Robert J. S. Brown was born in September 1924 in Lawndale, California. He had one younger brother. Brown remembers his father putting a picture of Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] on the wall before his election. When he got old enough to pay attention to things, they were in the Depression [Annotator's Note: Great Depression; a global economic depression that lasted through the 1930s]. His parents were in the chicken business. They had the good fortune in 1929 to have an oil boom in Lawndale. Two wells were drilled on his parent's land. His father purchased one of the wells and ran it for 35 years. Brown walked to school. The banks went out of business in the Depression. A lot of kids went hungry, and Brown felt guilty for having so much. They raised some crops and chickens for a few years. His father worked hard on their oil well. Brown helped him. He never wanted to be in the oil business. He did end up working in the industry later. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Brown if he recalls where he was when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941.] Brown heard about it when he was making a photographic record of the house his father had grown up in. His father drove up and told him. Brown was going to graduate from high school in six months and knew that meant the draft. Brown was in awe of the fact that he was going to end up in the service. He did not like the idea of going to war. They thought they would end up in the war but against Germany. Brown finished high school in June 1942. About ten percent of the people in his community were Japanese, including his friends. They were all taken out to Japanese internment camps. His parents did not like the idea of their kids being cannon fodder. In the fall he started at Cal Tech [Annotator's Note: California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California]. Almost immediately, it was clear he would be drafted. The Navy had the V-12 Program [Annotator's Note: V-12 US Navy College Training Program, 1943 to 1946]. He was nearsighted and could not pass the eye test. He joined the Army Reserve, and he was called up in a few months. Brown did not want to be drafted.

Robert Brown left for boot camp in February 1943. He went to Fort MacArthur [Annotator's Note: Fort MacArthur, California, now part of Los Angeles Air Force Base, San Pedro, California] to be inducted and then had basic training in Atlantic City, New Jersey. It was a change for him. He became good friends with a lot of the people. He did not like the military. Immediately after basic training, he was sent to Ohio State University [Annotator's Note: Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio] to take electrical engineering courses. He learned a lot. He then went to Los Alamos [Annotator's Note: Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico] where he used everything he learned. The first few months he worked in electronics construction assembling equipment. He was then transferred to a group responsible for the electrical part of the definition of the spherical bomb, Fat Man [Annotator's Note: Fat Man; codename for atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan 9 August 1945]. The work was beyond state of the art. He worked for Don Hornig [Annotator's Note: Donald Frederick Hornig; American scientist] testing and developing switches. They developed the circuitry for the Nagasaki bomb and the Trinity Test [Annotator's Note: Trinity, code name for the first detonation of a nuclear device on 16 July 1945; Manhattan Project; Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range, Socorro, New Mexico]. The Army assigned him, and he was not told why. Once he got there, that said it was secret but not what the project was. A few months later, George Kistiakowsky dismissed all of the people who knew what the project was, and then told the rest of them but he was not supposed to. A little later, Brown's boss got him more access. He was in the Army the whole time. Brown loved where he was. He had always loved the mountains, so he thought it was great. There were no close towns. There was an Indian village called San Ildefonso Pueblo at the base of the hill Los Alamos was on. They had a square dance group at Los Alamos and Enrico Fermi [Annotator's Note: Enrico Fermi Italian born American physicist] was part of that. The Indians invited them down for a dance evening. Brown has a photograph of Enrico Fermi meeting an Indian who became a very famous potter, Maria Martinez [Annotator's Note: Maria Montoya Martinez; Tewa, Native American]. There were eventually two or three thousand people there. Brown would go to Santa Fe [Annotator's Note: Santa Fe, New Mexico] occasionally. He got invited to some of the civilian's homes for meals often. He learned to snow ski there.

