by Janet Beard
Finally the door to Dr. Houston’s office opened. He was younger than she’d expected, looking to be just barely in his thirties, lightly freckled with closely cropped red hair. He wore a gray suit and dark blue tie. “June Walker?” he asked.
She nodded and stood. He shook her hand firmly. “Timothy Houston. Come in.”
He motioned her into the office, which was cluttered with stacks of books overflowing from the shelves. She sat across from him as he looked down at her application. His face was wide and expressive, but he seemed distracted as he asked her a series of straightforward questions. She described her experience in detail, but he wasn’t even looking up at her.
“But I don’t understand. When did you attend secretarial school?”
“I didn’t. But I learned everything I needed to know working at the Clinton Engineer Works.”
He took off his black-rimmed glasses and rubbed his temples. “Yes, but why in the world did they hire you with no experience?”
She wanted to burst into tears. His tone made it clear that he had already made up his mind about not hiring her. “I don’t know, sir.”
“And you quit on V-J Day. That seems awfully abrupt.”
She inhaled deeply. She figured there was no point in lying. “I was dismissed because of a suspected breach in security.”
“I see.” He shook his head. “Thank you for coming in, Miss Walker. That will be all.”
She stood and turned, anxious to get out of the office as quickly as possible. As she reached for the door, she heard him behind her. “And to think you never had any idea what you were even doing there.”
His condescension was too much. She turned around. “Excuse me, sir, but I knew exactly what I was doing.”
He looked up from his papers. “Yes, but you didn’t know what it was all about.”
The anxiety of the interview followed by his swift rejection had left her feeling reckless, like she had nothing to lose. “But I did.”
He gave a little snort, but she could see she finally had his attention. “You’re telling me that you knew about the atom bomb before any of the rest of us?”
She nodded.
“But you couldn’t possibly have understood how it worked.”
June took a deep breath and spoke with a confidence that was new to her. “I was a secretary at Y-12, where uranium was enriched using the electromagnetic method. Uranium-235 was separated from natural uranium using calutrons, a kind of mass spectrometer. The uranium was bombarded with electrons, which caused it to become positively charged ions. These were accelerated and sent through a magnetic field, which separated out the lighter 235 ions. Those were used in the bomb they dropped on Hiroshima.”
His smirk was gone, and his voice became sincere. “How on earth did you know all that?”
She looked him in the eye, the corners of her mouth upturned ever so slightly. “I breached security,” she said, and turned to go.
Tim Houston watched the girl in amazement. He had barely registered her when she had first walked in, looking like every other country girl from these parts in her homemade skirt and drugstore lipstick. But something had happened to her face as she spoke. Her eyes lit up, she had a half-smile, and even though he knew she was laughing at him, he thought that she looked beautiful. For years to come, he would swear that at that moment the thought crossed his mind: This is the woman I am going to marry.
“Wait, Miss Walker!” he called out, and chased her down the hallway.
(Courtesy of the Department of Energy)
Epilogue
CICI AND TOM WERE MARRIED AS PLANNED A MONTH AFTER THE war ended at a simple ceremony in Knoxville, attended by only one of Tom’s Army friends. It wasn’t until a year later that he was finally demobilized, and they were able to travel together to New Jersey, so that Tom could begin working in his father’s bank. Tom’s mother Eleanor took three days to decide that Cici was a classless fraud. Eleanor made the decision to keep silent on the matter, on the grounds that a divorce from a manipulative gold digger would be more humiliating for the Wolcott family than a marriage to one, which she hoped could be managed.
Tom, blinded by love, didn’t realize the truth about Cici until almost a decade later. By then it didn’t matter—she was a Wolcott through and through. As soon as they had taken up residency in Morristown, Cici began studying, just as she had when she first arrived in Nashville. She knew Eleanor hated her, but Cici admired her mother-in-law, and both women realized it was in their best interest for Cici to learn from her. Eleanor would never have admitted it, but she was impressed with Cici’s ability to absorb the rites and customs of the gentry and convincingly reproduce them. In no time, Cici was setting up accounts at Bonwit Teller and Saks, arranging charity auctions for the historical preservation society, serving with confidence on the tennis court, and developing a taste for old-fashioneds. Even Cici was surprised by how naturally it all came to her. She was meant for this life, and she looked gorgeous wrapped in mink, walking arm in arm with Tom down Fifth Avenue on their way to meet other bankers and their wives for drinks and dinner.
