The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II Read online

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  Contents

  Introduction

  Principal Cast of Characters

  Map—Clinton Engineer Works, Tennessee, 1943–1945

  Revelation, August 1945

  1: EVERYTHING WILL BE TAKEN CARE OF: TRAIN TO NOWHERE, AUGUST 1943

  Tubealloy: The Bohemian Grove to the Appalachian Hills, September 1942

  2: PEACHES AND PEARLS: THE TAKING OF SITE X, FALL 1942

  Tubealloy: Ida and the Atom, 1934

  3: THROUGH THE GATES: CLINTON ENGINEER WORKS, FALL 1943

  Tubealloy: Lise and Fission, 1938

  4: BULL PENS AND CREEPS: THE PROJECT’S WELCOME FOR NEW EMPLOYEES

  Tubealloy: Leona and Success in Chicago, December 1942

  5: ONLY TEMPORARY: SPRING INTO SUMMER, 1944

  Tubealloy: The Quest for Product

  6: TO WORK

  Tubealloy: The Couriers

  7: RHYTHMS OF LIFE

  Tubealloy: Security, Censorship, and the Press

  8: THE ONE ABOUT THE FIREFLIES . . .

  Tubealloy: Pumpkins, Spies, and Chicken Soup, Fall 1944

  9: THE UNSPOKEN: SWEETHEARTS AND SECRETS

  Tubealloy: Combining Efforts in the New Year

  10: CURIOSITY AND SILENCE

  Tubealloy: The Project’s Crucial Spring

  11: INNOCENCE LOST

  Tubealloy: Hope and the Haberdasher, April–May 1945

  12: SAND JUMPS IN THE DESERT, JULY 1945

  13: THE GADGET REVEALED

  14: DAWN OF A THOUSAND SUNS

  15: LIFE IN THE NEW AGE

  Epilogue

  Photographs

  Reading Group Guide

  About Denise Kiernan

  Notes

  Acknowledgments

  Index

  For Joe

  Introduction

  There have long been secrets buried deep in the southern Appalachians, covered in layers of shale and coal, lying beneath the ancient hills of the Cumberlands, and lurking in the shadow of the Smokies at the tail end of the mountainous spine that ripples down the East Coast. This land of the Cherokee gave way to treaties and settlers and land grants. Newcomers traversed the Cumberland Gap to establish small farms and big lives in a region where alternating ridges and valleys cradle newborn communities in the nooks and crannies of the earth. Isolated. Independent. Hidden.

  In 1942, a new secret came to this part of the world. The earth trembled and shook and made way for an unprecedented alliance of military, industrial, and scientific forces, forces that combined to create the most powerful and controversial weapon known to mankind. This weapon released the power present in the great unseen of the time, unleashing the energy of the basic unit of matter known as the atom.

  Author H. G. Wells might have called them Sun Snarers, the people who descended upon the valleys and ridges.

  “And we know now that the atom, that once we thought hard and impenetrable, and indivisible and final and—lifeless—lifeless, is really a reservoir of immense energy . . . ,” Wells wrote in his 1914 book, The World Set Free. This lesser-known title by the War of the Worlds author describes the harnessing of the power of the nucleus: “And these atomic bombs which science burst upon the world that night were strange even to the men who used them.”

  Wells wrote this long before the neutron was discovered, let alone fission, and his work began to popularize the phrase “atomic bombs” before those devices ever took form beyond the author’s pages. But years earlier, people in the mountains claim another prophet lay on the ground, overcome with visions of a project that would bring the snaring of the sun to the hills of Tennessee.

  They say a prophet foretold it.

  A general oversaw it.

  And a team of the world’s greatest scientific minds was tasked with making it all come together.

  But it was the others, the great and often unseen, who made the visions of the Prophet and the plans of the General and the theories of the scientists a reality. Tens of thousands of individuals—some still reeling from the Depression, others gripped by anxiety and fear as loved ones fought overseas in the most devastating war any of them had known—worked around the clock on this project, the details of which were not explained. For the young adventurers, male and female, who traveled to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, during World War II, doing their part meant living and working in a secret city, a place created from the ground up for one reason and one reason only—to enrich uranium for the world’s first atomic bomb used in combat.

  Roots have always run deep here. They were dug up and scattered when the strangers with the project came to the foothills of the Cumberlands, but the newcomers, too, could not resist the pull of the earth and dug their own roots down deep into the Tennessee clay, soaked by mountain rain and baked by a thousand suns. Permanent. Enduring.

  Many of these workers on this secret project hidden in the hills were young women who had left home to fight the war in their own way. They left farms for factories willingly, wrote letters hopefully, waited patiently and worked tirelessly.

