had been told that when we came in, we would kill all of them, and they believed it. Well, about the third day, some of these little kids started coming back in and we gave them some cookies or whatever we had, you know. I don’t think we had any cookies but we gave them something to eat and then they saw we weren’t going to kill them and then the women started coming back in and no matter where you went they’d bow to you just like they did all the policeman. All those women would bow to the policeman or anyone in power; that’s the way it was. But, we weren’t allowed to go in the direction of Nagasaki. We can go around other places but not there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you ever hear anything mentioned about Oak Ridge during that time?
MR. DAY: No.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was the feeling throughout the military when it was announced the bomb was dropped?
MR. DAY: I thought it was the most wonderful news we ever heard, actually because they had a pretty good prediction that if we had to invade Japan, which they had planned to do, we would have had at least 500,000 casualties. I don’t mean dead people but at least that many injured or killed. And I can believe it after going into Sasebo because that place was heavily armed, the whole coast was. We went in there—and now, think about this now, ’45 it was, we went in there and took over a radio station that the military had. It was built 75 feet under the ground, air-conditioned, had communication; they were shipped out there. Now, that was that long ago and that you just wouldn’t think, you know it would have been that way.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, when the US Military arrived there, and what about the Japanese soldiers? Where they in view or—
MR. DAY: Oh yeah, yeah they’d met us when we went in and everything.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, how was their reaction to you?
MR. DAY: Well, it was civil. We had no problem. I mean, I’m sure that they were saddened but they knew the war was over.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did it seem like maybe some of them was glad the war was over?
MR. DAY: Well, I’m sure they were. I know we were and no, we never had any kind of an incident of anything with them [inaudible].
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, the US treated the Japanese with some respect?
MR. DAY: Oh yeah, absolutely, we had no problem at all, none.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, where did you go from there?
MR. DAY: Come back to the states, finally.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is that when you got out of the military?
MR. DAY: No, that wasn’t when I got out. I came back to San Diego and I wanted to transfer to their radio station in San Diego and they said, “Well, we don’t have any openings for radio supervisor or radio operators”. And I said, “Okay”, and then they transferred me all the way across the United States to the Naval Station in Philadelphia, in a guard attachment which I’d never been in a guard attachment my life. Not only that, but they had Formal Guard Mount every day except Sunday. So, I got through one of them and then I volunteered to take all Sundays because everybody wanted to go somewhere else on Sunday. But, when I say Formal Guard Mount, I mean they had the band, they had all the—the guy said “Don’t mess up.” I was commander of the guard because of my rank; I knew nothing about it. He said “You better not mess up because the colonel will shoot you.” I said “Well”, well, I knew that was baloney but anyway after a few weeks are up, I put in for transfer at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, because for some reason, no one wanted to go there but it was a wonderful place.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, what brought you to Oak Ridge, Jim?
MR. DAY: I had a brother living here and he kept telling me that I should come down here to work. So, I came down one day and put an application in and told them the background I had and they said, “Well, we don’t have any openings in the [inaudible] work”, and I said, “Well, what do you have?” and they said, “We can start you out as a metallurgical technician”. I didn’t even know what he was talking about. I said, “I’ll take it.”
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, what year was this?
MR. DAY: This was in 1947.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And what plant did you work?
MR. DAY: Oak Ridge National Lab, the whole time.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was it called X-10 at that time?
MR. DAY: Yeah. It was called X-10. It still is. A lot of people call it X-10.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall where you went for your application, where you put in your application?
MR. DAY: It was at X-10, at an old barracks looking building and that’s where it was then. It’s nothing like it is now, nothing.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What job did your brother have for you, do you remember?
MR. DAY: He was a draftsman; architectural draftsman.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did he work for one of the plants?
MR. DAY: Yeah, he did—I think he worked at Y-12, I believe he did.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, when you came and put your application in at X-10, did you stay with your brother?
MR. DAY: No, we moved and we moved into an apartment up on Hunter Circle; one bedroom.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Were you married at that time?
MR. DAY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you meet your future wife?
MR. DAY: In Morristown.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And what was her name?
MR. DAY: Margaret Rice.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And I see now Morristown, you—before Oak Ridge—tell me a little bit about living in Morristown.
