The Girls of Atomic City (45 page)

★ ★ ★

The ride on the Navy shuttle was a brief one. The memorial itself was long, rectangular, white, and concave in the middle, as if pulled downward by what rested beneath. The ship’s rusted gun turret protruded up through the surface of the water.

After docking, Dot disembarked along with the rest of the passengers, making her way toward the narrow structure in the water.

What had started with Pearl Harbor resulted in the development of a technology that ended a war and recast the political and emotional landscape of the world. Dot had moved from rural, post-Depression Tennessee to a secret government city, to the biggest wartime development in modern history and now here to where it had all begun.

The waters of the Pacific acted as a blanket of stillness covering the remnants of the violence that once was, seeds of history now buried in the sea floor. They were over the middle of the ship now, its mammoth form lurking upside down beneath them. Dot looked out over the harbor. The barnacled and algae-ensconced outline of the remains of the ship was visible through the greenish-blue water.

He was in there, somewhere, her brother Seaman Willard Worth Jones. Shorty. She began to cry. After a few moments, she turned to see an older Japanese woman standing next to her.

“Did you lose someone here?” the woman asked Dot in a heavy accent, her own eyes brimming with tears.

“Yes, I did,” Dot answered. “My brother.”

The woman nodded. “I am so sorry for you,” she said.

She moved toward Dot, and Dot held out her arms. The two women embraced. Dot knew this stranger somehow understood. She did not know why, she did not know how, and she did not care to ask.

The woman did not linger, simply said good-bye and walked away.

Dot took the lei she had carried with her and tossed the ring of blossoms out into the open water, knowing it was not only the first but likely the last time she would ever place flowers on her brother’s grave.

Epilogue

Heading northwest on Highway 62, I cross over the Clinch River. No gates. No guards. Signs for the Y-12 National Security Complex loom large, nothing hidden about them. Streets and sites that flank the road into town recall what once was: Scarboro Road. Bear Creek Road. New Hope Cemetery. A small wooden sign marks the former location of Elza Gate.

Since the first time I visited Oak Ridge years ago, I have been reminded of the Army bases I knew as a child. Though the town has been out from under military control for decades, its prefab origins still lurk beneath modern-day structures. If you look closely, you can spot them. An office for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on South Illinois Avenue once served as a field hospital. The Midtown Community Center—a.k.a. the Wildcat Den—remains, now home to the Oak Ridge Heritage and Preservation Association. The site of the former bus terminal houses a Mail Boxes
Etc.
and a Cash Express. Jackson Square is still here, though the businesses have come and gone and come again. The Center Theater that once showed movies like 1942’s
In Which We Serve
is now home to the Oak Ridge Playhouse. Nearby, the Chapel on the Hill continues to host interdenominational religious services and weddings, while the Guest House (which later became the Alexander Inn) is a dilapidated mess, grassy and overgrown. Many younger residents remember the structure as an inn only, knowing nothing of its history as a place where people like J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, Ernest Lawrence, a young senator John F. Kennedy, among others, lay their heads. A number of A, B, C, and D houses dot the town, many of them refurbished with carports and clapboard, porches, and porticos. Slap a forest green awning on a government prefab and you’ve got yourself a chiropractor’s office. Oak Ridge’s history remains, in many ways, still hidden in plain sight.

My first trip here, I half expected some sort of Googie-esque signage, starbursts, and atomic symbols beaming out at me from every surface, a “Home of the Manhattan Project” billboard welcoming visitors to town.
Not so. Some of the most noticeable nods to Oak Ridge’s past are found on menus in various bars and eateries, where chicken wings provide a natural outlet for kitschy atomic humor, and sauces range from “Y-12” to “Nuclear.”

Now with a population hovering around 28,000, Oak Ridge straddles its future and past. It’s a town of science and progress, where researchers continue to discover new elements and neutrons continue to fire away, only now they do so at the Spallation Neutron Source, a facility at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). ORNL is occasionally home to the world’s fastest computer, a title it relinquishes and regains periodically in an ongoing battle against similar computing giants in China, Japan, and elsewhere in the US, like Big Ten gridiron rivals meeting each other on a field of competition determined by data transfer rates.

The Secret City Festival is held here in June each year, showcasing that tango between what was and what shall be. The two-day event is part history, part technology, with everything from WWII reenactments and dunking booths to reactor tours. In a day you can go from calutrons to inflatable bouncy houses, taking in Buffett cover bands and bluegrass, fission, and funnel cakes.

At a recent festival, I join Joel Walker, director of education and outreach at the National Archives regional facility outside Atlanta, Georgia (NARA Southeast), in the lobby of the American Museum of Science and Energy. The last time I was at AMSE—which boasts a permanent and in-depth exhibit of Oak Ridge’s role in the Manhattan Project—was for Ed Westcott’s 90th birthday celebration. Many spoke in honor of and on Ed’s behalf. He did not speak. He suffered a stroke years back, and though his physical recovery was substantial—he still scales tall scaffolding to get just the right shot—his speech remains largely impaired. There is, however, no one who helps “tell” the story of this just-add-water town created from scratch 70 years ago better than the Photographer, Ed Westcott.

