The gas that Colleen’s probe was emitting was helium, though she did not know that, and the gauge she was eyeing was that of a mass spectrometer, which she also did not know at the time.
Jellico train wreck information from author interviews and Troop Train Wreck, by David Ray Smith (Oak Ridge: September 2007); “Death Toll in Troop Train Wreck Reaches 33,” Kingsport Times, July 9, 1944; “Troop Train Wreck Toll Set at 40,” Associated Press, Milwaukee Sentinel, July 8, 1944. Details regarding deaths per month from memo titled “Number of Deaths at the Oak Ridge Hospital” and dated September 20, 1944, from Formerly Declassified Correspondence, 1942–1947; Records of the Atomic Energy Commission, Record Group 326, National Archives at Atlanta; National Archives and Records Administration.
Tubealloy: The Couriers
Description of courier route from Rhodes, Groueff. Information regarding container and form of contents from author interviews, notably with David Ray Smith and Wilcox. Contents as well as silo also described in Rhodes. First shipment quality from Groves and Y-12 production specifics from Groves. Y-12 shipping receipts from Formerly Declassified Correspondence, 1942–1947; Records of the Atomic Energy Commission, Record Group 326; National Archives at Atlanta; National Archives and Records Administration.
Description of courier travel and route from author interviews, also Rhodes, Groueff, and The New World: A History of the United States Atomic Energy Commission, vol. I, 1939–1946, by Richard G. Hewlett and Oscar E. Anderson Jr. (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1962); and “Operations and shipments begin,” from Y-12 National Security Complex, US Department of Energy.
7. Rhythms of Life
Descriptions of Roane-Anderson meeting of December 1943 and the need for recreation, especially among young women, from Clarke and Spaces (previously cited), also “Minutes of Meeting of Executive Committee, Recreation and Welfare Association, Held at Town Hall, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, 12/31/43, at 2:00 PM,” memo from the War Department, US States Engineer Office, dated January 4, 1944. State of mind of housewives from author interviews, notably Rosemary Lane. Lists of activities from Robinson, Oak Ridge Journal, and author interviews. Information regarding Waldo Cohn, from author interviews, also “the Symphony Orchestra,” by June Adamson, from Voices (previously cited).
Information regarding dances from author interviews, Oak Ridge Journal (as cited within text). “Parachute dresses” seen online and on exhibit at the Behring Center of the Smithsonian, National Museum of American History, Washington, DC.
Average age of Oak Ridge from author interviews and “New High School in ’51 Talk of the Town—and state,” by D. Ray Smith, Oak Ridger, August 11, 2008. Regarding “Where are you from”: Colleen loves to sing “Where are you from, Mr. Oak Ridger?” which was from the musical “A Thousand Suns,” written by Betty Clayton Osborn on the occasion of Oak Ridge’s 25th anniversary.
Author note: Virtually everyone I interviewed described going on “dates” to the cafeteria. Chapel on the Hill schedules from Oak Ridge Journal. Reference to Methodist church at movie theater from Robinson. Story of kicking bottles out of the way to have services in the rec hall from Viola Lockhart Warren Papers (Collection 1322). Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles. Number of church groups from Robinson.
Happy Valley recreation description from author interviews, notably with Helen Jernigan, also “Happy Valley,” by Helen C. Jernigan, in Voices. 3.2 percent beer ad from Brewing Industry Foundation “The American Soldier and Sobriety,” Life magazine, April, 19, 1943. Tales of bribing gate guards and hoarding of booze from author interviews, notably Paul Wilkinson, Toni Schmitt, and Please God, US First, by John C. Pennock (Charlottetown: TWiG Publications, 2003). Hiding contraband booze and how to make fake wine from author interviews. Swimming pool statistics from Oak Ridge Visitor Center and “History and Architectural Resources of Oak Ridge, Tennessee” (previously cited).
Segregated recreation information from At Work in the Atomic City, Atomic Spaces, City Behind a Fence, and author interviews, notably with Valeria Steele Roberson and Kattie Strickland. Also “A New Hope,” by Valeria Steele, from Voices (previously cited). Hal Williams information from “Scarboro: The Early Days” exhibit at Scarboro Community Center, Oak Ridge, Tennessee; “A Tribute to Hal Williams,” by Rose Weaver, Oak Ridger, February 9, 2010. Colored Camp Council meeting from City Behind a Fence.
