The Girls of Atomic City (31 page)

Shortly thereafter, Stafford Warren, in turn, wrote:

“Information on the biological effects of these materials is urgently needed and these materials are now available in suitable quantity for experimental work.”

The maximum permissible body burden for 49 remained unclear. Was it as hazardous as radium? More hazardous?

In August of 1944, the Scientist had authorized programs designed to develop ways of detecting 49 in the body. But he didn’t want those experiments to be handled at Los Alamos. After meeting with members of the medical section, the group decided a research program was in order, one using both animal and human subjects.

By March 1945, doctors at Los Alamos were not happy with the urine samples of some of the workers there. Dr. Louis Hempelmann, health director at Los Alamos, recommended “a human tracer experiment to determine the percentage of [49] excreted daily in the urine and feces.”

But starting the program had been delayed. Doctors were “awaiting the development of a more satisfactory method of administration of product [49] than is now available.”

CHAPTER 11

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Innocence Lost

Quite often, at first, when we were talking to some man, we would suddenly see a blank expression come over his face—an “I really wouldn’t know” look that warned us we were on dangerous ground.

—Vi Warren,
The Oak Ridge Journal

It was early, just past 6:30 in the morning, as the vehicle motored along the road carrying six people to work. Ebb Cade, his two brothers, and their friend Jesse Smith had left nearby Harriman, where the four of them shared a home, and picked up two other workers along the way. It was a Saturday, March 24, and the rising sun had just crested the horizon, making itself barely visible over the Black Oak Ridge that ran along the western boundary of the Reservation. The car headed due east toward Blair Gate near the southwest corner of the Clinton Engineer Works. The gate sat near Poplar Creek and just north of the K-25 plant, their final destination.

Cade had been working construction for the Project, mixing cement for the J. A. Jones Construction company, and his days either started early, lasted late, or maybe both, depending on which end of the 24-hour shift he found himself. He had been born in Macon, Georgia, and then moved to North Carolina along with his brothers—the Hickory-Greensboro area—before the group came west to Oak Ridge to find work.

Roads were uneven and overused, tires were easily taxed and rarely replaced, whether for rations or lack of funds. As the vehicle approached the gate, a guard approached and stopped the group, inspecting everyone for their badges and then sending them on their way, a long day ahead of them.

It wasn’t too far from the gate to the plant itself. The group might not have been even a mile and a half from K-25 when they saw something up ahead of them. It appeared to be a large government vehicle and it was stopped on the side of the road, its rear wheels jacked up. As Cade and the others drove past, they had to maneuver around the oversized vehicle.

As Cade’s vehicle swerved around the vehicle, a dump truck appeared directly ahead. The sun was a good five minutes into its day, now. Could that have blinded the drivers, or caused enough of a squint or glare so as to dull their reflexes? A moment longer delayed by security at the guardhouse might have made a difference in the end. But now there was no more time. The two vehicles drove directly into each other’s paths. They collided head-on, metal crumpling under the force of the crash, bodies buckling beneath the impact.

All six of the passengers in Cade’s car were taken to the Oak Ridge Hospital, where they were examined and treated. Besides Cade, at least one was hospitalized. Cade looked as though he had lost some blood, but there was no mention of a life-threatening condition in the initial report.

Cade’s presence in the hospital drew additional attention.

The short report began:

This patient, a fifty-three-year-old colored male, was hospitalized on March 25, 1945, following an automobile accident in which he sustained comminuted fractures of the left femur and right patella and a transverse fracture of the right radius and ulna. Physical findings of note included a left lenticular cataract and marked hypertrophic and atrophic arthritic changes in both knees, together with osteochondromatosis of the left knee . . .

Timing probably played a role in what happened next.

