Benjamin Bederson was born in New York, New York, the son of Russian immigrants. He grew up in The Bronx and Brooklyn in poor Russian neighborhoods. His father worked in restaurants and his mother in the garment industry. Bederson and his one sister lived mostly unattended, but he enjoyed roaming around on his own. Bederson had a community that he considered "home"; a "Communist-in-practice" co-operative of apartment houses comprised mostly of Russian Jews that had fled Russia because of anti-Sematic persecution. Bederson's father and many other residents were members of the Communist Party which, at the time, was not particularly objectionable and everybody he knew had the same radical background. Bederson belonged to the Young Pioneers of America, the Communist equivalent of the Boy Scouts. The Great Depression affected the family very badly; during the years 1931 and 1932, Bederson's father couldn't find work, and they were "on relief." In the depth of the Depression his father took a job constructing a restaurant, using American know-how and equipment, in Moscow. The family accompanied him there and lived in Russia for about eight months, during which time Bederson attended an Anglo-American school, but "didn't learn very much." They left Russia with very little money, that ran out when they reached Berlin, just as Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] gained power, and had to depend on the Hebrew Rescue Society to get back to the United States. Bederson said he was basically a "happy kid with lots of hobbies," normal except for the politics. Very important in his early history was Bederson's free education at New York's City College for two and a half years. When the war started he quit to take a defense job with the Army Signal Corps, expediting war goods. Bederson was drafted in late 1942.

Benjamin Bederson always knew he would be a scientist, but in 1942, he began his military career in the Army. He was 20 years old when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941], and he remembered walking into the family's apartment, and somebody telling him about the bombings. Bederson said he was impressed by the enormity of the news, and knew things were going to change. He said after Pearl Harbor the entire country was united in favor of the war. Bederson joined the Signal Corp as a civilian and could have asked for a draft deferment, but chose instead to go into the Army and fight the Nazis. He went to Governors Island, New York for his physical, and incidentally missed the swearing in ceremony because he was in the restroom. After a few weeks Bederson got orders to report to Fort Dix, New Jersey where he did three days of basic training before being told he would be trained as a tail gunner and radio operator on a B-17 [Annotator's Notes: Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber]. Radio school was being conducted at a big hotel on Lake Michigan that the Army had commandeered near Chicago, Illinois. At the end of radio school, when everybody else shipped out for tail gunner school, Bederson was kept behind to teach upcoming classes. He said he had a great time in the GI [Annotator’s Note: slang term for an American soldier] friendly Midwest, and learned a little more about America. He met "nice Jewish girls" at the Jewish Welfare Board, and was in the Chicago area for about nine months. He couldn't believe his luck when he learned about and was accepted into the ASTP [Annotator's Note: Army Specialized Training Program]. He went to the University of Illinois and then to Ohio State University studying electrical engineering. The Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945] wiped out the ASTP, and all Bederson's buddies were being shipped to Belgium and other places "to do real fighting."

While Benjamin Bederson's buddies were being deployed overseas, he was being interviewed by three "obvious scientists" from New York for a position on what was called the Manhattan Project. Bederson told them his ultimate ambition was to be a physicist, and without gaining any further knowledge about the nature of the project, he got secret orders to report to Knoxville, Tennessee. When he arrived, he was put on another train heading for Oak Ridge, Tennessee. There he lived in a barracks that had maid service, which was his first indication that something different and special was going on; the second indication was that a new town was going up all around him with buildings that were tall and round, and looked like distillation plants. Bederson supposed they were making alcohol; he later learned they were separating uranium. After one week in Oak Ridge, during which time he underwent another battery of questions, he got orders to report to Santa Fe, New Mexico with other "physics-types." He arrived at a storefront on the main Santa Fe square, where a lady ordered an Army car to take him further on his journey. It was the beginning of the winter of 1943, and the weather was dry, sunny, and pleasantly cold. The lone passenger in the car, they drove for a while, up the scary side of a mesa, to Los Alamos, New Mexico, a place even more mysterious than his previous locale. At the top of the mesa, they stopped at a wooden guardhouse, where guards looked over his orders, and sent him on to a barracks for the night. The next day, somebody told him what he would be doing. He was still a soldier in uniform, and still had no idea what was going on, but he had a new job. The physics problem he would be facing was the design of the atomic bomb.

