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

by Denise Kiernan

  There was shopping, too, though it was more akin to “waiting.” Waiting in line for cigarettes. For soap. For meat before it ran out. For Jell-O. When available, Jell-O was a real score and guaranteed a wait. Sugar was rationed and Jell-O was a little something sweet. All you had to do was add a little hot water and you could have yourself a ruby-hued, cool, bouncy treat in the hot Tennessee summer.

  Colleen soon realized the second she saw a line she had better get on it. Chances were there was something good at the other end.

  Most services were managed by the Roane-Anderson Company, so named for the two counties in Tennessee that CEW straddled. Roane-Anderson, a shell company of Turner Construction, was created for the Project and operated as an agent of the government under the direction of the United States Engineering Department. Luckily, some services came to you. The library, for example, headed by the New York Public Library’s Elizabeth Edwards, was in Townsite. Soon Edwards instituted the rolling library. There was a rolling grocery, too, that made the rounds through the trailer sites, propping open its shutters for a quick treat. Each Thursday it offered copies of the Oak Ridge Journal.

  The front page read:

  NOT TO BE TAKEN OR MAILED FROM THE AREA

  Under no circumstances should pictures of the various installations or panoramic views be taken!

  Colleen always wondered why you weren’t allowed to take the Oak Ridge Journal off the “area.” There was never any real news in it.

  “Dog bites in Oak Ridge: 40 a month . . .”

  But what could the paper print? If Colleen wasn’t allowed to know what she was doing, how could they print what anybody else was doing? The Journal was useful for mass schedules and social events. It featured reports on “presenteeism” in the plants and a smattering of fashion news—always useful to the woman up to her knees in mud 24-7.

  “It’s just like camping. . . . It’s only temporary. . . .”

  So went Colleen’s mother’s mantra, one for all of those who have endured tough times. Oak Ridge was difficult, yes, but also exciting and different. Colleen knew she wanted to remember her time here. She began collecting bits and pieces of her life. Two fires during her childhood had robbed Colleen’s family of so many personal memories. Those experiences had made her oddly sentimental. She began saving almost everything she got her hands on: important newspaper clippings, memorable photographs, sketches, and poems inspired by her new adventure. Each ticket stub glued into a scrapbook or stuffed in a keepsake box further cemented her spot in a place that she was certain would be only temporary.

  Sakes alive, look at it! How could it be anything but?

  ★ ★ ★

  A flashlight moved across Kattie’s sleeping face. It was the guard again, coming into Kattie’s hut. They were allowed, it seemed, to come in almost whenever they wanted.

  “Ain’t nobody here but you, but there are four beds,” the guard barked at Kattie.

  He left, flashlight waving, no doubt heading to the men’s area to see if he could shake the women out of there.

  Guards were a very regular presence in the black hutments and always stationed outside “the Pen”—the name that Kattie, her friend Katie Mahone, and the other women who lived in the black female hutment area had taken to calling their little corner of CEW. Kattie had noticed it when she first arrived, the barbed wire. High, tall fencing with barbed wire separated the women’s hutment area from the men’s, which was across a ditch and up a bit of a grade. That’s where Willie was, and would stay, for the foreseeable future.

  They didn’t put men in a pen, though, Kattie noticed. Her hut was around back, right near the fence, wire in every direction. There was only one way into the Pen and the guards were there, night and day, making sure no men entered the women’s area. She still saw Willie every day after work at his hut. But there was a curfew. Come 10 PM, flashlights waved and folks scattered. Were they FBI men? Kattie thought so. Oh, but the women hated those guards. Most of them, anyway. The head guard, the one who looked the oldest to Kattie’s eyes, was quite nice.

  It was authority, he explained to Kattie, that made the younger guards behave the way they did.

  “Get your marriage license the next time you go home,” he told her one day when she was being hassled by one of the younger guards. “Don’t let them tell you who you can and can’t visit.”

  He never ran her off from Willie’s hut, not once. Of course Kattie always made sure she was back inside the Pen before curfew. Not all the women did, though. And then the flashlights came out.

  There had been plans for an entire Negro Village, one that would have resembled the main Townsite with construction like the white homes, separate but essentially equal. But as housing became limited throughout CEW in 1943, it was decided that the Negro Village would become East Village—for whites. Lieutenant Colonel Crenshaw, who was in charge of the program, explained why. Negroes didn’t want the nice houses, he wrote. His office had received virtually no applications for the village. The negroes felt more comfortable in the huts, that was what was familiar to them—or so went Crenshaw’s rationale. Black and white construction workers and some GIs lived in hutments, but no white women lived there. The hutments remained, no matter one’s marital status, earnings, or seniority, the only housing for black workers. Five grown men might live in the 256-square-foot space if the coal stove was removed in the summer to allow for one more cot. When the Negro Village became East Village, hutment areas for black residents were equipped with separate roads that took them to the nearest stores, fenced off from the white areas. Theft was a persistent problem, privacy practically nonexistent, and amenities few.

  Treatment varied widely, and some black residents wrote letters of complaint stating they were not permitted to visit their spouses at all, no matter the time.

