The Manhattan Project

by Cynthia C. Kelly

  Generally, black workers were unskilled and performed such jobs as common laborers, janitors, and domestic workers. Very few Negroes were hired for skilled labor or technical jobs. But while they did not have the best or most challenging jobs, their contribution to the success of the project was important. Blacks shared with whites an eager desire to help the war effort, and at one point some gave volunteer hours in their jobs. But still, after their day’s work, they returned to their segregated and deficient hutments.

  Because the federal government allowed segregation to exist in Oak Ridge, it became an accepted lifestyle. Local officials in those days stated government policy as one that conformed “with the laws and social customs of the states and communities in which federal installations are located.” Thus blacks and whites lived in almost totally different worlds except when they were working, however vaguely, toward the completion of the war project.

  For the black person in Oak Ridge, segregation was total. Blacks lived day in and out under oppressive conditions. They utilized separate facilities such as cafeterias, recreational facilities, bathrooms, drinking fountains, and change houses. They had to ride in the back of buses and suffer other indignities like being served food at the bus station through a pigeon hole. One facility that many blacks appreciated, though, was the washhouse with washing machines. One early resident said, “We were still using scrub boards back home.”

  In early Oak Ridge, black married couples were not allowed to live together. As one person recalled, “We were told before we came that there would be no housing for me and my mate.” Though black men and women lived in the same general area, they were separated by a fence five-feet high with barbed wire across the top. The women lived inside this area which was referred to as the “pen.” There were guards on duty at the entrance to make sure the women were inside by a curfew time of ten o’clock each night. This was considered a form of protection for the women.

  Housing for men and women was in frame buildings, called hutments, measuring fourteen by fourteen feet. These were primitive dwellings with dirt floor, coal stove, no glass windows, and a single door. There were no bathrooms in these hutments, and each of the four residents living within the unpartitioned room had to use facilities provided in central bathing houses. In this type of housing, provided for blacks and some white men, conditions were worse than anywhere else on the reservation. Not only was it oppressively hot in summer and cold in winter, with little privacy for the occupants, but violence sometimes marked the area. Yet blacks had to live in the hutments until 1950, while white construction workers were moved to better homes by 1945.

  U.S. Department of Energy

  Housing for African American workers in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was segregated and often six people shared a hutment measuring approximately 250 square feet.

  “All-black crews with white foremen”

  In this selection, historian Robert Bauman discusses the segregated conditions that African Americans experienced at Hanford Engineer Works and in the surrounding communities of Pasco, Richland, and Kennewick, Washington.

  From “Jim Crow in the Tri-Cities, 1943–1950”

  BY ROBERT BAUMAN

  About 15,000 blacks arrived in the Tri-Cities in 1943–45 as the result of a recruiting drive by the DuPont Corporation, the primary contractor for the Hanford Engineer Works at Richland. DuPont had been directed by the Manhattan Engineer District (MED), the organization within the Army Corps of Engineers responsible for building uranium and plutonium plants, to construct the Hanford Engineer Works as quickly as possible. In order to do that, DuPont aggressively recruited white and black laborers from the South. DuPont’s managers believed jobs at Hanford would appeal most to Southern laborers, who received lower wages than workers in other parts of the country. These laborers would build the facilities in which the plutonium used in the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, was produced.

  Kennewick, Pasco, and Richland were primarily farming communities at the time of the influx, located near the confluence of the Columbia, Snake, and Yakima rivers in southeastern Washington. Before the war, racial discrimination had not been particularly acute in the Tri-Cities, in part because the black population was small. Most of the African Americans living in the area before the war were single men working for the Northern Pacific Railroad. The black population included only a few families. The African American population of Pasco, where most blacks lived, rose from 27 in 1940 to just under 1,000 in 1950. These numbers do not include the thousands of blacks who migrated to the Tri-Cities during World War II but left after the war.

