The Girls of Atomic City (13 page)

A new era had begun, the theoretical made provable, a monumental if secret gain achieved in their own snowy hundred-acre wood.

Theoretical physicist Eugene Wigner opened up a bottle of Chianti he had brought from Princeton to Chicago. The wine was poured into paper cups, its straw-bottomed bottle signed by those in attendance. Laboratory head Arthur Compton called James Conant, then head of the National Defense Research Committee, and relayed the news in a manner reflecting both secrecy and a lack of secure phone lines:

“The Italian Navigator has just landed in the New World,” Compton said. “The earth was not as large as he had estimated and he arrived sooner than expected.”

“Were the natives friendly?” Conant asked.

“Yes. Everyone landed safe and happy.”

Success. A sustained nuclear reaction was possible. What’s more, the Project could now build a reactor that would use Tubealloy to produce another new and highly fissionable element, Element 94, also known in the Project as “49.”

★ ★ ★

Some hours later, Leona and the Italian Navigator trudged through the snow, reeling from the day’s events. It was bitterly cold, even by Chicago standards. Leona was bundled to the brim, black eyes peeking out over the collar of her overcoat. Hers was a captivating face, and the only female one in the crowd on the courts that day. She walked briskly alongside her small, fiery mentor, each of them quietly wondering if they really had been the first to pull this off, or if the Germans had already surpassed their achievements without any of them knowing.

They were headed to a gathering at the Fermi home that had been in the works for weeks. The date, when initially chosen, was random. However, in light of what had happened, the party took on an added level of celebration, at least for those guests privy to the day’s events. Laura Fermi was not.

Laura had done her best to adjust to the new level of secrecy in her life. She hadn’t always been out of the loop. She had spent many an evening surrounded by her husband’s colleagues, discussing his work over wine and food. It was different now, but her curiosity would not be so easily dodged. With every coworker who walked through the door, a “Congratulations” was given to her husband. As the list of backslappers and well-wishers grew, Laura began asking what her husband had achieved that was so remarkable. She wasn’t getting very far.

Ask your husband . . . Go talk to Enrico . . . You’ll find out sometime . . .

Laura turned to Leona for an answer. Leona was younger, yes, but imposing in her own way. She was tall and attractive with a strong build, and Laura had heard that Leona possessed a stratospheric IQ. But when Leona started talking about sinking admirals, Laura had no idea how to react. For a time, Laura had felt as though Leona looked down on her. Now she felt her husband’s protégée was ridiculing her.

. . . a Japanese admiral . . .

But Leona’s creative metaphor was immediately and emphatically backed up by other scientists present and Laura let it pass.

Laura would later write that she thought it significant that so many of the project scientists were not from the United States, that many were recent immigrants like her own brood. Maybe others thought it commonplace that experts, no matter their citizenship, should be involved in ventures of such importance. But Laura read more into it. These scientists—Hungarians, Italians, Germans—knew the power and speed with which a dictatorial state could mobilize. Universities. Military. Research. Back in their war-ravaged homelands, these entities, each with their own expertise and power, were under a single direction, guided and controlled by one hand.

“A dictator decrees,” she later wrote, “a president asks Congress for permission to organize.”

The Project, it seemed, would make no such mistake.

Her husband had achieved the unbelievable before, Laura thought. Perhaps there was a way to sink a ship while buried under snowdrifts in Chicago. When she finally confronted her husband a few days later, the results were no less perplexing.

“Did you really sink a Japanese admiral?” she asked.

“Did I?” came the response.

“So, you didn’t?” Laura volleyed.

“Didn’t I?” her husband returned.

Doublespeak. Metaphors. Laura knew that continuing along this line of questioning was futile. She may not have known what her husband was working on in the University of Chicago’s Metallurgical Lab, but she was sure their work had precious little to do with metallurgy.

