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

by Denise Kiernan

  The size of the operation impressed the Secretary, and few, if any, of the workers recognized him as he was led on his tour. Retiring to the Guest House after his first full day in town, he wrote in his diary that he had just seen “the most wonderful and unique operation that probably has ever existed in the world.”

  The tour continued the next day. When the Secretary returned to Washington, he continued the rapturous account of his visit, penning in his diary he’d seen the “largest and most extraordinary scientific experiment in history,” that he had been “the first outsider to pierce the secrecy of its barricades” and described Oak Ridge as an “orderly and well-governed city.”

  He added that although the Project had proceeded as planned, and that he was 99 percent sure of success, the only real measure of success was yet to come. The value and efficacy of the Gadget would be judged by its first war trial.

  ★ ★ ★

  The General found out from a fellow officer who, in turn, had heard the news on the radio.

  On April 12, 1945, President Roosevelt had died in the “Little White House,” Warm Springs, Georgia, of a massive cerebral hemorrhage.

  A nation fell into tremendous sadness for the loss of their longtime leader. The people had elected President Roosevelt to not one, not two, but to four consecutive terms in the Oval Office. There were young adults who did not remember ever having any other White House occupant.

  For the Project, the timing was not ideal. There could be no stopping, no slowing down, no pausing to regroup. The timetable did not allow for it. The majority of members of Congress had no idea the Project existed, and it was often extremely difficult to obtain additional funding without raising some fiscal eyebrows. With each additional financial request, the General and the Secretary encountered at least minimal difficulties. Each time they had to trot out vague explanations for how each fresh infusion was going to be spent—something beyond the standard explanation that the appropriation was destined for “the war effort.” They needed the president on board.

  The tricky business of divulging Project information without divulging any Project information was usually achieved by focusing on the purchase price of lands, housing costs, construction, and infrastructure. But the Secretary and General were careful not to give too much information about the costs and size of the actual plants themselves. Everything was described in the broadest believable terms. Yet earlier in the year, it was becoming clear that some members of Congress might need to be brought into the loop. If House leadership were on board, several key members could be invited to Clinton Engineer Works where an idea of the size and scope of the Project might be more easily grasped, even if details were withheld.

  With Roosevelt’s approval, the General and Secretary had been planning to meet with leading members of the House on April 13. In light of the unfortunate events of April 12, that meeting was now canceled.

  Now former Vice President Truman was inheriting not only the helm of a country at war. He was inheriting the Project.

  He knew precious little about what was taking place in the mountains of Tennessee, the desert of New Mexico, the flats of Washington State, and elsewhere. Truman would have to be briefed and soon. The Missourian had been vice president just 82 days now. Besides not knowing of the Gadget, there were growing tensions with the Russians, who were now moving on Berlin.

  The Secretary had mentioned to President Truman that there were some important items that needed to be discussed. But the responsibilities of a new president were legion. There were schedules and meetings to be juggled. There were administrative transitions to manage and moving his family into the White House and the list of tasks went on and on, compounded by the ongoing war.

  So the Secretary made it clear that this particular meeting could not wait:

  April 24, 1945

  Dear Mr. President:

  I think it is very important that I should have a talk with you as soon as possible on a highly secret matter.

  I mentioned it to you shortly after you took office but have not urged it since on account of the pressure (sic) you have been under. It, however, has such a bearing on our present foreign relations and has such an important effect upon all much thinking in this field that I think you ought to know about it without much further delay.

  Truman immediately sent a reply, handwritten on the very same letter. His appointment secretary, Matthew Connelly, put the secretary of war on his appointment list for the very next day, Wednesday, April 25.

  The former haberdasher from Independence, Missouri, could not have fathomed the information about to be dropped into his lap. This man had once served as so notable a head of the Senate Special Committee that the body soon became better known as the Truman Committee, a group determined to make sure that the American public was getting its money’s worth as far as national defense spending was concerned.

  Welcome to the Oval Office, Mr. President. You’re about to get an earful.

  Truman listened as the largest expenditure in the history of the American military was laid out before him in full detail. As he listened, he worked to understand the enormity of the long-term effects of this Project on not only the conflict at hand but foreign policy in years to come. He worked to wrap his mind around the decision that likely stood before him, a decision that was fast approaching.

  The brand-new president felt, as he later wrote, “like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.”

  Both the General and the Secretary were on hand to drop the cosmos on the newly burdened head of President Truman. They brought him up to speed, from the earliest days of research through the development of the Manhattan Engineer District and up to their current projections for delivery of the Gadget. The Secretary’s trip to CEW turned out to be well timed—the information was now as fresh in his mind as it was in the General’s.

  They explained that a version of the Gadget—the implosion version, using 49 as fuel—would be ready for a test in July, just three months away. A second version of the Gadget—the gun version, using enriched Tubealloy from CEW—would likely be ready for deployment by roughly August 1.

  Truman listened. He was on board.

  It was suggested that five congressmen—one of whom had already raised questions about this cloaked and horrendously expensive project—be given a tour of the CEW so that they, too, might understand the scale and necessity of this unprecedented military venture.

