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Notes
I cannot come close to expressing how challenging it was to decide which women I was going to feature most prominently in this book, and how difficult it was to leave the others on the cutting room floor (or in digital research folders, as it were). There were many interviews that I found extremely helpful in writing this book, even if the people who shared their stories with me were not featured in its pages. A list of primary individuals interviewed follows these notes.
Where not otherwise noted, information regarding Celia (Szapka) Klemski, Toni (Peters) Schmitt, Kattie Strickland, Jane (Greer) Puckett, Helen (Hall) Brown, Virginia (Spivey) Coleman, Dot (Jones) Wilkinson, Colleen (Rowan) Black, and Rosemary (Maiers) Lane comes from author interviews conducted between 2009 and 2012.
A note about dialogue: The use and/or creation of dialogue is based on either author interviews, oral histories, or meeting minutes.
A number of texts, original documents, and audio and video resources were consulted during the researching and writing of this book. In addition to the primary works cited here, a suggested “reading, watching, and listening” list is available at girlsofatomiccity.com.
Introduction, Cast of Characters
Description of the region from author’s visits to the area, interviews with longtime residents, and from the “History and Architectural Resources of Oak Ridge, Tennessee” (National Register of Historic Places Multiple Property Documentation Form, National Park Service, US Department of the Interior, January 1987) and from “Report on Proposed Site for Plant Eastern Tennessee,” Formerly Declassified Correspondence, 1942–1947; Records of the Atomic Energy Commission, Record Group 326, National Archives at Atlanta; National Archives and Records Administration.
More specific details regarding the arrival of the Manhattan Project to the East Tennessee area come from numerous sources and original documentation, many of which will be cited throughout the book. H. G. Wells’s book The World Set Free: A Story of Mankind was originally published in 1914 (London: MacMillan). It is available in the public domain from the Project Gutenberg and other sources. The book eventually fascinated many scientists, including Manhattan Project physicist Leo Szilard, as mentioned in Richard Rhodes’s The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986), among others. Wells’s prediction of the atomic bomb is still referenced today, in places like Wired (“Rise of the Machines: Why We Keep Coming Back to H. G. Wells’ Visions of a Dystopian Future,” by Matthew Lasar, October 8, 2011). Chris Keim, who worked at Y-12 during the war and went on to be division director of technical information at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, shared a wonderful anecdote about Wells’s book in his essay, “A Scientist and His Secrets” from These Are Our Voices: The Story of Oak Ridge, 1942–1970 (Oak Ridge: Children’s Museum of Oak Ridge, 1987). He and other scientists bought out all the copies of The World Set Free from a Berkeley, CA, bookstore until the store owner got curious about the popularity of the title. Military intelligence approached the shop owner, asked him to keep quiet, and then unsuccessfully tried to find out who had bought the books. On August 18, 1945, just 12 days after the Hiroshima bombing, The Nation’s Freda Kirchwey wrote a fantastic essay for that magazine, titled “When H. G. Wells Split the Atom.” Wells died in 1946, just one year after the bombs he foresaw were used to end World War II. Information regarding code names: The origin of the word “tubealloy” or “tuballoy” comes from the “Tube Alloys” project, which was the code name the British used for their early work on the atomic bomb. Both “tubealloy” and “Tube Alloy” are also mentioned in several texts, including Rhodes (previously cited). Both spellings are also used in various memos and declassified material, and were used repeatedly by a variety of individuals interviewed by the author. I have chosen the spelling “tubealloy” as opposed to “tuballoy” to reflect the name’s origin and its pronunciation (TOOB-uh-loy). 49 and 94 were for plutonium, as was “copper,” though that presented some confusion. Both 49 and 94 can be found in various declassified materials and are referenced in The Plutonium Story: The Journals of Professor Glenn T. Seaborg, 1939–1946, by Glenn T. Seaborg, edited by Ronald L. Kathren, Jerry B. Gough, Gary T. Benefiel (Columbus: Battelle Press, 1994), and in The Plutonium Files, by Eileen Welsome (New York: Random House, 1995).
