The Manhattan Project

by Cynthia C. Kelly

  8. Nash Garage Building—3310 Broadway at 133th Street. Pilot plant built by Columbia University to produce the barrier material for K-25. Formerly a Nash automobile dealership. Eventually the Kellex–Clarence Johnson design was used after abandoning the Norris-Adler design. Full-scale production of the barrier material took place at the Houdaille-Hershey plant in Decatur, Illinois.

  9. J. Robert Oppenheimer—grew up in an apartment at 155 Riverside Drive (88th Street) and attended school at the Ethical Culture School, 35 Central Park West.

  10. The New York Buddhist Church—331–332 Riverside Drive (between 105–106th streets). The historic statue of Shinran Shonin, founder of the Jodo Shinshu school of Buddhism, stands in front of the New York Buddhist Church. This statue of Shinran Shonin survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, in which 150,000 people died, and 90 percent of the buildings in the city collapsed or burned. It is now the focus of an annual peace gathering held on August 5th when a bell is tolled at 7:15 P.M., the moment in Japan when the bomb was dropped.

  Manhattan Project Sites in Washington, D.C.

  In addition to the White House and the Capitol, where major decisions about the bomb were made, there were many other places in Washington, D.C., where Manhattan Project activities occurred.

  BY ROBERT S. NORRIS

  1. General Groves’s Home and Office—The Groves family lived at 3508 36th Street NW in Cleveland Park from August 1939 until the spring of 1948. They had moved to the neighborhood to be near the National Cathedral School for Girls where daughter Gwen went to school. The General’s office was on the fifth floor (Rooms 5120 and 5121) of the New War Building at 21st and Virginia Streets in Foggy Bottom. The building was opened in June 1941. Today it is part of the State Department and the suite of offices are in the Bureau of Verification, Compliance, and Implementation. Later the General lived at 2101 Connecticut Avenue, died at Walter Reed Hospital, and is buried at Arlington Cemetary.

  2. Woodley, 3000 Cathedral Avenue NW—Woodley was the Washington home of Henry L. Stimson from 1929–1946. It is an historic home dating to the early nineteenth century and was the summer residence of President Grover Cleveland during his second term. As a young officer George Patton rented it in 1928. Stimson would occasionally come home from his office at the Pentagon for lunch and a nap. Today it is the Maret School.

  3. The Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1530 P Street NW—Vannevar Bush was president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and was in effect President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s (FDR’s) science adviser. In June 1940, FDR appointed Bush to head the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), a government organization to coordinate the nation’s scientific resources and weapon development. A year later the Office of Scientific Research and Development was established with the same purpose and Bush was made its director, absorbing the NDRC. Throughout 1941 Bush directed three reports—under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences—to assess the likelihood of whether atomic energy could be used for a bomb. The positive conclusions were strengthened by the British MAUD report causing Bush to drive the bomb project forward, get FDR’s approval and the Army eventually involved. Many meetings took place in Bush’s office.

  4. George Washington University—site of The Fifth Washington Conference on Theoretical Physics where, on January 26, 1939, Niels Bohr, recently arrived from Copenhagen, and Enrico Fermi reported to their colleagues the discovery of fission by Otto Hahn, Fritz Strassmann, Otto Frisch, and Lise Meitner. The conference took place at 2029 G Street NW. That building no longer exists but a plaque commemorating the historic meeting is outside Room 209 in the Hall of Government at 710 21st Street NW.

  5. Cosmos Club—During World War II the Cosmos Club was located in several buildings on the northeast corner of Lafayette Square one of which was once Dolley Madison’s house. Several discussions and decisions about the bomb occurred there among Club members. For example, on Saturday, December 6, 1941, the day before Pearl Harbor, over lunch Vannevar Bush discussed with James Conant and Arthur Compton his idea to ask General Marshall to assign an Army officer to oversee research and development of the bomb and to hide the expenditures in the Army Corps of Engineers’ massive budget.

