The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II

by Denise Kiernan

  “A dictator decrees,” she later wrote, “a president asks Congress for permission to organize.”

  The Project, it seemed, would make no such mistake.

  Her husband had achieved the unbelievable before, Laura thought. Perhaps there was a way to sink a ship while buried under snowdrifts in Chicago. When she finally confronted her husband a few days later, the results were no less perplexing.

  “Did you really sink a Japanese admiral?” she asked.

  “Did I?” came the response.

  “So, you didn’t?” Laura volleyed.

  “Didn’t I?” her husband returned.

  Doublespeak. Metaphors. Laura knew that continuing along this line of questioning was futile. She may not have known what her husband was working on in the University of Chicago’s Metallurgical Lab, but she was sure their work had precious little to do with metallurgy.

  Just four Decembers earlier, Lise Meitner had sat pondering the possibility of what the team in Chicago had now made a reality. She and Ida Noddack remained an ocean away and well outside the growing Project. Lise’s nephew Otto Frisch would soon find himself with other Project scientists at Los Alamos, New Mexico. Leona and the Italian Navigator would eventually make their way to Site W, where the success of CP-1 would be applied on a massive scale. Lise, too, had been invited to join the Project but declined. She knew what they were developing. She wanted no part of it.

  CHAPTER 5

  ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

  Only Temporary

  Spring into Summer, 1944

  We were indignant all over again when we got to Oak Ridge. Why couldn’t we have been warned about what a raw place we were coming to?

  —Vi Warren, Oak Ridge Journal

  Colleen Rowan waited patiently for her turn. The effusively outgoing 18-year-old brunette was on line for the shower; business as usual in a trailer camp with communal baths that served thousands of shift workers. The showering took place in shifts, as well. Colleen had encountered lines at every turn since moving here. This was just one more.

  She found herself staring at the embroidered peacock on the back of the blue chenille robe of the woman in front of her. Chenille was a big hit. And here in East Tennessee they were within striking distance of the tufted bedspread capital of the world, Dalton, Georgia. When Colleen’s family first came to Oak Ridge, they had passed the vendors on the highway, selling chenille bedspreads. Other roadside entrepreneurs offered up squirrels to hungry travelers, tiny cooked carcasses hanging alongside soft, tufted strips of fabric in pastel pinks, mint greens, and blues. The roads were full of people selling what they had, trying to get by. The Rowan family from Nashville drove past them, heading to a bigger place with better jobs for everyone in the family who was of working age. They were moving on to what they believed would be a land of opportunity and of purpose.

  At first, Colleen hadn’t been sold on the idea of moving to CEW. The first thought that had sprung to mind a year earlier when her family came to visit relatives here was, No way, no how. And she told her mother as much.

  “But this is where we need to be,” Colleen’s mother had explained. “We should do this, not just for us, but for Jimmy. For the war.”

  Bess Rowan’s family were mostly plumbers: Spike, Robert, and Uncle Jack had come to CEW to work. One of Daddy’s brothers, John, had moved here, too. The men had learned about the jobs via their plumber’s union. Spike, Robert, and Jack all worked at the K-25 plant, where Colleen now worked.

  Conditions at CEW took getting used to. Many of the construction workers were living in one-room hutments, each with three other men. And where were the sidewalks and proper streets?! Colleen stared in disbelief as she watched women in dresses walk barefoot through the gunk that covered everything within sight, their shoes hoisted high over their heads. She couldn’t imagine why on earth her mother would want to leave Nashville for this.

  But with nine children still at home and her brother Jimmy in the Philippines, Colleen knew better than to tangle with her mother. And Colleen wanted so badly for Jimmy to come home safe. If this would help—and they were told it would—she would do it.

  “It’ll be just like camping,” Colleen’s mom said, trying to convince her. “It’s only temporary.”

  Colleen had survived the Depression. She had survived the nuns at Cathedral High School. She could survive this.

  This was life in a place called Happy Valley.

