The Girls of Atomic City (38 page)

“Improvement” would be made, increasing effectiveness and possibly the “scale of magnitude.” Little Boy’s impact would pale in comparison to what might be developed down the line.

“The possession of this weapon by the United States even in its present form should prove a tremendous aid in the shortening of the war against Japan,” he said.

Exact methods would not be revealed, obviously, but “in accord with its policy of keeping the people of the nation as completely informed as is consistent with national security, the War Department wishes to make known at this time, at least in broad dimension, the story behind this tremendous weapon which has been developed so effectively to hasten the end of the war.”

Stimson started in 1939, with the discovery of fission, and emphasized that the “fundamental scientific knowledge” that was the basis for the development of the atomic bomb was known in a number of countries. Japan, he felt, would not be using an atomic bomb in this war—which was not yet over—and any efforts by Germany to develop her own weapon ended with her defeat.

He described the close work between the United States and the United Kingdom, how the Project had started first in the Office of Scientific Research and Development, under Dr. Vannevar Bush
before control of the project was transferred to the War Department and the command of now Maj. Gen. Leslie R. Groves.

This man—General Groves—had officially taken over the Manhattan Project just under three years ago. By sheer force of will and roughly $2 billion, he’d bulldozed his way to a successful Gadget with the help of a team of scientists led by J. Robert Oppenheimer and hundreds of thousands of workers across the country.

A Government-owned and operated city, named Oak Ridge, was established within the reservation to accommodate the people working on the project. They live under normal conditions in modest houses, dormitories, hutments, and trailers, and have for their use all the religious, recreational, educational, medical, and other facilities of a modern small city. The total population of Oak Ridge is approximately 78,000 and consists of construction workers and plant operators and their immediate families; others live in immediately surrounding communities.

Stimson continued: “The large size and isolated location of this site was made necessary by the need for security and for safety against possible, but then unknown, hazards.”

He detailed the plants in Hanford, Washington, and the labs in New Mexico, identifying Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer—the “genius,” in Stimson’s words—largely responsible for the development of the bomb. Stimson also acknowledged the many “smaller” sites and universities—Columbia, University of Chicago, Iowa State, and more—and countries and governments, including Canada. He thanked the many companies involved—M. W. Kellogg, Union Carbide, Tennessee Eastman, DuPont, and more—but did not mention the specific names of the plants they helped construct and manage: Y-12, K-25, S-50, and X-10.

Stimson thanked the press as well for complying with the requests of the Office of Censorship. Across the country, news editors had finally run their fingers under the gummed flaps of the envelopes they had been instructed not to open until further notice. As they did,
official statements and photos poured out, many of which had been taken by the Photographer, Ed Westcott. There was talk of patent control and the need to maintain adequate supplies of the element known to thousands of Project employees by the name “tubealloy.” As for the ultratight security and the remarkable ability for so many thousands of people to keep such a big secret as well as they had, Stimson admitted:

The work has been completely compartmentalized so that while many thousands of people have been associated with the program in one way or another, no one has been given more information concerning it than was absolutely necessary to do his particular job. As a result only a few highly placed persons in Government and science know the entire story.

There was an inherent promise to atomic fission in peacetime, he said, and a question of how to employ this science going forward, since its most visible use thus far was as a devastating weapon. He predicted it would take many years of research “for the conversion of atomic energy into useful power. . . . We are at the threshold of a new industrial art . . .”

★ ★ ★

What had for so long been a drought of information came now as a flood. But people who worked in the plants at CEW still wondered what,
exactly
, they might have been doing all this time. The specific details of their roles in the Oak Ridge story did not always trickle down. The complete story would, for many of them, remain beyond their grasp for decades to come.

No one took Helen and Dot aside to explain what happened when they turned their knobs this way or that, or told them they were helping operate calutrons. Colleen was not then told what the pipes she continued to inspect carried. Kattie did not know what the plant she cleaned had done. Yes, chemists like Virginia Spivey and statisticians like Jane Greer could assemble the informational pieces a little more
easily for themselves, but the full picture from start to finish was not made public.

Everyone at CEW found themselves recasting discussions and experiences in light of the new information. Oak Ridge’s precise role was not entirely clear to many. Some assumed they had built the bomb itself. That they had actually been helping create the atomic bomb’s fuel source was too abstruse for many to comprehend. And most details remained top secret.

But that was no matter.

Oak Ridgers finally knew
something.
There was something to pin their efforts and their work on. They had played a part in what appeared to be a key turning point in the war, one that might end it for good.

Elizabeth Edwards, Oak Ridge’s librarian transplant from the New York Public Library, went to the shelf containing the encyclopedias. She looked over the spines and stopped at the volume containing the letter
U.
As she picked up the book, it fell open as if on command, the spine already worn and bent and broken from more than a year of being opened to the same page over and over by chemistry-savvy people trying to make sense of what they thought might possibly be going on.

On that well-worn page was a long streak of black ink, smudged by fingers of sweaty, overworked hands, leading to a word, the element that gave the Clinton Engineer Works its reason for existence.

★ ★ ★

In the ensuing celebration that day and into the night, words that previously had gone unmentioned, whether unknown or forbidden, passed everyone’s lips, ricocheting off walls and the hushed spaces of plants, and cafeterias and buses.

Uranium!

Atomic!

Bombs!

Radiation!

Plutonium!