1. Everything Will Be Taken Care Of: Train to Nowhere, August 1943
I first met Celia Klemski through Colleen Black. The two still know each other after having crossed paths at Father Siener’s mass during the war. I have interviewed Celia many times and have had the pleasure of just sitting in her living room on many occasions. Already in her early 90s when I first met her, she is fit, healthy, and lively, much like the young woman who jumped on a train with little to no information about where she was headed.
Description of Celia Klemski from author’s visits, interviews, and historic photographs (courtesy of Celia Klemski). Descriptions of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, from Celia Klemski and also George Ross Leighton’s portrayal of the town in his essay “Shenandoah, Pennsylvania: Rise and Fall of an Anthracite Town,” from his book Five Cities: The Story of Their Youth and Old Age (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1936). Stories of rations and scrap-metal drives from author interviews with men and women. I first learned of the remembrance flags featuring blue stars for loved ones who had served and gold stars for those who had passed away from Colleen Black. The Blue Star Mothers of America and Gold Star Mothers of America still exist today. The last Sunday of September is Gold Star Mother’s Day. (“Blue Star Mothers of America,” by Deborah Tainsh, www.military.com. October 17, 2006; “Proclamation 2196: Gold Star Mother’s Day,” Code of Federal Regulations: The President, Office of the Federal Register.) An image of both stars can be seen in the World War II poster “ . . . Because Somebody Talked!” by Wesley, 1943 (Government Printing Office for the Office of War Information, NARA Still Picture Branch).
Information regarding the Manhattan Engineer District’s first headquarters from Leslie M. Groves’s Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project (New York: Da Capo Press, 1962) and K. D. Nichols’s The Road to Trinity: A Personal Account of How America’s Nuclear Policies Were Made (New York: Morrow, 1987). Locations of Manhattan Project sites in the New York metropolitan area: A Guide to Manhattan Project Sites in Manhattan, by Cynthia C. Kelly and Robert S. Norris (Washington, DC: Atomic Heritage Foundation, 2008). Charles Vanden Bulck, disbursement officer and procurement manager for the Manhattan Project, Corps of Engineers (David Ray Smith, “Historically Speaking,” The Oak Ridger, July 5, 2011.) Description of Saturday Evening Post cover from September 4, 1943, issue. Regas restaurant description from author interviews with Celia Klemski and others; also “Regas Closing After Nine Decades,” by Carly Harrington, Knoxville News Sentinel, December 12, 2010; vintage postcards and photos. Moving of MED offices to Oak Ridge, from War Department memo dated 29 June 1943, “Moving District Office to Oak Ridge, Tennessee,” Formerly Declassified Correspondence, 1942–1947; Records of the Atomic Energy Commission, Record Group 326; National Archives at Atlanta; National Archives and Records Administration.
Author note: “All in the same boat” is possibly the most oft repeated phrase I heard
while conducting interviews for this book, from both men and women.
Tubealloy: The Bohemian Grove to the Appalachian Hills, September 1942
Information on a Bohemian Grove meeting from both attendee Kenneth Nichols, who refers to the September 1942 meeting in his book (previously cited), and also Groves, Rhodes (previously cited), and Stephane Groueff’s Manhattan Project: The Untold Story of the Making of the Atomic Bomb (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967). Additional information about the history and lore of the Bohemian Grove from “Masters of the Universe Go to Camp: Inside the Bohemian Grove,” by Philip Weiss, Spy Magazine, November 1989; “The Truth About The Bohemian Grove,” by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, Counterpunch, June 19, 2001; “Bohemian Tragedy,” by Alex Shoumatoff, Vanity Fair, May 2009; “A Guide to the Bohemian Grove,” by Julian Sancton, Vanity Fair, April 2009. “A Relative Advantage: Sociology of the San Francisco Bohemian Club,” by Peter Martin Phillips, dissertation, University of California, Davis, 1994. Additional information on uranium procurement, Edgar Sengier, and the Union Minière du Haut Katanga mining holdings from Road to Trinity, previously cited, and Groueff (previously cited). Road to Trinity by Nichols (previously cited) and Now it Can Be Told. Reference to “fruit that scalds” from Tom Zoellner’s Uranium: War, Energy, and the Rock that Shaped the World (New York: Penguin Books, 2009). McKellar anecdote from author interviews, also Remembering the Manhattan Project: Perspectives on the Making of the Atomic Bomb and its Legacy, edited by Cynthia C. Kelly (Hackensack: World Scientific Publishing, 2004), citing William Frist and J. Lee Annis Jr.’s Tennessee Senators, 1911—2001: Portraits of Leadership in a Century of Change (Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1999).