Tensions with Knoxville inhabitants from author interviews. Bacon Hosiery Mills information from City Behind a Fence.
Tubealloy: Security, Censorship, and the Press
Information about the Met Lab meeting from “Behind the Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb: Chicago 1944–45,” by Alice Kimball Smith, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, October 1958. Information on compartmentalization and “sticking to knitting” from Groves.
Censorship information and War Department Counterintelligence Unit information from Groves and Robinson. Approach to screening and hiring from Groves and from An Exceptional Man for Exceptional Challenges: Stafford L. Warren, vol. 1. Interviewed by Adelaide Tusler. Oral History Program, University of California at Los Angeles, Regents of the University of California, 1983.
Presidential Executive Order from “Franklin D. Roosevelt: ‘Executive Order 8985. Establishing the Office of Censorship,’ December 19, 1941.” Courtesy of Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=16068, last accessed June 2012.
U.S. Government Office of Censorship. “Code of Wartime Practices: For American Broadcasters” (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1942). June 15, 1942 ed. by Clarence W. Griffin Papers, North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh, NC.
Additional information about censorship, including the June 28, 1943, memo and Mutual Broadcasting Company from Robinson (previously cited).
8. The One about the Fireflies . . .
All jokes included in this chapter were told to the author throughout the researching of this book. There are many, many more . . .
Women’s stories from author interviews.
Information about the newspaper, vis-à-vis Francis Gates stories from “From Bulletin to Broadside,” by June Adamson from Voices (previously cited).
Additional information regarding Celia’s brother Clem from official military record of Clement P. Szapka, NARA office of Military Personnel Records, National Personnel Records Center, St. Louis, MO. Censoring of letters was a common occurrence based on author interviews, including Celia Klemski and Helen Hall.
Use of incomplete ideas to increase rumors from author interviews, notably Joanne Gailar. Information regarding Superman censorship from Robinson and “Fatal Fiction: A Weapon to End All Wars,” by H. Bruce Franklin, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Nov. 1989.
Jim Ramsey, longtime resident of Oak Ridge and son of one of the “old-timers,” said that native Gullah speakers from the Low Country of South Carolina were also hired to empty garbage, ostensibly because of their limited reading skills. Propaganda images from photographs taken by Ed Westcott (previously cited). While visiting with Ed Westcott at his home, I noticed the Norman Rockwell calendar he had in his kitchen. Many of Westcott’s pictures had that “Rockwell” feel to them, and some were staged as well. The juxtaposition of lines at the butcher shop and comic book sales with the fences, guards, and towering industry have always struck me as interesting, and I find this one of the more engaging aspects of Westcott’s work. Additional information on “creeps” and informants from author interviews, also predominantly Groves, as well as City Behind a Fence and Hales. June 14, 1944, memo and seditious dismissals from Spaces. Additional information about guard harassment in the black hutment area from Formerly Declassified Correspondence, 1942–1947; Records of the Committee on Fair Employment Practice, Record Group 228; National Archives at Atlanta; National Archives and Records Administration.
Tubealloy: Pumpkins, Spies, and Chicken Soup,
Fall 1944
Kramish story from “Hiroshima’s First Victims,” by Arnold Kramish, The Rocky Mountain News, August 6, 1995. Kramish described uranium as a “bone-seeker” and suffered for many years as a result of his accident. Tibbets information from Groves and from “Wendover’s Atomic Secret,” by Carl Posey, Air & Space Magazine, March 2011.
List of Project scientists from Groves, Rhodes, and Smyth. Difficulty of checking background on academic scientists and comments on Communism from Groves. Oppenheimer information from Groves and also American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005).
Niels Bohr anecdote from The Manhattan Project, Kelly (previously cited). Information about David Greenglass, including code name, from memos dated September 21, 1944 and November 14, 1944, from VENONA program records of the US Army Signal Intelligence Service (now the National Security Agency) and from “The Atom Spy Case,” by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and The Brother: The Untold Story of the Rosenberg Case, by Sam Roberts (New York: Random House, 2001).