  B. W. Ross, spokesman for the Colored Employees of Roane-Anderson Company, wrote:

  And too, at the war man power board where we signed for employment on these jobs we were promised living facilities that would allow man and wife to live together. And now we colored married couples are here working on this Govt. Project. With our wives living in one house and we being their lawful married husbands are living in separate houses alone to our selves. We are not allowed to visit our wives home. And our wives are not allowed to visit our homes at no time day or night.

  The black cafeteria was close—right near the huts—but Kattie could not, no matter how she tried, stomach the food. One resident penned a letter of complaint detailing food served in the black cafeteria—“rocks, glass or some dangerous piece of harmful trash in this food”—and sent it to Roosevelt himself. Kattie remembered the night of the dreadful turkey thigh—at least she thought it was a turkey thigh—her cramps kept getting worse and worse, so severe. Willie had to physically carry her to the bathroom.

  It must have been a buzzard thigh, she thought in retrospect. Once they arrived at the communal bathroom, it was full. Apparently, she hadn’t been the only one whose stomach had been torn up by the buzzard. So Kattie made Willie go into the men’s bathroom to check and see if the coast was clear. It wasn’t entirely—there was another man there and in obvious intestinal despair—but she had no choice.

  Something had to change.

  There may have been better pay here, but there was not better food. Kattie knew she had to figure out another way to get something decent to eat. There had to be a way to make this place feel a bit more like home. She was going to figure out a way to cook in her hut, out of sight of the guards, rules or no.

  ★ ★ ★

  Celia had been getting ready to turn in when her dorm mother buzzed her room. Celia had a phone call.

  Was it her family calling about her brothers?

  It was late—already close to 10 o’clock. She went down to the lobby and picked up the phone. The voice on the other end was one she had been waiting to hear for some time. It belonged to Henry Klemski.

  “Do you remember me?” Henry asked. “You p
icked me up at the train station.”

  Did she remember him? Celia stifled a laugh.

  There was certainly no shortage of available men, but Celia had found herself thinking about Henry more and more. After that first meeting, Celia had begun to distance herself from Lew. She liked him, but he was talking marriage, and Celia wasn’t ready for that.

  She also knew that if Henry thought that she was still dating Lew, there was no way Henry would ask her out. So she let Lew down easy.

  “I’m not going to get serious with anybody,” she’d said. “I’m taking up your time. See if you can find another girl.”

  Time passed, and Celia had begun to wonder if she’d ever hear from Henry. And then, seemingly out of the blue, he rang.

  “Meet me for coffee at the cafeteria,” Henry said to her.

  “I can’t. It’s too late,” Celia said. “The dorm mother won’t let me go.”

  Celia found her dorm mother to be strict, but not unreasonable. That said, she still didn’t think that this idea would fly.

  “Put her on the phone,” Henry said.

  Celia handed over the phone to the dorm mother and stood by watching as she spoke to Henry for a few moments and then hung up.

  “He sounds like a nice guy,” the dorm mother said. “You can go.”

  Celia freshened up and ran over to Jackson Square to meet Henry at the cafeteria. She had been given one half hour. And that was all the time she’d need. Now, a few months on, she and Henry were spending more and more time together. But one person she had been hearing less and less from was her brother Clem.

  ★ ★ ★

  By the summer of 1944, the dorms were teeming with thousands of individuals. Single white women lived in dorms where they could be strictly monitored. Along with the no-cooking rule, there were rules against gambling and liquor. And, perhaps most challenging in a town with dorms chock full of single men and women in their late teens to mid-20s: No male visitors allowed. Sexual infractions meant eviction and were often punished most severely. Dorm mothers were relied upon to regulate comings and goings, and curfews. Some of these marms had been lured from places like Bryn Mawr and Smith and trained other dorm mothers about how best to handle the challenges of looking after so many single young girls living away from home for the first time.

  There were violations and complaints. Some of the griping made it as far as the District Engineer, who found himself visited by a delegation of ministers. Some of their congregants—the “good girls”—had complained about “bad girls” breaking dorm rules, including those prohibiting male visitors. The ministers suggested that all the “bad girls be moved into their own separate dorm, so as not to disturb or, by association, damage the reputations of the rule-abiding women.” The Engineer told them it was a fine idea. All the ministers needed to do was supply two lists: one of the good girls and another of the bad girls. The Engineer did not hear from them again.

  Despite her initial panic and thoughts of turning tail and returning to Hornbeak, Dot began adjusting to life in the dorms. There were those living in the dorms who complained about laundry, or cafeteria food, or about having to share a bathroom. But Dot didn’t think it was any worse than the “two-holer” outhouse she had grown up with. She had only brought one bag from home—mostly hand-me-downs from her life as the youngest of seven children—so she found her room to be big enough. The furniture was so new that some women had to unwrap the plastic from their dressers when they moved in. One young woman reported moving into a dorm that was so new the windows weren’t yet installed. She slept in an overcoat and found ice gripping the edges of her water glass the next morning.

