Girls of Atomic City by Denise Kiernan Mid-September/October Book Club Online

[JoanP]

The Book Club Online is  the oldest  book club on the Internet, begun in 1996, open to everyone.  We offer cordial discussions of one book a month,  24/7 and  enjoy the company of readers from all over the world.  Everyone is welcome to join in!

Discussion Begins September 15  
Everyone is welcome!

 

The Girls of Atomic City                            
by Denise Kiernan

Based on first-person interviews with women who served at Oak Ridge, several of them  now in their eighties and nineties, Denise Kiernan  tells the  true story of young women during World War II who worked in a secret city dedicated to making fuel for the first atomic bomb—only they didn’t know that. At the dawn of the atomic age, the community of Oak Ridge, Tenn., rose up around the secret work taking place there in support of the war effort.  At the heart of those efforts were thousands of women from across the country who did their part to help secure the United States while maintaining a public silence.  They all knew something big was happening at Oak Ridge, but few could piece together the true nature of their work until the bomb was dropped over Hiroshima, Japan, and the secret was out. The shocking revelation: the residents of Oak Ridge were enriching uranium for the atomic bomb.  They had NO idea!

DISCUSSION SCHEDULE:

September 15-21~ Introduction & Revelation, August 1945;
   Chapters 1, 2, 3  (62 pages)
September 22-28 ~ TUBEALLOY, 1938
   Chapters 4,5  (to pg.98)



 RELEVANT LINKS:
       An Interview with Denise Kiernan  about Atomic City girls, Part 2 Interview with Denise Kiernan,
Music  the girls would have listened to,
2013 Interview with Celia Klemski,

For Your Consideration
September 22-28

Tubealloy  ~ Lise and Fission, 1938 (pg 57)
1. Are you already familiar with these scientists?  Does the book change your feelings about them?
2. What happens when you split the nucleus of a uranium atom?  How can this lead to a bomb?

Chapter 4 ~ The Project's Welcome for New Employees
1. Could the delay in processing background checks have been deliberate?
2.In this chapter and the next, we meet the rest of our cast of characters, and see them beginning to cope with this strange setup.  Which ones do you relate to most, and why?

Tubealloy  ~ Leona and Success in Chicago. December, 1942
1. What was the significance of Fermi's successful experiment?
2. Was it justified to do this experiment in the middle of Chicago, when it might have blown up a big chunk of the place?  Why would they have made that decision?

Chapter 5 ~ Only Temporary ~ Spring Into Summer, 1944 (to pg.98}
1. The workers don't have any idea what they are doing, are living in awful conditions, and are asked by the government to take it on blind trust that they are helping to win the war.  Would people now accept that?
2. Are you surprised at how differently the black workers were treated?
3.How did people cope with the problems of living at Oak Ridge?  Could you have managed?  What crucial role did women have in shaping the character of the community?
 

DLs:  JoanP, Marcie,  PatH,
 

[PatH]

Attitudes toward women reminds me of some of Lise Meitner's problems.  She was only the second women to get a PhD at the University of Vienna, and she had a lot of trouble getting allowed to work in the lab.  The nervous men didn't like to have women around; one lame excuse was that of safety--"their hair might catch fire."  For perspective, here's a respected senior male chemist of the time:

http://www.famousscientists.org/dmitri-mendeleev/

[bellamarie]

Jean, you have every right to be "crumpy" and I will tell you I am a bit grumpy, after reading these two chapters.  BUT Alas!  I was excited to see my curiosity satisfied in this chapter.....regardless of:

 "The response from the instructor was clear:  Curiosity for curiosity's sake was not appreciated.  Or this: " What you do here, What you see here, What you hear here, please let is stay here."

Here comes the media, snopes, spies, and loose tongues.....

pg.  65

A woman thoughtlessly wrote her family describing the size and number of facilities in her new town...Someone kept a diary...A man told a friend about the type of machinery he saw in his plant...

pg. 71  

Spring was in the air, Townsite was growing by leaps and bounds__
"McCrory's 5, 10, & 25 Cent Store Now Open in Jackson Square next to the Ridge Theatre!"__and The Oak Ridge Journal paused to ask residents, "Does Your Tongue Wag?"

