by Steve Olson
At the libraries of the University of Washington and Washington State University, Trevor Bond, Anne Jenner, and many other librarians and archivists provided me with documents, pointed me toward things I needed, and otherwise made researching the history of Hanford a pleasure. Similarly, at the Seattle Public Library, Linda Johns and Ann Ferguson helped me find documents that are available nowhere else. Writers in Seattle are lucky to have access to such superb libraries and accomplished librarians.
Telling the story of the atomic age from the perspective of Hanford and plutonium has required recounting, usually with a different emphasis, episodes that are familiar to experts on the Manhattan Project. For their previous scholarship I’m grateful to Kate Brown, John Findlay, Michele Gerber, Bruce Hevly, William Lanouette, Robert S. Norris, Cameron Reed, Richard Rhodes, J. Samuel Walker, Alex Wellerstein, G. Pascal Zachary, and especially Cynthia C. Kelly, the founder and president of the Atomic Heritage Foundation, whose websites continue to be by far the best single source of information on the Manhattan Project and the early years of the Cold War.
In Nagasaki, Susumu Shirabe, Hitomi Shirabe, and Mariko Mine provided invaluable assistance and documents as I retraced the steps of Hitomi’s grandfather, Raisuke Shirabe, in the hours, days, and months after the bombing. Atsumi Nishimura provided me with Japanese translations throughout the writing of this book.
Many people who have worked at Hanford or have lived in the Tri-Cities shared their stories and expertise with me, including Terry and Jim André, Tom Bailie, Del Ballard, Randy Bradbury, Carolyn Fazzari, Kathleen Flenniken, John Fox, Roy Gephart, Harvey Gover, Ron Kathren, Greg Koller, Pamela Brown Larsen, Susan Leckband, John McCloy, Larry Morgan, Bruce Napier, Gary Petersen, Trisha Pritikin, Alan Rither, Mark Smith, Don Sorenson, Jim Stoffels, and Gene Weisskopf.
For their generous and expert assistance I especially want to thank Robert Franklin, Jillian Gardner-Andrews, and Michael Mays at the Hanford History Project, Becky Burghart and Kris Kirby at the National Park Service, Colleen French at the Department of Energy, Tom Carpenter and Liz Matson at Hanford Challenge, Steven Gilbert at the Institute of Neurotoxicology and Neurological Disorders, Jon Brock at the University of Washington, Robert S. Norris at the Federation of Atomic Scientists, Alex Wellerstein at the Stevens Institute of Technology, Cameron Reed at Alma College, Annette Cary at the Tri-City Herald, Hal Bernton and Sandi Doughton at the Seattle Times, Joe Copeland, Jenny Cunningham, and Knute Berger at Crosscut, Michael Krepon at the Stimson Center, Ken Niles at the Oregon Department of Energy, and Eric and Ellen Seaborg.
My daughter, Sarah, and son, Eric, spent many hours helping me do research on the Manhattan Project, the Cold War, Hanford, and Nagasaki. Sarah and Seattle-based mapmaker Matt Stevenson drew the wonderful illustrations in the book.
Five people read and commented on this book when it was at a critical juncture: Robert Franklin, Sally James, Cynthia Kelly, John Martin, and Melanie Roberts. Their feedback had a big influence on this book. Many friends also offered much-needed advice and encouragement, including Joe Alper, Thomas Conkling, Gregg Easterbrook, Susan Feeney, Kevin Finneran, Donna Gerardi Riordan, Greg Graffin, David Jarmul, Marjorie Kittle, Jill Lawrence, Priscilla Long, Lisa Olson, Rick Olson, Dan Para, Blake and Connie Rodman, Eric Scigliano, Jack Shafer, Mark and Judith Stein, Umberto Vizcaino, and David Williams.
I have dedicated this book to my wife, Lynn, without whom none of my books would have been written. I have also dedicated it to the memory of John Hersey, from whom I took a course on narrative nonfiction in 1978. Even now, sitting at my desk, I can hear his calm and patient voice offering me advice.
NOTES
The following notes refer to books, articles, publicly available interviews, and other documents listed in the bibliography. Documents only available in archives are described in full in the notes. Quotations in the text that do not have a corresponding note are from interviews that I conducted.