Robert Brown knew specifically what he was working on after being told. He worked on the electrical parts. Some of his friends worked on the explosive parts, the detonators. They were spread across different mesas [Annotator's Note: geological formation], they needed the units isolated in case of accidents. They were constantly reminded of the secrecy required. There were a couple of spies. One of them was David Greenglass [Annotator's Note: David Greenglass, American soldier] and was only two bunks away from Brown in the barracks. They were not acquainted. At a party, Brown was introduced to Klaus Fuchs [Annotator's Note: Klaus Emil Julius Fuchs; German physicist who shared American, British and Canadian nuclear secrets with the Russians] who was a well-known spy. Brown did not get acquainted with him. There were several categories of people there. A lot of people were there for maintenance. There were people doing engineering and science. Brown was around more people in uniform in the barracks areas, but in other areas the numbers of civilians was comparable. Brown was at Los Alamos [Annotator's Note: The Los Alamos Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico] for two years.

Leading up to the test [Annotator's Note: Trinity test, code name for the first detonation of a nuclear device, 16 July 1945, Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range, Socorro, New Mexico], Robert Brown was conscious of how complicated it was. They just kept their fingers crossed and hoped it worked. They were not thinking about blowing up Germans or Japanese. There was a theory that it could ignite the atmosphere of the earth. He could not do anything about that, so he did not worry. Brown understood the process in general. Brown was in on the test of the first equivalent of Fat Man [Annotator's Note: Fat Man; codename for atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki on Japan 9 August 1945]. The bomb had already been constructed. The test made them glad the arrangement worked. The Trinity test was on 16 July [Annotator's Note: 16 July 1945] and 6 August was Little Boy [Annotator's Note: Little Boy; codename for atomic bomb dropped Hiroshima, Japan on 6 August 1945]. Brown worked on both the research and the creation of the electrical devices. There was supposed to be a rehearsal, but electrical storms were coming up. They did not want the cables to be struck by lightning. Truman [Annotator's Note: Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States] needed to know whether it worked or not in Potsdam [Annotator's Note: Potsdam Conference, Potsdam, Germany, 17 July to 2 August 1945] in a few days. Brown talked with Oppenheimer [Annotator's Note: J. Robert Oppenheimer; American physicist] after that and told him Hornig [Annotator's Note: Donald Frederick Hornig; American scientist] did not want to do the rehearsal. Oppenheimer was visibly worn to a frazzle. There was a misfire due to the storm. Brown was at a site about ten miles away. They had glass plates to view through after the first flash. They had to lie down until the shock wave went over them. Fermi [Annotator's Note: Enrico Fermi; Italian born American physicist] was next to Brown and was dropping shreds of paper for a test. Brown saw the mushroom cloud and thought "thank goodness." They were glad everything worked. After a while, there were large operations of making records and disposing of equipment. They were interviewed regarding patents. He left after six or seven months. They could get their discharges expedited to attend school but Brown was turned down.

[Annotator's Note: The interviewer repeats Robert Brown's story of working on the atomic bomb test incorrectly.] Little Boy [Annotator's Note: Little Boy; code name for atomic bomb dropped Hiroshima, Japan on 6 August 1945] was already made, and the Trinity Test [Annotator's Note: Trinity, code name for the first detonation of a nuclear device, 16 July 1945, Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range, Socorro, New Mexico] was for the spherical bomb called Fat Man [Annotator's Note: Fat Man; code name for atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan on 9 August 1945]. They were pretty sure Little Boy worked. They did not have enough material to make a second one. Brown was at Los Alamos [Annotator's Note: Los Alamos Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico] for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Brown did not agonize over it. He did not relish the thought of frying a bunch of people, but more people were killed in one night fire-bombing Tokyo [Annotator's Note: Tokyo, Japan]. The Japanese were out for world domination. Brown thinks it ended the war faster. There are different opinions on that. No matter, everybody was glad the war was over. Brown left Los Alamos on 17 February 1946. Somebody in his group got him into Cal Tech [Annotator's Note: California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California] immediately on the G.I. Bill. He got a degree in physics. He liked being out of the secrecy. He graduated in 1948. He went to the University of Minnesota [Annotator's Note: unsure of which campus] and spent five years there. He concentrated on low-energy nuclear physics. Brown is all for keeping track of what has happened and what it means. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer recites Brown's life to him and asks what he would say to someone viewing this.] He did not have a plan for the path he took. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Brown what he would want people to know about him.] He ran into things that were interesting and important and got into them. He valued the chance to talk with interesting people and to have interesting things going on.