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

by Denise Kiernan

  The problem of what to do and where to go on Saturday night has been solved for Oak Ridge citizens . . . dances will be held for the public every Saturday night on the Townsite tennis courts. The first dance will be held this Saturday, July 22, [1944] at 8:30 PM. . . . (Oak Ridge Journal)

  This was great news coming on the heels of the very popular Fourth of July dance. Tennis court dances were a hit. There was even the added promise that upcoming dances might feature local talent. At the inaugural July 22 fete, the Oak Ridge Orchestra played and the entry fee was 50 cents for men. (Psst! Wring out those stockings, ladies—just 25 cents for you.)

  Dances were already popular around the Reservation, and there were several held each and every week at various recreation halls. Sunday nights, for example, were for the Ridge rec hall. Dances on the tennis courts were welcome because the outdoor locale allowed you to enjoy swinging and swaying in the cool night breeze—if nature decided to cooperate—rather than indoors where the day’s heat still lingered. Glenn Miller and Johnny Mercer filled the air as all the twentysomethings gathered, ready to “Begin the Beguine” until it was time to go home.

  With so many bodies jostling and jitterbugging, dances could render some makeup a sweaty, goopy mess. Heat and humidity were especially challenging for those women who went the extra yard and wore leg makeup. Some young women even drew seams up the back of their legs to simulate stockings or hose, much of which had gone to war, where their fabric was needed for parachutes. If you were a woman handy with a needle and thread, you might get that fabric back in another incarnation: Many young brides had taken to fashioning wedding dresses from the very parachutes that had brought their loves safely back down to earth. Fashion’s contribution to the war effort, come full romantic circle.

  Some women wore boots to wade through the mud, then changed into more fetching shoes upon arrival at the dance. Any pairs of stockings that women did have were safely guarded, not to be sacrificed too freely for a mere dance. Stockings were just one of the fashion casualties of war. Zippers took a hike overseas as well—nimble buttoning fingers prevailed. And lipstick was now carefully removed from cardboard or plastic containers and applied gingerly with fingers, since many of the factories that had manufactured the makeup’s metal cases had shifted to constructing shell casings or other munitions. And some of the ingredients needed to make the lipstick itself, including petroleum and castor oil, were also in short supply. Sacrifices had to be made—big and small. And maquillage crisis or not, young women did what they could with what they had when it came time to primping for an evening out.

  Colleen had held on to one or two of her old metal lipstick cases long after the lipstick had disappeared from them. Wielding a paper clip, she would fastidiously dig out the remaining bits of pigmented oils and wax from any remaining tubes—or from a newly purchased cardboard tube—and carefully melt it down on a stovetop before pouring the emulsified liquid back into the precious metal case. Women pulled their hair up, perhaps in a chignon, or curled it using whatever was available, bobby pins if you had them for a pin curl, or otherwise a night’s sleep with your tresses twisted around some old rags would do the wavy trick as well.

  Any effort was worth it: The average age at CEW was 27. It was a heady mix of backgrounds and personalities: GIs and chemists, construction workers and truck drivers, college girls from big cities far away and high school graduates from farms down the road. Meeting new people was at once easy and a tad complicated. While most everyone was open and anxious to meet new friends, conversations were as restricted as the property itself, usually limited to talk of family and home, safe topics that had nothing to do with your work.

  What do you do?

  This simple phrase, a standard opening line in many a social situation, was not to be uttered within or without the fences of the Clinton Engineer Works by anyone who worked there if they wanted to keep their jobs.

  Where are you from?

  This, however, was an entirely acceptable inquiry and one that echoed throughout the dances, cafeterias, and newly constructed recreation halls throughout the Townsite. The emcees of the dances themselves helped make temporary partners of potential wallflowers by filling the nights with dance contests and games orchestrated to coax strangers into one another’s arms—but not too tightly.

