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

by Denise Kiernan

  Ida, however, was not on board with Fermi’s conclusions in this case.

  Fermi’s groundbreaking work was identifying “new radioactive elements produced by neutron bombardment.” Neutrons had changed the physics game, and Fermi was doing more than anyone at the time to analyze the impact that these tiny, subatomic particles had on other elements.

  An atom, the basic unit of existence of the material world, contains a central nucleus made up of protons and neutrons, with electrons orbiting around it. Ernest Rutherford first proposed that the atom contained a small, positively charged center orbited by electrons. He later theorized about the existence of neutrons, and was soon proven correct. Protons possess a positive charge, electrons a negative one, and neutrons are the Switzerland of atomic particles: neutral.

  The number of protons in an atom determines its atomic number and, in a sense, its identity. It also determines where that element lives on the periodic table. The number of neutrons present in an atom determines the isotope of that element. Some elements have only one isotope, while others have several. Carbon 12 and carbon 14 are two isotopes of that abundant element. Both are still carbon, both have six protons, but they behave differently because they contain differing numbers of neutrons.

  The advantage to being neutral on the atomic level is similar to that of being neutral politically: You can enter charged situations more easily.

  Neutrons can more easily slip into the positively charged nucleus of another atom than can positively charged particles or protons. And they can do so at slower speeds.

  Why encourage neutrons to enter the nucleus of another atom? To see what happens, of course. In 1934, this is precisely what Fermi had been doing in his famed laboratory at the Institute of Physics at the Università di Roma La Sapienza. He and his team, known as i ragazzi di Via Panisperna, were bombarding elements all the way up the periodic table with neutrons to see how they behaved.

  When a nucleus absorbed another neutron, radiation was often emitted and new isotopes formed. These new isotopes tended to be in the same neighborhood of the periodic table as the element that had been targeted.

  But when Fermi got to the largest naturally occurring element on the periodic table, element 92 (later referred to as “Tubealloy” by the Project), things got interesting.

  When Fermi bombarded element 92 with neutrons, several different products were observed, but he and his team could not identify all of them. He worked his way down the periodic table from 92, comparing the products of his experiment to the attributes of elements 91, 90, and so on, down to lead, atomic number 82.

  No match.

  Fermi concluded that the unidentified fragments in the resulting postbombardment mix might have been from a new element, even heavier than element 92: an element with an atomic number of 93 or beyond.

  Why did he stop at lead? Ida Noddack wondered.

  Ida was a woman with more than just a passing knowledge of the periodic table. She had long studied Mendeleev’s organizational chart of known elements and devised her own version in 1925. Head down in her lab, dark hair pulled back in a chignon, she worked alongside and eventually married chemist Walter Noddack, with whom she had discovered element 75, rhenium, named for her homeland, the Rhine Valley. In her opinion, Fermi stopped his comparisons too soon.

  She deemed Fermi’s work inconclusive, and in late 1934, she published her views on Fermi’s findings in an article titled “Über Das Element 93” (On Element 93), in which she proposed an idea that seemed unrealistic to most, preposterous to others.

  Ida wrote that while doing this sort of experiment, it could be assumed that “some distinctly new nuclear reactions take place which have not been observed previously . . . When heavy nuclei are bombarded by neutrons, it is conceivable that the nucleus breaks up into several large fragments, which would of course be isotopes of known elements but would not be neighbors.”

  Fermi and the rest of the physics community disregarded Ida Noddack’s take. Her paper was both ignored and on occasion mocked. However, Noddack’s proposed, and subsequently dismissed, theory—that the nucleus might actually be able to split—was not wrong.

  Ida Noddack was simply ahead of her time.

  CHAPTER 3

  ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

  Through the Gates

  Clinton Engineer Works, Fall 1943

  We were indignant when we had to sneak out of our home communities without telling our friends where we were going and what for. If it was all so important, why not impress the friend by giving them the “dope.” What was it all about anyway?

