Q: What are your strongest memories from the war time? Los Alamos
from all accounts was an extraordinary place to be.
HA: Oh, yes. It was a fantastic place. You had the creme de la creme. All
the scientists were there. We had a very definite mission. We knew what we
wanted to do, and we appreciated that time was of the essence. If you recall,
in the early `40s, things were going very bad for the allies, and my own
experience I had personal friends, the president of my freshman class at the
University of Denver shot down in the Battle of Britain. I used to be a
softball pitcher. My catcher was killed in the Pacific, a guy named John
Erickson. A lot of guys, Travis Railey, a whole gang, my vintage, were killed,
and so when I was fortunate enough to get into this particular type of work in
the project that we were really dedicated to trying to end the war. Clearly,
by the time we used the bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki the war was won, but it
wasn't over, and there were a tremendous number of people still dying. If we
had had an invasion, it would have been a real mess.
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