  Unlike in major cities such as Seattle and Portland, few other racial minorities were present in the Tri-Cities when African Americans began arriving en masse. Approximately 150 Asian Americans lived in the area before the war, but some of those who were of Japanese descent had been moved to internment camps by 1943–44. Some Mexican braceros provided agricultural labor during World War II, and a small number of Mexican Americans were hired in early 1944 to work at Hanford. But Mexican Americans did not begin arriving in large numbers until the late 1950s. Because the Tri-Cities, unlike other areas of the American West, had a relatively small population of other minorities, blacks bore the brunt of white racism.

  Blacks and whites arrived in the Tri-Cities with differing expectations about race relations. Blacks believed that moving north would improve their social status as well as their income. Whites came north expecting that blacks would be treated as they were in the South. The Manhattan Engineer District ensured that blacks never constituted more than 10 to 20 percent of the employees at Hanford. MED officials deemed that number enough to mollify the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) but not enough to scare away white Southern laborers. Despite the need for workers, and the difficulty in finding them, the MED refused to exceed its own quota of blacks. Out of approximately 50,000 workers at Hanford in July 1944, just over 5,000 (4,100 men and 962 women), or roughly 10 percent, were African American.

  The MED, DuPont, and local government officials saw the hiring of black laborers as a temporary expedient. Colonel Franklin T. Matthias, Hanford’s commanding officer during the war, noted in his diary that the Washington governor Arthur B. Langlie, whose record on race was otherwise one of moderation, asked for his assurance that most construction workers would be returned whence they came after the war, “particularly the Negroes.” In addition, the city of Pasco reached an agreement with DuPont officials that the company would pay to transport blacks back to the South after their work was completed.

  Pasco officials also demanded that black and white Hanford employees who lived in Pasco be transported to work on separate buses. African American workers fought back. In November 1943, they complained about the segregated busing to the Spokane branch of the NAACP. The branch president, the Reverend Emmett B. Reed, voiced his concern to state officials, including the governor and the director of public services, as well as to officers of the regional and national NAACP, about what he described as “an attempt on the part of certain elements to impose upon our State… Jim Crowism.” Members of the Seattle NAACP’s Legal Redress Committee met with Governor Langlie in an unsuccessful attempt to convince him to force Pasco and DuPont to stop segregated busing. Thurgood Marshall, special counsel at the NAACP headquarters in New York, recognizing the national implications of challenging the Jim Crowism of federal defense contractors, wrote state and federal officials demanding an end to segregated buses. Four months later, DuPont stopped the practice. This was one instance in which pressure from individuals and civil rights organizations brought about change in the Tri-Cities.

  The NAACP’s pursuit of racial equality at Hanford did not end with the termination of segregated busing. At the end of May 1944, E. R. Dudley, NAACP assistant and special counsel, arrived in Pasco from New York to investigate continued charges of racial discrimination at Hanford. Dudley noted that though the practice of segregated busing has been “cleaned up,” there was still extensi
ve discrimination at Hanford. For instance, he found that the overwhelming majority of blacks at Hanford worked in construction or menial jobs. And though DuPont had recruited many black women with promises of clerical jobs, it employed them almost exclusively as maids, waitresses, and cooks. Dudley challenged DuPont to explain why blacks were always reclassified from one menial job to another but never promoted to white-collar jobs. Officials “evaded” his question.

  Labor was strictly segregated at Hanford, which is not surprising given the racial assumptions of white working-class culture at the time. Most of the black laborers at Hanford worked on all-black crews with white foremen, pouring 784,000 yards of concrete to help build the nation’s first production-scale nuclear reactors. Many of these white foremen had been transferred by DuPont from the South, and they brought their prejudices and Jim Crow ideas with them.

  Mexican Americans also experienced discrimination and segregation at Hanford. Because of the ongoing labor shortage, in August 1943 the War Manpower Commission urged DuPont to recruit Mexican Americans to work at Hanford. Colonel Matthias recorded in his diary that he told the commission that the use of Mexican American laborers would “require a third segregation of camp facilities, inasmuch as the Mexicans will not live with the Negroes and the Whites will not live with the Mexicans.” Matthias and DuPont eventually gave into pressure from the War Manpower Commission in early 1944 and hired about 100 Mexican American laborers, mostly from El Paso and Brownsville, Texas. DuPont provided segregated housing for those workers in Pasco.