  —Vi Warren, Oak Ridge Journal

  Kattie leaned back in the car, exhausted. Not too much farther to go now. Her brother-in-law Harvey was driving and she and her husband, Willie, sat watching out the window as Alabama eventually turned into Tennessee. They’d rest once they got to Chattanooga, but then tomorrow they had to press on. Willie had been away from home and from Kattie for a while now, but that was all changing.

  These were the times for men to be away from home. Kattie knew that. At least he wasn’t off fighting. Willie had done what was best for the family and now she was traveling more than 300 miles to do the same, to move to the Clinton Engineer Works, a place she’d never laid eyes on, a place not on any maps. Good work, good money.

  “Ain’t here yet,” the cashier used to chirp every time Kattie strode eagerly into the Western Union office in Auburn, Alabama. Kattie would circle back later, anxious to receive the $50, $70, or sometimes even $100 that Willie sent home like clockwork.

  And he was sending that money right into the hawk’s hands. Kattie’s grasp on money was fierce. She didn’t let go unless she put food on the table or savings in the bank. When she got to Tennessee she would be doing the sending, too. Sending money home to those precious babies she was forced to leave behind.

  Harvey had gone to Tennessee first, then returned to town with word of a big war site that was hiring at rates they were never going to see in Auburn. It was all right, Harvey had said. And they badly needed workers. So Willie went along with him, and when he finally came back to Alabama for a visit, he told Kattie that she should come with him to Tennessee. There was work for her, too.

  Kattie’s mama—who’d always liked Willie—had to disagree. Kattie was the only child of her parents’ nine boys and girls left at home to help out, though she now had kids of her own. Kattie had been working at the library at the university, dusting every corner, every shelf, then returning home to help her mama and take care of her own four children. But it was hard to argue with this Tennessee money, and finally Kattie’s mama gave in. No one would dare raise a word against bringing more dollars home.

  She hadn’t the faintest idea what to expect from this new place. All Willie had seen was his hut, the construction site, and the cafeteria, so he hadn’t much to tell. Hard work didn’t scare her, that was sure. She had seen hard. Picking pound after pound of cotton in the afternoon, cooking supper with Mama in the evening, getting up the next day to milk four cows—one cow so feisty she could, as Kattie liked to say, kick the sweetnin’ outta ginger cake. (Her brother Commodore had to tie that cow up before Kattie would take one step toward those angry udders.) In her younger days it was then off to school where incorrectly answered math problems meant a heavy-handed smack. When she was a child, she didn’t know which was worse, her switch-happy teacher in the one-room schoolhouse or that cow. Both had to be faced every day. That was hard. Picking an entire bale of hay alone was hard. Moving constantly from field to field, crop to crop, even as a child, was hard.

  Whatever this new place in Tennessee had to dish out, she knew she could handle it. Auburn was moving farther and farther behind her, and along with it the towns and roads she’d known all her life, the fields of corn where she’d learned to husk in a flash, saving the long silky strands of maize to make wigs for dolls who’d long lost their original coifs. Mama. Even that darn cow was miles away now.

  But that’s not w
hat was making Kattie cry as the car wound its way along the twisting roads of northern Alabama. With every passing mile, she was that much farther away from her babies. 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.

  ★ ★ ★

  Celia stared out of the window of the large town car as it bounced along the unpaved road and stopped at a gate flanked by a barbed-wire fence extending in both directions, vertically accented by observation towers. The car stopped. Armed guards in military uniforms approached. The driver got out of the car, and returned after a quick chat and a flash of some paperwork. The guards waved the car on.

  Celia watched as the first glimpses of her new—Should she call it a town? A camp? An outpost?—passed slowly by. Military. That presence was immediately clear. Though Celia had had her share of protocol and security measures in Washington and New York, this was different. The car couldn’t have moved much more quickly, even if the driver had wanted it to. The mud made sure of that. Celia had never seen so much in her life. Having grown up in a mining town, she knew from dirt. She had known a life of soot, lustrous or not, settling in, on, and around every nook and cranny and every seam of your dress.

