In the spring of 1944, mom and dad left Boise to work at the Hanford, Washington,
construction camp.  Dad was hired as a roofing foreman and my mom learned how to
type and was hired as a clerk.  Hanford was where the U.S. first produced
plutonium for the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in the fall of 1945.
The site, called the "Hanford Engineer Works", was authorized by the government,
was over 670 square miles and displaced over 1500 farmers and residents of the
small towns of White Bluffs, Hanford and Richland.  These people sacrificed their
lands, homes and communities to a war effort that was cloaked in secrecy.  When
their property was vacated, they were compensated but still had to pay for their
own relocation.  A Native American tribe, the Wanapum, who traditionally roamed
this area and had camp sites along the Columbia River where they fished, were also
totally restricted from this area.

Ground was broken in March 1943, and the construction that followed went at an
unbelievable pace; first the construction camp at Hanford, to house and feed the
workers; second, the construction of the project consisting of reactors, chemical
separation plants, warehouses, infrastructure, craft shops, etc.; and, third, the
permanent town of Richland where the people lived who operated and worked at the
project making plutonium.  Many of these buildings, such as the reactors and
chemical separations plants were first of a kind based upon prototypes and
experimental mock ups.

Fifty thousand workers from all over the U.S. poured into the area first living in
tents and then, as soon as they were built, in barracks and the world's largest
trailer park.  The 131 "H" shaped barracks were strategically located near eight
mess halls that served 2,700 persons three times a day, all you could eat for
sixty cents.  Also nearby were huge beer halls that sold 12,000 gallons of beer
each week.  The number of men far exceeded the number of women.  Each had separate
barracks.  A downtown business area was constructed that consisted of a grocery
store, drug store, post office, general store, administration buildings, clinic
and a department store.  A very popular movie theater and a performing arts
theater were constructed.  Those husky, male workers played cards and dice, drank
beer, went to a movie or to a live performance.  What else was there to do?  Major
performers of the day, Kay Keyser, Woody Herman and Tommy Dorsey, were booked to
keep the workers occupied during their spare time.  Gas rationing was in effect
that kept the folks pretty much isolated to the Hanford community.

My parents arranged for me to take the train to visit them in the summer of 1944.
Dad lived in the men's barracks; a small, two man room with single iron bedstead
cots and a dresser for each man, battleship linoleum on the floor.  His roommate
worked the night shift so I got to sleep in his bed at night.  Mom lived in the
women's barracks and we would all get together after work to eat in the cafeteria,
go to a movie or to one of the stage shows or dances.  During the day, I would
wander down to the business area, fill up on a malted milk shake, go to the
recreation center to play ping pong and hang out or go to a movie.  The men's
cafeteria was huge, filled with long wooden tables and wooden benches lined up for
the workers to sit on; family style served by hustling ladies, their arms and
hands filled with bowls of food.  There were several of these cafeterias located
among the barracks to accommodate the fifty thousand or so hungry male workers.
There was at least one, maybe two cafeterias for the women.  Dad told me the story
about some of the men that had just come from the back country and hills of
Tennessee or Kentucky not knowing how to use eating utensils and eating the food
with their hands.  I never saw that but looking at some of these workers, I could
believe it.

One evening when Dad and I were heading for the cafeteria to eat, we came upon a
circle of fifteen or twenty men that pretty much covered a street intersection,
dim street light strung overhead.  Upon further investigation, we discovered that
they were into a huge dice game and the money was flowing around the circle,
exchanging hands with the winning and losing.  It was rumored there was a lot of
crime including murders, but you never read about it in any newspaper as security
was very tight.  There was little, if any, public media.

The government's security plan was to compartmentalize the construction in order
for the workers to not see the whole picture and figure out what it was all about.
It seemed to work, although my father thought it might be about atomic development
as the water in the Columbia River was characterized as being "heavy", with which
the Germans, he had read, were also experimenting.    Every where you went, in and
around Hanford, were posted warnings about the security and to never talk to
anyone else about your job.  I remember one poster showed a Nazi U-boat that had
just torpedoed an American ship which was going down and it said, "Loose lips,
sink ships!"

