Yawn, aww man I don’t want to wake up right now but I have to because I need to catch up on all of my work from yesterday. I hurried to take shower and groom my hair just in a few minutes. Off to the lounge center where our laptops are settled. Cesar was the first person who woke up and working on his journal ever since 4:30 am! Secondly, Vilmarie and I were waked up to work on our back up stuff at about 5:30 am. The others woke up pretty much later than us but Nutt woke up kind of early too. All of us worked hard to complete all of our work. Then it was rest and that was great!

Anne and Nancy decided that the best thing for us to start is just a flexible day. Everybody was looking around at the museum of the Tennessee School for the Deaf. I wanted to thank the hostess for leading us to around to your beautiful school! Also we went to the American museum of Science and Energy to learn about the secret atomic bomb manufacturing that occurred in about 1940’s. Today is one of my favorite days so far since the first day of OTR here because AMSE is all about World War II atomic bomb and has lots of cool stuff that we can stay and learn all day! When we first entered the museum, we noticed the first thing is brain challenge games that was all ready set up. Ville and I ran to the math brain challenge game, even through I hate math. We tried to figure out how to solve the problem. We struggled how to solve the problem, but luckily Nutt was willing to help us and finally we made it!!! However the games were pretty critically mental challenge for all of us but its good exercise for us.

Afterwards, Nancy was begging us to watch the video of Hitler’s speech and Germany’s soldiers but there are no captions or subtitles for us to read. We just watched it until it ended anyway. The video made us recoil in thinking how the Germans had done to other races of people and harm them for stupid reasons that the Germans believe in especially Hitler. Hitler however brought us bitterness and lost many innocent people for what Hitler believed that the kind of races should be exterminated. Thanks to Americans and Allies who fought and stopped it.

Looking around the museum and playing games was kind of long and the museum was going to close soon. We went downstairs to go to the bathroom and were ready to leave but I requested Annie to interpret for me to ask any elderly people who were working in the secret atomic bomb manufacture and willing to tell his/her story. Both of us just looked at the gentleman who was smiling with warm inviting eyes. He was the right choice. We approached him and asked him if he will become interviewee as I interviewed him. He gently agreed and sat down next to me, briefly fumbling as to how he could start to tell his story.

Hence, the story, during his junior year of Upsala College, ‘Bill’ William Tewes joined the Army reservoir in New Jersey of 1942. There, he was trained and educated until June of 1945; and he was put on active duty. Later on, he was a chemical specialist who separated the uranium– U235 and U238 and tested them to see how well it worked. During his time, many who worked for the U.S. government didn’t know what they were making and what it will be used for, but Bill knew about it and kept it in secret until after the World War II ended. Also he was one of 50 scientists worked secretly under government’s management.

In 1944 of June, he was transferred to Oak Ridge and worked on K25. He also was here when Hiroshima occurred in Aug 6, 1945. On Thanksgiving of 1945, Bill was invited to see the secretary of director development; suddenly he met a beautiful, petite woman who happened to become his wife. We were told that he felt that he helped to end the World War II by making the bomb. “If the war continued, more people would’ve died.”, he said, boldly and quite clearly in his gentle southern voice.

The powerful exposure of his story of what he had been through during the World War II and the Cold War was an inspiring feeling to me and the others. After his story, I felt a powerful feeling and was in awe.

Thank you, Mrs. Tewes so much for your willingness to tell us your story. It really affects us when you did something in the past and helped America and the world for future generations.