An Atomic Love Story

by Shirley Streshinsky

  Ruth ended the letter on a strangely pensive note: "It is actually a curious life. The woods are full of wonderful people, and everyone is so driven that we never get a chance to see them . . . It is as if you are running in a dream and your legs won't move . . . With the physicists now things are better. They went through a hellish hard time at the start, trying to convince the army and the navy that the scientific developments they knew should be done were any good. Now they've won their game and are going full tilt." Richard was now at General Groves's side, solidly placed among the politicians, the military and the scientists, interpreting and advising, with a heavy load resting on his aging shoulders.

  GENERAL GROVES WAS EVERYWHERE AT once, barking out orders, brooking no dissent, tightening his grip on the Manhattan Project. He had carte blanche to give the scientists everything they needed to complete the mission; Los Alamos alone was to cost more than 74 million in 1940 dollars.276 (The entire project, including new facilities at Hanford in Washington State, Oak Ridge in Tennessee, and Argonne in Illinois, was to cost about two billion 1944 dollars). It was Robert who had mentioned to Groves that New Mexico had enough empty space to build and test a bomb, and Robert who knew about the Los Alamos Ranch School on a mesa at 7,500 feet, a boarding school established in 1917 to give boys "a life of rigorous outdoor living and classical education." It was only a few miles from where Robert himself had been introduced to his life of rigorous outdoor living. The mesa was undisturbed except for a row of houses built of logs and stone for the faculty, a larger structure for classes and dining, a dormitory with outdoor porches where the boys slept year round, and a barn with a supply of riding horses.

  Groves took one look and requisitioned it. The boys were sent home, and a parade of bulldozers and a thundering herd of heavy Army trucks crawled up the narrow winding dirt road with its hairpin curves, steep cutbacks and sheer drop-offs. They churned up the pristine mesa, slashing the woodland wilderness into a mud-covered warren of brown wood apartments, barracks, Quonset huts and laboratories. All of it was then surrounded by a high fence topped with barbed wire and sealed with gates manned by sentries. Anything Groves needed, he got.

  The top-secret city would be peopled by a collection of the most brilliant physicists in the United States, Canada and Great Britain, and the cream of the graduate student crop. Those who did not know this part of America were astonished by the beauty of the high desert mountains, the utter wildness of the place where they were to spend the war years. The average age of the scientists was twenty-five. Oppenheimer himself had not yet reached his thirty-ninth birthday when he drove the Cadillac up what came to be called "The Hill."

  In Berkeley, Robert said his goodbyes. Oddly, he made a point to call Steve Nelson, Kitty's friend and a Communist Party organizer, to meet him for lunch. "We met at a restaurant on the main strip in Berkeley," Nelson would remember, "and he appeared excited to the point of nervousness. He wouldn't discuss where he was going, but would only say that it had to do with the war effort. We chatted, mostly about Spain and the war, and exchanged good-byes."277 Neither was being watched by the FBI or Military Intelligence at the time, but this would soon change.

  In the winter of 1942–1943, the Chevaliers came to dinner at Eagle Hill. Robert went to the kitchen to make his famous martinis, and Chevalier followed. In the course of the conversation, Chevalier said that he had been approached by a chemist at Shell Oil whom they both knew. This man said he had contacts at the Soviet Consulate who wanted to know if Robert would be willing to share the research he was doing. Chevalier said his answer had been a quick and emphatic "no," but he had felt that Robert should be informed of the inquiry. Chevalier did not remember exactly what else was said during the conversation but he did remember that Robert was "visibly disturbed." Chevalier, for his part, said he dismissed the incident from his mind. They rejoined their wives and had another pleasant evening. Robert remembered that when Chevalier told him that the contact had a way to transmit information to Soviet scientists, "I thought I said 'But that is treason,' but I am not sure. I said anyway something." Kitty was to claim that she was the one who'd said, "But that would be treason."278

  In March, the Oppenheimers turned Bombsight toward New Mexico and Los Alamos. Despite his promise, Robert left without seeing Jean.