One of the great pleasures of writing about historical events in the age of the internet is that many historical documents, and especially documents associated with the use of atomic bombs at the end of World War II, are available online. Rather than citing in the notes the physical locations of these documents, I have provided enough information in the text to find them with a quick web search. I invite readers to consult the full documents and draw their own conclusions about the world-changing events they describe.
PROLOGUE
1As soon as Franklin Matthias flew over the Horse Heaven Hills: Sivula, “Fateful flight selects site,” A1.
2“This is it”: Franklin Matthias, interview by B Reactor Museum Association (BRMA), September 26, 1992. Available upon request to BRMA.
2Even as Matthias was flying over the towns of Richland, Hanford, and White Bluffs: Jones, Manhattan, 78–85.
4“most contaminated nuclear site in the Western Hemisphere”: Gilbert et al., Particles on the Wall, 3.
4“I treated plutonium production”: Rhodes, “Hanford and History.”
5“known sin”: Oppenheimer, 88.
5“My God, if everybody that has made an important contribution”: Interview of Crawford Greenewalt by David A. Hounshell and John K. Smith, December 15, 1982, Hagley Museum and Library, Accession 1878. Available upon request to the Hagley Museum and Library.
PART 1: THE ROAD TO HANFORD
7“I didn’t think, ‘My God’”: Seaborg, “Glenn T. Seaborg Biography 1912–1999.”
CHAPTER 1: BEGINNINGS
9Toward the end of his long: Hoffman, 247.
9“pathways to success in big business”: Hardy, 498.
9“Seaborg’s brother is a truck driver!”: Segrè, interview by Richard Rhodes.
10“We weren’t poor”: Seaborg and Seaborg, 10.
10“taught chemistry with the charisma”: Ibid., 13.
10“You could learn certain principles”: Seaborg, interview by the American Academy of Achievement.
11“lingering disbelief”: Seaborg and Seaborg, 22.
11“The whole Berkeley atmosphere”: Yarris.
11“Berkeley was Wonderland”: Seaborg and Seaborg, 23.
12The morning after his evening in the library: Hiltzik, 47.
13“I got out of there just in time”: Time Magazine, 72.
13They were sometimes called the “nim nim boys”: Bird and Sherwin, 94.
13“I couldn’t get over the feeling”: Seaborg and Seaborg, 27.
15In January 1934 the husband and wife team: Guerra et al., 49–51.
16Over the next few years: Seaborg, “My Career as a Radioisotope Hunter,” 962–64.
17“I wonder if any of the people”: Jolly, 157.
CHAPTER 2: THE CHAIN REACTION
19“I have something terribly important to tell you”: Alvarez, 72.
19“When Alvarez told me the news”: Wilson, All in Our Time, 28–29.
19“If you hit a car-size boulder with a pick”: Seaborg and Seaborg, 56.
19“I walked the streets of Berkeley”: Ibid., 59.
20“What an exciting specialty I’d chosen”: Ibid., 60.
22“How can anyone know what someone else might invent?” Lanouette, 133.
23“there was very little doubt in my mind”: Szilard, His Version of the Facts, 55.
24“It would take the entire efforts”: Frisch and Wheeler, 52.
26“It seems to me now”: Szilard, The Collected Works, 193.
26The physicists at Columbia “started looking”: Fermi, Collected Papers, Volume II, 1000.
CHAPTER 3: ELEMENT 94
29Well past midnight on February 24, 1941: Seaborg, Journals, 28–29.
29“a less significant or historical looking room”: Seaborg, Nuclear Milestones, 3.
31“can be separated from all the known elements”: Seaborg, Journals, 29.
31Seaborg later recalled: Bickel, 188.
31“I was a 28-year-old kid”: Seaborg, “Glenn T. Seaborg Biography 1912–1999.”
32On Monday, March
3, 1941: Seaborg, Journals, 30.
34“Fortunately, we were spared”: Seaborg and Seaborg, 72.
34“I was unfamiliar with the god”: Ibid.
CHAPTER 4: THE DECISION
36he considered his first name “a nuisance”: Zachary, Endless Frontier, 20.
36“you couldn’t get anything done in that damn town”: Goldberg, “Inventing a Climate of Opinion,” 451.
36“this uranium headache”: Zachary, Endless Frontier, 189.
37“I with that the physicist who fished uranium”: Ibid., 189.
37“scared to death”: Ibid., 195
37“As long as I am convinced”: Compton, The Cosmos of Arthur Holly Compton, 44.
