BY JODI PETERSON
Oral histories from veterans who worked on the U.S. Navy Nuclear Propulsion Program are now available through the Library of Congress. Two CSU entities—CEMML and the Public and Environmental History Center—collaborated on collecting the histories. Seventeen veteran interviews collected as part of the NRF Oral History Project are now archived and available on the Library of Congress, Veterans History Project website.
Note: This story is an update to a previous CEMML article.
The veterans trained and worked at the Naval Reactors Facility in southeast Idaho. The NRF was founded in the 1950s, during the Cold War. Under the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, the men helped develop and test the first prototype reactors for nuclear-powered submarines and aircraft carriers. Decades later, the U.S. Navy and the Idaho State Historic Preservation Office partnered to commemorate the NRF’s historic mission; as part of that effort, they contracted with CSU to record oral history interviews. CEMML Principal Investigator Amanda Wallander led the project; CEMML Historian Dillon Maxwell helped conduct interviews and trained PEHC students.
The entire collection, encompassing 31 oral histories recorded with both veterans and civilians who qualified and/or worked at the NRF, is also now curated at the Idaho State Archives as MS918: Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program oral history collection. Access to this collection may be requested via the Idaho State Archives oral history collection webpage.
Each of the 17 interviews is about an hour long, and covers topics such as why the men joined the Navy; their work at the NRF; and life on board a nuclear submarine. To listen to individual interviews, visit https://www.loc.gov/programs/veterans-history-project/explore-the-collections/. Search for “Personal Narrative” and enter an item number from 128614 through 128623 and from 128628 through 128634.
One of the most interesting interviews is with James C. Okeson, who joined the prototype program in 1964. “There was so much to learn, the people were very focused, and it was very intense,” he said. “It was in the top five of stressful times in my 27-year career in the Navy.” Okeson recalled that during the Vietnam War, he served as executive officer on the USS Barb, a nuclear submarine deployed off Guam in the Western Pacific. On July 8, 1972, a B-52 Stratofortress with a crew of six crashed about 300 miles from the island during a typhoon. The USS Barb and another submarine in the area came to the rescue. The Barb was able to rescue four of the men. It was “a terrible—but wonderful—experience,” Okeson said.
The Naval Nuclear Reactor Facility oral history project began in 2022 and spanned four years, from locating former workers who were interested in sharing their stories; to conducting interviews in Idaho, New York, and Pennsylvania; to submitting the recorded interviews to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. “We sought to meet the highest standards for oral histories to make sure they could be curated at the Library of Congress,” noted Wallander.
The CSU team interviewed 33 men who worked at the Naval Reactors facility. Seventeen of them were also veterans, which made their stories eligible for inclusion in the Veterans History Project (the civilian interviews will be added to the Idaho State Archives in Boise). “These gentlemen were so appreciative of being invited to share their experience,” said Wallander. “They were working on classified high-security projects and for much of their lives they were not allowed to talk about it. They were really excited to have their voices archived at the Library of Congress, to have their service recognized and valued.”