Sabotage in the Secret City
Page 24
‘But, Libby, this is the south.’
‘The south is out there,’ I said waving a hand in the air. ‘This is federal property. They are citizens of the United States – just as we are – citizens who made sacrifices to win the war. We need to show them the respect they deserve as fellow human beings.’
‘But they still segregate the military. How can you possibly think your efforts will succeed?’
‘We’re not going for integration – not yet. But we do think we can change their deplorable, un-American living conditions. And even if that is a quixotic goal, we have to try.’
‘What can I do to help?’
‘First of all, you can sign the petition I’m bringing to the next Walking Molecules meeting. We will present it to the administration and the military the moment that the war is over. We will be demanding immediate action.’
‘You can count on me, Libby. You can always count on me. And if you want to stay here and work – I want to do the same. No strings. No obligations. I’ll be here waiting for you to make a commitment or chase me away.’
AUTHOR’S NOTE
In May 1945, time was drawing nigh for the deployment of the uranium-based bomb. Unbeknownst to the scientists at Oak Ridge, their July 25th shipment of Uranium 235 arrived at its Pacific Island destination on July 27th. There, every available bit of the U-235 they had sent was incorporated into Little Boy. On August 6th, the Enola Gay, piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets, Jr., dropped that bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later, Fat Man, the first plutonium bomb, fell on Nagasaki. Those two were the only atomic bombs existing in the US arsenal at the time but Truman told the Japanese to ‘expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.’
The Japanese fell for his bluff. Emperor Hirohito ordered the war council to accept the terms of surrender laid out by the allies. They announced their intentions on August 15th. Representatives of the Empire of Japan formally signed the Instrument of Surrender on board the USS Missouri on September 2nd.
Although military experts believed that more than 100,000 American lives and several times that amount of Japanese lives would have been lost in a physical invasion and credited the use of the weapons for preventing those deaths, many scientists still agonized over their role in the creation of the bombs. Oppenheimer, director of the Los Alamos facility, condemned the sins of the physicists and said, ‘There is blood on my hands.’
Code named Fu-Go, the fire balloon was a real weapon launched by the Japanese during World War II. It was a hydrogen balloon that carried an anti-personnel bomb or incendiary devices designed to take advantage of the jet stream over the Pacific Ocean to drop bombs on American and Canadian cities and rural areas. This Japanese weapon was the very first with intercontinental range, albeit without any targeting ability. The sole purpose was to terrorize the populace of the two countries. Balloons were found floating off the coast of Los Angeles and landing in the states of Wyoming, Montana, Oregon, California, Kansas, Iowa, Washington, Idaho, South Dakota, Michigan and Nevada as well as the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Alberta, the Yukon and the Northwest Territories. One of the more menacing landings was near the Manhattan Project’s production facility at the Hanford Site, in Washington state, causing a short circuit in the power lines there.
Despite the widespread distribution of these weapons, the incident mentioned in this book was the first and only time a fire balloon caused any fatalities in the North American continent.
Because of the housing shortage caused by the population explosion at Oak Ridge, some white workers were also housed in the crude hutments, however, all of them were moved to more suitable structures by 1945. Much of the black population continued to reside in the segregated shacks until 1950, despite efforts by many wives of scientists. Nonetheless, when the Supreme Court decision in Brown versus the Board of Education was announced in 1954, Oak Ridge was the first community in the south to desegregate its junior high and high schools beginning in 1955. Segregation continued at the elementary schools for another decade.
Finally, I want to express my appreciation to my dependable support team: my excellent agent Jane Dystel; author and friend Betsy Ashton; and my first reader and biggest cheerleader, Wayne Fanning.