MR. DAY: Okay, when I got out of the service, there was no jobs then. So, my brother and I—there was a little restaurant a guy had just retired from. We took that thing over and built a good business in it and I had two brothers, and this one—they were both younger than I was, and they said well—so one day—that’s where I met my wife. She’d come in to eat and you know I met her there and we got to dating. And then I told my brother, I said, “Well, this business is not big enough for 3 people, so I’ll find something else to do and that’s when I came to Oak Ridge. Now, she had worked here during the war as a cubicle operator at Y-12.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, was this before you met her or after?
MR. DAY: Yes, yes before. I did not know her. I didn’t know her until—
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember how long she worked here?
MR. DAY: She worked there all during the war.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And so you met her at Morristown; that would be about-what ’47?
MR. DAY: Yeah, ’47.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And then your other brother that was in Oak Ridge suggested you come here and go to work and you did.
MR. DAY: Yeah, right, I did.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Let me ask you, I forgot to ask you this. Did you receive any medals or awards of any sort while you were in the military?
MR. DAY: Well, yeah I got a lot of them but you know, sort of meaningless medals and you know it was for certain areas that you were in and combat medals and everything. The best one I guess I had was the Bronze Star, that’s the 3rd highest medal you can get in the military. You get the Bronze Star then you have the Silver Star, then you have the Medal of Honor. But what makes the Bronze Star different is they can award that to you for exemplary work. It doesn’t have to be from a brave act, a military act, and that’s what I got it for, not a Medal of Valor. Because I’d stood long watches like 72 hours at the time, believe it or not, and we did that and I wasn’t the only one that did it. But, you just don’t think it for that long, but we did.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That is a long time—
MR. DAY: You can do a lot of things.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Without a break.
MR. DAY: Yeah, it is that’s right. I forgot to tell you when we were on Guam, there was a man and I can’t remember his name, he was in the Navy and he’d been promoted to Chief Petty Officer. He was on Guam all during the Japanese time that they were there. He hid in a cave and those little native boys would bring him food all during the war. Then, when they saw the American ships coming, he flashed it with a mirror. They sent a boat in and picked him up, brought him aboard our ship, and he’d been there I don’t know how many years. And he would get in the mess hall to eat and he ate just like a native; no utensils at all, just ate with his hand like a wild man. His wife had remarried because the Navy had told her that he was dead. They had no idea that he was hiding out on Guam all those years.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, how did he get there to start with?
MR. DAY: Well, he was stationed there, and the Japanese came in—
MR. HUNNICUTT: Invaded them. 
MR. DAY: And got the island, and he hid. He hid in this cave and it was a sad story. I don’t know whatever happened to him. I have no idea. I don’t know if he’s still living or—but I could imagine what his wife must have felt like when she found that out. There she is remarried, had no idea this man was still alive, but strange world.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Quite a story.
MR. DAY: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you and your wife first live when you moved to Oak Ridge?
MR. DAY: We lived on Hunter Circle in a one bedroom apartment, two story apartment. We were on that upper floor, the end unit. I don’t know the number, I don’t remember that.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Can you describe to me what the inside of the apartment looked like.
MR. DAY: Well, you had a living room and you had the small bedroom, and a small kitchen, and a small bathroom; that’s it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What did you think about Oak Ridge when you first came and got to looking around about the city?
MR. DAY: Well, I was just glad to have a job, and the first job I had paid $44 a week. I was glad to get it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your wife work any while you first came to Oak Ridge?
MR. DAY: No, she did afterwards, but then she got pregnant, had a boy right after we’d moved afterwards.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What was your son’s name?
MR. DAY: James H. Jr. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: And where is he today?
MR. DAY: California. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: What’s his profession?
MR. DAY: He’s a radiologist and he’s going on half time next year, so he can live a little.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Starting to retire in a little bit?
MR. DAY: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your wife recall any of her experiences or how Oak Ridge might be when she first came versus when you moved down here?
MR. DAY: Well, you know she lived in a barracks like thing.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Dormitory?
