The Girls of Atomic City

“So many locals soon found themselves applying for work at the project that had evicted them in the first place. Reduced to renters and wage earners, these displaced people would work at Site X, on lands they once held as their own.” 

The creation of CEW had a serious impact on the original residents of the site. Having previously been relatively independent homeowners and farmers, they found themselves turned off their land, often with very little warning and inadequate compensation. Faced with the loss of their lifestyles, they frequently had little choice but to seek employment at CEW itself. 

“As the reservation grew and the newcomers settled in, he would portray Site X as the Project envisioned it, and as those who traveled there wanted it to be. He snapped the rising town’s pioneering spirit and the expressions of newfound camaraderie among those for whom family and home were far away.” 

James Edward “Ed” Wescott, an unknown 21-year-old, landed the role of the Project’s official photographer. He had a great deal of access and took photos intended to reflect the Project’s vision of CEW. As such, his early photographs portrayed a sense of wartime spirit and “making do” that suggest at the beginnings of a new community.

“Leaving her children behind, children she’d been told were not welcome at this new place, not if your skin was black, anyway. That was hard.” 

Due to restrictions on wage levels within the defense industry, CEW was technically not allowed to lure in workers with higher-than-average wages. They not only bent this rule to some degree but also used the added benefits of on-site housing as an additional perk. However, reflecting an underlying racism very much at evidence in its policies, this did not include family homes for people of color who were not allowed to bring their children on site or live as married couples. 

“What kind of girl was this Jane Halliburton Freer? Was she wild? How did she do at school? Did she drink? Really now, tell the truth. And what about that family of hers? Any rotten apples there?” 

People applying for many of the roles at CEW, especially those with access to sensitive information such as Jane’s statistician position, required rigorous screening before they were accepted. In Jane’s case and many others, this included officials visiting her hometown and interviewing her teachers, college professors, and neighbors.

“Though the government had the opportunity to establish the Reservation as a completely desegregated zone, it did not; black residents on the grounds of the Clinton Engineering Project would be primarily laborers, janitors, and domestics, and would live separately, no matter their education or background.” 

Despite an Executive Order declaring that there would be no discrimination in the defense industries, the directors of the Project chose to make Oak Ridge a segregated site. People of color received fewer facilities and were denied access to many of the recreational and housing options that made the difficult conditions more bearable for white people. This policy even prevented the renowned scientist and engineer J. Ernest Wilkins Jr. from being transferred to the project from the University of Chicago.

“The Project liked high school girls, especially those from rural backgrounds. Recruiters sought them out relentlessly, feeling young women were easy to instruct. They did what they were told.” 

Although the Project spent a lot of time and resources recruiting all available workers with appropriate scientific backgrounds, even going as far as to relocate soldiers from active service, they also wished to recruit as many young, rural girls as possible. The thinking was that these young women would follow orders without question.

“Would she mind, the two men wondered, paying very close attention to what the people around her were doing and saying?” 

Undercover operatives worked throughout the Reservation, looking for anyone who might be defying protocol and talking too much. However, as Helen discovered, they also recruited ordinary workers, asking them to listen in to their colleagues’ and neighbors’ conversations and anonymously report anything out of the ordinary. 

“There was only one way into the Pen and the guards were there, night and day, making sure no men entered the women’s area. She still saw Wille every day after work at his hut. But there was a curfew. Come 10 PM flashlights waves and folks scattered.” 

Oak Ridge was segregated, and people of color were given far inferior housing and facilities. In addition, even married couples were not allowed to live together. In another example of the racism that shaped many of the Project’s policies, black women had to live in a separate area surrounded by barbed wire and patrolled by guards who regularly invaded their privacy by coming into their huts even while they were asleep. 

“Then the District Engineer gave Lawrence some surprising news: the ‘hillbilly’ girls were generating more enriched Tubealloy per run than the PhDs had.” 

Although Lawrence was surprised to learn that the local high school girls were processing more Tubealloy than his scientists, the District Engineer understood this perfectly. While Lawrence’s scientists constantly tinkered with the equipment they were using, the “hillbilly” girls followed orders without adjusting equipment on which they had only basic training. 

“In a world of secrecy, where infractions—including the unauthorized accessing of personnel files—could be punished with firing and eviction from your home this kind of delving was nonetheless seen as a necessary risk.” 

Normal life managed to find numerous ways to emerge through the layers of secrecy and security at CEW. With so many young, single people gathered together, dating was a key part of this, and there were always some personnel workers prepared to break the rules to give their friends classified information on new men and potential dates.

“Even those who managed to work with Tubealloy and knew what it was were instructed, and agreed, never to use its name. So even if you had figured out part of THE BIG SECRET—or thought you had—there was no reason to use transparent language in public, since you would never get confirmation about whether you had, truly, determined why CEW and all its plants existed. Loose lips!” 

Some of the scientists and other workers did realize that they were working with uranium. Some even managed to work out, or guess, why they were doing so. However, even these people were part of the overarching culture of silence at CEW and rarely ever acknowledged their knowledge or spoke openly about it. 

“It took more than houses to make homes, more than cafeterias and bowling alleys to build community.” 