There were 235s and 238s ringing in people’s ears, even though most of them had never heard of either. Children were in a tizzy jabbering on about the “automatic bomb.” “Stay on the job” still remained the message at work. The war was not yet over, still many workers took to the streets. Cubicle operators abandoned their panels, chemists walked away from their benches. As the celebration and the release of so much pent-up curiosity continued, some recoiled at the sound of words they had been explicitly forbidden to utter. Scientists who had banished certain terms from their vocabularies found it hard to hear the language bandied about so freely.

In Y-12, one young chemist, Bill Wilcox, reached for his daily calendar. He was a smiling, bow-tie-clad man from Pennsylvania, a Yankee who had fallen for a Tennessee redhead named Jeannie on the dance floor, a traveler to Dogpatch who had now seen everything from backwoods “splo” (moonshine) stills to the unleashing of the power of the atoms he had studied at university. Listed in some documents as “Chemist #40,” Wilcox took a red pen and circled the date at the top of the page. Monday, August 6. He still felt odd, somehow, writing the
U
word. Instead, on his calendar page he wrote, quite simply and in large letters, “T Day.”

Other scientists felt as though a gag order had been lifted. Among them was Waldo Cohn, biochemist and cofounder of the Oak Ridge Symphony. He was seen driving through town, yelling out the window of his car, without a care or fear in the world, for all to hear:

“Uranium! Uranium! URANIUM!!!”

★ ★ ★

Physicist Lise Meitner was on holiday, in the small lakeside village of Leksand, Norway. Her hosts brought her the news. She sat, shocked. Tears came. She went quiet. Soon a local reporter arrived. What could she say about her work on the bomb?

She had
never
worked on any atomic bomb, she said. Still, she was followed by cameras and questions, and stories were concocted of Lise fleeing Germany with valuable information about the bomb that she then gave to the Allies. Her picture—including one of her with a goat—accompanied the exaggerated and often-fabricated
tales, images of the exiled physicist on holiday the day the bomb was dropped.

★ ★ ★

At the holding facility in Farm Hall, England, the detained German scientists were processing the news.

Otto Hahn felt personally responsible. He drank, heavily, until the alcohol began to dull his nerves. The other scientists were reluctant to believe word of the bombing at first, thinking it some sort of elaborate ruse by their captors. Once it sunk in, the news consumed their conversation, for hours, then days.

WEIZSÄCKER:
I don’t think it has anything to do with uranium. . . .

HAHN:
At any rate, Heisenberg, you’re just second-raters and you may as well pack up.

HEISENBERG:
I quite agree.

HAHN:
They are fifty years further advanced than we.

HEISENBERG:
I don’t believe a word of the whole thing. They must have spent the whole of their 500,000,000 pounds in separating isotopes; and then it’s possible.

HAHN:
I didn’t think it would be possible for another twenty years . . .

WEIZSÄCKER:
I think it’s dreadful of the Americans to have done it. I think it is madness on their part.

HEISENBERG:
One can’t say that. One could equally well say “That’s the quickest way of ending the war.”

HAHN:
That’s what consoles me.

Two days later, the scientists at Farm Hall prepared a memo to clarify their work in Germany “on the uranium problem.” In it, they hoped to clarify the research conducted, as they felt Germany had been misrepresented in the press. Of the discovery of fission, they wrote:

The fission of the atomic nucleus in uranium was discovered by Hahn and Strassmann in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in Berlin. . . . Various research workers, Meitner and Frisch were probably the first, pointed out the enormous energies which were released by the fission of uranium. On the other hand, Meitner had left Berlin six months before the discovery and was not concerned herself in the discovery.

★ ★ ★

Col. Kenneth Nichols, the District Engineer, tried to let his wife, Jacqueline, know before everyone else. Nichols had sent everything he could get his hands on regarding the bomb over to their house, so that Jacqueline would not have to wait for the radio address like everyone else. It was a gesture he wanted to make after all the secrecy and silence she had endured.

But when the envelope arrived at their home, Jacqueline was entertaining Vi Warren. Jacqueline, ever discreet, and knowing that Vi, of all people, would understand—decided to leave the envelope unopened until she was alone.

Then the phone rang. It was Jacqueline’s sister-in-law asking what Jacqueline thought of the news. Jacqueline immediately turned on the radio and opened the envelope, absorbing it all. She was, as she later told her husband, “terribly disappointed that the bomb had been dropped on civilians,” but was glad to know that the Project that had taken so much of her family’s time was a success, and that her husband had played a key role. More than anything, she was glad it looked like it was all going to be over now.

★ ★ ★

In many cases, stay-at-home women found out about the bomb before their working counterparts. Currents of information trickled speedily among the cemesto prefabs and trailers that had spread like kudzu across the Reservation over the last three years, disrupting the usual conversations that sprung up between loads of muddy socks and chemical-stained shirts.

News began to fly from kitchen windows, down those laundry lines and out into the streets. Celia wanted to celebrate along with everyone else but she couldn’t. She was at home, waiting for the next wave of nausea. She heard the crowds and the honking and the growing chorus of joyful, boisterous noises. But she just felt too sick to
participate. So she stayed put, alone at home, far from the Castle and even farther from Manhattan, where she and the Project had begun.

★ ★ ★

Apparently while Helen Hall was traveling from Tennessee down to Louisiana, the entire world had changed.

She couldn’t believe that now, after waiting for her vacation, she was actually heading
back
to Tennessee without having spent so much as a night in New Orleans.

Her friend Pee Wee had been living there with her husband, who was working at some sort of government job that Helen didn’t really know much about. Pee Wee had grown up in Eagleville, just one grade behind Helen. As children, they had been thick as thieves, and as young adults they were still a tight-knit pair despite the distance between them.