9. The Unspoken: Sweethearts and Secrets
Jane’s stapler box message courtesy of author interviews and personal papers of Jane Puckett. Story regarding “ocean paint” from Cooking Behind the Fence (previously cited); urine story from author interviews; molasses story from “Citizens of Oak Ridge describe Life in the Secret City during World War II,” by Frank Munger, Knoxville News Sentinel, August 7, 2005, http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2005/aug/07/citizens-of-oak-ridge-describe-life-in-the-city/, last accessed June 2012.
Information regarding Bill Pollock and the Pollock Wired Music System from “Bill Pollock . . . Music Man,” by June M. Boone, from Voices, and 61-11 & Olio, by Charles R. Schmitt (Oak Ridge: C&D Desktop Publishing and Printing Company, 1995).
“Sleepy Time Gal”: music by Ange Lorenzo, Raymond B. Egan, words by Joseph R. Alden, Richard A. Whiting. Copyright EMI Music Publishing.
Vi and Stafford Warren story from Stafford Warren oral history and Viola Lockhart Warren papers (previously cited).
ACME Insurance Company information from author interviews. Story of clandestine coffee klatsch being busted from Cooking Behind the Fence (previously cited).
Dr. Clarke’s perspectives from “Report on Existing Psychiatric Facilities and Suggested Necessary Additions,” as cited in text (1944) from NARA Southeast, RG 326; “Psychiatric Problems at Oak Ridge,” by Eric Kent Clarke, American Journal of Psychiatry, Jan 1, 1946, vol. 102, p. 437–444.
Tubealloy: Combining Efforts in the New Year
Progress on Y-12 from Groves and Nichols.
Information regarding Truman not seeking nomination as vice presidential candidate from Senate Historical Office, US Senate, Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, DC. Henry Wallace was reportedly not a desirable vice presidential candidate in the eyes of a growing faction of the Democratic Party, who viewed him as having too many eccentricities and Russian connections, among them mystic and philosopher Nicholas Roerich, whom Wallace referred to in his letters as “guru.”
Idea to run the plants in tandem from Nichols, Groves, Jones, and DOE (all previously cited).
Mark Fox information from Nichols. Decision to build K-27, and Groves-Nichols New York City meeting from Nichols.
10. Curiosity and Silence
Information regarding psychiatric patient from author interviews, notably Rosemary Lane and Lois Mallet; also from “Psychiatric Problems at Oak Ridge,” Clarke (previously cited); “Psychiatry on a Shoestring,” by Eric Kent Clarke, ed. by Amy Wolfe, from Voices (previously cited); Oak Ridge Hospital memo from Carl A. Whitaker to Maj. Charles E. Rea, regarding conversion of apartment at 207 Tennessee Avenue and state of the patient, dated February 9, 1945; memo from Charles E. Rea to Col. Stafford L. Warren, chief, Medical Section, subject: “Care of Ensign Justin Hugh Allen,” regarding apartment conversion, nurse care, and ordering of shock therapy machine, dated February 8, 1945; all from Formerly Declassified Correspondence, 1942–1947; Records of the Atomic Energy Commission, Record Group 326; National Archives at Atlanta; National Archives and Records Administration. Information regarding the “occasional homosexual gang” from “Psychiatric Problems at Oak Ridge,” Clarke (previously cited). Information regarding electroshock therapy from Pushbutton Psychiatry: A Cultural History of Electroshock in America, by Timothy W. Kneeland and Carol A. B. Warren (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2002); “A Science Odyssey: People and Discoveries—Electroshock therapy introduced, 1938” (WGBH, 1998), http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dh38el.html, last accessed June 2012; “Neuropsychiatry in World War II,” Office of Medical History, U. S. Army Medical Department, http://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs/wwii/NeuropsychiatryinWWIIVolI/chapter10.htm, last accessed June 2012.
K-25 start-up from Nichols, Groves, and Wilcox. Steam plant information from Robinson and Wilcox.
Tubealloy: The Project’s Crucial Spring
Status of Y-12, K-25, and S-50 production from Nichols, Groves, and Wilcox. Concept of cost and redundancy of plants and sites from Nichols. Cost of Y-12 from Wilcox. Electrocution shock at Y-12 story from author interview and from video interview of Agnes Houser (Y-12 National Security Complex, Oral History video).