MR. DAY: Dormitory, but, you know it’s like an Army barracks and she enjoyed working here very much then after the war, Eastman Kodak was the contractor there. You know when those cubicles were operating. So, after the war they terminated everyone and they transferred her to Kingsport; Eastman Kodak had a plant up there. She worked one week and said that was worst place she ever worked in her life. You know, I guess she was just used to this one and found out that there’s a different world when you get into commerce.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How did you get back and forth to work when you first came to Oak Ridge?
MR. DAY: Rode a bus, I think it cost is 50 cents a week.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And where did you get on the bus?
MR. DAY: At Midtown; I had to drive down there, get on the bus there at the Central Bus Terminal.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You had a car apparently when you came?
MR. DAY: Yeah, I had a ’40 Ford.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember coming through the gates of Oak Ridge?
MR. DAY: Yes, oh many times.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about your experiences going in and out of the gates.
MR. DAY: Well, I had a sister that worked here then for Fairchild Aviation and she’d get me a pass and I’d stop out to Elza Gate there and come in. And I thought, “Man, this place is really heavily fortified.” You couldn’t go in or out without going through the guards. It was strange but—
MR. HUNNICUTT: Quite different than you were used to?
MR. DAY: Well, not really because I go in through gates for a long time, about all of my adult life, really.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So tell me a little bit about your first job.
MR. DAY: My first job was in metallurgy and myself and another individual, day after day we’re alloying U-235 with 2S aluminum. And we would put that in a big crucible; we’d put the aluminum in, then we’d get the 235 powder, after the aluminum’s melted. Pour it in, then we had that slag you put on top of that. Anyway, we would bring that certain temperatures and after it was mixed good and then cooled, we’d pull the slag off and we poured it in a big graphite ingot, let it set and then they’d take that ingot and roll it into thin sheets and that’s what they made fuel elements with for the graphite reactor. That’s where I got a lot of radiation that I wasn’t aware of for years later and— 
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember your badge number that you had when you first—
MR. DAY: 8195, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, were you required to wear that badge when you went in and out of the city?
MR. DAY: Yes. At the plant.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That’s how you were identified to get back in?
MR. DAY: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: But what about when you went in and out of the city when the gates were still up?
MR. DAY: I don’t remember that. I don’t know if I had to show that badge or not. I really don’t remember.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you move to out of the apartments?
MR. DAY: Move to a flattop up on the East Drive, two bedrooms. There’s a [inaudible]—we called it flattop because it had a flat roof and windows up high and it had two small bedrooms, a living room, one bath, and a kitchen. It was a little bigger than that at Hunter Circle anyway. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of heat was in the flattop?
MR. DAY: Coal furnace.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you get your coal?
MR. DAY: They delivered it about once a month or more often if you threw that dust away and ordered some more because a lot of times they’d deliver that stuff and it was so bad you couldn’t put it in the stove. You know, it was just dust, really, a lot of it was.
 MR. HUNNICUTT: It wasn’t lump coal?
MR. DAY: Well, it had supposed to have been, but a lot of it wasn’t.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have a storage place that the coal was delivered to?
MR. DAY: Yeah, yeah they had a little coal chute there and they’d put it in a box outside.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Next to the street?
MR. DAY: Yeah, no it’s behind the house there, I’ll think on that one.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And now, on those flattops, did they have more than one door to come in?
MR. DAY: No, just one, that’s it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall ever seeing an emergency escape door in one of the bedrooms or  in the flattop?
MR. DAY: No, I don’t. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: Some must of had them and some didn’t. I’ve had people tell me that.
MR. DAY: I don’t know. I don’t remember seeing one.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where do you recall your wife did her grocery shopping?
MR. DAY: That brings back something interesting. We went out to Seattle on our honeymoon. Back then, everywhere you stopped, like to get gas or anything, anything below $5 change, you got it in silver dollars. I had a pocket full when I got back. So, this old White Store was down at Grove Center and that’s where I went to buy groceries after we got back when we live at Hunter Circle and I pulled out, I don’t think it’s $11 or something with those silver dollars and this girl looked at them and she had never seen one before. She says, “Well, I’m not sure if we can take that”, I said, “Well, call your manager, I believe he’ll like to take it.” And he came out and he said, “Absolutely, you have any more of them?”, and I said, “Not today”, but that poor little clerk had never seen a silver dollar before. She didn’t know if it was legal tender or not, so—
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember what schools your son attended?