38“within twelve months”: National Academy of Sciences, Committee on Atomic Fission, May 17, 1941, report. Available upon request to the National Academy of Sciences archives.
38“the first side to perfect this scheme”: Parides, 27.
39“I still shudder when I think”: Bush, 279.
39“If large amounts of element 94 were available”: National Academy of Sciences, Committee on Atomic Fission,” July 11, 1941, report, “Memorandum Regarding Fission of Element 94” by Ernest O. Lawrence. Available upon request to the National Academy of Sciences archives.
40“I knew that the effort would be expensive”: Bush, 59.
40“of superlatively destructive power”: National Academy of Sciences, Academy Committee on Uranium. Available upon request to the National Academy of Sciences archives.
41“Seaborg tells me that within six months”: Compton, Atomic Quest, 71.
CHAPTER 5: THE MET LAB
43When Seaborg stepped off the train: Seaborg, Journals, 109.
43Organized and led by Jimmy Doolittle: Scott, 38.
44“a stack 200 to 300 feet high”: Seaborg, Journals, 121.
45“We’re working on something that’s more important”: Seaborg, interview by Stephane Groueff.
45“Some stare in disbelief”: Seaborg, Journals, 155.
46“Scientists like me thought less”: Seaborg and Seaborg, 87.
46“We were fighting for survival”: Ibid.
47Ten days after Roosevelt approved Bush’s plan: Seaborg, Journals, 160.
47“Those who have originated the work on this terrible weapon”: Lanouette, 236.
48“no knowledge at all of nuclear physics”: Sanger, 34–35.
48He told the Met Lab scientists that the construction and operation: Compton, Atomic Quest, 109.
CHAPTER 6: PLUTONIUM AT LAST
49Shortly after coming to Chicago: Seaborg, Journals, 131.
49“We were told to take precautions”: Seaborg and Seaborg, 93.
50“We were pretty young”: JaHey, “Those early days as we remember them.”
50Seaborg called it weighing invisible material: Seaborg, Man-Made Transuranium Elements, 38.
50“Today was the most exciting and thrilling day”: Seaborg, Journals, 176–77.
51Thomas Edison almost lost his eyesight: Jorgensen, 30–32.
51By the 1920s, professional societies: Hacker, 13.
52Seaborg, for example, was always adamant: Seaborg and Seaborg, 75.
52One time a Met Lab worker was walking by a soda machine: Karle, interview by Alexandra Levy.
53Once a dog being used in plutonium exposure experiments: Brues, “Those early days as we remember them.”
53Another time the chemists at the Met Lab: Compton, Memories of Early Atomic Pioneers, 88.
53scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project: Voelz et al., 611.
CHAPTER 7: THE DEMONSTRATION
54Seaborg had a terrifying thought: Seaborg, Journals, 201.
55The army turned up the pressure: Hewlett and Anderson, 106.
56He said that he could: Seaborg, Journals, 216.
57It was not a squash court: Mort, 1.
57“This is not it”: Allardice and Trapnell, 37.
58“would probably remember longer than the others”: Compton, Atomic Quest, 141.
58Greenewalt later ventured: Greenewalt, interview by Stephane Grouffe.
58“His mind was swarming with ideas”: Compton, Atomic Quest, 144.
58“What I was really thinking about”: Interview of Crawford Greenewalt by David A. Hounshell and John K. Smith, December 15, 1982, Hagley Museum and Library, Accession 1878. Available upon request to the Hagley Museum and Library.
58“Of course we have no way of knowing”: Seaborg, Journals, 217.
60To avoid perceptions of war profiteering: Hewlett and Anderson, 187.
60Matthias told his commanding officer: Williams, 17.
PART 2: A FACTORY IN THE DESERT
61“Some of the flattest, most lonesome territory”: Seaborg, Nuclear Milestones, 163.
CHAPTER 8: THE EVICTED
63On March 6, 1943: Gibson, 15.
63The Wheelers stared: Mendenhall, 407.
64“It was a wonderful place for the children”: Jeanie Shaw Wheeler, interview by Margot Knight, 1979. Available from Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, Washington State University Libraries, Pullman.
64When the Columbia flooded in spring: “Wheeler Family History,” from the collection of family histories in the Public Reading Room, Department of Energy, Richland, WA.
64swim: Franklin, 52.
64“It was a terrible shock,” said a resident of Hanford: Sanger, 21.
65“What’s the old barn over there?”: Mendenhall, 410.