  ★ ★ ★

  Townsite was the section of CEW originally set aside for living and shopping and other quotidian comings and goings. It sat in the northeast corner of the Reservation, backing up against the Black Oak Ridge and bounded to the south by Old Tennessee 61. Happy Valley sprouted out of the dust in the shadow of K-25, housing its thousands of workers, just one of several necessary residential additions to CEW.

  Initially, Stone & Webster (S&W), out of Boston, served as principal contractor for CEW’s plants and other structures, and started work on the administration building—the “Castle on the Hill”—in November of 1942, while evicted locals were still packing up. Moving full steam ahead meant the gentle rise and fall of the verdant landscape had been reduced to dirt and clay. Barren tracts made easy targets for rains which transformed them into meandering rivers of mud.

  S&W failed to impress the General with their plans for the residential Townsite area. So the Pierce Foundation and their associated architectural firm, Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, came on board. Pierce had a knack for modular housing, with an eye for town design, and had dipped its toes into the prefab market during the Depression. It developed, with the Celotex Corporation, a cheap, versatile material called cemesto board.

  Cemesto. Cement and asbestos, a pairing that in many ways made the town of Oak Ridge possible, was a potent mix of prefabulousness. Wall sections could be mass-produced, shipped, stored, and used to erect everything from homes to schools to shops. In early 1943, it was decided that the Pierce Foundation and Skidmore would design the Townsite. Stone & Webster would oversee construction and handle infrastructure services like telephone, sewage, etc.

  But early on the Pierce-Skidmore team had some basic questions.

  How large did the town need to be?

  Where would the town be located?

  Project reps were loathe to offer answers, as they might provide clues to enemy snoops as to what was going on at CEW. For location, the Project provided highly edited aerial photos that gave an idea of topography but little more—they could have been taken anywhere. The Project initially told Pierce-Skidmore to base their designs on a town of 13,000. When the time came for a site visit, the architects were instructed to go to New York City’s Penn Station at a particular time and place. They were met by a representative of the Project, ushered onto a train, and then told their destination.

  Soon CEW began to take shape: There were seven gates in all. The three plants—Y-12, K-25, and X-10—were kept separate from Townsite for safety and security purposes. Y-12 and K-25 were roughly 17 miles apart themselves, so that if there were a disaster that destroyed one, the other would survive. Y-12 took up around 825 acres and was roughly five miles from Townsite. It sat on the far side of Pine Ridge in the Bear Creek Valley, with topography helping to deter damage in case of any accidents or explosions.

  By the spring of 1943, roughly 55 miles of railroad and 300 miles of paved roads were already in place. The original plan for a town of 13,000 was already scrapped by the fall of 1943 when Celia and Toni first arrived and at this point the Project anticipated CEW might have as many as 42,000 residents.

  There were a variety of single-family homes, apartments, and dormitories planned for Townsite. Homes sat upon the new streets in as equidistant a manner as possible. Though the homes varied in their number of bedrooms, the prefab nature of all the structures meant the bones beneath were essentially the same. When viewed from a distance, Townsite exhibited a uniformity, a visual reinforcement of shared circumstances and hardships, even if that was n
ot strictly true.

  But despite all this progress, this tribute to modern science and city planning, there were no sidewalks.

  ★ ★ ★

  At least Colleen’s family had their own trailer now. At first, only Colleen, her mom, and her brother Brien came to CEW. Her father stayed in Nashville with the rest of the kids, still waiting for his Statement of Availability.

  The national “Statement of Availability” program was designed to prevent workers from job-hopping, which could hamper wartime industries dependent on a consistent labor force. If a worker left a job vital to the war effort, he or she had to obtain a document from their employer before being eligible to be hired elsewhere. If someone were laid off, there was no problem. But if a worker was fired or quit—say because they wanted a better-paying job—an employer could deny the Statement of Availability. This meant the worker had to wait at least 30 days before they would be able to be hired again, often longer.