  Many of the Jim Crow codes that governed society in the South were also in place at Hanford, in part to please white southerners. Blacks were strictly forbidden from eating with whites. Of Hanford’s nine mess halls, eight were for whites and one was for blacks. Commissary number two was the black commissary; numbers one, three, and four were for whites. One of the black barracks had a pool parlor and soda fountain so that black workers could relax and socialize away from whites. Most social activities at Hanford were segregated. For instance, Hanford officials planned separate Christmas events for each night of the month of December 1944 for blacks and whites.

  During his investigation, the NAACP’s E. R. Dudley found housing at Hanford strictly segregated. The extensive rows of barracks at the site were segregated by gender and race. In 1943, Hanford had 110 barracks for white men, 21 for black men, 57 for white women, and 7 for black women. Later in the war, Hanford created a separate black trailer camp on-site. Interestingly, the toilets at this site were not segregated. This angered some white workers, who occasionally placed Whites Only signs on them. On at least one occasion, some black workers “overturned one of the buildings, along with its white occupant, who was not physically injured, but was, of course, morally disorganized.” The battle over toilets at Hanford reflected the larger conflict over racial segregation in the workplace.

  Those African Americans who sought housing off-site also faced a segregated and, at times, hostile environment. Housing in the government town of Richland was for permanent workers, such as those employed in production. Because blacks were hired only as construction workers, which were temporary positions, they were excluded from housing in the town. Housing in Kennewick was off-limits to blacks because of racially restrictive covenants. In fact, the city was hostile to the mere presence of African Americans. Kennewick police arrested one black Hanford worker for riding in a car with two white men. They then tied him to a power pole until police from Pasco, where the man lived, came for him. Apparently, Kennewick officials did not want blacks in their jail either.

  Pasco was the only one of the three cities that allowed black residents. However, because of racially restrictive covenants, blacks could reside east of the railroad tracks only. In the words of one longtime African American resident of Pasco, “They didn’t want no colored on the west side of the railroad track in 1944.” The city did not provide water or regular garbage service to the east side. DuPont arranged for one barrack and one bunkhouse for “colored personnel” in Pasco, but many African Americans were forced into makeshift residences, including trailers, shacks, tents, and chicken houses.

  Dudley also found that Pasco businesses discriminated against blacks, reporting that there seemed “to have been concerted action on the part of all business to deprive the Negroes of café service, bar and grill service and most stores refused them the privilege of trying on” clothes while shopping. Dudley estimated that 80 percent of restaurants, soda fountains, and lunch counters in Pasco refused to serve blacks. He experienced this discrimination firsthand when the owner of Austin’s Grill in Pasco told him that his restaurant “did not serve colored people.” Blacks also had difficulty obtaining medical services in Pasco. One African American resident complained, “You couldn’t get a doctor to attend to a colored person in Pasco.”

  Blacks in Pasco faced discrimination from law enforcement as well. The Pasco Police Department invented a new crime called “investigation,” which allowed police to arrest blacks without charging them with a more specific infraction. Roughly 25 percent of all arrests of blacks in the 1940s in Pasco were for investigation. Clearly, the Pasco Police Department, like many others across the country, targeted African Americans. What makes Pasco’s policy unusual was how quickly it was constructed in a community that had virtually no pre-World War II black population.

  U.S. Department of Energy

  Manhattan Project work was scattered across the United States at both government and industrial sites.

  Manhattan Project Sites in Manhattan

  For the most part, the Manhattan Project was not physically located in New York City but scattered across the country. However, as Robert S. Norris explains, several sites in Manhattan were involved in the project.