Author note: Senator McKellar’s story is one of the most popular associated with the site of Oak Ridge and is repeated to this day in articles and by word of mouth. Author personally feels it has been “enhanced” by time, considering that the initial estimated cost of the Manhattan Project in 1942 was not yet near $2 billion. Note: General Leslie Groves officially acquired the Tennessee site on September 19, 1942, still considered Oak Ridge’s “birthday.” Then-colonel Kenneth Nichols was not yet District Engineer at this meeting, but would become so in August of 1943. Information regarding early days of MED from Groves, Nichols, and Atomic Energy for Military Purposes (The Smyth Report): The Official Report on the Development of the Atomic Bomb Under the Auspices of the United States Government, by H. D. Smyth (York, PA: Maple Press, 1945).
2. Peaches and Pearls: The Taking of Site X, Fall 1942
I first met Toni Schmitt at the VJ Day celebration at the Oak Ridge Historical Preservation Association in August of 2010. She had an incredible energy, dazzling smile, and incredibly detailed memories. I first interviewed her on September 14, 2010, but unfortunately, she died while I was still working on this book. I had the pleasure of meeting her daughter, Kathy Schmitt Gomez, who shared some of her mother’s additional documents and memories with me. These included a letter written by Toni’s younger sister Joyce—“Dopey”—who wrote about the peach sales of their youth.
Description of Clinton from author visits and interviews. “Everything’s goin’ in and nothin’s comin’ out . . .” from multiple author interviews. Information about fish gigs from author visits to the Museum of Appalachia, Clinton, TN. Market Street, Clinton, and its role in the pearling industry from author visits to the site and interviews; also author visits to the Museum of Appalachia (previously cited), the historical marker erected by the State of Tennessee, Market Street, Clinton, TN. Information on the history of the Clinch River pearls and the effect of Norris Dam on those pearls also from Natural Histories: Stories from the Tennessee Valley, by Stephen Lyn Bales (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2007).
Description of and information pertaining to Manhattan Engineer District’s (MED) original scouting of sites in East Tennessee from Nichols’s essay “My Work In Oak Ridge,” from Voices (previously cited); original document “Second Visit to T.V.A. Looking for Available War Plant Sites,” July 13, 1942, Formerly Declassified Correspondence, 1942–1947; Records of the Atomic Energy Commission, Record Group 326; the National Archives at Atlanta; The National Archives and Records Administration; A City is Born: The History of Oak Ridge Tennessee, by Fred W. Ford and Fred C. Peitzch (Oak Ridge: Atomic Energy Commission, Oak Ridge Operations, 1961); Vincent C. Jones’s Manhattan: The Army and the Atomic Bomb (Washington: Department of the Army, December 31, 1985).
Descriptions of eminent-domain seizures, including notifications, appraisals, displaced families, parcels, payments, and site clearing from Road to Trinity, Now It Can Be Told, and A City is Born (all previously cited); “A Nuclear Family: I’ve Seen It” (Y-12 Video Services, Y-12 National Security Complex, 2012); Peter Bacon Hales’s Atomic Spaces: Living on the Manhattan Project (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997); Charles W. Johnson and Charles O. Jackson’s City Behind a Fence: Oak Ridge, Tennessee 1942–1946 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1981); Nichols descriptions of the Norris Dam and Tennessee Valley Authority from the Tennessee Valley Authority, www.tva.gov; relocation of families due to the dam from all of the above and Tennessee’s Dixie Highway: The Cline Postcards, by Lisa R. Ramsay and Tammy L. Vaughn (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2011).
Parlee Raby letter from document collection at the Y-12 National Security Complex New Hope Center History Center Exhibits, Oak Ridge, TN; stories of Van Gilder and John Rice Irwin from Voices (previously cited); John Rice Irwin’s “Oak Ridge Displacement” (NARA, College Park: Archive Booklet 62, no date listed). Reference to children being sent home from school to tell their parents they had to move from author interviews and anecdote of Lester Fox shared by Ray Smith. Fox was skipping school when he was called into the Oliver Springs telephone bank and told to get the principal for an important call, which reportedly came from a senator. The principal returned and gathered all students together and told them to go home and tell their families they had to move. The government needed their land.