Benjamin Bederson's first job at Los Alamos, New Mexico was exploding steel tubes using a primer cord and strain gauges. A whole contingent of British scientists had arrived at about the same time as Bederson, and at that point he found out about Operation Jumbo. He did that work for a few months on a different mesa, because he was causing too much of a disturbance on base before, much to his surprise, he got his secret clearance in spite of his and his parent's political background. He notes that others were "shipped out" of the project for such reasons. Bederson considers getting his clearance to be the "biggest favor of his life." Then he had a meeting with George Kistiakowsky [Annotator's Note: George Kistiakowsky was a Ukrainian-American physical chemist working at Los Alamos, New Mexico], who told him everything about the project. Bederson said it was a very important day in his life, and he was very excited because he knew that he was going to help end the war. When the scientists finished building Jumbo [Annotator's Note: a 200 ton cylinder constructed to prevent the loss of plutonium during the Trinity atomic bomb test in July 1945], which is still in New Mexico, Bederson's initial job came to an end. His new assignment, working under Donald Hornig [Annotator's Note: Donald Hornig was an American chemist working at Los Alamos, New Mexico], was far more important: to help design triggers for the ignition systems on the second, more sophisticated atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. Bederson said it was very interesting to work on a young, "ecumenical" team.

In Benjamin Bederson's estimation, his experience at Los Alamos, New Mexico, qualified him as a physicist. He worked with a high speed camera to test the switches on the atomic bomb to a point where it's operation was acceptable, and after it was in production he tested the commercial switches. He finally learned he would go to Tinian in the Northern Mariana Islands to test the actual products at the airfield from which the host planes would take off. First he went to Wendover Field in Utah to help the Army personnel [Annotator's Note: of the 507th Composite Group] wire the switches in the airplane that would be used in the bombing operation, then he went on to Tinian for the final testing. Bederson feels lucky and honored to have been part of the activities that ended the war, saying, "it was quite an accomplishment; it saved a lot of lives." He firmly believes the endeavor saved more American and Japanese lives than it cost. His most memorable experience was the "climax" on 6 August [Annotator's Note: 6 August 1945] when the Hiroshima bomb went off, even though it was not his work, and on 9 August when the Nagasaki bomb exploded. Bederson said they were right [Annotator's Note: Bederson laughs], and the war ended right afterward. The scientists were very happy with the results of their work.

While he was at Los Alamos, New Mexico, Benjamin Bederson knew both Ted Hall [Annotator's Note: Theodore "Ted" Hall was an American physicist and a spy who passed secret information about the American nuclear program to the Soviet Union] and David Greenglass [Annotator's Note: David Greenglass was a member of the Special Engineer Detachment who passed secret information about the American nuclear program to the Soviet Union]. He bunked right next to Greenglass, and got to know him very well, but didn't become close friends with the man. Greenglass was a machinist with a high school education and the two didn't have much in common. Greenglass was a Communist and Bederson said they made a mistake letting him through. Bederson said they didn't talk about work, nevertheless, Greenglass mentioned Bederson in his testimony. After the war, Bederson said he wanted out of the Army; he had never before been disciplined, and didn't get along very well in the Army. Later he recognized how important the Army had been in his life, and how it had "pulled him together," taught him self-discipline, and prepared him for his later life. He waited at Los Alamos, New Mexico five months for his discharge, and was separated from the Army in January 1946.

After his discharge, Benjamin Bederson went back to City College of New York and, given his credit for the education he underwent in the Army and letters from J. Robert Oppenheimer [Annotator's Note: J. Robert Oppenheimer was an American theoretical physicist who served as the director of the Los Alamos Laboratory during the Manhattan Project] and other principles at Los Alamos, he earned his degree in one semester. He went to graduate school and got a post-doctorate at MIT [Annotator's Note: Massachussets Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts] working in nuclear physics. He mentioned that he also had a wife and four children, which he said was "pretty important, too." He established a laboratory in atomic physics that thrived for many years. He finally retired from NYU [Annotator's Note: New York University in New York, New York] at 70 years of age, traveled the world working in laboratories and edited physics journals. By 1993, he was editor-in-chief of the American Physical Society, and stayed in that job for five years. Then he did volunteer work, heading up the Atomic & Molecular Division of the American Physical Society, and other jobs. At the time of the interview, he was fully retired, and looking for what he would be doing for the next ten years, which he said should not be wasted. Asked what drove him through his long, successful career, he said he likes to joke that it was 90 percent chance and ten percent luck. As for passing on the lessons of World War 2, he thinks that it was important to have a civilian army, connected to mainstream America, using everybody in some creative and productive way, and not necessarily carrying a gun. He admitted that many bad things came out of the war, but that "universal conscription" was a good thing that helped sew the country together.