This wonderful book by Denise Kiernan was recommended to me by a friend and has the subtitle, “The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II.” There is some irony in the fact that I’ve read this book as the Rocky Flats Plant where I worked has been very much in the news. To explain this distraction, the facilities at Oak Ridge were built to make the nuclear material for the Manhattan Project. Rocky Flats was the place in the eventual weapons complex where plutonium and a variety of other metals were made into parts for the nuclear weapons. The descriptions of the secrecy surrounding converting farming areas in Tennessee into a massive, part of the Manhattan Project certainly reminded me of the days when I worked at Rocky Flats as described in my book, “An Insider’s View of Rocky Flats, Urban Myths Debunked.” I do not know whether the issues of damage to the health of people working at Oak Ridge compare to the fire storm of controversy that seems to have once again flared up over Rocky Flats. I am probably more interested in the book than someone who is unfamiliar with Oak Ridge or Rocky Flats, but I recommend the book to anyone who enjoys good history.

The book describes the young women (called “girls” in that era) who were willing to be transported to an unnamed place to work in a job that was not described in even the simplest terms. Celia Szapka Klemsi was transported from Manhattan by train to Knoxville, Tennessee without being told her final destination. When she asked where she was going and what she would be doing she was told she was not allowed to know. She was told that asking questions was frowned upon and that “everything will be taken care of.” Her adventurous spirit must have been strong, because she agreed to travel to the unknown. The train was filled with other young women only knew their new job paid well and would help the “war effort.” The train stopped in Knoxville, given their evening meal, and put back in the cars to be driven to Oak Ridge.

The book shifts from Celia’s story to begin the explanation of how Oak Ridge became a key part of the Manhattan Project and how tens of thousands of workers were hired, transported, and housed to work in secret.Tennessee senator Kenneth McKellar, chair of the Senate Appropriation Committee, was asked by Secretary of War Henry Stimson if he could “hide” two billion dollars to fund a secret war project. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt later repeated the request. McKellar is said to have replied, “Well, Mr. President, of course I can. And where in Tennessee do you want me to hide it?” Some of the money was used to buy thousands of tons of “Tubealloy,” code name for uranium ore, from Africa and Canada and ship it to Oak Ridge.

Many of the people hired to work at Oak Ridge were young women from the local area. One was Toni Peters from Clinton. The local people couldn’t help but notice lines of packed trains were going into Oak Ridge and nothing was coming out. The reputation for the place was impacted early by the government’s belief that the land they needed could be bought cheaply and people living there had to get out of the way. The people of Tennessee had seen it before when people were uprooted to build the large dams for the Tennessee Valley Authority. Norris dam displaced 3,000 families and 5,000 graves. It also provided much of the massive amounts of electricity needed to remove the fissionable isotope of uranium from the Tubealloy ore.

The book weaves the story of building and operating the Manhattan Project in with  the personal stories. The 1914 H.G. Wells book titled “The World Set Free” is mentioned on the first page of the Introduction. The book predicts “…harnessing of the power of the nucleus: ‘And these atomic bombs which science burst upon the world…were strange even to the men who used them’.” There are interesting descriptions of the scientists who studied the atom. Lise Meitner wrote to Otto Hahn that she believed data from the bombardment of Tubealloy with neutrons made her fairly certain “…that you have a splitting…”  Lise and her nephew Otto Frisch began calling this “splitting” fission in 1938.The term wasn’t accepted quickly, but research led others to believe the term was accurate and appropriate. More importantly, it was recognized that splitting atoms would release unbelievable amounts of energy. Scientists including Albert Einstein warned President Roosevelt that Germany might be working to develop weapons based on the idea. A line of committees, advisory groups, and brain trusts that would eventually be called the “Manhattan Engineer District,” or just “Project,” received $6,000 in funding in October 1939. An offshoot met December 6, 1941to recommend an “…all out effort to work on unleashing this new power.” Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese the next day, and the recommendation was accepted and acted on with vigor.

The book describes the Spartan lives of the tens of thousands of workers who had been transported without explanation to Oak Ridge. People were assigned to work stations with only enough information to know how to control instrument panels. They had no idea that the panels controlled the processes being used to isolate fissionable uranium from Tubealloy ore. The building of the gigantic processing buildings was a much greater priority than streets and sidewalks, and people had to deal with deep mud that could suck off your shoes.The living conditions provided minimal comfort or privacy as tiny prefabricated houses were built at a rate of one every thirty minutes. Many lived crammed together in dorms or “hutments.” It is sad to read about the segregation. To put it mildly, blacks had worse housing than whites.

There are a few disturbing mentions of unsuspecting blacks in other locations being injected with plutonium to study the effects. One was a young man who had several bones broken in a car wreck, and his bones weren’t set for twenty days until he had been injected samples could be taken to determine the amount of the plutonium that was settling into the bone and other parts of his body. He died at the age of 61 of heart failure.

Demands for secrecy were everywhere. There were admonisons such as “When in doubt, shut your mouth” were everywhere. One young woman is described as being recruited (she took it as an assignment) to report on any fellow worker who talked “out of school.” Everyone knew there they were constantly being watched by fellow workers called “creeps.” People who had a tendency to speculate about what was going on or to say other things considered unwise disappeared from the project. The workers of Oak Ridge weren’t revealing secrets, but Soviet spies had infiltrated the entire Manhattan Project that the Soviets code named “Enormoz.” Stalin was not surprised at anything when Truman told him the U.S. was about to use a new weapon.

People became accustomed to standing in long lines to buy any kind of groceries or other supplies needed in daily living. There are interesting descriptions of the locals realizing much the people inside the reservation needed more than they could easily buy. Dalton Georgia was the “tufted bedspread capitol of the world, and you could by a chenille bedspread from a vendor next to another selling the tiny cooked carcasses of squirrels.  Entertainment seemed to be mostly dances on places such as tennis courts, and sneaking booze into the reservation became almost an art form. People the condition because of the constant reminders about the war.

President Truman had made an announcement that an atomic bomb had been dropped on Japan that harnessed “…the basic power of the universe. He specifically mentioned Oak Ridge near Knoxville, Tennessee. Rowdy celebrations broke out all over the reservation. A few days later the Oak Ridge Journal, which had been heavily censored previously, offered the headline “Oak Ridge Attacks Japan!” Some or several workers must have suspected what they had been doing before the secret was revealed. The book describes how the “U” encyclopedia book in the library fell immediately fell open to a much read page titled Uranium for any new user.  

One of the women who had worked at Oak Ridge later took a job as a docent at the museum. A woman visitor asked, “Aren’t you ashamed that you helped build a bomb that killed all those people?” She replied, “Well, they killed my brother.”