The recommendation for the injections arrived March 26, just two days after the crash itself. Then just a few days after that, the
samples of 49 were shipped by Dr. Wright Langham in Los Alamos to Dr. Friedell in Oak Ridge so that he could, if the opportunity presented itself, try them out on the subject. As Friedell related the circumstances, the “colored male” was “well-developed” and “well-nourished,” though he had sustained fractures in his arms and legs. But he was communicative enough to let the doctors attending to his needs know that he had always been in good health.

The patient stayed hospitalized and was treated with the exception of his legs. They were not set immediately. They would not be. Not just yet. Not until the doctors knew how they were going to proceed.

And from this moment forward, the black construction worker and accident victim admitted into the Oak Ridge Hospital as Ebb Cade became known as HP-12.

★ ★ ★

Spring turned to summer in 1945 and the Clinton Engineer Works was in its toddlerhood. Still, new people continued arriving. Another expansion had gotten under way in early 1945. Small two-family Victory cottages—very basic, temporary dwellings made of plywood and roll roofing—sprouted up from the dusty ground as if seeds just watered by the Appalachian rains. They offered residents one bedroom, with a combined living room and kitchen, and were believed to have a life span of three years. There were approximately 28,834 people living in family units and apartments. There were roughly 1,053 people still living in farmhouses that had been left over after the initial phase of construction of the Project, minimally renovated. The dorms themselves had 13,786 men and women, and a staggering 31,257 individuals were living in barracks, trailers, and hutments.

This third phase of expansion estimated a population of 66,000. But that was low. The resident population was now at its peak: 75,000. This was a remarkable increase over the initial 13,000-some estimate made in the very early stages of development of Site X itself. Employment peaked at 82,000 in May 1945, so more than 100,000 people were on-site each day, if you combined residents and commuters. The bus system was one of the 10 largest in the United States, ferrying passengers into and around Site X. In 1944, a fare
was instituted and rides that were once free cost a nickel. The 800-bus fleet carried an average of 120,000 passengers per day at its peak. There were 163 miles of wooden “sidewalks” and 300 miles of roads, and the cafeterias—17 of them now—served roughly 40,000 meals per day. So populous, so secret. Oak Ridge boasted an electricity bill that made New York City look like the Dogpatch that this neck of Tennessee was mocked for resembling. Yet there was still not yet a hint of Oak Ridge’s existence on any maps.

Women continued to make up a large portion of the new arrivals. At Oak Ridge, women found both job opportunities
and
a lively social life, with one sometimes unexpectedly affecting the other. Virginia the chemist now found herself gravitating more and more toward conversations with men at social gatherings. It wasn’t that Virginia hadn’t had the opportunity to meet other women like herself—college-educated and single. But every now and again, when she found herself at a party, she noticed she had little in common with married women. She would wander into conversations, seeking to meet new female friends, but soon noticed that many of them spent their time talking nonstop about diapers, shopping, and home life.

Virginia had two older brothers and was always comfortable chatting with the opposite sex. One brother, denied admission into the US Air Force, joined the Canadian Air Force. Virginia remembered him coming home for a visit when she was still at home. He was six years older than she but still so young. Virginia watched as he stood in their yard, leaning against a tree, talking about what he’d seen. He looked so devastated, so sick of war. For Virginia it was one of those memories that stayed with her, one that reminded her why she wanted to make a difference. Few Oak Ridgers cared whether they were let in on the Secret, so long as the war ended, and brothers would come home again, the images of war dulled if never erased, soothed by family, by the familiar.

Virginia never felt bothered by the restrictions, was never fazed by the secrecy. Though she had heard that informants and spies walked among them, she never worried about who might be listening or
think she knew enough to be particularly informative. But sometimes she was reminded that perhaps she did know more than she realized.

She once went on a hike with another scientist whom she was dating, and fell into one of the more brazen discussions she had ever had about the purpose of CEW. Virginia loved hiking. Getting away from the concrete and the cold, antiseptic feel of the lab and out into the surrounding ridges, where trees and underbrush still held on dearly to the clay and soil beneath them, was restorative and invigorating. The forest of nearby Big Ridge was popular with many of the town’s residents. Perhaps it was the seclusion, being physically removed from the factories and the mud and the activity of the Reservation that made people feel more comfortable chatting about life’s secrets. There, it seemed no one was listening, save the ever-present cardinals and occasional red-bellied woodpecker and whomever you had chosen as company. No eyes staring down from billboards, no ears leaning in to your conversation from across a table or a few seats over on the crowded bus.