...Specialists in Axis espionage and sabotage activities are standing before their leader...they are about to embark on a vital mission for Naziland...and here are typical instructions to enemy agents...
   We have reports that somewhere in the American state of Tennessee there is a new war project about which you MUST get DETAILED information...
   Talk and listen: Get public opinion and current speculations about the work being done...
   The natives and workers will aid you__they will talk, talk, talk.  Listen.  Some will tell you because they are unsuspecting, have faith in everyone they meet, others are plainly ignorant that they are giving information...
   Search discarded plans and trash.  Listen to every possible conversation___these Americans talk constantly about their work...psychological sabotage is your weapon of which our Dr. Goebbels is the master.  When you hear a rumor spread it to every ear that will listen...bad food, mud, sickness, poor pay, strikes, waste, discrimination, race prejudice, and persecution___make the place sound so dirty and miserable, so poorly managed and inefficient that no decent person would want to remain there...
   Make the hate the state of Tennessee until they leave in droves...
   Let the looseness of their tongues and the softness of their brains do your work for you.  Bring me the report that this project in Tennessee will be entirely useless to America.  Heil Hitler!

In comes two men recruiting Helen Hall to be their eyes and ears....their spy!

Reading this confirmed that no matter how hard we try to keep things classified, confidential, or secret, there is always going to be someway, someone, somehow that it will get leaked.

We also learn in this chapter that complaints were filed for various reasons, and the people were not fired for filing.  Yet, many did leave due to the conditions, food, prejudice, etc., e.g., the turnover of employees, and the complaints fell on deaf ears.

JoanP.,

Your post reminded me of several inconsistencies I'm finding, for example, the use of the term "TUBEALLOY" is sometimes one word, sometimes 'tube alloy"  Which is it?  I keep waiting for an explanation, but fear that there will be none.

I do remember hearing in Denise K.'s interview she addressed deciding to combine the two words and make it one, it was easier for her, and since it really made no difference whether it be tube alloy, or tubealloy, she went with the one word.

Jean, Good catch on the inconsistency of the visiting.  

Did everyone actually read and comprehend all the tubealloy breakdown, fission, etc., in these two chapters.  Now that made me grumpy. I came away scratching my head.   Talk about combustion, I thought my head would burst!!!!      

Ciao for now~

[PatH]

Bellamarie, you raise some important points here.

Curiosity and secrecy--if you didn't experience it, it's hard to believe the atmosphere of wariness about spies then.  I was just a kid then, but I can still remember the feel of it.  "Loose lips sink ships."  I'm not at all surprised at the attitudes you quote.  I am surprised, though, that they thought anyone could do a good job in a factory or mechanical type situation without knowing anything beyond what some administrator thought was necessary.  If you don't know what you're doing, you can't always realize when things are going wrong.  I hope we will hear more about Helen Hall's listening assignment, and whether it ever led to anything.

Tubealloy--in a note, Denise K gives the three versions of the word that were used, and says why she picked the one she did.  I agree with her choice, though it doesn't matter a lot.  I would prefer she just said uranium, but it's a valid choice to go with the code words.

Did everyone actually read and comprehend all the tubealloy breakdown, fission, etc., in these two chapters.

That's a big problem in telling this story.  It's actually two parallel stories, both of them exciting.  But they are sort of independent, and you can enjoy either one while ignoring the other.

The main story, of Oak Ridge, and of the people who worked there, why they came, how it affected them, how they coped, and changed things, isn't technical, and it's the point of the book.

The second story, the scientific one, is kind of a subtext.  It's important, because that's why Oak Ridge is important, but you don't have to know it to appreciate the main part of the book.  So if you don't like it, forget it or skim over it, and don't let it get in the way of a really good book.

[PatH]

Tubealloy: I'm a retired chemist, and although this is far from my field, I do indeed find it a very exciting story.  It's worth following for anyone who feels like it.  It's hard to describe technical things; I think Kiernan does a good job, but it's not easy.

