The Girls of Atomic City

On July 16, Joan Hinton, a grad student working at Site Y travels up to a ridge with her friend ready to watch a secret test. Nearby, Elizabeth Graves (who is seven months pregnant) and her husband Al are in Miller’s Tourist Court and “their instruments [are] laid out on the bed” (234) in anticipation of the test. At the test site—a remote 432-square mile military locale—the Test Gadget is “suspended from a tower 100 feet high” (235), awaiting detonation. Observation camps 10,000 yards away hold teams of officials and scientists, all instructed to “[l]ie down, feet toward the blast, head away, and cover your eyes” (236). At 5:10 in the morning, the countdown begins.

Around 25 miles away, Joan feels the heat first and then sees what looks like “a sea of light” that is “gradually sucked into an awful purple glow that [goes] up and up into a mushroom cloud” (237). The cabin at Miller’s Tourist Court shakes but the Geiger counter does not begin registering changes until 3 p.m. when a “wave of radiation—a swath approximately 100 by 30 miles” (237) reaches their location. The public is given a cover story about a magazine of pyrotechnics exploding, but the Test Gadget had been detonated, “annihilat[ing] the steel tower and carv[ing] a crater six feet deep and 1,200 feet in diameter” (237). Men standing 10,000 yards away are knocked down by the blast which, at its center, is four times as hot as the center of the sun. The explosion is audible 40 miles away and “visible for more than 200 miles” (238).

Truman is at a two-week meeting with Churchill and Stalin in Potsdam near Berlin. He decides to tell Churchill about the test first and wait for the right moment to tell Stalin. Stalin informs them of “a telegram from the Japanese emperor ‘asking for peace’” but Truman is focused on “Japan’s unconditional surrender” (239). Back in America, scientists have written a letter begging Truman to use the Gadget only if “the terms which will be imposed upon Japan have been made public in detail and Japan, knowing these terms, has refused to surrender” (241). The scientists write that “a nation which sets the precedent for using these newly liberated forces of nature for purposes of destruction may have to bear the responsibility for opening the door to an era of devastation on an unimaginable scale” (241-242). The letter is signed by 70 scientists, but when it is delivered to the Secretary’s office, it is “filed away and never delivered to the president” (246).

Truman gives “the go-ahead to issue orders that the Gadget be used as soon after August 3 as would be possible,” although he gives instructions that civilians should not be targeted. In his diary, he writes that the bomb “seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful” (244). Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, also seems conflicted, telling the Secretary that he hopes “we [will] never have to use such a thing against an enemy,” revealing three years later that he “dislike seeing the United States take the lead in introducing into war something as horrible and destructive as this new weapon was described to me” (246). Britain and China join America in calling for Japan to surrender or face “prompt and utter destruction” (245).

Back at CEW in early August 1945, a nurse enters HP-12’s room to discover that Ebb Cade is missing. Virginia is getting ready for a vacation to Washington, D.C. However, in the lead up to her departure, some colleagues tell her that she should consider rethinking her trip since it seems that something major is about to happen. 

As soon as she hears the news, Toni wants to call Chuck at work, suddenly aware that “everything will change now” (249). When Chuck finally answers, she says, “Chuck! Chuck! Did you hear me? It’s a BOMB!!!” but “Chuck [hangs] up without saying a word” (249). Elsewhere, Rosemary is called into a meeting in Dr. Rea’s office to listen to “a very important public announcement from the President of the United States” (250). The radio is turned on and the President announces that the U.S. has dropped “one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base” and that the bomb “had more power than 20,000 tons of T.N.T” (250). Nicknamed Little Boy, the bomb was dropped from the Enola Gay at 9:15am.

It is estimated that nearly 70,000 people were killed instantly (which is nearly the about of Oak Ridge), but that number will later be revised to 140,000 dead.

Back at CEW, Jane is distracted from her work, looking out see an ecstatic crowd In Dr. Rea’s office, Rosemary hears the President mention Oak Ridge and realizes that CEW is connected to the bomb. As overwhelming as the announcement is, “that single mention of ‘Oak Ridge’ [causes] perhaps the greatest shock of all” (257). Oak Ridgers find themselves trying to process the fact that they all had a role in the event and to figure out what exactly it was. The knowledge that they have “been helping create the atomic bomb’s fuel source [is] too abstruse for many to comprehend” (261). However, they do now have “something to pin their efforts and their work on,” recognizing that “they had played a part in what appeared to be a key turning point in the war, one that might end it for good” (261). Celebration lasts into the night.

However, some of those who had been key to the theoretical development of the bomb are less overjoyed. Lise Meitner makes it clear to a reporter that she has “never worked on any atomic bomb” (262) while Otto Hahn, a German scientist detained in England, feels “personally responsible” and drinks “heavily” while his fellows are “reluctant to believe word of the bombing” (263). Back in the states, Virginia learns about the event while on her vacation, and suddenly her colleagues’ cryptic comments make more sense to her. Other things also begin to click into place such as “the absence of articles from the scientific journals, her work in the lab, [and] the percentages her hike with her physicist beau who theorized that they were building some sort of bomb” (267). 