  The Project had gotten some help circumventing restrictive labor practices put in place to keep wartime industries humming along. Under Secretary of War Robert Patterson issued a directive stating anyone applying for a war industry job through the United States Employment Service had to be recruited by the Project first. If they were rejected—they didn’t pass the security clearance, for example—only then would they be available for another position.

  As construction began to pick up in 1943, workers were leaving at a rate of as much as 17 percent a month. By the end of 1943, the regional office of the War Powers Commission proclaimed, “the unknown demand at Clinton Engineer Works overshadows all known demand . . .” In early 1944, Union Carbide noted a 25 percent turnover rate for construction workers at K-25. Based on exit interviews, complaints ranged from work conditions to food and housing, which, for the construction workers, was generally trailers or tiny hutments. By mid-1944, continued plant construction and expansion were in full swing, and the need for workers was crucial. So the under secretary of war and the president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers came to an agreement—the Brown-Patterson Agreement—enabling the Project to yank workers out of existing jobs, send them to CEW, and retain them for three months. Employers would receive official recognition from the War Department. Employees got a bit of a pay raise, overtime opportunities, and would retain any seniority they had back home. Travel was provided, and housing—in some form—was paramount.

  Housing options ran the gamut, from three-bedroom houses for a family of four down to hutments like the ones Colleen’s uncles and Kattie and Willie lived in. Though on-site housing was a recruiting perk, need continued to outstrip availability. Housing guidelines were strict and getting stricter. A childless couple could not live in a two-bedroom house, for instance. Proper single-family houses were generally reserved only for those earning $60 or more a week and were assigned depending on the number and gender of children. If you worked for an hourly wage below the position of foreman, you needed special approval for a house. If you lived within 40 miles of CEW, then you were out of luck altogether. You commuted. If you were single, there were dorms or barracks. Some civilian married couples found themselves destined for separate dorms with no in-room visitation for members of the opposite sex.

  When the Rowans decided to move to CEW, Colleen’s father left his job at the post office. But the Postal Service was vital to the war effort, so James Rowan had to wait for his Statement of Availability before he could be hired by another company. What Colleen’s parents did not anticipate, however, was that her father’s absence would complicate their search for housing. Only “heads of households” were eligible to apply for available on-site family housing. Women were not, no matter their circumstances, considered heads of household.

  Despite the fact Colleen’s mother was the primary family member at CEW, working to support her children while her husband took care of the kids back in Nashville, she was not regarded as a “head of household.” So she was ineligible for a house, apartment, or trailer when she first arrived.

  Women who made enough money or held the right positions—though the vast majority did not—might be able to get a house for their family, but it required additional approval from the District Engineer, an approval that Colleen’s mother would never receive. In some cases, women were told they might—MIGHT—be considered for some sort of family housing if they could find another female employee to share the house with them.

  Most of Colleen’s extended family was at CEW. So when they arrived, Colleen lived with her aunt Nell and uncle Jack, and her mom lived with Uncle Spike. Colleen slept on a bed at the far end of the trailer that folded up during her waking hours to make a table. Cleaning was easy enough. As Aunt Nell would joke: just walk the length of the trailer and kick the drawers shut.

  Finding room for household items like high chairs was another matter. When Uncle Jack had taken some metal pipe from the K-25 job site and crafted a high chair with it for one of his kids, he couldn’t get the finished chair in the door. Instead, it stayed outside, sinking down into the mud, baking into place by the sun. At least Aunt Nell could keep the baby close by while she was hanging up clothes.

  ★ ★ ★

  The Happy Valley encampment featured row after concentric row of identical trailers. Thousands had been hauled to the Reservation by train and dumped on the newly razed ground.

  Everything’s goin’ in . . . Nothin’s comin’ out . . .