Scientists are awful gossips about other scientists, so it's amusing to me to read some of this stuff.

[mabel1015j]

I understood why they didn't want curious people, i'm just not one of those and would not have lasted for more then a week. Of course, the environment may have sent me home anyway. I did grow up in small town, rural America and i just must see green things at least every couple days - trees, grassy hills, mountains with trees. I do get both crumpy and grumpy  , and depressed, if my surroundings aren't naturally pleasant. I need some quiet, alone time on a regular basis also.

Add to the mud, the crowding, the lack of understanding a process, if i lived in a trailer, there is NO bathroom and NO plumbing. Now, my sister's first farm which she lived on when i was ages 5-14, and where i spent a lot of my summers, had an outhouse. There was a pump for water in the kitchen and they had electricity. I didn't mind the outhouse, i could walk across a nice patch of grass to get to it; i could hear the birds, and the cows and horses, it was a not an unpleasant spot. But that's not the same as having NO bathroom in a community of trailers and strangers.

Do i sound unpatriotic? Also i am looking at the situation as a 73 yr old, maybe not as i would have at 18.  

Yes, the tubealloy sections are difficult for this non-scientist to grasp, but i get the essence and it is interesting.

Joan - I was making teriyaki chicken from a recipe i hadn't used before and it turned out way too sweet and too dry. Very disappointing.

Jean

[ursamajor]

Many of the workers on the Manhattan project stayed in Oak Ridge after the war, bought the cemesto houses the government originally assigned them, and live there to this day unless they are buried in Oak Ridge cemetery.  Many of them have lived an astonishingly long time, well into their 80s or 9os.  I was not here during the war years, so I don't remember the mud or the trailer villages with the common bath house.  You have to remember that this was wartime and our soldiers were dying on two fronts.  That made the sacrifices look pretty insignificant.

  Almost all of the people I know personally were professionals of one kind or another, and so less likely to have had significant exposure to either asbestos or radiation.  They have generally been a pretty healthy lot, though of course they are dying rapidly now.  The cemesto construction may have been an asbestos hazard to the carpenters who built the houses, but the people who lived in them were not affected.  The larger cemesto houses are still in great demand.  Most of them have been improved and/or expanded and are well designed and quite comfortable.

Something not mentioned in the book is the remarkably high birth rate in the city during and immediately after the war years.  The joking answer to "What are you making there?" Answer "babies" was pretty apt.  Families of four, five or more children were common.  I have five myself.  The Oak Ridge schools were the best in east Tennessee for many years. We remained in Oak Ridge until our last child graduated from high school.

[bellamarie]

PatH., 

 It's actually two parallel stories, both of them exciting.  But they are sort of independent, and you can enjoy either one while ignoring the other.

I agree, even though it seems a bit confusing to follow, I do feel I already have learned more about the science of alloy than I ever knew before reading just these six chapters. 

Ursa,

Something not mentioned in the book is the remarkably high birth rate in the city during and immediately after the war years.  The joking answer to "What are you making there?" Answer "babies" was pretty apt.

 

I guess you could say it was the onset of the Baby Boomers!  I don't suspect you will ever see a population growth as fast as this time ever again.  Young college kids today don't have a direction, they are very immature, dependent on their parents, and don't want to marry or have children well into their 30s and 40s.  They are so unaware of what is going on in the world, they don't even have a clue who ISIS is.  Now that we have officially committed to destroying this group with airstrikes in Syria, I am sure you will see protestors on the universities, but if asked who is ISIS, or where Syria is located, they couldn't tell you.  They can only say they don't want war.  No one wants war, we know from history there are times we have to get involved, as painful and ugly as it is.

Ciao for now~











Ciao for now~

[JoanP]

Ursa, I found a pdf file that indicated Virginia Spivey, one of the rare "girls" with a college degree - in chemistry, married a Dr. Coleman and lived in Oak Ridge into the 50's - at least. I found a photo in the same file...but don't know how to lift photos from pdf files.  Will try to learn how to do that.  Maybe you knew her~

My guess is that they didn't know what to do with her - which is why they kept her in the "bull pen" waiting for an assignment.  Would they have kept her there as a teacher indefinitely had she not requested to be sent to a chemistry lab?  She requested the lab when she learned she wouldn't move up on the pay scale as a teacher.  (What else is new, Jean?)  I was surprised they honored her request.