  Colleen loved the dances and tried never to miss a one. It didn’t matter whether she went with Blackie or with a gang of girls from the dorm where she now lived. After a week clambering over pipe after pipe, she was more than happy to stay on her feet a little while longer if it meant music and friends. Everyone needed this break from routine. It wasn’t like the outside world, where you left work and went “home.” Work was everywhere you looked on the Reservation. But if they had to work hard, they were going to play hard, too.

  Now that Colleen had finally moved out of her family’s trailer and into the dorms, dating was a lot easier. She had moved into her cousin Patricia’s single room. Roane-Anderson would have converted it to a double soon enough, anyway. The two did what girlfriends and family did: share clothes. They had each arrived at Oak Ridge with only one small cardboard suitcase, so having a similarly sized roommate meant doubling your wardrobe. But Patricia kept bringing Colleen’s blouses back with various small holes burnt into them. It had happened at work, Patricia said. Colleen didn’t ask how. She didn’t know what Patricia did. It wasn’t her business.

  Once Blackie had come around to asking Colleen out, she was happy to oblige, but she certainly wasn’t ready to give up her other beaux. No sensible woman would. She had no idea how long she would even be here. After the war was over, she and her family would likely go home. Blackie was in the military, and he would probably be assigned somewhere else. Everything about the CEW looked so temporary—even as every day it began to feel to Colleen to be more and more permanent.

  Despite the plethora of available men in Oak Ridge, dating a GI did have its perks, including access to the PX, which was otherwise off-limits to civilians. Colleen’s understanding of what SED meant was that Blackie had initially enlisted in the Army, but because he had studied engineering they had rerouted him to CEW. The SED hadn’t existed before the Project, so there wasn’t much history to know. But then again, she didn’t need to know much more about him than she already did. He was a Yankee—from Michigan—and an only child to boot. Colleen struggled to imagine a house that wasn’t spilling over with kids. He wasn’t Catholic, but hey—nobody’s perfect. Blackie shared her longing to travel, but for the time being, dates on the Reservation were often a visit to the cafeteria, convenient and affordable. For the ever-sociable Colleen, sitting up late with Blackie and friends in the cafeteria was one of her favorite things to do, and she loved catching an earful of an unfamiliar accent and learning about faraway places. There, a sing-along was always ready to break through the clink of utensils and the rumbling hub-bub of shift changes, and Johnny Mercer’s 1944 tune could have been the theme song for the entire Reservation. For the entire war.

  “You’ve got to Ac-Cen . . . Chu-Ate the positive and E-Lim . . . Uh-Nate the negative . . . Latch on, to the affirmative and Don’t mess with Mr. In-be-Tween . . .” Most importantly, as far as Colleen was concerned, Blackie knew how to impress a girl.

  Case in point: On one of their first dates, he brought her a box of Ivory Flakes soap.

  Who needs flowers? Roses fade, but flaky soap available from the PX lasted months. Having Ivory Flakes was a rarity in itself, and also saved her valuable time—one less line to stand in, only to find that the grocer was out. Again.

  That was romance, as far as Colleen was concerned. Maybe this guy was a keeper after all.

  ★ ★ ★

  Romance was not first and foremost in Helen Hall’s mind. What little spare time she had between shift work was dedicated to basketball or softball. Oh, how her brother Harold would love the ball courts in her new town! Helen went weak-kneed at the site of those gymnasiums with gleaming new courts and plenty o
f regulation balls. No more laboring to cut down trees, burying them deep in the Tennessee clay, and then climbing up to nail old privy buckets to them.

  She remembered Harold fashioning balls out of hog bladders after the Thanksgiving Day slaughter, and watching them pop and shrivel the minute they bounced out of bounds and into the brush on their small family farm. Helen would have to spend hours in the woods surrounding their farm looking for the most perfectly round rock she could find and painstakingly wrap it in twine that she snuck from the barn. Daddy didn’t like that, no sir. But he did always come to her games at school. Not like her mother, who found basketball shorts a bit revealing for her taste.

  I won’t go see you play naked! was the gist.