MR. DAY: Yes, he attended the University of Tennessee and then he applied for a medical school and took a, I think it was a three-day test and he came home he said, “Well, I won’t be going to Med-School”, I said, “How come”, he said, “Well, there’s no way you could pass that test.” And he’d tell me about, I said, “Look, what they want to know is your overall knowledge and they’ll look at all your grades and your courses that you’ve taken and everything”, I said, “Nobody is going to make a hundred on that test.” 
They had all kind of World Art; everything that you could think about in life that was on that test. They just want to see what your overall knowledge was. Well, one day a few weeks later, he gets this business sized envelope and right diagonally across that thing says, “Accepted”, and I said I wonder what would they do if you failed it. But, he was tickled to death because—I had to get three people to write a recommendation. I got three doctors here to do that and they were glad to do it and so we went down there and I’ll never forget Doctor [inaudible], do you remember him?  
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes.
MR. DAY: Well, he wrote one for him and Doctor Preston and Doctor [inaudible] and anyway Doctor [inaudible] told me, he said, “Jim, they’ll work his ass off.” I said—because he went down there and he was right. Normally, it’s a four-year course but they had 39 months straight; that’s what it was and then after he got out there, he would move to Colorado and he did a three-year Specialty in Radiology at the University of Colorado.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, when he went through the Oak Ridge school system, do you remember some of the schools he attended? 
MR. DAY: In Oak Ridge?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes.
MR. DAY: Well, yeah, Elm Grove; he attended and then I think he went to Cedar Hill, maybe a year or two. He was in nursery school when my wife was working and then he went to high school, all of it in Oak Ridge.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall whether the Oak Ridge school system helped him in his schooling that he took?
MR. DAY: Absolutely, tremendously, and to this day, he’ll tell you that it really helped him. When he went to UT, he said, “I’m not taking any more Spanish”, he had about four or five years of it and I said,  “Well, what are you going to do? You have to have foreign language.” He said, “I’m going to take German”, I said, “Man, that’s a bad mistake”, I said, “That is a rough language”, then he said, “Well, I’ll take it.” He didn’t do too good in it, but he took it anyway.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you remember about rationing stamps?
MR. DAY: Ration stamps?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes.
MR. DAY: Nothing. I remember seeing them, but I don’t remember anything about them.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That was gone by the time you got here?
MR. DAY: I guess, yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of activities did your family do outside the home?
MR. DAY: Well, we’d bowl and we fished and hunted. While he’s growing up I wanted to introduce him to it, and of course he doesn’t do it now and doesn’t have time and I don’t do it either and—
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where did you bowl?
MR. DAY: Down at Grove Center.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The Oak Terrace Bowling Lanes?
MR. DAY: The Oak Terrace, yeah; did that for quite a few years and the team.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about fishing? Where did you go fishing?
MR. DAY: We’d fished at Norris, down below Norris Dam mostly.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was fishing not very good on the Clinch River out here?
MR. DAY: Not too good, it wasn’t too good. Sometimes, it’d be okay, and other times nothing, you know that’s just the way it—and I’m sure it’s the same now.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you have a telephone when you first came to Oak Ridge?
MR. DAY: I think we did, but I’m not really sure.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Where you on a party line?
MR. DAY: No.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you remember about door to door salesman? Was that something that happened in Oak Ridge, do you remember?
MR. DAY: No, the only thing I remember that would closely resemble that is these rolling stores.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, tell me about a rolling store.
MR. DAY: Well, there’s a guy that came by on a—like he would have a three-quarter ton truck cabin built on the back and he’d have groceries in it and sell them; sugar, flour, eggs, whatever, and I never did buy anything from him because they were usually higher than the store.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, where were you living when the rolling stores came in?
MR. DAY: In East Drive in that flattop.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, you moved from Hunter Circle did you say, to East Drive?
MR. DAY: Yeah.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Okay. How long did you live in a flattop?
MR. DAY: Probably couple of years, I guess.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Then, where did you moved from there?
MR. DAY: I moved into a B house, a cemesto.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me about a B house, what’s that mean?