Hope you've cheered up some, Jean!  That was a blue Monday!
 Even if Denise Kiernan decided to refer to the product as one word  (TUBEALLOY) in her book -- I'm sure I saw it a number of times as two. Of course I can't find them now - but will keep an eye out for tube alloy as we go forward!   A strange term, isn't it?  What does it mean to you?

I'm enjoying the scientists too...they are in a hurry to get this project going.  What would have happened without them?

[JoanP]

Here's the photo - wish I could make it bigger. Taken in May, 2009 -

 

Several retired ORNL staff members recently attended the Women in Science and Engineering Celebration at ORNL. Left to right with the Nuclear S&T Division’s Peggy Emmett are Nancy Landers, Liane Russell, Carolyn Gooch, Fay Martin, Virginia Spivey Coleman, Mozelle Rankin Bell and Marty Adler-Jasny.

[ursamajor]

I know Virginia Coleman - her son Frank hung out with my older girls all the time they were in high school.  Frank wouldn't let anybody but me cut his hair - and it always needed cutting.  Virginia has recently moved to an assisted living facility.  I didn't make the connection when I read the book.

[mabel1015j]

How cool, Ursa!

[PatH]

Ursamajor, it's great having our own in-house expert to fill in the details. 

[JoanP]

2. What happens when you split the nucleus of a uranium atom?  How can this lead to a bomb?  I would be happy to hear from those to whom this makes perfect sense.  I have a feeling that Einstein's theory plays a part here...splitting an atom.  Will wait for you who know more than I do.

Denise Kiernan wrote this as non-Fiction - based on live interviews conducted between 2009 and 2013.  And Ursa is here to back the story.  So whenever we are tempted to conclude how things must have been, how the girls "must have felt" and the dangers they must have faced, Ursa reminds that they lived to their 80's and 90's.  It couldn't have been that dangerous in Oak Ridge at the time, could it?  That's not how these girls viewed it then - or even oday for that matter.

"Which of the girls do you relate to most, and why?"  I think I'd choose Jane Halliburton Greer (Puckett) , the one who chose to stay near Oak Ridge to be near her recently widowed father, who lived in Paris, TN.  I think I understand her reason for sacrificing her future plans to be near her father and to put her plans on the back burner until the boys came home.  She had enrolled in UT with the intention of studying engineering at Knoxville.Once she arrived in Knoxville after taking preparatory classes in Alabama, however, Puckett was not allowed to study engineering because she was female,
Instead, she was directed to the university’s statistics program where Puckett graduated two years later with a degree in governmental economics. She was the first student in Knoxville’s history to graduate from this program.

Even after the purpose of the work being done at Oak Ridge — the creation of an atomic bomb — was publicly announced and the war brought to an end, she continued to work in the lab at Oak Ridge.

She married James Beverly “Puck” Puckett in the late 1940s. The two were married for 59 years until his death in 2006

Her daughter  said that a short time after her mother was interviewed for the book, she had elective shoulder surgery from which she never fully recovered.
As of 2013, she lives in a facility for patients of dementia in Tennessee.

I found her photo -

[PatH]

JoanP, that's a great photo of Jane Greer Puckett.  She sure looks like someone who has no regrets.  It looks like Kiernan did her research just in the nick of time.  Thank goodness.

I'm working on a scientific summary.

[bellamarie]

It would be wonderful if we could contact Denise K., and invite her to our discussion.

[JoanP]

PatH - looking  forward to your explanation  for the layman - laywoman.

