WWII Veteran, Los Alamos

Victor Kumin graduated from Harvard in January of 1943 with a degree in Chemistry. A year and a half later, in June 1944, he was drafted. Three months after becoming a soldier, he was in the final phase of basic training when he was called out and brought before a civilian and a military officer who quizzed him about physical chemistry. At the end of the oral exam, they told him he had flunked. They needed chemists, they said, but he had been away from his studies for too long.

Kumin returned to the mud. Within a few days, he got another call. This time, he was told to pack his bags and be ready to leave the next morning. Along with a train ticket to Santa Fe, N.M., he was given orders in a manila envelope with instructions not to open it.

"I was told to keep my mouth shut and not tell anyone anything," he said.

A young soldier who had studied metallurgy in college had also been plucked from the ranks to travel west with Kumin. At every meal stop along the way, strangers sidled up to the two soldiers and tried to strike up a conversation. They disclosed nothing.

Between themselves, Kumin and the other soldier speculated about their destination. Their best guess was a rocket development project. But, as he says, "We couldn't have been more wrong." Their destination was Los Alamos, where they were to work with a team assembled by J. Robert Oppenheimer to help build the Atomic bomb.

Kumin and his colleagues attended weekly meetings at which leaders of the project explained aspects of the work. As the Trinity test drew near, Oppenheimer made a statement that stuck in Kumin's mind.

He recalled it this way: "There are many of us here who hope and pray that this will prove to be impossible. But we're going to go down to Alamogordo, and we're going to make this test, and if it doesn't work, we're going to come back and we're going to work twice as hard to make it work."

After the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Kumin refused to continue his work and faced a court-martial. He was ultimately honorably discharged.

Shown: Los Alamos Project, Main Gate; Victor and his wife, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Maxine Kumin; Victor and Maxine in their garden, Warner, NH.

Victor Kumin, WWII Veteran, Los Alamos

by Victor Kumin

Transcription

CLASSROOM PROMPT:

V ICTOR KUMIN_Ethics and the Making of the Bomb

Grade Level: High School

Social Studies, English Language Arts, Science

In this lesson, students will engage in classroom discussion and writing assignments in which they must reflect on the nature of scientific progress and technological development and their moral and political implications. Students will begin to see that science and technology can raise ethically ambiguous questions for which there is no single right answer.

LINKS of INTEREST

PBS Learning Media: Truman and the Bomb

Through newsreel footage, archival photos, and interviews, this video segment adapted from American Experience traces the decision-making process that led President Harry Truman to order the dropping of atomic bombs on two Japanese cities in August 1945. Contributing to his decision were the belief that the Japanese were unwilling to surrender, a concern for American lives, a limited knowledge of the atomic bomb’s devastating effects, and a failure to consider other options that might bring the war to a close.

Oppenheimer / The Day After Trinity

ABC News: Hiroshima / Why the Bomb was Dropped

Atomic Archive: Einstein’s Letter to President Roosevelt – 1939

Library of Congress: Roosevelt’s Letter to J. Robert Oppenheimer

Voices of the Manhattan Project, an Interview with J. Robert Oppenheimer

The Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum / Collection focuses on the decision to drop the atomic bomb.

Atomic Heritage Foundation: Science Behind the Atomic Bomb

The Bomb: PBS

Return to All Chroniclers of American History >

0:11

01. Intro to Recording

Victor Kumin
5:04

02. The Early Years at Harvard and Woods Hole

Victor Kumin
4:32

03. Transfer to Los Alamos

Victor Kumin
6:53

04. The Secrecy of their Work

Victor Kumin
2:06

05. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Victor Kumin