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

by Denise Kiernan

  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.

  Helen had been looking forward to spending some time relaxing with her old friend. But no sooner had she stepped foot on the cobbled streets of New Orleans than Pee Wee announced that she and her husband were heading to Tennessee. They were excited about news of the bombing, as everyone in the country was, but the news about Oak Ridge’s involvement was inspiring their change of plans. They were from Tennessee, and Tennessee, they had now learned, had played an important role in something big.

  For Helen, it was as if she had stepped through some sort of time warp. She had boarded a plane in one world and gotten off in another; it wasn’t location alone that had shifted beneath her.

  Helen understood Pee Wee’s reaction to the news and made the only decision that seemed sensible to her at the time.

  “Well, I’m going with you, then.”

  She didn’t unpack, just piled into the car with Pee Wee and her husband, and drove back toward her new vacation destination: Oak Ridge.

  ★ ★ ★

  Toni had yet to hear back from Chuck. Maybe he doesn’t know yet, she thought. If he still had his nose to the grindstone, in that parallel universe of Oak Ridge where words like “uranium” and “bomb” were not to be uttered, even in whispers, he must have thought Toni was out of her mind, about to get him—or more likely, herself—into some serious hot water.

  Toni remembered a conversation she had heard just two days earlier when she and her friend Betty Coobs had run into Mr. Diamond outside the Castle. Toni now cast that exchange in a brand-new light.

  “I figured out what they’re doing here . . . ,” Betty had said. Naturally, Mr. Diamond was all ears. Toni had stood stock-still, frozen in horror.

  “They’re gonna split the atom, harness the energy, and make a bomb.”

  It had all sounded like gibberish to Toni, who had laughed it off. She remembered that Mr. Diamond, however, was not as amused.

  How on earth had she known that? Toni now wondered. Betty had always been smart, but splitting atoms? Of course what Betty did not know two days ago when she brazenly shared her the
ory—and what they had just found out today, as the atomic cat was out of the bag—was that Mr. Diamond had reported the incident to security.

  “Betty, I had a talk scheduled for you for today,” Mr. Diamond said.

  But history had intervened and Betty had narrowly escaped a severe reprimand, if not the loss of her job.

  Toni still didn’t understand the bigger picture, but she had more pressing issues on her mind and a trip to plan. She would soon be traveling with Chuck to New York City, to visit his family in Queens. She wondered if they’d like her. They had gotten along fine with her brother Ben when he was sent from his Air Force base in Florida to New York to take a two-week communications course. Chuck’s parents had invited Ben—a.k.a. Silver Buckles—to their home and he charmed them the way that only a nice southern boy from Tennessee could. But Toni knew it would be different for her. Chuck’s parents hadn’t even wanted their son to get a job or leave home and here Toni was, a woman, taking up a significant chunk of his emotional real estate. So much felt beyond her control.

  What’s next? Toni wondered. Do I still have a job?

  Would Chuck go back to New York for good? Maybe the war would even be over by the time they visited his parents. Gosh, if that happened, maybe Silver Buckles would be home safe. Wouldn’t that be something. Over. Finally.

  ★ ★ ★

  It was a clear, sunny day as Virginia and her friend Barbara boarded the ferry on the banks of the Potomac that would take them down the Chesapeake Bay to Norfolk, Virginia, where Virginia’s sister lived. After a little trouble sleeping on the train, the remainder of the trip had been fantastic. The two young women walked through L’Enfant’s city, visiting museums and listening to bands playing on the mall near the Washington Monument. When she had left Tennessee with Barbara, Virginia had little idea how much the world was going to change during her short time away from Oak Ridge. Now in retrospect, the cryptic comments made to her in the lab before she left work made more sense.

  “It’s about to happen . . .”

  She now knew what “it” was.

  Other things started to make sense: the absence of articles from the scientific journals, her work in the lab, the percentages, her hike with her physicist beau who theorized they were building some sort of bomb, the mutterings of dates from Yale and Harvard, the hints dropped by her coworkers days before she left. As she and Barb stood on the deck of the ferry enjoying the late summer weather, the topic of conversation among the guests inevitably turned to the bombing of Hiroshima.

  Virginia listened as people discussed the top secret Project gracing the front pages of the nation’s papers. Soon someone mentioned that none of the people working in the plants had any idea what was going on.

  Without thinking much about it, Virginia instinctively said, “Well, I did.”

  The curious, chatty mood suddenly turned accusatory.

  “Nobody knew!” someone hissed. “All the papers said no one there knew. How would you know?”

  Virginia withdrew as the small crowd pounced on her words, implying that she was lying, pretending to be something she was not.

  A person in the know? This young girl?

  Virginia only wanted to join in, add an interesting perspective. She wasn’t intending to brag. I never would have figured things out on my own, she thought, though she knew the secret had to be chemical in nature, something to do with atomic energy. But she needed help putting the pieces together.

  This had been perhaps the first time that she had said out loud—and to people who lived off the Reservation—what she believed. Their reaction made her feel as though it would likely be her last.

