"PLEASE DON'T GIVE MY ADDRESS TO ANYBODY. THERE ARE CAPTAINS IN THE ARMY WHO LIVE UP HERE WHO DON'T KNOW WHAT WE ARE DOING" — Richard Fey𝐆nman

Feynman and his wife Arline departed for New Mexico on a train on March 28, 1943. During🔯 his almost two-and-a-half year tenure at Los Alamos, Feynman tried to live a relatively normal life as a partic⛦ipant in the Manhattan Project — or as normal as it could be, given the extraordinary circumstances of his personal and professional life .

In this letter to his mother written at the beginning of his first winter in New Mexico, Feynman discusses having served on the town council ("The town council elections are coming up soon again. I hope I will avoid — + will try to avoid — being reelected.") and Arline's efforts to get ready for Christmas ("Putzie is preparing for X-mas + has all kinds of things...Tree decorations, presents, etc. I don't know where she gets all the stuff — I don't give her a lot of money — poor girl.").

He also reiterates to his ♒mother the importance of secrecy with regards to his whereabouts:

"Please don't give my address to anybody. There are Captains in the Army who live up here who don't know what we are doing (even Majors). I'm not supposed to see anyone. I'd like to see Stappler when he comes + I'll try hard as hell to get permission to see him ⁠— + I might be successful, but don't give people my address because I might have to disappoint them." (Feynma🌳n is here referring ܫto Robert Stappler, a friend from Far Rockaway High School who graduated with him in 1935).

REFERENCES:

Published in Michelle Feynman, ed. Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track. The Letters of Richard P. Feynman. New York: Basic Books, 2005, pp. 27-29.