Stories of John Hendrix, “the Prophet,” from The Oak Ridge Story: The Saga of a People Who Share in History, by George O. Robinson Jr. (Kingsport, TN: Southern Publishers, 1950); “John Hendrix and the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee,” by David Ray Smith, www.SmithDRay.net; Back of Oak Ridge, by Grace Raby Crawford, edited by David Ray Smith (Oak Ridge, TN: 2003).
Author’s note: One of the spared structures, a stone house built just months prior to the land acquisition by an Owen Hackworth, is currently on the National Register of Historic Places stating that it served as housing for General Groves prior to the completion of the administration building and Guest House. Information on the Luther Brannon House from “History and Architectural Resources of Oak Ridge, Tennessee” (previously cited); “Brannon, Luther, House,” from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service, US Department of the Interior. However, additional references to Groves having used this structure for lodging have not yet been found.
Information on peaches and their role in the region from author interviews with Toni Schmitt, personal papers of Kathy Schmitt Gomez, and “The Wheat Community,” by Patricia A. Hope, in Voices (previously cited).
Rosie the Riveter and Geraldine (Hoff) Doyle information from “Geraldine Doyle, 86, dies; one-time factory worker inspired Rosie the Riveter and ‘We Can Do it!’ Poster,” by T. Rees Shapiro, Washington Post, December 29, 2010; Saturday Evening Post (cover image May 29, 1943); Norman Rockwell: My Adventures as an Illustrator by Norman Rockwell and Thomas Rockwell (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1960). Information about James Edward “Ed” Westcott from author interviews and from Through the Lens of Ed Westcott: A Photographic History of World War II’s Secret City, edited by Sam Yates (Knoxville: University of Tennessee, 2005).
Tubealloy: Ida and the Atom, 1934
“Ida Noddack: Proposer of Nuclear Fission,” by Fathi Habashi, from A Devotion to Their Science: Pioneer Women of Radioactivity, by Marelene F. Rayner-Ca
nham and Geoffrey Rayner-Canham (Quebec, Canada: McGill-Queens University Press; Philadelphia: Chemical Heritage Foundation, 1997); “Ida Noddack and the Missing Elements,” by Fathi Habashi, Education in Chemistry, March 2009; “The Discovery of Nuclear Fission,” by Emilio Segrè, Physics Today, vol. 42, July 1989. “Enrico Fermi—Biography,” Nobelprize.org, June 10, 2012; “Possible Production of Elements of Atomic Number Higher than 92,” by Prof. E. Fermi, Nature, pp. 898–899, June 16, 1934; “Über Das Element 93 (On Element 93),” by Ida Noddack, Zeitschrift für Angewandte Chemie, vol. 47, September 1934, p. 653.
3. Through the Gates: Clinton Engineer Works, Fall 1943
Interviews conducted with Kattie Strickland, Celia Klemski (previously cited), Toni Schmitt (previously cited), and Jane Puckett. Additional documentation (badges, invitations of work, telegrams) courtesy of the private papers of Celia Klemski and Jane Puckett. Repurposing of fencing from old farms from Atomic Spaces (previously cited).
I first met Kattie after interviewing her granddaughter Valeria Steele Roberson. Kattie is lively and friendly and very patient with repeated questions about what must have been a trying time in her life.
Jane Puckett is a force of nature, and still friends with Virginia Coleman and Rosemarie Waggener, another interviewee who is not featured in this book.
Author note: Many interviewees had tales of hacking and coughing dust. This particular anecdote about the “Oak Ridge croup” and orientation films comes from interviewee Joanne Gailar, and from her essay “Impressions of Early Oak Ridge,” in These Are Our Voices (previously cited).
All Oak Ridge Journal clips as cited within text.
The constant shuffling and dividing of dorm rooms and the need for space comes from author interviews, notably with Celia Klemski and Colleen Black, Road to Trinity, City is Born, City Behind a Fence, and Atomic Spaces (all previously cited).
The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II Page 36