P.O. Box 1663

The unassuming cover in Figure 1 was mailed by Doris Watkins from Cambria, Virginia on December 2, 1944. It's addressed to her husband, Army Staff Sergeant Peter H. Watkins stationed in New Mexico. It is posted with an extremely common 3-cent “Win the War” stamp released July 4, 1942. More than 20.6 billion of these stamps were printed, and they appear on many, many covers from the World War II period.

Figure 1

The cover also bears a censor mark and censor tape indicating that its contents were read and passed muster. That was par for the course for much mail during wartime. The enclosure no longer exists, but the letter was most certainly benign, probably a picture of domestic life in Virginia.

So why bother highlighting this cover? Well, see the Post Office (PO) box to which it was delivered, “Box 1663”? That was the PO box for mail sent to Los Alamos, the top-secret site in New Mexico where the atomic bomb was developed. The first A-bomb was tested there on July 16, 1945, and that was followed by two atomic bomb drops on Japan in August 1945 that hastened the end of the war.

Los Alamos was established in 1943 as a top-secret site to develop nuclear weapons under the Manhattan Project. Thousands of employees, including physicists, chemists, engineers, and military personnel, were stationed there. Their mail was delivered to PO Box 1663 and later two additional PO boxes (180 and 1539).

Staff Sergeant Peter Watkins (Figure 2 is his Los Alamos security badge photo) was born in England in 1919 and grew up in Bisbee, Arizona. He was well educated earning a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Arizona-Tucson followed by a B.S. in Engineering, a Master of Science and a Ph.D. from Virginia Polytechnic Institute (VPI).

Figure 2 - Peter H. Watkins

Los Alamos employed many prominent scientists – including several Nobel Prize winners – but Watkins was still young and not at that level in his career when he was deployed there. He enlisted in the Army on July 9, 1942, at age 22. At the time, it appears he had his Chemistry degree but was working as a bank clerk. Given his science background, he was assigned to the Army’s Special Engineering Detachment (SED). The SED was how the Manhattan Project ensured that it had access to young technicians and scientists subject to military service. By the time of the A-bomb test in July 1945, half of all laboratory personnel at Los Alamos was SED.

He met his future wife – Doris Virginia Carty – in Virginia where they married in September 1943. After the war, Watkins returned to Virginia where he completed his graduate work and taught Chemical Engineering. He was eventually employed by Exxon Research & Engineering Corporation first in Baton Rouge as a chemical engineer and then in Florham Park, New Jersey. He retired from Exxon in 1981 as Coordinator of Professional Employment Technical Information. He passed away in New Jersey in 1992 at age 72.