  19

  KITTY AND ROBERT GO TO LOS ALAMOS AND ROBERT SAYS GOODBYE TO JEAN

  In the spring of 1943, General Groves decided that the only way to protect secrecy was to keep each group of scientists working separately on their individual projects, with no exchange of information, no talk about work at all. It fell to Richard to convince the General that scientists could not work that way; there would be no bomb without collaboration. Richard was also the liaison between the U.S. and British governments. Some of the top British physicists came to Los Alamos. Sir James Chadwick came. So did Italy's Enrico Fermi; both were Nobel Laureates. One physicist, the most revered of all, was still at risk. The British were standing by, ready to spirit Niels Bohr to England as soon as he would agree to leave Denmark. Richard Tolman would then arrange Bohr's passage to America.

  When Richard and Ruth managed to find a few days together, they would head for Massachusetts. An inveterate sailor, Richard felt at home on Cape Cod and especially in the village of Woods Hole. In the fall of 1943, he took Major Robert Furman out on a little skiff into Buzzard's Bay. Furman was the head of intelligence for the Manhattan Project. He was planning a foray into Italy and Germany, named the Alsos Mission. In the middle of the bay, Richard drilled Furman on fissionable material and bomb assembly, prepped him on the questions he would need to ask for the American scientists to discern how close the Germans were to developing their own atomic bomb.

  THE OWI, WHERE RUTH WORKED, was to keep the home front informed about the progress of the war and more important, to bolster morale, considered crucial to the war effort. It was also to convince women to enter the workforce. OWI published stacks of posters with slogans like, "We're All in This Together," or, "Are You a Girl with a Star-Spangled Heart? Join the WACs Now." That spring, Ruth was one of eighteen women chosen to be part of a country-wide effort to select female officers for the Women's Army Corps. Ruth was in the Third Corps Area; out west in the Ninth Corps her old friend Jean Macfarlane, now Professor of Clinical Psychology at Berkeley and one of the tightly entwined psychology clan, was also interviewing candidates.279

  THE OPPENHEIMERS WERE AMONG THE first to wind their way over the old road that rumbled through the Indian pueblo of San Ildefonso, across the Rio Grande, then up through a series of dizzily treacherous switchbacks before emerging at the top. There they were rewarded with glorious views of the mountains Robert loved, a gift that would sustain that wartime generation through the hard months ahead.

  Robert and Kitty had first pick of the single row of substantial houses inherited from the Ranch School. Made of rock and logs, the house had a high vaulted ceiling with exposed beams, and a large window that provided northern light for the expansive living room. It would serve well for the entertaining Kitty was expected to do, except Kitty did not see herself as the social arbiter of an Army outpost. Martha Parsons, the wife of the ranking Navy captain in charge of ordnance, stepped up and filled that role. Kitty did throw the first big party on the Mesa on May 22, to celebrate Robert's thirty-ninth birthday. For the fete, Robert had his thatch of black hair cropped close to his head, which emphasized his handsome face and penetrating eyes. The cut also gave him the aesthetic appearance of a monk; he looked older and wiser.

  The Corps of Engineers stretched a fence around the whole mesa top, with gates that required official passes and implacable Army MPs who insisted on compliance. Another, even more sequestered enclosure, was built inside the fence, accessible only to the theoretical and experimental physicists, chemists, metallurgists, ordnance experts and engineers—those whose job it was to create the bomb. Called the Technical Area, it was the secret heart of Los Alamos, a secret within a secret. It housed th
e laboratories where scientists would spend their days and many of their nights, working on what was no longer to be referred to as a "bomb"—someone might slip and mention the word where enemy ears could hear—but instead "the Gadget." Nothing said inside the Tech Area was to be repeated outside. The obsession with secrecy was to settle over the camp, spreading even to those young wives who knew nothing at all.