  Virginia could finally talk about what she’d been doing all this time and no one wanted to listen.

  Conversation ceased, the subject dropped, and Virginia kept any remaining thoughts to herself. But she found the whole revelation remarkable, that there were people at CEW who knew much more than she did, and still no one had really talked about it.

  The more she thought about it, the more she realized: Oak Ridgers had kept the most amazing secret ever.

  CHAPTER 14

  ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

  Dawn of a Thousand Suns

  I heard one man break out fiercely and instinctively with a loud “Sh-sh-shush!” Secrets that he had guarded with his life for over two years were being shouted out for all the world to hear. Data that had only been recorded in code and labeled “Top Secret” were being flung into the air. Facts that he had withheld from his wife as if she were an enemy were being exposed in full detail to everybody.

  —Vi Warren, Oak Ridge Journal

  Toni stood atop the Empire State Building, five blocks north—and more than 1,200 feet skyward—from one of the spots where the Project all began. There, shielded among the skyscrapers and office buildings, was the Madison Square Area Engineers Office, which had once been the center for securing raw materials for the bomb. What had begun on this small island had been brought to completion, in part, back in Tennessee, a scant few miles down the road from where she had grown up, all coming to fruition not far from where she’d picked peaches, gone on joy rides in “borrowed” cars, and known the unwavering love of two unique parents. She stood silently beside Chuck and considered her future, one full of more choices than she had ever imagined her little life would have, more than she wanted.

  It was a different world in the days following the revelation. While everyone wondered if the war would soon be over, the people of CEW had additional concerns:

  Would Oak Ridge continue to exist?

  Retrofitted factories that had served wartime needs could well return to fashioning lipstick tubes or kitchen appliances. But Oak Ridge was not just a plant or a collection of plants. It was now a city, such as it was, sidewalks or not. Would everyone pull up stakes, leaving the monstrous edifices, temporary trailers, and prefab homes behind? Would it become a full-time military base? Would there still be a place for the thousands who had come to consider this just-add-water outpost their home?

  ★ ★ ★

  After her trip to Washington, DC, Virginia returned to the lab. Work had not stopped. One of her immediate supervisors walked up to her in the lab, eager—as many were—to talk about the Big News.

  “Virginia!” he said. “Did you know what was going on here?!”

  What struck Virginia as odd was that he sounded as if he himself had had no idea. How could he be so surprised? she wondered. She would have thought someone in his position might have put a few things together during his time here. He was her supervisor, after all, and likely had access to more information than she did. But maybe not. She had no way of knowing without asking him directly, and she decided not to. Completely transparent discussions still weren’t happening, even after the big reveal.

  New rules were evolving. Going forward, what could and could not be said out loud in Oak Ridge would continue to change; details about the intricacies of the bomb would be parceled out according to what the Project believed appropriate. For workers, there was still so much about the big picture left unsaid.

  Everything and nothing had changed. Reminders came that it was to be business as usual at CEW, though some workers were already making plans to move on, assuming the existence of their jobs and the town were as temporary as they hoped the war would now be. The War Department issued the following letter to all workers:

  7 August 1945

  To the Men and Women of Clinton Engineer Works:

  Today the whole world knows the secret which you have helped us keep for many months. I am pleased to be able to add that the warlords of Japan now know its effects better even than we ourselves. The atomic bomb which you have helped to develop with high devotion to patriotic duty is the most devastating military weapon that any country has ever been able to turn against its enemy. No one of you has worked on the entire project or known the whole story. Each of you has done his own job and kept his own secret, and so today I speak for a grateful nation when I
say congratulations and thank you all. I hope you will continue to keep the secrets you have kept so well. The need for security and for continued effort is fully as great now as it ever was. We are proud of every one of you.

  Robert R. Patterson,

  Under Secretary of War,

  Washington, D.C.

  Jane Greer opened the letter from her sister Kathryn, written the night of August 6, the day of the Hiroshima bombing. Jane began reading.

  “Well, this has been quite an exciting day—more for you all than for us, I’m sure . . . ,” the letter began.

  Jane was always interested in what people on the “outside” had to say about her world, though she wasn’t permitted to indulge their curiosity. She relished reading news of her father, the family home in Paris, Tennessee, her siblings’ travels, and plans for the coming month. Jane herself was looking forward to visiting with Kathryn and the baby that was due to be born any day.

  Their father was worried about Jane, “being so up there close to anything so powerful.” Kathryn instructed Jane to write him about all the precautions Jane was taking at work in an effort to calm his fears.

  “Goodness!” Kathryn wrote. “It’s kinda scary the thing is so horribly powerful. I can’t even imagine such a thing and when you think what destruction it can cause it really does scare you. If the wrong person gets hold of it, there we are or at least where are we? But I’m sure it will have many unbelievable and wonderful peacetime uses and let’s hope that’s what it will be used entirely for. It should shorten the present war—in fact, it seems as though they would be ready to quit tonight. I know I would. Let’s hope and pray it does that one good thing and then is never used again for destruction.”