TLS, one page, 7.25 x 10.5, personal letterhead, June 9, 1971. Letter to Winston Dabney, Chairman of the Los Alamos Veterans Reunion Committee, in Los Alamos, New Mexico. In full: “Your letter of May 19, was received together with the Silver Coin and the Bronze Coin commemorating the 25th Anniversary of the Los Alamos reunion. Also, I was pleased to receive the mounted sample of fused sand of the New Mexico desert. It was interesting to read of your project and its past history and I am fully aware of the great contribution that was made by Scientific Laboratory in the creation of the nuclear weapons where the first test was made in Alamogordo on July 16, 1945. It pleases me to know that those who participated in that had a reunion of the members in commemoration of that occasion. The coins and the mounted sample will be placed in the Truman Library with other articles relating to the atomic age. Mrs. Truman joins me in thanking you for your good wishes and please extend to all of the members of your reunion our good wishes.” In fine condition, with horizontal mailing fold passing through the tops of a few letters of the signature.
Twenty-five years after the development of the atomic bomb, Truman is still able to look back with fond admiration for the tasks achieved by the scientists and crew working at Los Alamos. Though some had remained critical of the president’s decision to use the weapon, Truman himself held no such regret, as referenced here in his pleasure that those participants would hold a reunion. Master Sergeant Winston Dabney was a member of the Special Engineering Detachment at Los Alamos. The “mounted sample of fused sand” sent by him to Truman was a sample of trinitite formed in the crater of the desert floor when the first atomic bomb was exploded at the Trinity site near Alamogordo on July 16, 1945. This is only the second letter we know of in which Truman refers to the atomic bomb. The other, a 1961 letter to a newspaperman, referring to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, sold at Sotheby’s in 1995 for $28,750. Pre-certified John Reznikoff/PSA/DNA and RRAuction COA.
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