  But this was like a raw pit of gummy earth. She and the other girls were still tired from the long train ride and intermittent sleep. Breakfast, though welcome, had only served to prolong the mystery. They had all been anxious to see where they were going to be living and working. Right now, gazing out the car window as wet, sticky earth sprayed up from the rain-soaked tires, it did not look good. Their first impressions were clay colored. They weren’t arriving as much as sinking into a sopping sea of mud.

  Construction went on in every direction. The fences had been some of the first things to go up, and crews repurposed the barbed wire taken from many of the farms and homes that had been moved off the land. Celia couldn’t see any sidewalks, only wooden planks laid over the newly excavated ground. There were some houses, virtually identical, sitting side by side and lining the dirt roads. There were larger buildings, mostly white, similar in style and shape, not like the brick and stone and shingle of every other town she’d seen, or the soaring concrete and steel of the city she’d just left. Though the town was brand-new—less than a year old—somehow the mud managed to make everything seem run down. Wherever they were, it didn’t look finished. Why on earth would her bosses have decided to move the offices from New York City to . . . to . . . wherever this was? But if Celia wondered about the reason for the move, she never asked. She had worked for the Project long enough to know that much.

  She also knew well the futility of asking the driver where they were headed. But then he finally spoke up: “You’re going to work first,” he said.

  He took a turn off the main road, headed up a small incline, and finally came to a stop. Celia looked out the window and across a small expanse of grounds to the building that was going to be her new office. It looked like an H from where she sat, one long, narrow white building with a pitched roofline set perpendicular to a pair of two-story buildings on either side. Celia glanced down either side of the central structure. The complex didn’t look completed yet—the land surrounding it still resembled a construction site—but it was. Between the car and the squat white building was nothing but more mud. The sun was a bit higher in the sky now, but had done precious little to dry up the mess.

  Celia was collecting herself and her bag when a collective gasp emanated from the other women in the car.

  Celia turned. She stared, astonished, as one of the girls stepped out of the car and began sinking, as if in quicksand.

  Foot! Ankle! Midcalf . . . ?

  The young woman finally managed to extricate herself, but her shoes were certainly ruined, if she could even manage to retrieve them. Celia watched as the next woman bravely exited and tried to avoid a similar plight. No dice. After a few steps she, too, began to lose her footing in the morass of unavoidable muck.

  Celia was horrified. Imagine wearing their best clothes and shoes and having them ruined on the first day at a new job! But her pity was soon replaced by concern for her own hard-earned ensemble: The dress her sister had bought her and these precious I. Miller shoes.

  There is no way I am stepping out of this car in my new shoes.

  She had never in her life had such an expensive pair, and she had bought them herself. She wanted to make a good impression and was not about to sacrifice her footwear to the elements.

  The driver waited.

  “I can’t!” she said. “I paid twenty-three dollars for these shoes!”

  Celia sat, adamant, not about to step one foot out of the car. The driver exited the vehicle, marched around to Celia’s door, and flung it open. Then he offered Celia the only solution he could think of: He snatched her up and carried her across the muddy expanse, safely depositing her at the door of the administration building.

  Relieved, Celia strolled past her travel mates, who were washing their feet and footwear in small sinks that were conveniently located right inside the door. She met briefly with Lieutenant Colonel Vanden Bulck and was introduced to two civilians, Mr. Smitz and Mr. Temps.

  She received two distinct identification badges. One was a “Townsite Resident’s Pass”; the other was a badge that specifically allowed her entrance into this, the administration building, or “Castle on the Hill,” as she’d heard it called. She peered at the badges. Across the top of the resident badge, beneath the date of issue and her ID number, was written in large letters “Clinton Engineer Works.” Her age, height, weight, and eye color were listed. The pass stated that she was “a resident of Oak Ridge Tennessee,” and was “authorized to enter and leave the reservation only through gates on Highway no. 61 (Clinton, Elza, or Oliver Springs).”