  Truman was hardly green when it came to knowledge of military spending, having investigated a number of items on the defense agenda that he believed to be evidence of overspending. He had on more than one occasion, while heading the committee named for him, pushed the Secretary to fully explain this Project and why it was costing so much and just where on earth all the money requested could ever possibly be going. The Secretary had not said a peep. And now President Truman had his answers. All of them. The moon and stars and planets had landed, and Truman could now see the breaking dawn of a new, untold universe.

  ★ ★ ★

  “THE WAR IN EUROPE IS ENDED! SURRENDER IS UNCONDITIONAL; V-E WILL BE PROCLAIMED TODAY; OUR TROOPS ON OKINAWA GAIN,” announced The New York Times in a banner headline covering the front page on May 8, 1945.

  Germany had officially remained in the war just over a week after Adolf Hitler’s death on April 30. Not that the writing hadn’t already been on the wall before Hitler and his new bride, Eva Braun, walked into the Führerbunker 50 feet beneath the city streets of Berlin. Above them, the once-gleaming European capital was succumbing helplessly to hordes of Russian troops. The pair would never see sunlight again.

  VE Day came mere weeks after the deaths of Benito Mussolini and President Roosevelt and shortly after President Truman learned the full truth about the Project. Within 24 hours of the official end of the war in Europe, a group of Project representatives, chaired by the Secretary, gathered for the first informal meeting of the Interim Committee, a group tasked with discussing and assessing not
just how the Gadget itself would be used, but also the role of the Gadget and the science that had made it possible in the postwar world. How would information be shared among nations that differed in political ideology? How would the science be controlled internationally and what kind of legislation would be put in place to regulate it all?

  Wartime information control and publicity were more immediate concerns. At the second informal meeting of the Interim Committee, on May 14, the General attended. A scientific panel was agreed upon that would include Fermi, Compton, Lawrence, and Oppenheimer, and the committee discussed how best to disperse information to the public.

  “William L. Laurence, a science editor of The New York Times, now under contract with the Manhattan District, should work up drafts of public statements . . .”

  The committee knew that all their many years of private toil on the Project would soon be very, very public, and they needed guidelines about how to share information about the Gadget with the world.

  ★ ★ ★

  As post-Hitler Europe began to take shape, Allied forces tracked down ten German scientists—Lise Meitner’s former colleague Otto Hahn among them—and detained them at Farm Hall, a country estate in Godmanchester, England, just outside Cambridge. There they would be kept under wraps and out of sight until the war was over and until the Allies had determined, once and for all, just how close Germany had come to creating a Gadget of its own.

  The German scientists sat at Farm Hall, with nothing to do but debate the reason they were being held there and how long their detainment might last. As they did, the Allies listened. This was Operation Epsilon.

  “ . . . I wonder whether there are microphones installed here?” Kurt Diebner, physicist and head of Germany’s research into Tubealloy, asked his colleagues.

  “Microphones installed?” answered Werner Heisenberg, the man who brought the world the uncertainty principle of quantum theory. He was laughing. “Oh no, they’re not as cute as all that. I don’t think they know the real Gestapo methods; they’re a bit old-fashioned in that respect.”

  ★ ★ ★

  Victory in Europe brought joy and relief to those with family or loved ones stationed overseas and meant, they hoped, soldiers might soon be headed home. Meanwhile, work at the Clinton Engineer Works didn’t skip a beat.

  No sooner had news of Germany’s surrender hit the papers than brand-new messages were slapped up on CEW’s billboards, reminders that it was business as usual. There was no slowing down now. If anything, the pace needed to pick up.

  One billboard that sprung up seemingly overnight featured a buff Uncle Sam pulling up his shirtsleeves. His gaze was fixed on a map of Japan, while behind him a white flag flew over the land of Germany. It proclaimed:

  One down, One to go now,

  Give it all we’ve got. Stay on the job, finish the job.

  Another, more emotionally jarring reminder that “it’s not over until it’s over” was captured in an image depicting soldiers under heavy enemy fire. Two lay on the ground, as a third looked up at a dark sky peppered by mortar and artillery spray. The caption read: Whose son will die in the last minute of war? Minutes Count!

  Sixteen days after victory in Europe was declared, Tokyo was hit hard again. The bombing runs back in early March—Operation Meetinghouse—had made a terrifying impression. Before the sun rose in the east on the morning of March 10, 1945, the skies over Tokyo had filled with 279 B-29s. By the time the incendiary attack had finished, more than 267,000 buildings had been destroyed, roughly equal to about one-fourth of the entire city. The bombing left more than 83,000 people dead, many more according to some estimates, and scores were homeless and injured. The attack had resulted in the single highest death total of any individual day of action thus far in the war. Now, in May, the B-29 payloads skirted the urban and industrial areas near the Imperial Palace.