  A number of these women—and men—still live in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, today. I have had the fascinating and humbling privilege of meeting them, interviewing them, laughing and crying with them and hearing firsthand their tales of life in a secret city while working on a project whose objective was largely kept from them. Over the years they have graciously given me their time and suffered through repeated questions and what must have seemed like insane requests to recall moments from their day-to-day activities roughly 70 years ago. They did so happily and enthusiastically and never, ever with even the slightest bit of bravado. That is not their style. I did not only learn about life on the Manhattan Project. I also found myself taken aback by their sense of adventure and independence, their humility, and their dedication to the preservation of history. I wish I could include each and every one of them in these pages, but I cannot. I hope those who find themselves only in the acknowledgments will accept my thanks in place of my prose. I feel exceptionally lucky to know those who continue to live on, and miss those who have passed since I began working on this book.

  Without them, this sun-snaring—this Manhattan Project—would not have achieved its objectives, and because of them a new age was born that would change the world forever.

  These are some of their stories.

  —Denise Kiernan,

  summer 2012

  Principal Cast of Characters

  PEOPLE

  (THE WOMEN, IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE)

  Celia Szapka

  A secretary transferred from the Manhattan Project’s original offices in New York City, Celia grew up in the coal-mining town of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania.

  Toni Peters

  A secretary from neighboring Clinton, Tennessee, Toni heard about the Project from its beginnings, when the government seized her aunt and uncle’s farm to make way for the secretive town.

  Jane Greer

  A statistician-mathematician from Paris, Tennessee, Jane oversaw a team of young women who crunched numbers around the clock to track the production rates of the Y-12 plant.

  Kattie Strickland

  A janitorial servi
ces worker from Auburn, Alabama, Kattie came to Oak Ridge with her husband to work at K-25.

  Virginia Spivey

  A chemist from Louisburg, North Carolina, Virginia came to Oak Ridge after graduating from the University of North Carolina. She worked in the chemical department of Y-12 analyzing product.

  Colleen Rowan

  A leak pipe inspector at the K-25 plant, Colleen left Nashville, Tennessee, for Oak Ridge, along with more than 10 members of her extended family.

  Dorothy Jones

  A calutron cubicle operator from Hornbeak, Tennessee, Dot was recruited right out of high school.

  Helen Hall

  A calutron cubicle operator and sports fanatic from Eagleville, Tennessee, Helen was recruited from the small coffee shop and pharmacy where she worked.

  Rosemary Maiers

  A nurse from Holy Cross, Iowa, Rosemary came to Oak Ridge to help open the very first clinic.

  OTHER WOMEN OF NOTE

  Vi Warren

  A columnist for the Oak Ridge Journal and wife of the Project medical chief, Stafford Warren.

  Ida Noddack

  German geochemist who suggested the possibility of fission years before its discovery.

  Lise Meitner

  Austrian physicist who escaped Nazi Germany and was part of the team that discovered fission.

  Leona Woods

  American physicist who worked on the first-ever sustained nuclear reaction.

  Mrs. H. K. Ferguson

  Representing the H. K. Ferguson Company, principal contractor for the S-50 plant. Her real name shall be revealed. . . .

  Joan Hinton

  American physicist who worked with Enrico Fermi’s team at Los Alamos, New Mexico.

  Elizabeth Graves American physicist who worked on the neutron reflector that surrounded the core of the Gadget.

  PEOPLE (THE OTHERS)

  The General

  General Leslie Groves, head of the Manhattan Project.

  The Scientist

  Robert Oppenheimer, laboratory director of the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. “Coordinator of Rapid Rupture.”

  The District Engineer, or The Engineer Col. Kenneth Nichols, administrative head of the Manhattan Project.

  The Secretary

  Secretary of War Henry Stimson.

  The Photographer

  James Edward “Ed” Westcott, official photographer for Clinton Engineer Works (CEW) during World War II.

  Eric Clarke

  Chief psychiatrist for the Manhattan Project at Oak Ridge.

  Ebb Cade

  A construction worker at K-25.

  Stafford Warren

  Chief of the medical section of the Manhattan Project.

  Enrico Fermi

  Also known as Henry Farmer and the Italian Navigator. Italian physicist and head of the physics group at the Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory; assistant laboratory director at Los Alamos.

  Ernest Lawrence

  Also known as Ernest Lawson. American physicist who developed cyclotrons and calutrons for the electromagnetic separation process. Head of the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory for the Manhattan Project.

  Niels Bohr

  Also known as Nicholas Baker. Danish physicist who contributed to the modern understanding of the structure of the atom and to the field of quantum mechanics.

  Arthur Compton

  Also known as Arthur Holly or Holly Compton or Comus. American physicist and head of the Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory.

  PLACES

  Oak Ridge, Tennessee

  Also known as Site X, Kingston Demolition Range, Clinton Engineer Works, and the Reservation. The designation “Clinton Engineer Works” referred to the entirety of Site X in Tennessee, while “Oak Ridge” referred more specifically to the “Townsite” and other residential, nonplant areas of the site.

  Y-12

  The electromagnetic separation plant at Oak Ridge, home of the calutrons.

  K-25

  The gaseous diffusion plant at Oak Ridge and, for a time, the largest building under one roof in the world.

  X-10

  The pilot reactor at Oak Ridge for producing plutonium upon which the reactors at Hanford, Washington, were based.

