The Girls of Atomic City (2 page)

PLACES

Oak Ridge, Tennessee

Also known as Site X, Kingston Demolition Range, Clinton Engineer Works, and the Reservation. The designation “Clinton Engineer Works” referred to the entirety of Site X in Tennessee, while “Oak Ridge” referred more specifically to the “Townsite” and other residential, nonplant areas of the site.

Y-12

The electromagnetic separation plant at Oak Ridge, home of the calutrons.

K-25

The gaseous diffusion plant at Oak Ridge and, for a time, the largest building under one roof in the world.

X-10

The pilot reactor at Oak Ridge for producing plutonium upon which the reactors at Hanford, Washington, were based.

S-50

The liquid thermal diffusion plant at Oak Ridge.

Los Alamos, New Mexico

Also known as Site Y or the Hill. Manhattan Project site where the Gadget was designed.

The Chicago Metallurgical Lab, University of Chicago, IL

Also known as the Met Lab, site of Chicago Pile-1 and the first ever sustained nuclear reaction.

Hanford, Washington
Also known as Site W. Site of the Project’s full-scale plutonium production facility.

THINGS

The Gadget

The atomic bomb, both implosion and gun models. “It.”

Tubealloy (Tuballoy, Tube-Alloy)

Uranium. Sometimes referred to as “alloy” or “Product” in its enriched form, which was used as fuel for the atomic bomb.

49

Plutonium. Element 94. Also referred to as “Product” or “material” in the context of fuel for the atomic bomb.

The Project

The Manhattan Project. More formally known as the Manhattan Engineer District (MED). The MED originally referred to the geographical designation of the Project’s initial headquarters in New York City but came to include all Manhattan Project sites.

Author’s note:
The information in this book is compartmentalized, as was much of life and work during the Manhattan Project.

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Revelation, August 1945

That morning, the excitement coursing throughout the complex known as the Castle was infectious. The words no one was supposed to speak, the words many had not even known existed, ricocheted off walls and flew freely from the mouths of even the least informed inhabitants of Site X.

Toni was beside herself. How could she not be? Phones rang, women gabbed uncontrollably, giving not a thought to what they were allowed to say, and no one tried to stop them. The merest details gleaned from newspapers, the radio, or flapping gums were making their way down the halls, into corner offices and throughout the secretarial pool. Slowly the entire Reservation was igniting, ripples of information expanding outward via word and wire. For every voice that uttered the News, at least two more spread it from there forward, faster this time, exponentially increasing the radius of those in the know.

Rosemary was glued to the radio, packed into her boss’s office with the others who had abandoned their stations. Colleen and Kattie were at work, too, miles away in the cavernous factory whose purpose was now all too clear. Jane heard such a ruckus outside her office that she threw open the window, waiting for the did-you-hear-don’t-you-know shouts to waft up from below. Virginia and Helen had taken
long-planned vacations, but the news managed to reach them, too, hundreds of miles away. And Celia and Dot were at home; they were, after all, housewives now. A lot had changed in two years.

Did Chuck already know?
Toni wondered.

She had always assumed he would know before her, but no matter. She
did
know and there was no doubt about it. She needed to hear what he thought. Everything would change now.

Wouldn’t it?

But when Chuck answered the phone and Toni blurted out the truth, she heard nothing in response.

“Chuck! Chuck! Did you hear me?!”

All she heard was a click at the other end of the line.

Chuck had hung up on her without speaking a word.

She wasn’t supposed to know.

Was she?

She had spent years not knowing, wondering, sometimes guessing, and then giving up. She had accepted the need and duty to
not
know, and now this. Today, for no apparent reason, without any warning and out of the sweltering summer blue, came the Secret. Toni had spoken the word that, until this day, was not to be spoken. A word to change the world.

Either she was right, or she was in big trouble.

CHAPTER 1

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Everything Will Be Taken Care Of

Train to Nowhere, August 1943

Southbound trains pierced the early morning humidity. The iron and steel of progress cut through the waking landscape.

Celia sat in her berth, the delicate folds of her brand-new dress draping over her knees as she gazed out the window of the train. Southbound. That much she knew, and that she had a sleeping berth because it was going to take a while to get to her destination. Towns and stations simmering in the August heat rippled past her view. Buildings and farms bubbled up above the horizon as the train sped by. Still, nothing she saw through the streaked glass answered the most pressing question in her mind:
Where was she going?

Already many hours long, Celia’s trip felt more endless because her final stop remained a mystery. She had no way to measure the distance left to travel or to let her subconscious noodle over what portion of the trip had already elapsed. There was only the expanding landscape and the company of a small group of women, previously unknown to her, but with whom she was now sharing this secrecy-soaked adventure. Celia had quite willingly embarked on a journey without first obtaining much tangible information. So she sat, waiting to arrive at the unknown.

A wavy-haired 24-year-old, Celia was always up for a change of scenery, and this trip was not her first. Her hair was a deep brown,
not quite as black as the coal ash that coated life in the Pennsylvania town that she had left behind: Shenandoah. It was a town about 100 miles and roughly the equivalent in light-years from Philadelphia, and which writer George Ross Leighton referred to as “a memorial to the age of rampant industry.” He described her “once-prosperous” hometown as one that was, in many ways, reminiscent of so many other American towns: past its prime, fighting to survive, and abandoned by the business that had spawned its heyday, a business that kept the lion’s share of profits far from the reach of the rock-shredded, blackened hands that had built it. It was already a region in decline, even back in 1939. But that mining town had given Polish families like hers—and Czechs, Russians, Slovaks—work. Sometimes it was steady, most times not, but it was a chance at a decent living.