She bore Tom three children, further securing her place in the family. Mothering did not come naturally to her, but luckily, nurses, nannies, and tutors were all provided. Only decades later would her husband and children turn on her, frustrated by years of emotional distance and neglect. By that time, Cici had taken up permanent residence in the summer house and could be found most evenings on the balcony with a cigarette and glass of brandy, staring out at the Atlantic Ocean, still beautiful in her chic bob and perfect makeup. If there were times when she allowed her mind to wander back through the years, questioning the decisions she’d made and actions she’d taken, you would never know it by looking at her, perfectly composed with a carefree elegance. And if she regretted any of her earlier behavior, she certainly never said so or let the thought linger very long in her mind. Even after the divorce, when two of her children had stopped speaking to her, Cici considered herself a success. She had gotten what she had wanted.
***
SAM GOT BACK to New York just in time for his mother’s funeral. A week later, a telegram arrived for her with the news that his brother Jon had died of complications from malaria. Sam stayed with his sister Sarah in Brooklyn for the next four months. They had never been close, but with the rest of their family suddenly gone, the siblings clung to each other in silent grief. He stopped drinking altogether and even went along with his sister’s family to their synagogue.
As soon as the veil of mourning lifted, Sarah set about finding a suitable Jewish girl for Sam to marry. He was too worn down to resist. Three months later, he married Esther Lieberman, twenty-six, his nephew’s third-grade teacher, who had given herself up for an old maid years before. They got along well enough, and she didn’t know about his drinking. He wasn’t particularly attracted to her but appreciated her common sense and practicality. She was happy to leave Brooklyn with him to return to California that winter. They had one son, Jonathan, named after Sam’s brother.
Sam went back to work at Berkeley. Though he regained something of his old enthusiasm for research, Sam never fully lived up to the promise he’d shown as a young scientist. Eventually Esther came to realize he drank, often secretly and often too much, but she found ways to protect herself and little Jon from the worst of its effects. She was a good mother, and in most of the ways that matter, they had a good life together. Occasionally Sam would think of June, wonder what had become of her, and remember the good times. In retrospect, he realized she was the only woman he had ever been in love with. Esther found a photograph of June in Sam’s study once, but never asked about it.
***
JOE WORKED AS a janitor at Y-12 for almost thirty years. The labs gradually emptied out, and the pace of work and life in the city slowed to a less urgent speed. He watched as most of the men he’d known from the war days drifted off, back to their farms or to northern cities, and eventually the old hutment area was
razed. The Brewers moved into a small house in Scarboro, the Negro section of the new, more permanent town.
A Negro elementary school was opened for Becky and Ben, though Ellie had to take the bus to Knoxville for high school. The Scarboro School finally added high school classes in time for Becky’s sophomore year. And in 1955, Life magazine came to Oak Ridge to take photographs as Ben and forty-one other Negro students showed up for school at Oak Ridge High School, the first desegregation in the South.
By that time, Ellie was married with children of her own, but Becky followed a different path. Her teachers at the Scarboro School were impressed enough with her abilities to help her apply for a scholarship to Fisk University in Nashville. When she returned home to visit after a year at Fisk, Joe and Moriah were shocked to find that she had become an independent young woman and a dedicated political activist. Becky became involved in the Nashville student movement, participating at sit-ins and traveling around the South to protest, against Joe and Moriah’s terrified wishes. Joe was reminded for all the world of Shirley Crawford, a decade earlier, and sure enough, Becky even ran into her once in Montgomery, where Shirley was organizing for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Every sit-in, every boycott, every protest made Joe think of Ralph, and he could hardly stand the worry he felt for his daughter.
But Becky managed to stay out of harm’s way. Eventually she settled into a career in social work. Ben also went to college and became an accountant. And as he relaxed into old age, Joe felt blessed beyond reason when he thought about his three lucky, striving children, all living lives he had never dared to imagine for them.
***
JUNE WORKED FOR Dr. Timothy Houston until January of 1948, when they were married. They both loved spending time outdoors, discussing current events, and traveling, which they did much of together, around the United States, Mexico, and later Europe. They had two children. Annie took after her father and had a wild streak that June could never quite figure out. Peter was more like his mother—calm, quiet, always observant, and deeply curious.
In 1965, with the children growing older and needing her less, June enrolled in the University of Tennessee to study education. Tim encouraged her and saw to it she always had time for her studies. Upon graduating, she took a job at a Knoxville high school teaching physics. Occasionally students would ask how she’d come to teach physical science, noting that it was unusual for a woman. June would tell them she had worked at Oak Ridge and had met a physicist there who first sparked her interest in the subject. Then she would sweetly remind them that a great many things had been unusual for women not long ago, and the usual was changing fast.