  6. Pentagon—Prior to being selected to head the Manhattan Project Colonel Leslie R. Groves was in charge of all domestic Army construction. One of his many projects was building the Pentagon. Ground was broken on September 11, 1941, and the first occupants moved into the initial section on April 30, 1942. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall moved into their adjacent offices (3E880 and 3E994) in November 1942 and the entire building was completed by January 15, 1943. Many meetings concerning the Manhattan Project were held in its offices including the Interim Committee meetings in Stimson’s office and the Target Committee meetings in Gen. Lauris Norstad’s office.

  7. Department of Terrestrial Magnetism (DTM), Carnegie Institution of Washington—Located off Broad Branch in Northwest Washington, D.C., DTM’s original role was to chart the Earth’s magnetic field. When DTM’s physicists Richard B. Roberts and Merle Tuve heard the announcement of nuclear fission at the conference at the George Washington University on January 26, 1939, they immediately set off for DTM to reproduce the experiment. Using a Van de Graaff generator in the new Atomic Physics Observatory, they recreated the experiment which was witnessed by Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, and others two days later.

  8. Edward and Mici Teller’s House—In August 1935, Edward Teller with his wife, Mici, sailed from England to take a position working with George Gamow at the George Washington University. In Washington, they rented a house for six years at 2610 Garfield Street NW, near the Wardman Park Hotel. In his memoirs, Teller recalls a visit from Leo Szilard. His wife was reluctant to have Szilard stay at the house (he was a “demanding houseguest,” Teller writes) but she offered to host him nonetheless. Teller recounts: “When we got home, Mici took Szilard to our small guest room. He sat on the bed, bounced a few times, and said in an unusually cautious voice: ‘I have tried to sleep on this bed before. The mattress is quite hard. Is there a hotel nearby?’ Mici, with a bright smile, pointed out the window. ‘There is the Wardman Park Hotel in our backyard.’ Half a century later, Mici was still boasting about her tact on that occasion” (Edward Teller, Memoirs, p. 142).

  Monsanto’s Playhouse for Polonium

  Dayton, Ohio, was another site of secret Manhattan Project work. In July 1943, Oppenheimer assigned Charles A. Thomas the task of separating polonium for use as an initiator for the bombs. As Monsanto Chemical Company’s research director, Thomas not only convinced Monsanto to undertake the polonium work, he also persuaded his mother-in-law to let them use the family’s grand Runnymede Playhouse with its giant ballroom, indoor tennis courts, and other facilities. Stephane Groueff explains the role of polonium and the makeshift laboratory where it was first separated.

  From Manhattan Project: The Untold Story of the Making of the Atomic Bomb

  BY STEPHANE GROUEFF

  At the moment of implosion, neutrons were needed to ignite the plutonium reaction. Spontaneous fission was possible, but the chance of its occurring was too small to depend on. It was imperative to incorporate some neutron making device in the bomb, but it was equally imperative not to release the neutrons prematurely. Somehow, the weapon had to be assembled without neutrons, and then the neutrons had to appear suddenly, right at the microsecond of implosion. Not before, not later.

  “I’m sure I could make a device that would be triggered exactly when the gadget compresses,” said Dr. Charles Critchfield one day to Oppenheimer. Critchfield, a thirty-three-year-old physicist, had worked on anti-tank projectiles in Washington and knew guns and ballistics well.

  Oppenheimer was skeptical, as was [Robert F.] Bacher, the Gadget Division’s leader, but Critchfield was told to go ahead and try. The first one of the major scientists to become interested in Critchfield’s idea was Niels Bohr. He convinced Bacher and
Oppenheimer that Critchfield was on the right track. A top-level special committee was formed, including [Hans] Bethe, [Enrico] Fermi, Bacher and [George] Kistiakowsky, to supervise his work. The neutron source became one of the laboratory’s major projects.

