SESSION I
19
about because I happened to walk into Dr. Taylor's office to ask him
on behalf of the Committee on Emergency Planning of the National
Academy of Sciences what research DASA wasn duing that was pertinent
to emergency planning.
I wasn also asking many other sagencres of the
government the sarne question,
Su he told me what they were planning,
which { found very interesting,
se Te
I've spent some years thinking about these problems, but not to
the depth that [hope some of you will be able to carry the discussion,
I didn't specialize in any of the subjecta which one necds to know, [
was a physicist but [didn't specialize in weapone design, [rm nota
biologist nor a doctor, Sol feel very mucha lightweight in many of
these discussions.
Perhapa the major purpose of the study we did was to tdentily
questions. ['m not sure how cuccesaful even that was. Since our
last conference I nave left Hudson Institute—and this outline is now
out of date, Loccasionally share an elevator with Spear. [ work
with Resources for the Future, and 1 suppose the most accurate
description of what ['m doing at the present time is studying environmental pollution,
HEMLER:
I'm Jchn Hemler.
call me a kissing type poet!
[ suppose, Dr. Warren, you can
[Laughter] However, at the time that
77
date:
Cathie
4 en" ii
at.
you were detonating the first weapon over Alamogordo [ was delivering newspapers in Carlsbad just across the mountains over there,
and { might say that was my start in nuclear weapons then,
WARREN:
Pretty good contact,
HEMLER: Really indirect contact, Shortly after the war [ went
to West Point, graduated from there in the early fifties, and the
Army absoroed me into its overwhelming regimentation for the next
few years, [n 1958 they decided to release me for a while, and I
went to graduate school at the University of Arizona where I obtained
my master's degree in physics and mathematics. Then the Army
pulled me back into its fo'd again.
I worked with the Nike-X program
for three years under the Armyjurisdiction, primarily in the warhead development area. Iwas loaned then to the Atomic Support
Agency in 1961 and 1°62 for, they called it then, ‘'a thirty day” period, to participate in the 196l and 1992 test series in Nevada and
the Pacific,
This beg:nin late January of 1462 and the "thirty-day”
we
period was over in late November of that sane year,
chance to see manyof the tests that went on.
but I did get a