  S-50

  The liquid thermal diffusion plant at Oak Ridge.

  Los Alamos, New Mexico

  Also known as Site Y or the Hill. Manhattan Project site where the Gadget was designed.

  The Chicago Metallurgical Lab, University of Chicago, IL

  Also known as the Met Lab, site of Chicago Pile-1 and the first ever sustained nuclear reaction.

  Hanford, Washington Also known as Site W. Site of the Project’s full-scale plutonium production facility.

  THINGS

  The Gadget

  The atomic bomb, both implosion and gun models. “It.”

  Tubealloy (Tuballoy, Tube-Alloy)

  Uranium. Sometimes referred to as “alloy” or “Product” in its enriched form, which was used as fuel for the atomic bomb.

  49

  Plutonium. Element 94. Also referred to as “Product” or “material” in the context of fuel for the atomic bomb.

  The Project

  The Manhattan Project. More formally known as the Manhattan Engineer District (MED). The MED originally referred to the geographical designation of the Project’s initial headquarters in New York City but came to include all Manhattan Project sites.

  Author’s note: The information in this book is compartmentalized, as was much of life and work during the Manhattan Project.

  ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

  Revelation, August 1945

  That morning, the excitement coursing throughout the complex known as the Castle was infectious. The words no one was supposed to speak, the words many had not even known existed, ricocheted off walls and flew freely from the mouths of even the least informed inhabitants of Site X.

  Toni was beside herself. How could she not be? Phones rang, women gabbed uncontrollably, giving not a thought to what they were allowed to say, and no one tried to stop them. The merest details gleaned from newspapers, the radio, or flapping gums were making their way down the halls, into corner offices and throughout the secretarial pool. Slowly the entire Reservation was igniting, ripples of information expanding outward via word and wire. For every voice that uttered the News, at least two more spread it from there forward, faster this time, exponentially increasing the radius of those in the know.

  Rosemary was glued to the radio, packed into her boss’s office with the others who had abandoned their stations. Colleen and Kattie were at work, too, miles away in the cavernous factory whose purpose was now all too clear. Jane heard such a ruckus outside her office that she threw open the window, waiting for the did-you-hear-don’t-you-know shouts to waft up from below. Virginia and Helen had taken long-planned vacations, but the news managed to reach them, too, hundreds of miles away. And Celia and Dot were at home; they were, after all, housewives now. A lot had changed in two years.

  Did Chuck already know? Toni wondered.

  She had always assumed he would know before her, but no matter. She did know and there was no doubt about it. She needed to hear what he thought. Everything would change now.

  Wouldn’t it?

  But when Chuck answered the phone and Toni blurted out the truth, she heard nothing in response.

  “Chuck! Chuck! Did you hear me?!”

  All she heard was a click at the other end of the line.

  Chuck had hung up on her without speaking a word.

  She wasn’t supposed to know.

  Was she?

  She had spent years not knowing, wondering, sometimes guessing, and then giving up. She had accepted the need and duty to not know, and now this. Today, for no apparent reason, without any warning and out of the sweltering summer blue, came the Secret. Toni had spoken the word that, until this day, was not to be spoken. A word to change the world.

  Either she was right, or she was in big trouble.
r />   CHAPTER 1

  ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

  Everything Will Be Taken Care Of

  Train to Nowhere, August 1943

  Southbound trains pierced the early morning humidity. The iron and steel of progress cut through the waking landscape.

  Celia sat in her berth, the delicate folds of her brand-new dress draping over her knees as she gazed out the window of the train. Southbound. That much she knew, and that she had a sleeping berth because it was going to take a while to get to her destination. Towns and stations simmering in the August heat rippled past her view. Buildings and farms bubbled up above the horizon as the train sped by. Still, nothing she saw through the streaked glass answered the most pressing question in her mind: Where was she going?

  Already many hours long, Celia’s trip felt more endless because her final stop remained a mystery. She had no way to measure the distance left to travel or to let her subconscious noodle over what portion of the trip had already elapsed. There was only the expanding landscape and the company of a small group of women, previously unknown to her, but with whom she was now sharing this secrecy-soaked adventure. Celia had quite willingly embarked on a journey without first obtaining much tangible information. So she sat, waiting to arrive at the unknown.

  A wavy-haired 24-year-old, Celia was always up for a change of scenery, and this trip was not her first. Her hair was a deep brown, not quite as black as the coal ash that coated life in the Pennsylvania town that she had left behind: Shenandoah. It was a town about 100 miles and roughly the equivalent in light-years from Philadelphia, and which writer George Ross Leighton referred to as “a memorial to the age of rampant industry.” He described her “once-prosperous” hometown as one that was, in many ways, reminiscent of so many other American towns: past its prime, fighting to survive, and abandoned by the business that had spawned its heyday, a business that kept the lion’s share of profits far from the reach of the rock-shredded, blackened hands that had built it. It was already a region in decline, even back in 1939. But that mining town had given Polish families like hers—and Czechs, Russians, Slovaks—work. Sometimes it was steady, most times not, but it was a chance at a decent living.