  The device Critchfield and his group of about sixty people developed was as small as a nut, and its official name was “initiator.” But in laboratory jargon, they called it the “Urchin.” It was made of beryllium and polonium, two elements that produce neutrons when put in contact with each other. The device was placed between the two hemispheres. The idea was that the implosion waves would demolish the initiator and the beryllium would mix with the polonium, producing neutrons which would ignite the nuclear reaction. Polonium, discovered by Madame Curie, is a peculiar metal, soft as cream cheese, dangerous when inhaled and difficult to produce. Its properties were almost as unknown as those of plutonium and up to that time it had been made only in laboratory quantities. Charles A. Thomas, coordinator of the Manhattan Project’s chemical and metallurgical work on plutonium, was faced with the tough and urgent problem of producing polonium in large quantities. Wasting no time, Thomas, research director of Monsanto Chemical Company, set up a makeshift laboratory in the indoor tennis court of his mother-in-law, Mrs. Harold E. Talbott. Her big estate near Dayton, Ohio, seemed to offer ideal conditions for seclusion and secrecy, and the first quantities of polonium, used at Los Alamos for Fat Man’s initiator, were separated there in her tennis court.

  Mysteries at the Met Lab

  Isabella Karle describes some of the mysteries she encountered on her first job at the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago.

  From “My First Professional Assignment”

  BY ISABELLA KARLE

  In December of 1943, I celebrated my 22nd birthday. I also completed all requirements for a Ph.D. degree in physical chemistry at the University of Michigan, packed my few belongings and took the train to Chicago where I joined my husband (Jerome Karle). He had already been employed for several months on a mysterious project at the University of Chicago. I also received an offer of employment for the same project which I accepted—sight unseen by both employer and employee. There was no application for the job. There was no personal contact with me and no information about the nature of the job. When I asked my husband about what I might be doing, all he said was that I will be amazed.

  There was very little indoctrination or introduction to my new job. I was told that plutonium (Pu) was a new element—not to be found on the periodic table—and that Norman Davidson was in charge of a group of 6–7 people whose task it was to synthesize plutonium halides by vapor phase procedures. My specific task was to synthesize pure plutonium chloride. The starting material was crude plutonium dioxide in the form of greasy yellow flakes as it was delivered from Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The ultimate objective was to produce pure Pu metal, by another group.

  There were some unexpected events. I will describe one of them. This concerned the Coca-Cola machine. It was a style of machine that dropped a paper cup, which was then filled with carbonated water and Coca-Cola syrup. The man who came to service the machine at our lunch time forgot to bring his hose for filling the syrup reservoir. He walked into the neighboring laboratory where wet chemistry was being performed and borrowed a rubber hose from an aspirator, filled the reservoir with the syrup, returned the hose and left. Some time after lunch a technician was carrying an alpha counter and noticed that the meter went off the scale as he passed the Coke machine. By the next day, the Coke machine was replaced with one that dispensed bottles rather than liquids. We never did know how many, if any, employees drank the radioactive Coca-Cola.

  A Message from Town Management

  Yes, we know it’s muddy—you think prices are too high in the grocery store—coal has not been delivered—it takes six days to get your laundry—the grocer runs out of butter and milk—your laundry gets lost—workmen congregate in the grocery store—the Post Office is too small—there are not enough bowling alleys—your house leaks—everyone is not courteous—you had to move from your dorm—you can’t eat a late snack—it takes too long to get your passes—the water was cold—the beer ran out—the telephones are always busy—you can’t get all the meat you want.

  Yes, we know it—because you have told us, and we hope you will continue to tell us. That’s why we’re here.

  But what you want to know is—WHAT’S BEING DONE ABOUT IT?

  Well—roads WILL be paved—the grocer is obligated to not charge prices in excess of those in Knoxville and a constant check is maintained—coal WILL be delivered—sidewalks WILL be laid—a third shift will be started in the laundry as soon as we can get help—jobs are available there now.

  Calcium chloride is sprinkled to keep down the dust—your shirts will continue to come back without buttons—we would put them on if we had enough—a shoe repair shop WILL be opened soon—your dormitory WOULDN’T be noisy if everyone were as considerate as he would like his neighbor to be—were you ever ANYWHERE that you liked everyone?—things WEREN’T different back home—everything can’t be done at once because we need more help.