MR. DAY: It’s just a two-bedroom, living room, kitchen, and a furnace room, and one bath, and a half a bath, one and a half baths and it was small about 960 square feet, okay. So, that’s the house that I completely remodeled—well, first I bought that house from the government for around $3,300.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember what year that was?
MR. DAY: That was probably ’48, I guess or ’49.
 MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember the address of the B house?
MR. DAY: No I don’t; 110, I think at North Temple Lane but I’m not sure that that’s the right address.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, what all types of remodeling did you do to the house?
MR. DAY: Well, one thing I don’t care to admit, I’ll never do it again; one experience—I dug a basement by hand and that gave me a lot of storage room and things. And then, I’d put brick up the wainscoting up to the windows, and put new windows, tore out the furnace room, put in the electric heat and air-conditioning and new roof with overhang, and new siding, new kitchen and dining area added on. So, I live there about 10 years.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you do all this work yourself?
MR. DAY: No, I did not. I hired a brick mason to do the brick work and siding, I [inaudible]. But, the others—my wife and I put the kitchen in. We bought the cabinets, put it in and the dining area that we added on to the house. I remodeled both bathrooms, I put the tile in it-both of them and when I took that coal furnace out of there, it gave me a lot of room, additional room in the house. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of heating did you put in the house?
MR. DAY: I put electric heat in. They were portable heaters.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, did your wife go back to work at any time she lived in Oak Ridge?
MR. DAY: Yeah, yeah she did.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What type of work did she do?
MR. DAY: She did clerical work and her last job she had, she worked for Alvin Weinberg. She took care of all his secret documents and I had an agreement with her that we’d never talk about her work. I didn’t want to know about it because it was secret. So, it worked out real good. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, the whole time you were at X-10, were you in the same division?
MR. DAY: After I got out of the Metallurgy Division, I transferred to Instrumentation and Control Division and that’s where I stayed for all my time there at X-10.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Tell me a little bit about Instrumentation.
MR. DAY: Well, we had probably in our division, had 350 people and we had it divided up. There was some—we had engineers, and we had a few physicists but mostly it’s engineers and technicians and weekly employees. And when I first started out, I started out in an apprentice program, three years and then after you got out of that program, you were a technician, and then after the technician, I was technician for a few years and then I was made a supervisor over a shop, and then I was made a general supervisor over six supervisors— five supervisors.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Without discussing any classification issues, was this instrumentation to monitor certain things?
MR. DAY: Everything. Basically, when we first started, we made most of our instruments because there wasn’t any on the market for measuring radiation and stuff and so we fabricated them at the lab. But, then once we go through that fabrication process, we’d have all our prints and everything, we’d get companies to bid on them if we needed more. In other words, if we could buy it commercially, we’d buy it but much of this stuff we couldn’t do it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was ORTEC, was that a company that made instrumentation, do you recall?
MR. DAY: Yes they did, yeah they did.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Was that a company you dealt with?
MR. DAY: No, not too much, but yeah we had, guys that would start that used to work in our division; some of them did.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you deal with any local companies here in Oak Ridge?
MR. DAY: No, not many. In my part of the work, there wasn’t any local then really. All these were [inaudible] then and most of our work that I did was process instrumentation and I worked with the Brown Instrument Company and L & N and people like that, big instrument companies. And the majority of my work—and like I say, we had it divided up where we’d have a reactor group. All they did was work for the Reactor Division. We’d have a group that worked for Analytical Chemistry, and we have a group that worked for Chemistry Division and one group with—in the end, well you got to go back just a little bit. When I started work there, there were no such things as a semi-conductor or even any solid state devices at all. It was all vacuum tubes and resistor boards and stuff like that. Capacitors that you individually put and took out, and then they came along with the transistor and then they came along with printed circuit boards and had that little tiny solid state devices that you could hardly see. And well, just like the new computers out there now used to be an old computer that they had was really the Zinger. It took up a room full of equipment and it wouldn’t do 100 [inaudible] what the two cabinets would do now, and speed. If I wanted to go back to that division to work today, there would not be a single thing I could do. It’s changed so dramatically, and that was what was really interesting with the job that every day we got something different, something new. And I recall one day these physicists were having a problem with an instrument. They were trying to measure small signals. You know, I’m talking microvolts and that’s when I was a technician. My boss said, “I want you to go there and see what is the problem of that instrument”, and I told him, I said, “You know, I’m going to look like you know what. Those guys spent days trying to find that problem and you’d expect me to find it?” He said, “Well, Just go and see if you can.” Well, I walked in there, I took one look at that thing and I saw just like that. What is was the wires that came in from their signal had a grounding sheath and it wasn’t grounded. They thought I was a genius. It was just a stroke of luck, nothing but luck, you know; makes you feel good though.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Jim, what do you recall about the Oak Ridge Hospital? Did you use the hospital facilities very much in Oak Ridge?