  Dot’s adjustment was also thanks to Katie and Thelma, two women who lived down the hall. Though they were only a few years older than Dot, they seemed to have it all together and took Dot under their wing. Most importantly, the two women loaned Dot money when her cash ran out, as it always seemed to, and the arrival of a paycheck was still a few days off. If the rent was due or Dot needed an infusion of dollars for the cafeteria or a movie in town, Katie and Thelma always came through. Dot always paid them back. She may not have saved much, but she was having the time of her life. Learning to manage her finances was a tiny bump in the road. The nervousness and fear she first felt was soon replaced by a heady feeling of freedom. There was no farm and no chores to do. All she had to do was go to work.

  For those who had gone to college, like Jane, the statistician, Virginia, the budding chemist, and Rosemary, the nurse, the dorms had a familiar feeling. Everyone was roughly the same age, all living together for ostensibly the same purpose. Friendships were cemented as fast as saddle shoes in wet clay in Oak Ridge during the war, and clubs sprouted quickly. Jane and Virginia eventually joined the College Women’s Club, organized by a mutual friend. The members of the College Women’s Club got together to socialize, sometimes putting on fashion shows or dances. But their primary activity was babysitting for local families—families living in real, honest-to-goodness houses—for 25 cents an hour. The idea was to raise money for a college scholarship fund for girls graduating from Oak Ridge’s high school.

  There were perks to babysitting, as well. The women enjoyed a night in a house with access to a real kitchen. If they could cobble together enough sugar ration coupons, they baked cookies and maybe brought a date along. Sometimes another couple would stop by and the young women could sit in a real living room and play a game of bridge or relax in mixed company without fear of running afoul of dorm regulations.

  Celia’s friend Rosemary babysat occasionally for the head of the hospital, Dr. Charles Rea. After a short stay in the dorm, Rosemary and the other nurses finally got their own living facilities, a housing complex right next to the hospital. Rosemary loved the convenience, and her new rooms were definitely a step up. Two rooms, rather than a whole hall, shared an ensuite bathroom. But she, too, liked to enjoy the comforts of what felt like a real home now and then. Dr. Rea and his wife had taken Rosemary in, in many ways. That first Christmas when she wasn’t able to travel home to Holy Cross, Iowa, she spent the holidays with them. And if they got home late, she would often spend the night at their home rather than go back to the dorm.

  Dorms and dating, babysitting and bridge. CEW was in many ways an outpost best suited to the young, those for whom enthusiasm trumped exhaustion and the sense of adventure outran hardship.

  ★ ★ ★

  For some residents, however, life on the Reservation was too trying. Chief Psychiatrist Dr. Eric Kent Clarke, who had just arrived several months earlier in March 1944, found himself challenged by what he soon realized was a very unique community. Combine cramped quarters with isolation and secrecy and he discovered that a lot of people were in a perpetual state of edgy exhaustion. The kind of rehashing of a day’s work with a spouse or roommate that most adults took for granted was not permitted. Relieving stress by talking about what was worrying you was not an option, since most worries were related to work, an off-limits topic.

  Residents had left familiar traditions and support networks behind, and there was little to replace them. Clarke reported that it had for some time been suspected that there were many psychiatric problems plaguing the residents of Oak Ridge, but that these situations were neither recognized nor well defined. That’s where he came in.

  “By March, 1944, the need for specialized service to cope with the personality disturbance became apparent and the psychiatric service was established,” Clarke wrote in one of his early reports.

  From the beginning the residents have been subjected to many additional stresses absent in the usual community which have created tensions. Material necessities were still in embryo form, and it required a true pioneer spirit, that was often lacking, to make an easy transition to a community still in the making.

  But how did one foster community from scratch amid nonstop deadlines, round-the-clock work schedules, and a high turnover of residents and laborers? The Project had little time or inclination to in
stitute social change.

  Despite all the planning the military did with regard to Townsites and homes and religious groups and softball leagues, there was no real plan for Oak Ridge beyond the timetable of the war itself.

  CEW had a single goal: to enrich Tubealloy for the Gadget.

  But whether the Project had intended it or not, CEW was a social experiment of sorts. A military-run Reservation handling the most top secret of assignments but inhabited by not only military men, but civilians, women, children. Native Americans from Oklahoma worked alongside construction workers from Mexico and good ol’ boys from Virginia. Black employees who were segregated and forced to live without their children and apart from their spouses in small hutments, and construction workers packed like sardines into tin-can trailers lived mere miles from out-of-town PhDs, who enjoyed prefab yet roomy homes. Those PhDs themselves—some living under assumed names for security reasons—might be next door to a plumbing foreman and his family, neither knowing the other’s job.

  Women added a social dimension to this military installation that had not yet been taken fully into account. They were an essential part of the Project’s success. Without them, there would be no Product, and without Product there would be no Gadget. But women brought a sense of permanence. Social connectivity. Home. Women seeking work or promotions were quizzed about whether they planned on having a family. Families—babies especially—were potentially disruptive to the production process. Women were powerful. And oh so necessary.

  Women infused the job site with life, their presence effortlessly defying all attempts to control and plan and shape every aspect of day-to-day existence at Oak Ridge. The Project may not have known what was to become of the town after the war, but the women knew that while they were there, they would not only work as hard as the men, but they would make it home.