Kiwanis November 25 Program: Byron Arison presented “My personal experiences on The Manhattan Project: The Making of the Atomic Bomb.”

Byron Arison (right in the photo) spoke at the November 25 luncheon meeting of Kiwanis held at Charlie Brown’s in Chatham Township. On the left in the photo is his wife, Arlene Peterson.

In his talk, Byron told how, after his graduation from the University of Michigan in 1943 with a Bachelor of Science degree, he was immediately hired by DuPont as a chemist at the TNT plant in Kankakee, Ill. He was transferred first in March of 1944 to the Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago and then in October to the Hanford Engineering Works at Hanford, Washington. During this period, he was part of a group that installed uranium into one of the reactors designed for the production of plutonium.

The audience was fascinated by this account of that critical period of time at the close of the Second World War. After a brisk Q&A session, everyone enthusiastically applauded this entertaining presentation.