The military built Oak Ridge with one purpose in mind: to facilitate the effective processing of uranium. However, they soon discovered that this required more elements than they originally considered. To maintain worker moral—and so, worker efficiency—they needed to provide a real sense of community and opportunities for “normal” life to thrive throughout the town. 

“It was an oddly magical setting, the playful suspension of responsibility in the shadows of the most massive industrial war plants ever constructed.” 

Various areas of the Reservation had their own recreational facilities and one of the most remarkable was an amusement fairway called Coney Island, located in the residential district of Happy Valley. This perhaps more than any other image, highlights the strange juxtaposition of the everyday and the top secret that sums up much of life at Oak Ridge.

“Those who signed the letter found themselves on the receiving end of a robust background check, but no new homes.” 

The Colored Camp Council was set up to help address the racial discrimination worked into the Project’s policies. However, the Project was resistant to its reasonable requests. When signatories sent a letter to the Project requesting homes for black families that were of equal quality to those of white families, they not only did not receive new houses but were actually investigated by the authorities.

“Not knowing what you were working on, what was important or irrelevant, meant that anything you might do or say could pertain to the larger Project about which you knew nothing and, therefore, would be out of line. Possibly dangerous.” 

One of the central problems with the compartmentalization of knowledge at CEW was that, because the workers did not understand the details of their work, they did not know what information was actually off-limits. Things that might seem entirely innocuous to them may have been highly significant and deemed a security risk by the Project’s leaders. 

“If you spoke out of turn, you were not only un-American, you were responsible for the senseless murder of troops. If you dared inquire too closely about your job, you were endangering the lives of innocent children, damning democracy, and joining the ranks of Hitler and Hirohito.” 

Propaganda was everywhere at Oak Ridge: in the newspaper, in leaflets, on posters plastered on every available surface. Sometimes, the messages encouraged cooperation and wartime spirit but often they were ominous warnings about how even minor infractions could cause devastating effects. 

“War had brought them together, in dorms and dances, at work and on buses. But another, elusive and unspoken link—Tubealloy—brought together their efforts and was completely dependent upon their abilities.” 

Tubealloy was central to the Project’s overall aim: the production of the atomic bomb. However, it was also central to the lives of every single woman working at CEW for it was the demand for processed uranium that brought them together, on the mysterious, secret site that did not officially exist. 

“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 from 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.” 

When black construction worker Ebb Cade had a car accident on site, doctors waited weeks to set his bones. However, within days, samples of plutonium were sent to the hospital so that they can be injected into Cade (known as HP-12) without his knowledge or consent. This was a particularly sinister expression of the Project’s culture of secrecy and, given the fact that Cade was black, was also a reflection of the Project’s racist attitudes. 

“Trinity was a blinding success. The Test Gadget annihilated the steel tower and carved a crater six feet deep and 1,200 feet in diameter. The temperature at the center of the mass of fire was four times the temperature at the center of the sun. The resulting pressure, more than 100 billion atmospheres, was the greatest ever to exist on the surface of the earth. It knocked men down who were standing 10,000 yards away and the resulting flash was visible for more than 200 miles and audible for at least 40.” 

After years of work, the Test Gadget—a prototype atom bomb—was detonated on July 16, 1945. It unleashed a force far beyond anything that had ever been seen before and radically altered not only the outcome of the war but international relations. 

“‘[T]here is almost no limit to the destructive power which will become available in the course of their future development,’ the scientists wrote. ‘Thus a nation which sets the precedent for using these newly liberated forces of nature for purposes of destruction may have to bear the responsibility for opening the door to an era of devastation on an unimaginable scale.’” 

After the Test Gadget was detonated and it was clear quite how much destructive power was now available to the US military, many of the scientists who had worked on the bomb felt reservations about their work. They wrote a letter to President Truman asking him to be circumspect with using the bomb and to think of the impact it would have on international relations. The letter never actually reached the President who was still returning from meeting with Churchill and Stalin in Germany, but it reveals much about the complicated feelings many held about the bomb.

“A large crowd was gathered on an expanse of muddy ground outside the building. People were ecstatic. They hugged each other and yelled excitedly to any other curious passerby.” 

At least initially, the news of that “Little Boy” had been dropped on Hiroshima was met with great joy by the most of Oak Ridge’s residents. Delighted that this might mean the swift end to the war that they had been promised, and often pleased that they had contributed to this in some small way, they celebrated long into the night. 

“This was different. This announcement wasn’t just about a bomb. It was about what had been going on here the whole time. Oak Ridge’s secret was out.” 

The President’s announcement about “Little Boy” was significant to all Americans. However, it had particular significance to the workers of CEW. After years of silence, secrets, and, often, ignorance about what they were working on, both the workers and the country at large finally knew what they had been doing and how it was contributing to the war effort.

“The bombings themselves were still hard for her to fathom, and she knew others who felt the same way. Anybody who had been working in Oak Ridge and had contributed to the development of something so tragic, so devastating, had to ask themselves the question whether it was the right thing to do.” 

Although many were simply delighted that the bomb might bring the war to a swift conclusion, others, like Rosemary, felt conflicted feelings about the work they had been doing. She believed that all of them, anyone who had contributed in any way to bringing this force into the world, had a duty to consider the moral repercussions of their work.