  But passing and shooting five-pound rocks with her brothers had developed her game in a way few fancy courts could. She was a decent height, with shoulder-length locks in chestnut waves, and those workouts had given her long legs muscle and shape, her lungs endurance, her arms reach and definition, and her shooting accuracy. She could play with the best of them. Yes, Harold sure would love these ball courts. She wanted him to come home safe so maybe he’d get a chance to see them himself.

  That was the recruiting Helen wanted to do! She wanted more girls for the Y-12 basketball team, the Robins. She wanted to talk to her coworkers about teams and sewing uniforms and maneuvering practice schedules around the constantly changing 24-hour shift work, not eavesdrop on their private conversations in the cafeteria or goad them into disclosing information they probably didn’t even mean to share in the first place.

  ★ ★ ★

  Religious services were a major concern of the Project from the very beginning, as officials appreciated the extra weight that spiritual communities might bear in a brand-new town with no preexisting social connections.

  The Chapel on the Hill was the center of much religious activity. That single space would eventually serve 29 different religious groups. Catholics claimed the lion’s share of parishioners, edging out the Baptists at number two with Methodists pulling in at third—a clear indication of just how many out-of-towners had moved into this Bible-belt region.

  The Chapel boasted a packed schedule. Catholics started arriving at 5:30 AM Sunday, Jewish services were at eight o’clock Friday night, and in between was an array of denominations and activities. (Colleen, Celia, and Rosemary still had the option of attending mass in Father Siener’s living room, as the priest continued to set up an altar in his own abode on Geneva Street.) The Chapel also played host to Episcopal vespers and youth group meetings. The Baptists also met at the high school, as did the newly organized Christian Scientist group. Services continued to be held in various rec halls throughout the Reservation, though early morning services in these sometimes meant kicking a bottle or two out of the way and erasing reminders of the previous night’s diversions to make way for the present day’s devotions. It was not unusual for the marquee above the movie theater in Townsite to proclaim: NOW SHOWING: Methodist Church.

  Every area of what was now a bustling “factory-tropolis” with several distinct town centers had its own recreational activities. The Grove Center had its own rec hall, and a very popular skating rink that ran throughout the night. Happy Valley had its own amusement fairway called Coney Island, full of skeet ball and darts, where “Sugar Blues” blasted through the loudspeakers well into the wee hours of the morning in a part of the Reservation that knew no night—thanks to 24-hour floodlights.

  Coney Island Workers, in their late teens to early 20s (some even younger, if they could squeak by without questions), awarded oh-so-precious cigarettes as prizes for winners of darts, air rifles, and coin tosses. It was an oddly magical setting, the playful suspension of responsibility in the shadows of the most massive industrial war plants ever constructed. It was a land of music and distraction for characters as diverse as the young pinboy on the duckpin lanes named Edgar Allan Poe (really) and a young college girl on break who relished every time she got the opportunity to page him over the loudspeaker. She and others like her closed up shop at 2 AM and went out to drink homemade wine, or got a ride to the Plantation Club near the town of Rockwood to dance all night.

  ★ ★ ★

  Venturing off-site was popular, as buses provided transportation to places like Norris Dam or Big Ridge Park. Couples packed picnic lunches, folded up a few blankets, and hopped on a bus or crammed in a car.

  As housing continued to be tight, some singles were assigned to group houses, which were ideal spots for quick and informal roll-up-the-rug dances. A house full of chemists might host a group of cubicle operators, perhaps none of them aware of what the others did day-in and day-out, though they might even work in the same plant. It didn’t matter: Beer tallies were kept on the fridge so that everyone paid their fair share, and romance blossomed on the small porches that some of the C and D homes in Townsite offered.

  For any and all activities, finding some alcohol to imbibe posed a bit of a challenge—but not too much for such an industrious collection of young people. Yes, there were one or two small taverns on-site, but none was anyone’s first choice. They were crowded and offered only 3.2 percent beer, a staple of military life and Army posts during wartime, which some considered a deterrent to bootleg booze.