  We would have planned it differently too if we had thought of it in ’33.

  We are at war—Sherman was right.

  —TOWN MANAGER R. R. O’MEARA, THE OAK RIDGE JOURNAL, 1943

  Section Five

  Secrecy, Intelligence, and Counterintelligence

  Secrecy, Intelligence, and Counterintelligence

  The overriding concern of General Leslie R. Groves in managing the Manhattan Project was secrecy. Anyone who entered the grounds of the Los Alamos laboratory or one of the other “secret cities” had to have a purpose and a pass. At all the sites, signs and billboards admonished workers to protect the project’s secrets: “What you see here, what you do here, what you hear here, when you leave here, let it stay here!”

  As this section conveys, General Groves was the architect of an intelligence revolution that took security measures to unprecedented heights. Congressional leaders agreed to secret budget processes with no legislative oversight. Groves created separate organizations to carry out intelligence, counterintelligence, and surveillance programs both domestically and overseas. These operated outside of regular military channels, kept separate records, and reported directly to him.

  Knowledge was compartmentalized. Workers were told only what they needed to know and were forbidden to discuss their jobs with anyone other than designated supervisors. Scientists, used to the free exchange of ideas, rebelled against the compartmentalization. At Los Alamos, Oppenheimer insisted that weekly scientific colloquia and other exchanges were essential to solve difficult problems. But this openness among the top echelon of scientists at Los Alamos was an exception and was contained “inside the fence.” For everyone else, it was “Stick to your knitting!”

  As the only person knowledgeable about the entire project, Groves stood at the pinnacle of power. He controlled the project’s pace, priorities, and direction through his decisions. No one could travel from one site to another without the general’s permission.

  As comprehensive as these measures were, they were not always effective. At Los Alamos, security officials often overlooked lapses in the system. Some moments were comical, as Laura Fermi and Richard Feynman relate. One story tells of a picnic companion and well-respected scientist who turned out to be a primary conduit for classified information for the Soviets. In addition, several authors provide insight into the Soviet atomic bomb project and the enormous advantages it gained from espionage.

  Finally, this section recounts the story of the Alsos mission to determine the status of German atomic bomb research and development. With a team of civilian scientists and military forces, the Alsos mission went to Italy, France, and finally to Germany at the front edge of the liberating Allied armies to learn about German progress—or lack thereof—and seize the scientists and their resources before the Soviets arrived.

  Unprecedented Se
curity Measures

  In this excerpt, Robert S. Norris discusses General Leslie R. Groves’s obsessive concern to maintain secrecy during the Manhattan Project, captured succinctly in his eight major security objectives. In essence, Groves was a key architect of modern security policy, enforcing secrecy measures to protect against leaks not only to foreign governments but also to Congress and others in the executive branch.

  From Racing for the Bomb

  BY ROBERT S. NORRIS

  Leslie Groves knew how to keep a secret. Secretary of War Stimson said of him that he had never known a man who was so security conscious. His aide in charge of security, John Lansdale, called him obsessive. As a result, the Manhattan Project, under Groves’ direction, contributed to the “intelligence revolution” that occurred during World War II in important ways that have not hitherto been recognized or appreciated. Security practices and procedures that Groves helped develop were later adopted in the formative years of the Cold War, and persist to this day.

  The Manhattan Project’s relationship to Congress, with its secret budgets and lack of legislative oversight, make it in effect, the first large-scale “black” program, to use a more recent term. It was also one of the recruiting fields for a group of people who went on to careers in the Central Intelligence Agency, and other sectors of the intelligence community after the war. The Manhattan Project established new levels of security consciousness and awareness. It was unprecedented in exacting information control not only among military and civilian government employees but those at universities and private corporations as well. The Manhattan Project was a turning point, a watershed in national security policy that served as a model for the postwar system, and Leslie Groves was its key architect.