I went back to Boise at the beginning of my eighth grade thinking back about what
a great time and such a wonderful experience I had the few weeks in Hanford with
mom and dad.  The war was getting into full swing.  There was a major Army Air
Force Air Base in Mountain Home, Idaho, about 10 miles from Boise.  It was a
training base for pilots and crew of the new B-24 Liberator, a bomber that was
extensively used in Europe during WWII.   Earlier I talked about the soldiers at
the skating rink.  There was a cute and I would suspect loose young girl that
lived next door to our house that was frequently visited by the Army air boys.  We
didn't live in the best of neighborhoods.  My grandma, who was with me while mom
and dad were at Hanford, made friends with these home sick kids and they seemed to
like me too; I think she fed them home cooked meals.  One of them was a pilot, a
really good friend, who, after the war, was a veterinarian in Eugene, OR; we kept
in touch a few years.  Another one, who probably didn't know if he would come back
from the war, gave me his gunner wings, sterling silver chest wings with a bullet
in the middle.

A few months later, my parents bought a homemade trailer with wood shingle siding.
I was fetched and once again got on the train and returned to Hanford where we
lived in the biggest trailer park in the world, maybe in the smallest trailer in
the world; 13,000 people in the trailer park.  Thinking back on it, the trailer
was set on a small, probably no bigger than about 25' x 40' lot; it was about
eighteen feet long, a bed in the back for my parents, a wood burning potbellied
stove to keep us warm during the winter; the stove had two temperatures: too hot
or not hot enough to keep the cold winds from seeping through under control.  Mom
cooked on a two burner cook stove; I'm sure we ate out a lot in the nearby
cafeterias or downtown.  I slept in the dining area, on the kitchen table that
made into a small bed.  This shanty trailer had to be a fire and health trap.  But
what did I know at the time.  It was an adventure and we were together as a family
which was important to my parents and to me.  The trailer plumbing consisted of a
kitchen sink.  The toilet, wash basin, laundry tubs and shower were located in a
nearby bath house located across the street from the trailer.  It also served as a
social center, a gathering place for neighbors to share stories; and, for kids to
hang out, keep out of the wind and be warm when it was cold in the winter;
although there weren't very many kids in the trailer park.  It was kept very warm
and a good place to get away from the crowded trailer conditions.  The streets in
the trailer park were named after famous generals.  I don't remember being upset
about leaving Boise and my friends there.  I think I thought of the move to
Hanford as the beginning of another adventure in my life.  I liked adventures.

For five or six months, I went to school at the Hanford grade school, formerly the
Hanford High School, a rather small, two story sandstone block building.  I joined
the student patrol.  Our job was to get out of class a few minutes early and
direct traffic at the major intersection in front of the school.  We wore caps
with black plastic bills and white belts; one diagonal across the chest with a
shiny tin badge pinned in the middle.  Our job was to stop cars at the
intersection with handheld stop signs to allow the little kids to cross the
street.  Just like present day school crosswalk guards of today.  At about this
same time, the permanent town of Richland was being built about twenty miles away.
As the Richland houses became available for occupancy, they were assigned to the
workers who were employed to operate the nuclear reactors and separation plants.
As the construction phase rapidly came to a halt, a steady stream of people left
Hanford and moved to Richland.  Because of this, you didn't get to know your
classmates very well; and, I also rapidly rose to the top rank of Patrol Captain,
a job I didn't hold very long; my few weeks of early fame.  My parents shortly
followed the exodus out of Hanford.

The construction site of Hanford that once housed, fed and entertained over 50,000
people was torn down and fast became a ghost town of cement slabs where the former
barracks, cafeterias, beer halls, stores, administration buildings, etc., once
stood.  This all new construction and then abandonment happened within less than
two years; the fourth largest city in Washington turned into a ghost town
inhabited by goats.  An amazing accomplishment made by the resources, ingenuity
and strength of this great country.

We moved our trailer to a horrible, substandard trailer park a few miles south of
Richland; an area known as The "Y".  My father was hired on as a driver with E.I.
DuPont, the contractor that ran the plant for one dollar plus expenses.  He was
eventually promoted to bus driver.  While in the trailer, we were anxiously
waiting our turn to find a house for rent in Richland.  That trailer park was a
fearful experience.  Remember, the trailer was pretty awful and the bath house was
even worse; cold, dirty, dilapidated and unfriendly.  The trailer park sloped up
from the road and our trailer was perched on the very top; completely opposite of
"knob" hill.  It was a very cold spring and chilling winds and storms blew right
through the trailer.  Once mom and I thought the wind might actually blow us over.
I didn't have a nice bath house to go to for comfort and safety.  I can usually go
with the flow and soon forget difficult experiences, but this is one that is
burned into my memory.