  Celia signed her new badge alongside the signature of a “Protective Security Officer.” The badge had to be worn and visible at all times. Now, at least, one of her questions was answered: She was a resident of Oak Ridge, part of the Clinton Engineer Works.

  A short while later, carrying her suitcase and clutching her oh-so-precious and still unsoiled shoes in hand, Celia carefully made her way out of the Castle and walked barefoot across Tennessee Avenue toward dormitory W-1, the first and currently only women’s dorm built in Townsite. Celia wasn’t the only woman in the small lobby looking for a place to live, and space was scarce. The housemother mentioned that one woman had a double room she was looking to share. And that’s how Celia introduced herself to Maybelle Panser from Wisconsin.

  Maybelle led Celia upstairs to the second floor of the two-story building. The room had two single beds, a night table positioned between them. There were two small dressers and a very tiny closet of sorts, in front of which hung a cloth curtain rather than a door. Everything was brand-new. The mattress didn’t seem too bad. The room had a single window, and when Celia looked out she could see the Castle. Communal bathrooms were down the hall. Unpacking was a breeze, as Celia had not brought much with her. A few changes of clothes and makeup, of course, but only the basics: some pancake, a little lipstick, her eyebrow pencil, and powdered blush. The I. Miller shoes went straight into the closet, where they would stay.

  The housemother was strict, and curfew was 10 PM unless you had permission otherwise or had shift work. Celia thought the cost for the rooms was reasonable. She and Maybelle would each pay $10 a month to share the space. Downstairs in the lobby, everyone had their own mail slot for letters and other messages. She had promised her mother and her brothers that she would write. She had yet to figure out how they were supposed to write her back.

  ★ ★ ★

  After hearing so much about the Clinton Engineer Works, Toni was now seeing it firsthand. The guards with guns checked that she did, in fact, have an interview, and let her pass. The construction, the people—it amazed her that all this activity was right down the road from Clinton. There was one last pearl to be plucked from the Clinch:
The world was her oyster.

  Guards directed Toni to the administration building for her interview. The Project was recruiting as heavily as ever, with offices in Knoxville for the different contractors who ran various plants and administrative operations. Toni found it oddly quiet when she entered the Castle, a contrast to the buzz outside. She wondered if she was the only one being interviewed for the job. That would be a stroke of luck. Toni had taken bookkeeping courses and had become, she thought, a darn good typist. At the very least she had to be able to get a job as a secretary. She didn’t want a factory job if she could avoid it.

  A Mr. LeSieur greeted her with a welcoming smile that put her at ease. But moments later, it became clear that Mr. LeSieur was not going to be interviewing her. Instead, he walked her down the hall and into the office of Mr. Diamond, whom Toni immediately pegged as a big ol’ Yankee. Toni had never met one up close before, but she had heard plenty about them. It wasn’t unusual for northern buyers to be spotted in Clinton haggling with pearlers on Market Street.

  Mr. Diamond had a massive, booming voice and a belly to match. Right off, Toni could tell that there would be no introductory niceties, no how-do-you-dos or where-are-you-froms with Mr. Diamond, that southern sort of conversational two-step that was second nature to her, and only polite.

  Mr. Diamond got right down to it.

  “Do you take dictation?”

  “Yes, sir, I do.”

  Mr. Diamond shoved a pad at Toni and began to speak.

  It wasn’t like anything Toni had ever heard before. She leaned forward, every muscle in her body, up to her freshly scrubbed ears, tensed in concentration as she listened so hard she thought she would sprain something. She felt totally lost, like she was riding some sort of syllabic roller coaster, trudging blindly on an endless scavenger hunt in search of the letter R.

  Goodness, Lord, what on earth is that man saying? Is he speaking English?