  “The sale of 3.2 beer in the post exchanges in training camps is a positive factor in Army sobriety,” the Office of War Information stated in a report cited by the Brewing Industry Foundation in the April 19, 1943, issue of Life magazine. “. . . In dry states and in states where there is local option, the military faces the problem of bootleg liquor. Bootleggers cannot be regulated; legal dispenses can be regulated.”

  Off-site outings could be made to places like the Ritz Club in nearby Clinton, where the occasional visit from CEW guards sent drinks scattering to the floor and sometimes resulted in a quick wink and offer of cash from the proprietor. Clinton Engineer Works and this part of Tennessee were technically dry. Ah, but this kind of prohibition had long served to bolster one of the state’s most significant, if illegal, industries: moonshine.

  Hooch was available, if not entirely healthy, from a variety of sources. Drop a few bucks in a basket on a back porch and snag a bottle of homemade innards-stripper from a stash in the washing machine. Taxi cab drivers from nearby towns like Clinton and Harriman made a pretty penny escorting folks to off-site spots where some “splo,” a local and potent moonshine, could be bought. The more industrious families made wine and beer beneath their small, rickety, mass-constructed porches: A little canned grape juice, some rationed sugar, and the magic of fermentation were all you needed to get the party started.

  If obtained off-area, there was the matter of getting your booze through the gates and past the guards, who themselves enjoyed a serious cache of confiscated rotgut in the guardhouse. Inspection was expected, the passengers of any car knew that. As you approached the gate and slowed to a stop, passengers prepared to have their car and bags opened. The guards were on to most of the tricks by now: the bottles in the wheel well, a container carefully positioned on the floor between the long-skirted legs of a female companion. The more hilariously duplicitous buried purchases in the bottom of bags of odiferous diapers. (Sleeping babies in bassinets weren’t enough of a deterrent.)

  That was the key: Put it somewhere the guards didn’t want to go. One surefire trick when returning to the Reservation after a quick trip to secure a fifth or two of Tennessee’s finest? Bury the bottle inside of a box of Kotex, carefully shielded by at least one or two pads.

  ★ ★ ★

  August in East Tennessee is a sweaty panting mutt, breathing down a dust-caked neck that has been baked by the southern sun. And just when it seemed as though fall would never break through the swelter, it happened: On August 3, 1944, the US Army Corp of Engineers, those kings of colossal construction, outdid themselves. They opened the swimming pool, one that was believed to be the largest in the country. It was fed by a spring that had been dammed up to form a lak
e, and now the sides and bottoms were covered in concrete. Residents could dip into 1.5 acres of wet, wonderful swimming surface area, a cool 2.1 million gallons of water. Yet even cooling off on the Reservation wasn’t mud-free—swimmers could feel their toes sink into bits of muck at the bottom of the massive pool, but they didn’t care. Their hot, tired bodies bobbed in the fresh, brisk springwater, replenishing temperatures and restoring spirits, albeit temporarily.

  Segregation forbade black Oak Ridgers from swimming in the pool and infiltrated most forms of recreation on the Reservation. Black and white pin boys couldn’t work in the same bowling alleys, for example, if there were not separate bathroom facilities available. There was a recreation hall near the hutment area, where Kattie occasionally ventured. She liked getting dressed for a dance now and then, sure, but overall there wasn’t too much to do there beyond boxing matches and playing cards. Black residents could not attend the movie theaters, either, though there were now several throughout the Reservation. Occasionally at the rec hall near the black hutment area 16 mm “race” films were shown. For 35 cents, viewers could sit on crates and watch stories—produced predominantly by white movie studios—about poor southern blacks making their way to the north for a new life. In the theaters in Townsite or Grove Center, it cost only 5 cents more to see first-run films, cartoons, and newsreels.

  Church served as one of Kattie’s primary social activities, when it was an option. Black workers strove to find time and space to worship, some holding prayer band meetings in their huts, others reaching out to pastors in Knoxville, who came to preach in the rec hall, the cafeteria, or wherever there was room. Kattie eventually attended the “church on the side of the road” as her small congregation came to call it. It was a small, but adequate building that wasn’t being used for any other purpose. It was a gift, an oasis of peace and community.