"Roland Krueger '39 began work on the then ultra-secretive "Manhattan Project" in the early 1940s. After leaving Ripon and earning a master's degree in physics from the University of Illinois, Krueger found himself in the research and development radiation lab experimenting on the electromagnetic separation process at the University of Berkeley in 1943.
He then made his way to Oak Ridge, TN, as assistant production superintendent in the manufacturing of Uranium 235, a vital component of the first two bombs. Krueger's research was the talk of his hometown of Fond du Lac, WI. A 1945 article from the Ripon Commonwealth reads Ripon College student aids Atomic Research.
He had about 200 persons under his supervision. The actual nature of his work is a closely guarded secret, his parents reported today. They asserted they know no more now of his work than they did a year ago, the article reports.
"Although the A-Bomb was a horrifying development," Krueger wrote in 1989, "I never felt the guilt pangs that some scientists later claimed because I - and my co-workers - felt that the device really ended the war and saved tens of thousands of soldiers' lives. All war is hell, of course, and what are the degrees of hell?"
The War Department spent more than $2 billion on what Krueger describes as "an intense, gut-wrenching time" and yet, he says, it was "intensely satisfying from a scientific standpoint to be able to bring such esoteric, bench-scale experiments to production reality in such a short period of time."
Kruege returned to California shortly after the war - where he still resides today - "to pursue the good life." Krueger researched jet afterburners for Douglas Aircraft until he joined Union Oil Co. of California, which would become Unocal Corp. Krueger retired in 1986 from Unocal, where he worked for more than 37 years.