The bulk of historic—and now declassified—documents available on the Manhattan Engineer District and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) are housed at NARA Southeast. On one of my research trips, Joel, who has a particular interest in this collection, took me behind the “Big Door” into the room where archivists and interns scurry about for patrons who have requested research files. The bay containing the AEC files is roughly 100 feet long and just over 22 feet high, and entering it I felt like I was in the final scene of
Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Here are roughly 5,000 cubic feet of AEC files, the majority of which have yet to be fully catalogued. There are, no doubt,
many more secrets trapped in those boxes of onionskin paper and typewritten memos.

This is one of the more striking wrinkles to the story of the Project and Oak Ridge: how much is still unknown. And what’s more, our ambassadors to that era, the men and women who are our window into that moment in time, are rapidly leaving us, and the structures they once inhabited may soon be gone. K-25 is currently being torn down, but a recently historic preservation agreement with the DOE will provide for the construction of a replica equipment building and history center to help interpret K-25’s role during and after the war. Y-12 remains behind gates and is still part of the National Security Complex, but many of its original buildings and remnants remain off-limits, except on special days of the year (the Secret City Festival among them). The dorms are long gone, as is the Castle on the Hill. The Guest House, though in disrepair, recently got a $500,000 grant as part of K-25’s preservation agreement.

When these people and what’s left of the original town and plants are finally gone, who and what will be left to interpret the origins of one of the most significant moments in world history—the birth of the nuclear age?

The challenge in telling the story of the atomic bomb is one of nuance, requiring thought and sensitivity and walking a line between commemoration and celebration. Opening history up to discussion and debate is the kind of tightrope walk that created years of controversy at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, for example. When the museum sought to create an exhibit on the
Enola Gay,
a controversy ensued and eventually came to a head on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II.

“When we began discussions of the exhibit, there were two points everyone agreed on,” Martin O. Harwit, then the museum’s director, was quoted as saying. “One, this is a historically significant aircraft. Two, no matter what the museum did, we’d screw it up.”

Unable to create an exhibit that satisfied all parties, curators canceled the exhibit in its original form and Harwit resigned.

There is currently a movement to create a Manhattan Project National Park, led in no small part by Cynthia Kelly and the Atomic Heritage Foundation (AHF) in Washington, DC. Introduced in June 2012 in the Senate by Jeff Bingaman (S. 3300) and in the House by Doc Hastings (H.R. 5987), the Manhattan Project National Historical Park Act would establish National Park Service sites at Oak Ridge, Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Hanford, Washington.

Locally in Oak Ridge, efforts are being made to preserve and restore
some of the town’s history. Ray Smith, Y-12’s historian, spearheaded creation of the New Hope Center, which houses a curated display space featuring historic artifacts from the electromagnetic separation plant, and helped establish limited tours of the complex’s remaining Manhattan Project facilities. Oak Ridge historian Bill Wilcox—aided by the AHF and others—has been fighting for nine years to preserve a piece of K-25 that could remain open to the public, ideally as part of the National Park. But there are challenges. Waste remains an issue, one legacy of the nuclear age that cannot simply be given a cursory mop-up in advance of any renovation. And, of course, money is hard to find.

Debates concerning how to present information about this moment in history will likely continue. Meanwhile, the legacy of the Manhattan Project continues to impact the social, environmental, and political landscape of the world. How things turn out in Oak Ridge remains to be seen. For now, visitors to the Secret City Festival can meet people like Colleen and Marty Rom, another fascinating woman I interviewed, at the Oak Ridge Heritage and Preservation Association table. Celia sits nearby at the Center for Oak Ridge Oral History’s booth, sharing her experiences as a woman who was told she would be here only six to nine months and who is now going on 70 years as an Oak Ridge resident.

After leaving the museum, I drive by John Hendrix’s resting place on my way to Celia’s house. The grave of the man once called the Prophet is located between two modern homes on a suburban street. No matter any visions he did or did not have, he most likely could not have imagined this, a subdivision swelling up around him. Later that evening, I bring Celia with me to Greenfield Assisted Living, where we enjoy some wine with Dot and Colleen, in an apartment where Colleen’s giant Manhattan Project collage takes up an entire wall. Rosemary is still living with her husband, John, in Maryland. Jane is in an assisted living facility in Tennessee. Kattie lives on her own in Scarboro and is the oldest member of her church. Yes, she still cooks on her K-25 biscuit pans. Helen lives in her D house and remains an ardent basketball fan, rarely missing a UT Volunteers game. She started writing—by hand—her own book, detailing growing up during the Depression. Her hands are now quite arthritic, which has slowed her down considerably. Toni passed away during the writing of this book, rather unexpectedly. The brief time I spent with her was filled with as much laughing as note taking. I finish my weekend by visiting and dining with Beverly Puckett, Jane’s daughter, and Virginia. Virginia tells me over dinner that she is taking a class on the History of Transuranic Waste
at the Oak Ridge Institute for Continued Learning, her scientific mind still working hard at age 90.

In remembering his time in Oak Ridge as head psychiatrist, Dr. Eric Clarke later wrote that, “Those who survive Oak Ridge from its beginnings are better for the experience.” I know I am better for knowing them.

As I drive away from Oak Ridge, I cross back over the Clinch, the sheer curtain of a pinkish-gray evening settling on its waters, no pearls sleeping in its beds. I leave my dinner with Virginia behind, thinking of her and other women’s journeys across the river in a much different time during a very different war. I have no answers as I head east deeper into the secret-shrouded shadow of the mountains. I roll down the window and wash my hands in the clouds.

Celia (Szapka) Klemski