  BY ROBERT S. NORRIS

  The first code name proposed for the secret program to build an atomic bomb was Development of Substitute Materials (DSM). When Colonel Leslie R. Groves learned of it he thought it would only arouse curiosity and he suggested Manhattan Engineer District (MED) following the custom of naming Corps of Engineer districts for the city in which they are located. When Groves was selected to head the project on September 17, 1942, Washington became headquarters but the MED offices in New York played significant roles in building the bomb.

  General Groves visited New York City approximately 50 times during the three-year period between September 1942 and August 1945. Sometimes he was passing through to somewhere else but more often it was a day-trip leaving DC in the morning and returning in the evening, taking the train from Washington’s Union Station and arriving at Penn Station in Manhattan. From there he might have appointments with his Corps of Engineer subordinates, corporate officials who were designing or operating his atomic factories, or scientists and engineers who provided expert advice.

  1. First Headquarters of the Manhattan Engineer District—270 Broadway, 18th Floor, at the time HQ of the North Atlantic Division of the Army Corps of Engineers. For the period from mid-June to mid-September 1942 this was headquarters of what would become known as the Manhattan Project. 270 Broadway was formerly the Arthur Levitt State Office Building and is now a mixed-use building of offices, rental apartments and condos. Stone & Webster, a Boston construction firm that built the Y-12 plant in Oak Ridge, also had offices there. MED HQ was moved to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in August 1943.

  2. Madison Square Area Engineers Office—261 Fifth Avenue at 29th Street (SE corner), 22nd Floor. Its purpose was to procure the necessary vital materials: uranium, graphite, beryllium, etc. Approximately 300 people worked in the office. Lt. Col. John R. Ruhoff was in charge, then Maj. Wilbur E. Kelly, who took over in September 1944.

  3. Baker and Williams Warehouses—Three buildings at 513–519 West 20th Street, 521–527 West 20th Street, and 529–535 West 20th Street at Tenth Avenue and the West Side Highway. Housed processed uranium from Canada brought to the nearby Hudson River docks.

  4. Union Carbide and Carbon Corporation building—30 E
ast 42nd Street. The building on the southwest corner of Madison and 42nd is no longer there and has been replaced by a new office building. On the 18th floor of the original building was the Murray Hill Area Engineers Office and the Union Mines Development Corporation, the latter a Union Carbide subsidiary set up to purchase domestic ores. Union Carbide operated the K-25 Plant at Oak Ridge. Murray Hill oversaw the ore procurement.

  5. Edgar Sengier’s office—25 Broadway (Cunard Building). Sengier was director of the Belgian firm, Union Minière du Haut Katanga. While exiled in the U.S., he directed African Metals. In September–October 1940, with fears of the Nazi occupation of Belgium, Sengier transferred almost 1,250 tons of high-grade uranium ore (in 2006 drums), from the Shinkolobwe mine in the Congo to the Archer Daniels Midland Warehouses in Staten Island. One of Groves’ first acts as head was to buy the ore on September 18, 1942. Later Sengier would assist Groves in his attempt to corner the world’s uranium through the Combined Development Trust.

  6. Columbia University—Pupin Hall and Schermerhorn Hall. Early fission research was conducted there with graphite piles by Enrico Fermi and others. Harold Urey and his associates worked on gaseous diffusion research at what was known as the Substitute Alloy Materials (SAM) laboratory.

  7. Kellex Corporation Headquarters—233 Broadway, the 60-story Woolworth Building, Offices on the 11th, 12th and 14th Floors. The 792-foot-tall building by Cass Gilbert was finished in 1913 and for 16 years was the tallest habitable structure in the world. Kellex was a separate entity of the M.W. Kellogg Company. Kellex designed the K-25 gaseous diffusion plant at Oak Ridge under Percival “Dobie” Keith and the J.A. Jones construction firm built it. Kellex was co-located with the New York Area Engineers Office that oversaw the contract. British Mission scientists worked there, including Soviet spy Klaus Fuchs before he went to Los Alamos.