Regarding courier travel and treatment: Stafford Warren oral history (previously cited). Courier health memo from Friedell: Formerly Declassified Correspondence, 1942–1947; Records of the Atomic Energy Commission, Record Group 326; National Archives at Atlanta; National Archives and Records Administration. Memos regarding physiological hazards, tracer experiments, method of administration, from US Department of Energy, including “Physiological Hazards of Working with Plutonium”; “Memo to members of the advisory committee on human radiation experiments, Oct. 18, 1994”; also Final Report Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
11. Innocence Lost
Information regarding Ebb Cade’s case from: ACHRE Report, Part II, Chapter 5: The Manhattan District Experiments. Department of Energy, http://www.hss.doe.gov/healthsafety/ohre/roadmap/achre/chap5;sf2.html; Memorandum Report, Atomic Energy Commission, Jon D. Anderson, director, Division of Inspection, July 15, 1974; memorandum, “Shipping of Specimens,” from Hymer L. Friedell to commanding officer, Santa Fe Area, April 16, 1945, Formerly Declassified Correspondence, 1942–1947; Records of the Atomic Energy Commission, Record Group 326; National Archives at Atlanta; National Archives and Records Administration; Plutonium Files (previously cited), “Human Radiation Studies: Remembering the Early Years: Oral History of Healthy Physicist Karl Z. Morgan, PhD.” Conducted January 7, 1995 (US Department of Energy, Office of Human Radiation Experiements, June 1995).
Morgan’s oral history regarding Cade is quite stunning. More here:
YUFFEE: You knew that the injection was going to take place prior to it?
MORGAN: No.
YUFFEE: Do you know who performed the injections?
MORGAN: No. Do you want me to tell you what I know about it?
CAPUTO: Sure.
MORGAN: Bob Stone—the associate director [for Health] under Compton—had his office next to mine at X-10. One morning, he came in all excited and upset. You will have to put this in context of the time and the location that we were in. We were in the South, and it’s no reflection on the African Americans, but they were called “[racial epithet].” I’m only telling you as I recall; my memory is far from perfect.
As I recall, he said, “Karl, you remember that [racial epithet] truck driver that had this accident sometime ago?” I said “Yes,” I knew about it. He said, “Well, he was rushed to the military hospital in Oak Ridge and he had multiple fractures. Almost all of his bones were broken, and we were surprised he was alive when he got to the hospital; we did not expect him to be alive the next morning. So this was an opportunity we’ve been waiting for. We gave him large doses by injection of plutonium -239.”
Of course, when
you say “-239,” it has some [plutonium] -238 and -240 mixed in, but [it is] primarily -239. [For security reasons, the word “plutonium” was never used in 1943–44. Stone continued] “We were anticipating collecting not just the urine and feces but a number of tissues, such as the skeleton, the liver, and other organs of the body. But this morning, when the nurse went in his room, he was gone. We have no idea what happened, where he is, but we’ve lost the valuable data that we were expected to get.” I had not even heard of the experiment. I learned later that Stafford Warren and Hymer Friedell and the others apparently knew about the study, but my project was primarily with physics not with medical or biological studies. So this was the first I heard of the situation.
I heard nothing more about this till some years later. I happened to see a little notice in the Knoxville paper, the News-Sentinel, stating that this man, “a black man”—our society had evolved a little more at that time—had died someplace in eastern North Carolina, as I recall they must have given enough information that I could tie it in with the same fellow. Then I heard nothing about it till recently. Only recently, more recently in the past few weeks, I have heard the name of the fellow and more information about his family, etc.
CAPUTO: Who would have had the authority to provide the plutonium for the experiment?
MORGAN: Who would have the authority? That’s a good question. In spite of our security, in some ways it was provided in a very ridiculous manner. I think I could have gotten all the plutonium that could be provided for anything I wanted to do, if it could be spared. Joe Hamilton got a dribbling amount to supplement his studies that he had done with plutonium -238, [which] he had gotten from the accelerator. I’m sure, confident, that if I’d put the request in, I could have gotten it. But, I suppose, all I would have had to do is walk in Martin Whittaker’s office and say, “Martin, we want to do this experiment. We need so many, two or three microcuries.” He would have provided it.
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