Just four Decembers earlier, Lise Meitner had sat pondering the possibility of what the team in Chicago had now made a reality. She and Ida Noddack remained an ocean away and well outside the growing Project. Lise’s nephew Otto Frisch would soon find himself with other Project scientists at Los Alamos, New Mexico. Leona and the Italian Navigator would eventually make their way to Site W, where the success of CP-1 would be applied on a massive scale. Lise, too, had been invited to join the Project but declined. She knew what they were developing. She wanted no part of it.

CHAPTER 5

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Only Temporary

Spring into Summer, 1944

We were indignant all over again when we got to Oak Ridge. Why couldn’t we have been warned about what a raw place we were coming to?

—Vi Warren,
Oak Ridge Journal

Colleen Rowan waited patiently for her turn. The effusively outgoing 18-year-old brunette was on line for the shower; business as usual in a trailer camp with communal baths that served thousands of shift workers. The showering took place in shifts, as well. Colleen had encountered lines at every turn since moving here. This was just one more.

She found herself staring at the embroidered peacock on the back of the blue chenille robe of the woman in front of her. Chenille was a big hit. And here in East Tennessee they were within striking distance of the tufted bedspread capital of the world, Dalton, Georgia. When Colleen’s family first came to Oak Ridge, they had passed the vendors on the highway, selling chenille bedspreads. Other roadside entrepreneurs offered up squirrels to hungry travelers, tiny cooked carcasses hanging alongside soft, tufted strips of fabric in pastel pinks, mint greens, and blues. The roads were full of people selling what they had, trying to get by. The Rowan family from Nashville drove past them, heading to a bigger place with better jobs for everyone in the family who was of working age. They were moving on to what they believed would be a land of opportunity and of purpose.

At first, Colleen hadn’t been sold on the idea of moving to CEW. The first thought that had sprung to mind a year earlier when her family came to visit relatives here was,
No way, no how.
And she told her mother as much.

“But this is where we need to be,” Colleen’s mother had explained. “We should do this, not just for us, but for Jimmy. For the war.”

Bess Rowan’s family were mostly plumbers: Spike, Robert, and Uncle Jack had come to CEW to work. One of Daddy’s brothers, John, had moved here, too. The men had learned about the jobs via their plumber’s union. Spike, Robert, and Jack all worked at the K-25 plant, where Colleen now worked.

Conditions at CEW took getting used to. Many of the construction workers were living in one-room hutments, each with three other men. And where were the sidewalks and proper streets?! Colleen stared in disbelief as she watched women in dresses walk barefoot through the gunk that covered everything within sight, their shoes hoisted high over their heads. She couldn’t imagine why on earth her mother would want to leave Nashville for this.

But with nine children still at home and her brother Jimmy in the Philippines, Colleen knew better than to tangle with her mother. And Colleen wanted so badly for Jimmy to come home safe. If this would help—and they were told it would—she would do it.

“It’ll be just like camping,” Colleen’s mom said, trying to convince her. “It’s only temporary.”

Colleen had survived the Depression. She had survived the nuns at Cathedral High School. She could survive this.

This was life in a place called Happy Valley.

★ ★ ★

Townsite was the section of CEW originally set aside for living and shopping and other quotidian comings and goings. It sat in the northeast corner of the Reservation, backing up against the Black Oak Ridge and bounded to the south by Old Tennessee 61. Happy Valley sprouted out of the dust in the shadow of K-25, housing its thousands of workers, just one of several necessary residential additions to CEW.

Initially, Stone & Webster (S&W), out of Boston, served as principal contractor for CEW’s plants and other structures, and started work on the administration building—the “Castle on the Hill”—in November of 1942, while evicted locals were still packing up. Moving full steam ahead meant the gentle rise and fall of the verdant landscape had been reduced to dirt and clay. Barren tracts made easy targets for rains which transformed them into meandering rivers of mud.

S&W failed to impress the General with their plans for the residential Townsite area. So the Pierce Foundation and their associated architectural firm, Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, came on board. Pierce had a knack for modular housing, with an eye for town design, and had dipped its toes into the prefab market during the Depression. It developed, with the Celotex Corporation, a cheap, versatile material called cemesto board.