  Kitty and Charlotte understood the magnitude of Los Alamos: Charlotte because Robert had appointed her as librarian, with access to The Tech and all of its top-secret files; Kitty because she did not intend to be shut out of any aspect of her husband's life. In fact, quite a few of the husbands confided in their wives. "Los Alamos was not a casteless society," one of the scientists' wives explained, "Lines were drawn principally not on wealth, family, or even age, but on the position one's husband held in the laboratory."280 This made Kitty first among the wives. And while she liked the idea, her reality was less glamorous. All the wives were expected to stay within the compound except for a monthly trip to Santa Fe, where they were not to talk to anyone who wasn't from the mesa. Kitty was virtually trapped. Unlike most of the others, Kitty did not thrive in the company of women, and she was only minimally interested in the basic organization required of the wives and mothers to create a sense of community. For Kitty, Los Alamos was not so different from Youngstown in her Communist days. Except that at Los Alamos, she was responsible for a rambunctious two-year-old, and the men still did all the important work.

  Indian women from nearby pueblos were allowed to work in the scientists' homes, freeing some of the wives to take jobs. Kitty worked for a while in Dr. Hempelmann's laboratory doing blood tests as part of a study of the dangers of radiation. (The doctor judged her competent but "bossy.") She also found time to plant a flower garden, and to make regular forays down the hill to pick up fresh vegetables and chickens from a local farm, to be distributed to other families. Kitty began to entertain a parade of important men who turned up regularly, often from Washington, D.C. Richard came, along with General Groves. The General was abrupt and demanding and dismissive, not a favorite of those who came into contact with him. But Groves was important to her husband, so Kitty gave him her full attention, and the General seemed to respond.

  TO THE AMAZEMENT OF MANY who knew him well, Robert was able to transform himself into an excellent manager, both inside the Tech Area and out in the community. On any given day, he would appear in the Tech Area where he made a point of understanding what each scientist was working on, or he might be handling the complaints of the women who railed against the monster stoves that dominated their kitchens—the "Black Beauties" that consumed coal and wood. Robert became the thread that kept them all connected.

  "The Tech Area was a great pit which swallowed our scientist husbands and kept them out of sight, almost out of our lives," one of the wives wrote. "They worked as they had never worked before. They worked at night and often came home at three or four in the morning. Sometimes, they set up army cots in the laboratories and did not come home at all. Other times, they did not sleep at all. Few women understood what the men were seeking here or comprehended the magnitude of the search. The loneliness and heartache of some scientists' wives during the years before the atomic bomb was born were very real."281

  Lonely for some. But for others, Los Alamos offered excitement and adventure. The young group on the mesa worked hard all week, but with their director's encouragement, they managed to play hard on the weekends. They drank too much, danced until dawn, went to each other's homes and shared whatever food they mustered from the Army PX. Horseback riding was a favorite way to explore the mountains; Kitty set the pace in an active riding group. As spring moved into summer, groups began to ask permission to go on hiking expeditions and explore some of the ancient Indian ruins in the region. Robert coaxed the security detail into allowing the outings. The General was determined to "satisfy these temperamental people" so they could keep their minds on the work at hand.

  To keep track of anyone who breached security, a covey of undercover Army counterintelligence agents was in place at Los Alamos. Offices were wired; individuals checked in and out through gates. Army security officers regularly questioned Robert about possible security lapses by different scientists, until he wondered if counterintelligence was trying to get rid of them all. Head of security was Captain Peer de Silva, a singularly humorless man, who seemed determined to expel not only Director Oppenheimer but anyone with any connection to Communism— including both Serbers. The enemy, it often seemed, was neither Japan nor Germany, but the USSR. For a time, MPs were stationed around the Oppenheimer house and even Kitty had to show her pass before she could enter. It was only when she started using the sentries as babysitters for Peter that they were withdrawn. Outgoing mail was routinely censored. At one point an envelope from her parents was sealed clumsily, with bits of wool caught in the glue, and Kitty complained loud and long. She believed it had been opened. Los Alamos security could not give her an answer, so they sent an agent to the Puening home in Pennsylvania, and discovered that Kitty's father had sat on the envelope—wearing his wool pants—to make certain it sealed properly.