65“They appraised my father’s 30 acres”: Sanger, 21.
65“If you want to see this place again”: Mendenhall, 412.
65“They came that morning to take us away”: Jeanie Shaw Wheeler, interview by Margot Knight, 1979. Available from Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, Washington State University Libraries, Pullman.
66“I have a promise”: Franklin Matthias, interview by B Reactor Museum Association (BRMA), September 26, 1992. Available upon request to BRMA.
66By the spring of 1941: Sivula, “The man who built Hanford,” A6.
67For the next few years, massive construction equipment: Flynn, 47.
68On February 26, 1943, he walked into the offices: Williams, 3.
68“trying to restrict publicity on this project”: Findlay and Hevly, 36.
69On October 16, 1805, Meriwether Lewis: Van Arsdol, Tri-Cities: The Mid-Columbia Hub, 10.
69They called the Columbia Ci Wana: Marceau, 1.12.
70From a population of almost 2,000 in 1780: Ruby and Brown, 11.
70When they asked for access: Brown, 34.
70“insist on maintaining their independence”: Franklin Matthias diary, April 2, 1944. Available at the Public Reading Room, Department of Energy, Richland, WA.
CHAPTER 9: THE BUILDERS
71“Suckers, suckers, suckers”: Compton, Memories of Early Atomic Pioneers, 144.
71“War Construction Project”: Toomey, 60.
72“Is it true that you people”: Groueff, 142.
72“I had thought there was a lumberjack”: Van Arsdol, “Woman recalls strange life in plant’s melting-pot camp.”
73It was the largest construction camp: Goldberg, “Groves and the Scientists,” 40.
74The specialized welders known as leadburners: Sanger, 68.
74By the end of the war, about 15,000 African Americans: Bauman, 124.
75Hanford also had jobs for women: Gerber, The Hanford Site, 11–12.
75For the men, as one resident said: Sanger, 68.
75The chief of police noted: Brown, 25.
76When workers were told: Toomey, 61.
76“It was exciting”: Sasser, interview by Robert Bauman.
76“This activity, conceived by the workmen”: Thayer, 99.
77“We have a contract with you”: Franklin Matthias, interview by B Reactor Museum Association (BRMA), September 26, 1992. Available upon request to BRMA.
77“Look, take it easy”: Thayer, 176.
77Harry Petcher and his wife Maxi
ne: Sanger, 98–104.
77“Everything was fine until we got a police call”: Ibid., 101.
79“Second best in class is good”: Norris, 49.
79“If it is a game”: Ibid., 41.
80“Dick has been a wonder of thoughtfulness”: Ibid., 58.
80“Entering West Point fulfilled my greatest ambition”: Ibid., 71.
81Ranked twenty-third in his class: Lawren, 52.
81“He was really a genius”: Franklin Matthias, interview by B Reactor Museum Association (BRMA), September 26, 1992. Available upon request to BRMA.
82“No one took this man lightly”: Norris, 135.
82He managed the building of army camps and facilities: Bernstein, “Reconsidering the ‘Atomic General,’” 894.
83“I was hoping to get to a war theater”: Groves, “Atom General,” 16.
83“The secretary of war has selected you”: Groves, Now It Can Be Told, 3.
84That afternoon he argued: Norris, 176.
CHAPTER 10: THE B REACTOR
85Woods was a child prodigy: Lucibella, 2, 5.
85“You are a woman, and you will starve to death”: Libby, The Uranium People, 30.
85“rather lonesome and empty”: Ibid., 84.
86“Everyone was terrified that . . . the Germans were ahead of us”: Libby, interview by S. L. Sanger.
86“When he told me he was ready”: Ibid., 164.
87The blueprints then were reviewed for accuracy: Ndiaye, 163.
87“suffered from a general disease”: Interview of Crawford Greenewalt by David A. Hounshell and John K. Smith, December 15, 1982, Hagley Museum and Library, Accession 1878. Available upon request to the Hagley Museum and Library.
88“My rule was simple”: Groves, Now It Can Be Told, 140.
88Asking them to “stick to their knitting”: Ibid.
88“You see what I told you?”: Groueff, 34.
89“We were a team, determined to win”: Franklin Matthias, from the manuscript “Hanford Engineering Works: Early History,” January 14, 1987, p. 11. Available from the Mary Coney papers, Special Collections, University of Washington Libraries, Seattle, WA.