As Virginia and her date walked, he rambled on, speculating about CEW’s purpose. He had no incontrovertible proof, so to speak, but Virginia listened, enjoying the young man’s company and the stimulating conversation.

“You’re a scientist,” he had said to her as they climbed among the pines and sugar maples. “You must know what’s going on here . . .”

Her date proceeded to tell Virginia his theory. Hadn’t she noticed how coverage of advancements in nuclear physics and things like fission had disappeared from the press? Indeed, this is precisely what Virginia and her sister had noticed a couple of years ago. Virginia’s friend believed such a raw, previously unleashed power was being harnessed in Oak Ridge and was going to be used to end the war.

He had no specifics, had not been told anything definitive by anyone with any kind of authority. He had arrived at his own theory the way so many scientists on the Reservation had. Not being allowed to know or discuss something does not turn off a mind conditioned by a lifetime of inquiry, and does not cause one to stop thinking, devising, deducing.

His words made complete sense to Virginia, the components of his logic snapping together in her scientific brain. She knew after that illuminating walk in the woods not to discuss the conversation with others. She wasn’t unnerved, but she didn’t go looking for opportunities to talk about work outside the lab, either, even if others couldn’t help themselves.

But when those discussions found her, she found them much more scintillating than talks of a domestic life she had yet to experience, one which did not yet hold as much intrigue or appeal.

★ ★ ★

Intrepid leak tester Colleen Rowan also loved climbing over felled trees and forest floor as a break from scaling pipes. She was getting serious with Blackie, though they had not explicitly stated their exclusivity. But neither was actively dating anyone else. Colleen had even taken to wearing an old pair of Blackie’s fatigues to work at the plant. She had sewn new bars on them and rolled up the oversized sleeves. They came in handy, considering her constant climbing up and along giant pipes and walking back and forth to work through the mud. It took its toll on clothes. Shopping at the PX and borrowing fatigues were two unexpected-yet-welcome perks of dating a soldier.

Colleen’s change in wardrobe hadn’t gone over well with everyone at the plant however. One morning she arrived at the conditioning building and headed downstairs to begin her day. She went to her station, took hold of her probe, and began carefully inspecting welds. She was immersed in her work when she looked up and saw a sergeant approaching. Colleen had never seen him before. He strutted straight up to Colleen, reached over, and ripped the stripes off the sleeves of Blackie’s fatigues.

“You have no right to be wearing these,” he said. “It’s disrespectful.”

Colleen stayed silent. The man stalked off.

She knew she wasn’t a soldier, but she would never do anything to intentionally disrespect anyone in the military. Her brother was a soldier. Her boyfriend was a soldier. She felt proud of what they
were doing. She thought she was showing her support. She began to understand her mistake—how a military uniform should be respected and worn only by someone in the service—but wished the man had explained her transgression to her instead of humiliating her.

She let it roll off her back. She rolled up her unadorned sleeves, loose threads now sprouting from the fabric, and got back to work.

This episode was hardly the most serious wardrobe faux pas for a member of Colleen’s family. Her brother Brien—one of the family working at CEW and possessing the irrepressible Rowan wit—thought it would be funny to fashion a hat with small wings attached to either side,
à la
fleet-of-foot Roman god Mercury. It would be a kind of millinery nod to the materials Brien believed he was working with. It would be an “I know more than you think I do” fashion statement, best appreciated by those as well versed in their mythology as they were in their chemistry. He knew they were working with mercury—maybe he didn’t know why, but he knew they were. He wore his hat with pride to work one day, and that day was one of the last days Brien ever worked.