  A massive modern marvel, the B-29 Superfortress was the flying powerhouse of World War II and the Pacific Campaign. Remote-controlled gun turrets. A pressurized cabin. More than half a million dollars, each traveling 350 mph at 40,000 feet. With the Mariana Islands now in United States control, the small spits of land in the Pacific served as an ideal air base to launch repeated attacks on Japan, and the Project had begun work of its own on the island of Tinian in February. The B-29 had already expanded beyond its originally intended purpose to conduct daylight bombings at high altitudes to include low-altitude runs at night. This go-to bomber of the war would now be adapted for yet another unique mission.

  For the Project, VE Day raised new questions. The General listened intently to Under Secretary of War Patterson’s inquiry. How far off was the end of the war? Did the victory in Europe mean that plans for using the Gadget on Japan might change?

  Why should it? the General thought.

  Had Germany’s surrender caused Japan to retrench, to lighten her attacks on Americans? No, it had not. He remembered the Secretary saying that the reason for the Project was to end the war, and to do so “more quickly than otherwise would be the case and thus to save American lives.” As far as the General was concerned, the Gadget was to be used against enemies, and Japan was still conducting herself as one.

  A report from the Interim Committee’s May 31 meeting made its way to Truman a week later containing recommended uses of the Gadget, the power it relied upon, and future exchange of the research that made it tick. This was followed by the formation of another committee at the Met Lab, among its members Leo Szilard, Glenn Seaborg, and its chairman and namesake, James Franck. The Franck report disagreed with the Interim Committee regarding use of the Gadget—it suggested a demonstration of the Gadget’s power first—but the Scientific Panel of the Interim Committee overrode them, stating they saw “no acceptable alternative to direct military use.”

  For himself, the General had no doubts about what was to be done with the Gadget. A decision was coming, true, and not one that would be made solely by the General and the Secretary. High-level briefings and meetings would be conducted among themselves, within their offices in Washington and with colleagues across the country and across the pond.

  But as for the final call, the buck stopped—as the sign on his desk in the Oval Office read—with President Truman.

  CHAPTER 12

  ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

  Sand Jumps in the Desert, July 1945

  She packed the husband’s suitcase and told him goodbye without knowing where he was going. She expected to be asked to leave the room after dinner so that her husband and his guest could talk about their secret. She got used to the left-out feeling but sometimes she wondered sadly whether she would ever be in her husband [sic] confidence again.

  —Vi Warren, Oak Ridge Journal

  July 17, 1945: On his way back to Washington, the General sat next to several scientists. They had been in each other’s company for several days now. He looked at them. They appeared exhausted and still markedly upset by what they had witnessed in the last 24 hours.

  The General arrived in the capital around noon, his work far from over. He had more reports to both write and code before sending them to the Secretary and President Truman, both of whom needed more detail about what had just happened in the desert beyond the cryptic and brief summation that he had sent off immediately following the event. The General also had an appointment to keep with photographer Ed Westcott, who was already seated outside the General’s office, waiting patiently, as he had been for many hours.

  Ed Westcott’s journey had been an unexpected one. The instructions were simple but vague: Take a train to Washington.

  Details were stranger than usual. The train would come late at night. He should wait at the Elza Gate railroad overpass, a place where, to his extensive knowledge of CEW, no passenger trains traveled. There was no indication beyond the tracks themselves that a train might pass. But the Photographer did as he was instructed.

  Midnight approached. Westcott stood waiting alone in the dark, cameras and gear in tow. Sure en
ough, the slightest tremors began quaking the ground beneath his feet. Out of the darkness a glimmer appeared, growing larger as the locomotive’s headlamp came into full view. The train slowed and came to a full stop for him and him alone. A door flew open and a set of stairs dropped from the car. Westcott boarded and the train pulled away into the night.

  After arriving early the next morning in Washington, DC, Westcott was taken to the General’s office in what was then the War Department Building (now the State Department building). Rooms 5120 and 5121 were the General’s original offices there, though he had taken over some more space as the Project had grown. When Westcott arrived, he learned the General was not available and was given no other information. So the Photographer sat down and waited.

  And waited.

  Hours passed, lunch came and went. Finally, late in the afternoon, the General arrived. This was not the first time Westcott had seen him. For nearly three years now, Westcott had documented the life of the Clinton Engineer Works, from plants to dorms, strident search-lights shining from the watchtowers to twinkly lights hanging over the tennis court dances. The General had made plenty of appearances at CEW. But the normally buttoned-down, well-groomed General did not look like his usual spit-shined self. He looked tired more than anything, and badly in need of a shave. The General greeted the Photographer politely but immediately excused himself.

  Westcott waited again, assuming the General wanted to freshen up before taking photos. This would be no run-of-the-mill portrait session, not after what had just transpired in the blinding dark morning of the New Mexico desert.

  ★ ★ ★

  The morning of July 16, after roughly 25 miles of jostling around on the back of her friend’s motorbike, Joan had finally arrived at the crest of the small hill. Others had had the same idea, but whispers and darkness concealed those who had successfully eluded the guards at checkpoints surrounding the test site. At least for the time being.