News of the bomb has Americans wondering if the war will soon be over, and the people of CEW also think about the future of Oak Ridge. The fates of the workers, the houses, the trailers, and other infrastructure remains unclear. When Virginia returns from vacation, however, she finds that “work [has] not stopped” and “completely transparent discussions still [aren’t] happening, even after the big reveal” (270). Despite this, with the bomb now public knowledge, workers can at least discuss matters to some degree with their families. Jane receives a letter from her sister detailing how frightening it is to think of her working with something so powerful and hoping that after Hiroshima nuclear power “is never used again for destruction” (272).

This is not to be, however. On August 9, another bomb, nicknamed Fat Man, is dropped on Nagasaki, killing approximately another 40,000 people. A third bomb is ready, but Japan surrenders on August 14 before it can be dropped. With the news of Japan’s surrender, Oak Ridge is “in a particular state of exuberance. Relief and pride [mix] with shock and pensive consideration at the news of a second bombing” (272). For some workers, “knowing they had been a part of helping end the war [is] enough” (273). For others, especially young men who had been accused of not doing their duty, finally being able to tell people what they know is a great relief. For still others, “knowing [is] too much” and “one young K-25 worker [leaves] the singing and celebrating and retire[s] to her dorm room” where she “think[s] about the small role she had played in the bombings, and crie[s]” (273). For Rosemary, too, the bombings are difficult to comprehend since “anybody who had been working in Oak Ridge and had contributed to the development of something so tragic, so devastating, had to ask themselves the question whether it was the right thing to do” (278). Shortly after, she takes a new job on another part of the site, as a nurse in a department dealing with the effects of radiation. 

Stafford Warren, head of the Project’s medical section, visits Japan to see the damage. He writes that “it stunk terribly, and there were flies everywhere” (288) and reports on the high levels of deaths both from the initial blast and the slower degradation from nuclear fallout that remained deadly weeks later. Japanese and Western journalists investigate the devastation and find themselves heavily censored by their governments. As a result, the international public is “slow to learn of the longer-lasting consequences” of the bombs (291). Many scientists feel that technology related to the bomb should not be kept secret, but President Truman disagrees. Meanwhile, tests are conducted on Ebb Cade’s teeth as well as on samples taken from 17 other people injected with plutonium between 1945 and 1947.

Following the end of the war, “the ebullient mood of victory [becomes] tempered by the emerging reality that international relations [will] never be the same and neither will Oak Ridge” (294). K-25 continues to manufacture weapons-grade uranium until 1964. Despite this, employment at CEW drops by 28,737 and its population in 1946 is only 42,465, far less than its peak of nearly 75,000 the previous year. More changes are afoot as Oak Ridge continues experiencing growing pains. On March 19, 1949, it becomes possible to enter Oak Ridge without inspections, badges, or security checks. This is met with mixed feelings, as “security checks that had once seemed a nuisance [have] for many become a comfort” and “many residents [have] grown to like the idea that anyone who did not belong in Oak Ridge was not permitted to enter” (296). The 1955 Atomic Energy Community Act allows for private ownership of houses and the self-governing of the town and “the pioneer spirit that had carried residents through the war now [has] to evolve into an entrepreneurial one” when in 1960, Oak Ridge becomes “a fully independent, ‘normal’ town” (297).

The dawn of the “Atomic Age” means that the promise of nuclear power clashes with the growing threat of nuclear warfare. In 1949, the Soviet Union detonates its first nuclear bomb. In 1961, it detonates “the largest nuclear weapon in history […] a 58-megaton explosion 4,000 times as powerful as the bomb that leveled Hiroshima” (299).

Cold War tensions are on the rise and attitudes towards Oak Ridge and its contribution to the war effort are changing. Like many others, Dot struggled to process the “strange mix of feelings” she experienced soon after the dropping of the bomb and the way she could “feel both good and bad about something at the same time, pride and guild and joy and relief and shame” (287). Years later, volunteering at Oak Ridge’s science museum, she faces far more critical responses to her work, as when a woman asks her “Aren’t you ashamed you helped build a bomb that killed all those people?” (305).

She still has “conflicting feelings” including “sadness at the loss of life” and memories of how “they had all been so happy, so thrilled, when the war had ended” (305). She feels and remembers “Relief. Fear. Joy. Sadness” but “how [can] she explain this to someone who had no experience with the Project, someone who hadn’t lived through the war, let alone lived in Oak Ridge?” (305). In the end, she realizes that the woman wants “a simple answer” so she responds “Well […] they killed my brother” (305).