  Once James Rowan received his Statement of Availability, he took a job with J. A. Jones Construction. The entire clan—Colleen, her parents, and eight brothers and sisters—moved into a double-wide trailer in the J. A. Jones Trailer Camp, near K-25, where Colleen and her mother worked. Colleen’s family lived toward the back of the camp near the security barrier. Colleen’s youngest sister, Jo, still in elementary school, was scared to approach the barbed wire, certain that the Germans were lurking in the woods on the other side of the fence. Thoughts of Jimmy and the specter of war were always with them. As soon as the Rowans moved in, Bess Rowan was quick to hang their service flag in the window, a reminder to everyone why they were here.

  Some trailers had small, makeshift yards and some trailer sites were given street names, hoping to make residents feel a bit more at home in their temporary surroundings. Happy Valley also included H-shaped barracks with male and female wings and hutments for white single men. Trailer camps like Colleen’s were hot and dusty in the summer when they weren’t covered in mud from temperamental southern thunderstorms. Bright streetlights shone all night to support the 24-hour shifts, giving everyone a feeling of never quite being at rest. Blackout curtains—normally an air-raid go-to—were indispensable if you could get them.

  The Rowan family’s double trailer at times housed eleven people—though it was hardly designed to do that. There was a double bed at each end of the trailer and a kitchen in the middle. It was larger than Aunt Nell’s single trailer, but small compared to their two-story house in Nashville. The trailer had electricity but no bathrooms. Water had to be hauled from a distribution center down the hill and stored under the sink, which drained into a bucket. Some families kept what they called slop jars for waste. Everything was emptied by crews with the daunting task of servicing the quickly multiplying structures dotting the landscape. A stove served double duty for heat and cooking. It often leaked oil onto the wooden floorboards below. If you weren’t careful, one stray spark and the whole thing could ignite.

  Taking advantage of shift work was key to making a snug, pressed-metal trailer fit large families. Family members slept in shifts, ate in shifts, cleaned in shifts. If there was a cot free, you slept on it. If a child needed to be picked up from school, you fetched her. If there was some food, you ate it. And you had better clean up after yourself, because everyone else was too busy to do it for you.

  Happy Valley began in 1943 when J. A. Jones built about 450 hutments on the south side of Gallaher Ferry Road near K-25. The area was so raw that they had to have wate
r trucked in. Just months later, Happy Valley was bursting its brand-new seams. Colleen’s uncles told her that citizens of Clinton were renting out garages and smokehouses to CEW workers, sometimes on a shift basis. Have sheets will travel. Others stayed in common rooms in hotels, with workers coming in and out at all hours. Now new roads and housing appeared in the time it took Colleen to leave for work and return home again. Throughout CEW roving construction crews worked in tandem: One crew laid foundations, a second pass added chimneys standing alone above bulldozed ground, then finally the cemesto siding was slapped on. At the peak, it was estimated a house went up every 30 minutes.

  Many people living in the camps at Happy Valley had never laid eyes on CEW’s main Townsite, only 10 miles away. They knew only the trailer camps and the ever-growing plant. Though Colleen may have loved taking the bus to Townsite, Happy Valley had everything: Cafeterias (there were 11 scattered throughout CEW by now) operated virtually around the clock to account for the 24-hour work schedules. Snacks at 2 AM? Sure, why not.

  There was the communal bathhouse, a post office. Most news arrived by mail. Calls for Colleen and others living in the camp were announced over loudspeakers posted to electric poles for all to hear. Indeed, personal phones were practically nonexistent. Only those who could demonstrate need or importance had a phone in their homes.

  Laundry was another adventure altogether. Colleen soon learned it was better to do your own with a scrub board, though keeping clothes clean hanging on the line was a Sisyphean battle against the elements. Gusts of wind blew trailer site soot, and pounding rain sent muddy spatters flying. Better this than take your clothes to what many referred to as “the shredder.” If you were lucky, you might get your clothes back from the drop-off service in four or five days. If you were unlucky, they might be lost or mangled. Why risk it? Under no circumstances would you gamble panties with elastic. Those were hard to come by in wartime, as rubber now served a purpose higher than a young lady’s waistline.