When they were old enough to understand, June’s children asked her questions about her wartime work. They were raised on air raid drills and learned to duck and cover in school. By the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Annie was thirteen and already forming her own opinions about nuclear proliferation. It was around that time when she first asked her mother in a somewhat accusatory tone if June had understood what the bomb was when she was working on it. June told her that she didn’t think anyone had understood really. Oppenheimer, Bohr, Teller, and all the rest might have appreciated the physics, predicted the destruction, feared the political repercussions. But no one really understood until August 6, 1945, and even then the understanding was just beginning. The thing was too awful and enormous to truly comprehend until it existed. And through the years, June’s understanding had increased; first with the stories from Hiroshima—the firestorm and black rain, the people without skin, the radiation poisoning, the shadows victims left behind—and later with the news of the Soviet bomb and all the buildup, speculation, and fear that followed. The new vocabulary—cold war, fallout, hydrogen bomb, nuclear winter—brought with it more horrible understanding.
June tried to explain life during the war to her daughter, but as the politics of the sixties swept her up, Annie came to see her mother as a pathetic pawn in the government’s evil game. She wanted to ban the bomb and give peace a chance, and June was endlessly proud of her. She hoped that if she had been her daughter’s age now, she would be out protesting the same things. But Annie was too young to understand that the right thing to do could change through the years. Different times call for different actions, and June was old enough to know better than to waste energy regretting her own.
Peter was more sensitive than his big sister and had recurring nightmares about atomic war. June would hold him next to her in the darkness and whisper comforts into his ear, solace false and true at the same time. She couldn’t promise that humanity wouldn’t destroy itself. But she had to teach him to believe it, just as she had taught herself in order to get through life. June was no better equipped for this than any other mother—she had no special knowledge, and her experience was limited to a few months in front of a panel turning knobs and checking meters.
She couldn’t explain that time to her children. All she could say was that she had entered the atomic age just a moment before the rest of the world.
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Time Line of Events
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About the Author
Meet Janet Beard
Born and raised in East Tennessee, JANET BEARD moved to New York to study screenwriting at New York University and went on to earn an MFA in creative writing from The New School. Her first novel, Beneath the Pines, was published in 2008. Janet has lived and worked in Australia, England, Boston, and Columbus, Ohio, where she is currently teaching writing, raising a daughter, and working on a new novel.
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About the Book
Behind the Book
Growing up nearby in East Tennessee, I first learned about the history of Oak Ridge at age seven, on a field trip to the city’s American Museum of Science and Energy. About half the of AMSE was a typical children’s science museum with a focus on energy where we could do things like touch a ball that would make our hair stand up with static electricity. The other half told the history of the making of the first atomic bombs, and that half freaked me out. I don’t know if I knew what atomic weapons were before that visit, but I remember being deeply concerned about them after and even asking my dad that night how we knew that some other country might not drop a bomb on us at any moment. This would have been the twilight years of the Cold War, but I didn’t know enough to have specific concerns about the USSR. Mine was the more general anxiety of beginning to grow up and realize that the world is full of horrors.
Throughout my Tennessee youth, Oak Ridge remained a local symbol of that anxiety, as well as scientific achievement—the two halves of the museum. But when I returned to the Oak Ridge story as an adult, it was the more personal narratives that drew me in. I happened on a TV documentary about the “Calutron girls” who manned the Y-12 laboratory during World War II, unbeknownst to themselves, enriching uranium. My childhood fascination returned, along with a new interest in these women’s stories. I read everything I could about Oak Ridge during the war. I revisited the city, where only fragments of the temporary wartime architecture remain, save for the mostly still off-limits (for those without security passes) labs. And I talked to my own grandmother, who I found out for the first time had worked for the Manhattan Project in Knoxville, typing documents for what purpose she never knew, while her sister worked in Oak Ridge.
Their experiences were typical of that generation in East Tennessee. The scope of the project was so large that it affected the entire community—particularly young women, who were entrusted with much of the U.S. war effort on the home front. And for me it was this massive collision of everyday lives with the combined forces of history, science, industry, and war that made me want to write a novel. Ordinary individuals from a wide va
riety of backgrounds came together to assist in the creation of one of history’s greatest and most horrible achievements, while bearing witness to the birth of the United States as a superpower. And all in my own native unassuming hills of Tennessee, no less. That was a fascinating story—or rather, a fascinating premise for hundreds of mostly forgotten stories. This book is my effort to bring a handful of those stories to life.
Time Line of Events
Manhattan Project Event
World War II Event
‘The Atomic City Girls’ Event
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1937
July
Japan invades China.
1938
March
Germany annexes Austria.
December
Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann discover the process of fission in uranium in Germany. Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch confirm the discovery.
1939
August
Physicist Leo Szilard writes a letter that Albert Einstein signs to send to President Roosevelt warning of the possibility of Nazi development of atomic weapons and urging that the U.S. begin its own nuclear research program.
September
Germany invades Poland. Great Britain and France declare war on Germany, and World War II begins.
October