MR. DAY: Yes, wonderful hospital as far as I’m concerned. I used it more than once and that’s where my son was born and the only time I’ve gone outside the Oak Ridge was that last surgery I had and it was recommended to me rather strongly that I should see those doctors over there and I did, and I was glad I did. 
MR. HUNNICUTT: But they were recommended by Oak Ridge’s physicians?
MR. DAY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about the dental facilities in Oak Ridge? How do you recall how they were?
MR. DAY: Well, that’s a good story because seems like every time I’ve got a good one, they either died or retired. This is not a dental one but I asked this—my family doctor; I first went to him I said, “Do you think you’re going to outlive me?”, and he said, “Well, I don’t know.” I said, “I’m tired of these people retiring and dying on me,” meaning, you know I’ve lived too long, I guess.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Who is your family doctor?
MR. DAY: Oh, I used to have Dr. Crews way back and he and a guy named Everett Sharpe used to go and jog down at a track at the high school. So, I went up to him one day and I had flu symptoms. I had diarrhea so bad I could hardly stand it and Dr. Crews looked up at me, he said, “Are you still running?” I said, “Yeah, I’ve been about four to five times this morning”, he said, “No, I mean down at the track!”, I said, “Oh.” He was a character and he was really a nice guy.
MR. HUNNICUTT: He was an icon doctor of Oak Ridge by no means.
MR. DAY: Oh, yeah he really was.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you remember doctors coming to the house and making house calls?
MR. DAY: Yes, Doctor Preston did when my son was a baby, he’d come to the house.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I believe Doctor Preston and Doctor Hardy must have doctored every child in Oak Ridge in those days.
MR. DAY: Almost, yes, they did. He was a great guy. I saw him one time out on the causeway; you know, I live right across from there and we’d go over and walk and one day and he was over there walking and he said, “Mr. Day!”, and I thought, “How in the world could you remember me?” I haven’t seen him in 10 years, but he had a fabulous memory, he really did. I don’t think he ever saw anyone that if he met him once, he knew him from then on.
MR. HUNNICUTT: You moved from the B house to where?
MR. DAY: I moved from the B house—let’s see; I sold it to a lady and then I moved to—is that the one I moved to? I moved to a two bedroom E apartment on [inaudible] and lived there about a year and then I bought an F house up there on Delaware.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, now tell me about the two bedroom apartment. How was that different than the other apartment that you first lived in?
MR. DAY: Oh, it was completely different. It was a four family apartment. The two ends were small. They call them E1s meaning you had one bedroom and then the E2 was a two story and it had two bedrooms, so it’s a lot different.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall the neighborhoods in all the houses you live, how the people—were the people friendly?
MR. DAY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did they socialize a lot with each other?
MR. DAY: No, Oak Ridgers don’t socialize a lot, in my opinion like small towns do.
MR. HUNNICUTT: So, in the neighborhoods that you’ve live in Oak Ridge, you didn’t notice that happening very often, the socializing?
MR. DAY: Not really and when I lived in that apartment on—the first one I lived I, the neighbors, you know we’d socialized but next door neighbor maybe but outside of that, not much.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you recall how your wife washed the clothes for the family?
MR. DAY: Yeah, we had a machine.
MR. HUNNICUTT: The washing machine, wringer type?
MR. DAY: Yeah, I think, I don’t know much at all. I think it was, and we did have a clothesline. This [inaudible] last wife, she’s always saying; she’s kidding her sisters. Her sister likes to hang stuff out and she’s telling her, “Well, that’s redneck”, I said, “Well, it does the job.”
MR. HUNNICUTT: So you moved from the E apartment to—
MR. DAY: F house.