Land of anthracite! Celia’s hometown was like many mining towns in the east, its lifeblood linked to the precious rock buried down deep in the surrounding hills and valleys; a high-carbon, low-impurity, more lustrous incarnation of mineral coal. Locked in the bonds that held it together was energy itself. It could be released in dreamy blue flame and bestow its power on its liberators. But soon the allure and sheen of coal had given way to grime and neglect, much as the banking room of the Shenandoah Trust, a victim of the Great Depression that was still fresh in folks’ minds, had given way to Stief’s Cut Rate Drug and Quick Lunch. Rather than thriving, the town was choking. Rusted smokestacks punctuated the now-polluted horizon, redbrick edifices had surrendered their vibrancy to the soot of an overworked earth, all dingy reminders of an industry that once ran rampant and now hobbled on its last legs.

That was behind her now. Every passing moment separated Celia from what could have been an ash-covered existence as the wife of another miner. She had never wanted that future but only recently realized that it was not carved in stone. As for her new employment and soon-to-be home, “secret” was the operative word. It was repeated frequently, and rendered the most innocuous of questions audaciously nosy. When Celia had asked the obvious—
Where am I going? What will I be doing?
—the answer was that she was not allowed
to know any more than she had already been told. She would be given only the information that she needed to get where she was going. Asking questions was frowned upon.

She had gotten a taste of this “don’t ask” world of work during the short time she had spent working as a secretary for the Project in New York City. Secrets were secret for a reason. She had to believe that. If there was a need for her to know something critical, she would be told when the time was right. Whatever “it” was, it must have been very important. That said, hopping a train with her one, simple suitcase in hand had felt more than a little odd. Would she know her stop? Would something jump out at her from the landscape, some detail of its appearance crying out to her, “Yes, Celia Szapka! This is it!” Then again, she had never ventured south and she was now southbound. That much she knew.

Everything will be taken care of . . .

Celia had chosen to trust her boss, and so far what little he told her had proven true. The limo had picked her up the morning before from her sister’s home in Paterson, New Jersey. She sat alone in the car and the driver made no other stops as the car motored south through the industrial heart of the Garden State before arriving at the train station in Newark. There she boarded the train, situated her scant belongings in her prearranged berth, and waited to depart. Once at the station, she had been joined by other young women, most seeming to be about her age, and none of them any more informed than she was. Celia was somewhat relieved to know that she was not the only one being kept in the dark. She and all the other young (and she assumed single) women sitting around her were heading in the same direction. They were All in the Same Boat.

Neither Celia nor any of the other girls sitting on the train would complain about the secrecy. Complaining was not in fashion in 1943, not with so many sacrifices being made thousands of miles away, across oceans she had never seen. So much loss of life and family. How could she or anyone else heading to a good, safe job complain? The war permeated every aspect of existence, from sugar, gas, and meat rations to scrap metal drives and the draft. Businesses across
the country were abandoning the manufacturing of their usual wares—from kitchen appliances to nylons—in order to churn out everything from tires and tanks to ammunition and airplanes.

Details of battles and news of troop movements did little to shorten the excruciating lapses in time between letters arriving from abroad, or to relieve the sadness for losses suffered by friends, which were sometimes followed by a twinge of guilt-laden relief when news of the dead had spared your home yet again. Small flags of remembrance, a star for each loved one, marked the homes of those affected by the war. So many stars hung in so many windows, stitched carefully by nervous mothers, sisters, and sweethearts. No matter the town, a walk down any residential street was sure to turn up blue-star banners waving alone in living-room windows, requesting silently to passersby to pray for the safe return of the brother, father, or husband that each five-pointed fabric memorial signified. And every Blue Star Mother lived in fear that her star’s color might one day change, might be rendered gold by an unwanted telegram or a knock at the door, that what once hung as a sign of support and concern would be transformed into a symbol of mourning.

Everyone’s patience and nerves were being tested, and Celia’s were no exception. Certainly the Szapka family had endured their share of difficulties. Despite it all—the tight money, her father’s long hours in the coal mines, the ceaseless work at home—they persevered. Complaining would not help secure the safe return of her brothers Al and Clem. It wouldn’t make her father’s work any more steady or do anything to clear his persistent cough, which seemed to be getting worse with each labored breath.

In summer, the mines had no work for her pa. The proud Pole, never one to take a handout no matter how tough things got, refused to go on the dole. So with little money to feed their kids, Celia’s parents packed Celia and her three brothers and two sisters—when they were all at home—off to their grandmother’s house in New Jersey. Memories of those summer visits to Grandma were not filled with hopscotch, swimming, or cookie-baking. Celia was put to work, cleaning and scrubbing floors. Her grandparents looked after her and her
siblings, making life a little easier on her parents until the mines opened back up and it was time for the kids to go back to school. But there would be no mining work for her brothers. Her parents never wanted that for their sons. They were all gone now: Al to the Philippines and Clem off to Italy. And Ed, lovely Ed, her oldest brother and her favorite, was in the tiny town of Vernon, Texas, the only place he could get his own Catholic parish.