  Kitty could be forgiven for overreacting; the Oppenheimers had been plagued by intense security for months, and it was wearing on them. Kitty endured several long interviews with Lt. Col. John Lansdale, the lawyer who served as General Groves' head of security for the Manhattan Project. She impressed him with "how hard she was trying. Intensely, emotionally, with everything she had." She had been frank and open about her membership in the Communist Party, about Joe, about her later disillusionment with Communism. Although Lansdale had earlier described Kitty as "a curious personality, at once frail and very strong," he would report that: "Mrs. Oppenheimer impressed me as a strong woman with strong convictions . . . She didn't care how much I knew of what she'd done before she met Oppenheimer or how it looked to me. Gradually I began to see that nothing in her past and nothing in her other husband meant anything to her compared with him. I became convinced that in him she had an attachment stronger than communism, that his future meant more to her than communism. She was trying to sell me on the idea he was her life, and she did sell me." He told General Groves that Kitty's "strength of will was a powerful influence in keeping Dr. Oppenheimer away from what we would regard as dangerous associations." Kitty as well as Robert regarded the project as "his outstanding career opportunity."282

  The FBI and Military Intelligence had tracked the Oppenheimers in Berkeley, had tapped their home phone, read their mail. Robert complained so bitterly that some of his friends thought he was becoming paranoid. He felt he could scarcely speak to his own brother without being questioned. Once at Los Alamos, the Army Intelligence called off the FBI, saying they had taken over full-time physical and technical surveillance of Oppenheimer. J. Edgar Hoover was not so easily dismissed; he directed his agents in San Francisco to keep watch on any of Robert's Communist friends.

  Jean Tatlock was on the list.

  BY JUNE, PRESSURE WAS BUILDING on Robert. His main responsibility, enormous in itself, was to follow the work of all of the scientists in order to grasp the whole. It was a performance that required an extraordinary mind and memory, combined with the temperament that he had developed; the scientists gave him full credit for acting as a translator for the body of work. When the community came together and made this raw young society work, Robert was given full credit for that, too.

  During the first summer at Los Alamos, Robert finally admitted his exhaustion to Bob Bacher, a physicist from Cornell who headed the experimental physics division at Los Alamos, and someone whom Robert admired and trusted. He told Bacher he felt inadequate to the task; said he was on the verge of giving up. Bacher listened and then pointed out that quitting wasn't an option because there was no one else who could do what was, at best, an impossible task.283 Bacher was sincere; like the other scientists, he was amazed at Robert's capacity for grasping the Gadget, and each man's role
in building it. Robert was key to the project's ultimate success.

  JUNE 14, 1943

  AT THE BEGINNING OF THE SUMMER OF 1943, Robert had to be in Berkeley to confer with Ernest Lawrence at the Berkeley Radiation Laboratory. It was Robert's first trip back and he had unfinished business. He had not seen Jean before he left, and she had sent messages saying she needed to see him. No matter how many Army intelligence agents were tracking Robert, how miserable they would make his life, he was going to keep his promise this time.

  The light was fading by the time he finally left Le Conte Hall. He walked across campus at his usual fast clip, heading for the streetcar that would take him into San Francisco. He would have allowed his mind to skim over the consequences. It would be more of an exercise to keep his mind occupied, to block the uncertainty of how he would find her. Jean present or Jean absent. Radiant or remorseful. Perfect, or flawed.

  The simple act of seeing her meant there would be hell to pay, he knew. Seldom without a cigarette, Robert would have stopped to light one, maybe taking the opportunity to take a quick look around for the security agent he knew would be there. His signature porkpie hat made an easy target to tail. From the moment he met her, the security agents would inform Lt. Colonel Boris Pash, chief of Counter-Intelligence for the 9th Army Corps headquartered in San Francisco, and Pash would be delighted to inform General Groves and the General would be livid.