MR. HUNNICUTT: F house. And what’s the difference in an F house and an E apartment?
MR. DAY: F house is the largest cemesto in Oak Ridge. It has three bedrooms, two baths, living room, big kitchen, furnace room, and then the one I had, it did have a big porch enclosed. We made a big sun porch out of it.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you recall the address of that F house?
MR. DAY: I’ll see if I have that written down, I’m not sure. I had it somewhere—F house, 201 Delaware Avenue.
 MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you buy the F house at that time?
MR. DAY: Yes, I bought it from a guy who had been transferred by Union Carbide to a plant up in Ohio.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And how long did you live in the F house?
MR. DAY: About 12 years probably. Did a lot of work on it; put new kitchen, new baths.
MR. HUNNICUTT: During this time up to the point of the F house, how did the city change? Do you recall how the city had changed?
MR. DAY: Been fairly constant change, yeah but of course, they built all these new buildings and everything down town, you know.
MR. HUNNICUTT: New shopping center?
MR. DAY: No. Well, even the city buildings; the fire hall, the [inaudible].
 MR. HUNNICUTT: The Library and the Civic Center area?
MR. DAY: Yeah, all new, you’re right. That was all built since I came here.
MR. HUNNICUTT: That brings up a question about when they opened the gates to the city. Do you recall that event? 
MR. DAY: I do recall it but I don’t—not too many details but I was glad, you know it was a hassle going in and out. I was glad to see it; a lot of people weren’t.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes, a lot of people wanted to be taken care of by the government and—
MR. DAY: I think so.
MR. HUNNICUTT: And it kept all the riff raff out of Oak Ridge.
MR. DAY: Yeah but—
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did you attend any of the parade or any of the activities that took place that day?
MR. DAY: I probably did but I don’t recall.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What about the Atomic Museum, did you ever attend that down at Jefferson?
MR. DAY: Yes, I think I did once or twice but not much. I’ve gone to this one down here now but the—
MR. HUNNICUTT: What’s your opinion of the museum now, the American Museum of Science and Energy?
MR. DAY: It’s nice. I think they charge now, don’t they?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Yes.
MR. DAY: And that’s new, well maybe last year.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Now, you like to do gardening, I guess you carried that over from when you grew up on the farm?
MR. DAY: Right.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What’s the most favorite—well, you had gardens when you lived in Oak Ridge, I guess at certain residences, is that right?
MR. DAY: Well, one over at Artesia I did; I had 2 gardens over there and—
MR. HUNNICUTT: That seemed to be the thing in the early days of Oak Ridge, wasn’t it; people raise their own gardens.
MR. DAY: Yeah, you know you’d go down Emory Valley Road where those houses are now. It was just garden after garden there and people didn’t own the land. I don’t know who did but—
MR. HUNNICUTT: Just a first come, first serve?
MR. DAY: But, now it won’t do you any good to do that because deer would eat it up, right?
MR. HUNNICUTT: Right, we have a large deer population in the city.
MR. DAY: We have a large deer population and wild turkeys and thousands of squirrels.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, what do you like about gardening?
MR. DAY: I like to see stuff grow and then I especially like the freshness of the vegetables and the fruits, yet there’s no comparing it. I mean, you know you buy something at the store and well, of course the old saying is true; the first thing that loses is the sugar. It doesn’t take it long. I mean, if you pick it one day and cook it the next day, you’ve lost a lot of content of the sugar of the vegetable, whatever it is. And one time—I’ll give you a little example: One time, I had the sister-in-law here and she told me said, “Those were the best green beans I’ve ever eaten in my life”, She said, “How did you fix them?” I said, “Well, I usually fix them, put them in a pot, and I’ll cut up an onion, put in there with it and then I used corn oil, and then I sprinkle a little sugar on it.” 
