The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Behind the Bomb

[n2doc]

by Michelle Legro


The civil servant was given only one clue where she would be going: a train ticket to Knoxville, Tennessee. She packed her best clothes, wore a new pair of shoes, and gave herself entirely to the project at hand: don’t ask questions, don’t talk unnecessarily, do your part to win the war. She arrived at a place that was more of a camp than a town, half-built prefabricated houses, an administration center, three reactors, and a foot of mud sure to suck off any shoe that stepped in it. On the books, she had arrived at the Clinton Engineer Works, a refinery plant for “Tubealloy.” Off the books, she had arrived at Site X of the Manhattan Project, where uranium would be enriched before it was shipped to Site Y in Los Alamos for use in “The Gadget.”

In The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II (public library), Denise Kiernan tells the story of the Oak Ridge center of the Manhattan Project, a town of 70,000 workers — primarily women — who lived in a camp-like environment of propaganda, barbed wire, checkpoints, code words, and spies, while working a thousand different jobs, all of which contributed to the events of August 6, 1945 and the dropping of the atomic bomb.

Women who had graduated from high school but couldn’t afford college could take the civil service exam. In a matter of months, they might be transferred to jobs in Washington, D.C., New York, or even abroad, without being informed where they were going or how long they would be there. Workers transferred to Oak Ridge were told to get on a train to Knoxville. College-educated women were recruited for their skills, but not always for their specialties. One woman who had wanted to be an engineer accepted a job as a statistician, which was considered more appropriate for her gender. Unskilled local women were also necessary to the project, and these locals often found themselves applying for work at the very place which had evicted their families.

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http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/03/20/the-girls-of-atomic-city/

[Little Star]

1. Cool! k&r

[Frustratedlady]

2. I knew a woman who was liaison between contractors and the

DOD or whichever department was in charge of building the bomb. She would meet with contractors in various places (different hotel rooms) one by one, and give them the changes made to the specs, answer questions, etc. She was one of the few who knew what those pieces were to be used for. The contractors were only given specs for one piece, but were not told what it was for.

She was a tiny woman in her later years and I assume she was petite at that time, as well. Not the type you would think would be involved in that type of work. I suppose it wasn't dangerous, as no one suspected the bomb was in progress.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

3. I knew one too, I sure wish I could remember her name.

She used to frequent the bar where I was a regular. She didn't say too much about it, felt she was still under the oath of secrecy. She died of cancer about 3 years ago, after being sick for nearly 10.

[niyad]

4. k and r