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TLS signed “J. R. Oppenheimer,” one page, 8.5 x 11, P.O. Box 1663, Santa Fe, New Mexico letterhead, October 1, 1945. Letter to George A. Bryan, in full: “This letter is to acknowledge your contribution to the development of the atomic bomb. The striking success of this project was only made possible by the work and sacrifices of the military members. According to your group leader, you are to be commended for five months spent in the project machine shops engaged as a machinist in the fabrication of equipment and parts which were essential to the development of the atomic bomb. You and your colleagues have consistently turned out high quality work and throughout the long period of high pressure effort you have cheerfully cooperated in meeting the most urgent demands of the project.” In fine condition, with some light creasing to the right side.
An exceptional letter from the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, dated two months after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and a month after the close of World War II. Oppenheimer writes a gracious letter to a technician in the special engineering detachment, a group that was essential to the development and successful detonation of the first atomic bomb. He acknowledges the difficulty of the position, with its inherent sacrifices and its “long period of high pressure effort.”
Oppenheimer mailed numerous letters of gratitude to former Los Alamos employees, some of which reemphasized the ‘absolute secrecy’ of the work, a mandate initiated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and a chief concern of General Leslie R. Groves. Anyone on the grounds of Los Alamos needed a purpose and a pass, information was compartmentalized, all employees were required to sign secrecy oaths, and signs and billboards across the facility admonished workers: ‘What you see here, what you do here, what you hear here, when you leave here, let it stay here!’ Secrecy proved a daunting task of the Manhattan Project, which, at its peak in June 1944, employed about 129,000 workers.
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