She’s said, “Sugar on green beans!?” I said, “Of course, that’s the first thing it loses, and you’re just adding it back. You don’t taste any sugar in it.” And you don’t. She said, “Well, I’m going to do mine that my way” I said, “Okay”. I told my mom one time when I was home many years ago and she had some green beans and I said, “Well, I see you’re still using that fat back in your beans”, she said, “No, we haven’t been doing that for a long time. The doctor told us we couldn’t do that anymore”, and I said, “Well, what do you do?” she said,” I used corn oil.” So, I’ve used it ever since. It really gives it a good flavor.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Did your family visit the indoor theaters when you went out, you know The [inaudible] or The Grove or—
MR. DAY: Yeah, yeah we did and I’ve gone to a lot of the [inaudible]. I have gone down to Jackson Square but then [inaudible] events down at [inaudible] auditorium, they’ll have some [inaudible] people coming in there and they’re pretty good; really the shows are.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Have you seen the city grow or has it grown since you’ve been here?
MR. DAY: It’s grown and then went backwards. It’s growing tremendously.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Explain. What do you mean by going backwards?
MR. DAY: By the fact that they let that entire mall set down there empty. I don’t understand that at all because we had a good business clientele for a long time here, from all around surrounding counties and now, you have nothing coming here in because there’s nothing to come to.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What would you like to see the city do in the future to improve itself?
MR. DAY: I don’t know but there are a lot of things I wonder why and one thing is I wonder why Kroger is going to all this expense, building another humongous store down here at this new development. Did they need it in this town? That’s their decision and it’s their money but I guarantee you that the city is going to be out some money there’s some way; making entrances and everything, and the water, and electric services and everything else. They’ll incur a lot of cost there, the city will.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, time will tell, won’t it?
MR. DAY: Well, it will, yeah, that’s just my opinion.
MR. HUNNICUTT: All the time you’ve lived in Oak Ridge, have you felt safe living in the city?
MR. DAY: Yes.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Are the Police Department, Fire Department very good?
MR. DAY: I think they’re responsive, yeah and of course I always lock my doors. I do it if I lived in—anywhere. I always did.  
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, when you first came to Oak Ridge, did you lock your doors?
MR. DAY: Absolutely. I’ve always done it. Do I think I need to? Well, I don’t know. I mean, why would you invite people in if you’re trying to sleep, I mean you know.
MR. HUNNICUTT: What do you like best about Oak Ridge?
MR. DAY: I like the ease of getting around and a close proximity to medical facilities, and stores. And people complain that there’s a lot of stuff they can’t find in Oak Ridge which is probably true but I find that everything I need, I can find here, almost.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Do you feel like the property tax and the service you get is adequate or inadequate?
MR. DAY: I think for what you get and schools and all, it’s more than adequate. It’s not cheap although I got—I told you about my property tax increase last year and I got it reduce back down where it should have been because of the assessors. I don’t know what was wrong with in and what they were doing, is all I can say.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Is there anything that we hadn’t talked about that you would like to talk about?
MR. DAY: No, I just—I think it’s a good place to live, I really do. My son often times has asked me why I don’t move to California where he is but I said, “Well, I haven’t lost anything there.” I’ve lived in California when I was in service for quite a time and I liked it. It’s a nice place but they got some crazy rules there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Maybe you ought to ask him to move to Oak Ridge?
MR. DAY: Well, I have.  I said, “When I get through with this house, why don’t you move into it?” He said, “Well, I thought about it”, and I said, “Okay”.
MR. HUNNICUTT: How old are you Jim?
MR. DAY: I will be 90 in February 6th; same day Ronald Reagan’s birthday was. He was a little bit older than I, not much but a little bit.
MR. HUNNICUTT: It’s been my pleasure to interview you and I want to thank you very much for your time for this interview.
MR. DAY: Well, it’s been my pleasure.
MR. HUNNICUTT: I know this will be a part of Oak Ridge history and someday in the future, some young student or even an adult will probably pull up your interview and read about it and learn something, not only about Oak Ridge but about the military experiences you’ve had.
MR. DAY: And I did leave my print down there at Jackson Square on one of those bricks and then down at the Civic Center out there I’ve got my name on it, too so—
MR. HUNNICUTT: On the honor wall—
MR. DAY: Yeah, I have to search before I can find either one of them, though. I don’t remember where it is, but it’s there.
MR. HUNNICUTT: Well, thanks again for your time and—
MR. DAY: Well, thank you very much and thank that man.

[End of Interview]

[Editor’s Note: This transcript has been edited at Mr. Day’s request. The corresponding audio and video components have remained unchanged.]