Cemesto. Cement and asbestos, a pairing that in many ways made the town of Oak Ridge possible, was a potent mix of prefabulousness. Wall sections could be mass-produced, shipped, stored, and used to erect everything from homes to schools to shops. In early 1943, it was decided that the Pierce Foundation and Skidmore would design the Townsite. Stone & Webster would oversee construction and handle infrastructure services like telephone, sewage,
etc.

But early on the Pierce-Skidmore team had some basic questions.

How large did the town need to be?

Where would the town be located?

Project reps were loathe to offer answers, as they might provide clues to enemy snoops as to what was going on at CEW. For location, the Project provided highly edited aerial photos that gave an idea of topography but little more—they could have been taken anywhere. The Project initially told Pierce-Skidmore to base their designs on a town of 13,000. When the time came for a site visit, the architects were instructed to go to New York City’s Penn Station at a particular time and place. They were met by a representative of the Project, ushered onto a train, and then told their destination.

Soon CEW began to take shape: There were seven gates in all. The three plants—Y-12, K-25, and X-10—were kept separate from
Townsite for safety and security purposes. Y-12 and K-25 were roughly 17 miles apart themselves, so that if there were a disaster that destroyed one, the other would survive. Y-12 took up around 825 acres and was roughly five miles from Townsite. It sat on the far side of Pine Ridge in the Bear Creek Valley, with topography helping to deter damage in case of any accidents or explosions.

By the spring of 1943, roughly 55 miles of railroad and 300 miles of paved roads were already in place. The original plan for a town of 13,000 was already scrapped by the fall of 1943 when Celia and Toni first arrived and at this point the Project anticipated CEW might have as many as 42,000 residents.

There were a variety of single-family homes, apartments, and dormitories planned for Townsite. Homes sat upon the new streets in as equidistant a manner as possible. Though the homes varied in their number of bedrooms, the prefab nature of all the structures meant the bones beneath were essentially the same. When viewed from a distance, Townsite exhibited a uniformity, a visual reinforcement of shared circumstances and hardships, even if that was not strictly true.

But despite all this progress, this tribute to modern science and city planning, there were no sidewalks.

★ ★ ★

At least Colleen’s family had their own trailer now. At first, only Colleen, her mom, and her brother Brien came to CEW. Her father stayed in Nashville with the rest of the kids, still waiting for his Statement of Availability.

The national “Statement of Availability” program was designed to prevent workers from job-hopping, which could hamper wartime industries dependent on a consistent labor force. If a worker left a job vital to the war effort, he or she had to obtain a document from their employer before being eligible to be hired elsewhere. If someone were laid off, there was no problem. But if a worker was fired or quit—say because they wanted a better-paying job—an employer could deny the Statement of Availability. This meant the worker had to wait
at least
30 days before they would be able to be hired again, often longer.

The Project had gotten some help circumventing restrictive labor practices put in place to keep wartime industries humming along. Under Secretary of War Robert Patterson issued a directive stating anyone applying for a war industry job through the United States Employment Service had to be recruited by the Project first. If they were rejected—they didn’t pass the security clearance, for example—only then would they be available for another position.

As construction began to pick up in 1943, workers were leaving at a rate of as much as 17 percent a month. By the end of 1943, the regional office of the War Powers Commission proclaimed, “the unknown demand at Clinton Engineer Works overshadows all known demand . . .” In early 1944, Union Carbide noted a 25 percent turnover rate for construction workers at K-25. Based on exit interviews, complaints ranged from work conditions to food and housing, which, for the construction workers, was generally trailers or tiny hutments. By mid-1944, continued plant construction and expansion were in full swing, and the need for workers was crucial. So the under secretary of war and the president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers came to an agreement—the Brown-Patterson Agreement—enabling the Project to yank workers out of existing jobs, send them to CEW, and retain them for three months. Employers would receive official recognition from the War Department. Employees got a bit of a pay raise, overtime opportunities, and would retain any seniority they had back home. Travel was provided, and housing—in some form—was paramount.