Wes' Journal

MANHATTAN PROJECT LETTER, NEW YORK CITY

As a child growing up in the 1950s, the atomic bomb and the threat of nuclear annihilation was not a theoretical possibility, it was a daily topic for both adults and kids. In elementary school, I remember practicing for a nuclear attack. We were instructed to file into the halls of the school building, face the wall, and cover our heads. While it seems silly today (cover your head to protect you from an atomic blast - fat chance) it was serious business then.

While my family didn’t have a fallout shelter, plenty of Americans did. I remember looking at pictures of the atomic bomb blast that devastated Hiroshima, but having no real comprehension of the awesome power that had been unleashed. Even seeing pictures of the charred ruins of the destroyed city didn’t really register. It was simply too far outside my level of experience to grasp.

All of these memories were brought back to me on the Manhattan Project shoot. Like most Americans, I knew very little about the race for the bomb, and the massive effort our government undertook to develop a nuclear weapon before the Germans. I hardly knew that at its height, the Manhattan Project employed more workers than the American automobile industry, and that scientists were working in secret in various laboratories and research facilities across the country.

Most of the scientists were unaware of the work that was being done at other facilities. They only knew that they were working on an atomic weapon, and only a handful knew the entire story.

During my investigation, I was fortunate to interview Dr. Francis Bonner, who was, by his own admission, a relatively low-level player in the Manhattan Project, working out of the Nash Building in New York City.

In truth, sitting and talking to Bonner in his peaceful Long Island backyard, was one of the highlights of my career as a History Detective. As he related his experiences as a newly minted Ph.D. working on a top-secret project, I found myself in total awe. It didn’t matter what Bonner did, he was there! He was part of one of the most important developments in the history of humankind. And he was telling me all about it. I couldn't leave without asking him the ultimate question: “After the bomb was dropped, did you regret what you had done?” Without hesitation he answered: “No. We helped win the War, and saved countless lives that might have been lost if we had invaded Japan”.

Thanks for watching this season,

Wes.

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Posted on 10 September 2007 By Wes Cowan

ERNIE PYLE'S TYPEWRITER, Albuquerque, NM Bloomington, IN and Portland, OR

I'm embarrassed to admit this, but when the producers for History Detectives told me I was going to do an investigation on Ernie Pyle, I was ecstatic. You see, I had confused Ernie Pyle with the great World War II cartoonist, Bill Mauldin. I remembered reading books of Mauldin's collected strips of "Willie and Joe", two regular G.I.'s whose inked adventures were known by every REAL soldier during the War. I really didn't know much about Ernie Pyle, other than he was "another" War correspondent. How wrong I was.

As the investigation unfolded, I quickly learned that Pyle, like Mauldin, was loved by American troops, in large part because he spoke their language. Pyle genuinely empathized with the common G.I. – and had an uncommon ability to connect with their fears, longings and homesickness, their impatience with the Army brass, and the horror of death. Through his columns in Stars and Stripes, Pyle touched the lives of thousands of U.S. troops in a way that few of us can conceive of today. I was astonished to learn that at the time of his death he was nearly as popular as Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Unbelievable.

Postscript: I also wanted to thank viewers for pointing out a slip-up in our story. Our expert, Jacqueline Joseph compared the way the number 1 looked when typed by our typewriter to a document Ernie Pyle typed with the date 1945. But as several viewers noticed, many people in those days used the lowercase “l” instead of the number 1 because it was easier to reach. What we showed you was just the first part of quite a detailed examination where we compared many features throughout the documents. The other numbers in the 1945 were also looked at, and we noticed other significant differences such as the letter sizes, and the spaces between letters, words and lines of type. So, thank you to our eagle-eyed viewers and rest assured that this did not affect the outcome of our investigation!

Until next time,

Wes.

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Posted on 16 July 2007 By Wes Cowan