It's been clear that the girls who worked on this Project knew nothing of what they were working on.  I wonder how familiar they are today - with the names of the scientists who  developed the formula that would lead to the bomb. How much do people know about the contributions of the female scientists?  I know we need to look at this from the perspective of the times, but wasn't it grossly unfair that  women were kept in the shadows - that men were supposed to be respected as the scientists?  I couldn't help but wonder if Denise Kiernan wasn't giving more credit than was due to these women - Their names aren't that well known - or are they?
I found this article - that indicates the importance of these women -

" Ida Noddack correctly criticized Enrico Fermi's chemical proofs in his 1934 neutron bombardment experiments, from which he postulated that transuranic elements might have been produced, and which was widely accepted for a few years. Her paper, "On Element 93" suggested a number of possibilities, centering around Fermi's failure to chemically eliminate all lighter than uranium elements in his proofs, rather than only down to lead. The paper is considered historically significant today not simply because she correctly pointed out the flaw in Fermi's chemical proof but because she suggested the possibility that "it is conceivable that the nucleus breaks up into several large fragments, which would of course be isotopes of known elements but would not be neighbors of the irradiated element." In so doing she presaged what would become known a few years later as nuclear fission. However Noddack offered no experimental proof or theoretical basis for this possibility, which defied the understanding at the time. The paper was generally ignored. However Noddack offered no experimental proof or theoretical basis

Later experiments along a similar line to Fermi's, by Irène Joliot-Curie, and Pavle Savić in 1938 raised what they called "interpretational difficulties" when the supposed transuranics exhibited the properties of rare earths rather than those of adjacent elements. Ultimately on December 17, 1938, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann provided chemical proof that the previously presumed transuranic elements were isotopes of barium, and Hahn wrote these exciting results to his exiled colleague Lise Meitner, explaining the process as a 'bursting' of the uranium nucleus into lighter elements. It remained for Meitner who had been forced to flee Germany in July 1938 and her exiled nephew Otto Frisch utilizing Fritz Kalckar and Niels Bohr's liquid drop hypothesis (first proposed by George Gamow in 1935) to provide a first theoretical model and mathematical proof of what Frisch named nuclear fission (he coined this term).

ps We did tried to contact her, Bella.  You must have missed her publisher's response...posted on the first page of this discussion - post #29.
But, aren't we fortunate to have ursamajor with us - who actually knew these girls?

[maryz]

Re women's discoveries - women were rarely given credit for such discoveries.  They weren't supposed to be able to comprehend such things. 

Digressing a moment from Oak Ridge, but in the same vein and time frame....Have we talked about the discoveries made by Hedy Lamaar?  Nobody ever heard of those things.  Here's a link to her Wikipedia page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr

[Frybabe]

Someone did mention it quite a while back. Don't remember who or in which discussion.

I just reread some of the article. I remember spread spectrum, not from her day but back in the early seventies when my X and I went up to Rochester, NY to evaluate spread spectrum equipment for the company he worked for at that time. I was pretty excited about it, as I recall.

[PatH]

Hedy Lamarr just goes to show you there's no correlation, plus or minus, between beauty and intelligence.  But beauty gets in the way of using your intelligence.  That article says that when she tried to get on the Inventor's Council in WWII, she was told she could help the war effort more by making appearances to encourage buying War Bonds.

[JoanP]

Hedy Lamarr!  Fascinating!  She is remembered for her beauty, not her brains, isn't she?  Who knew?  Maryz did.   (Frybabe did too!)  But the rest of us?  I only knew her as a movie star...and also I had this set of Hedy Lamarr paperdolls - so surprised to find them online!  Does anyone remember them?

I don't think there is anyone to blame for not crediting these women for their ideas and discoveries.  It seems to  that they were unwilling to speak up for themselves, to insist their names appear on their discoveries.  And who would have listened to them if they did?  This was another age...we keep saying that, maybe because it is true!

[mabel1015j]

Women involved in nuclear policy today, many more then in 1930s anf 40s, on both sides of policy.

http://thebulletin.org/women-and-nuclear-weapons-policy7165

Jean

[PatH]

I knew too, but only in the last few years (probably from her obituary).

It was another age, and women were unwilling to push for recognition.  It's more cut and dried with the woman scientists in our story, though.  They wanted recognition, and worked for it, even though at times they knew they had to keep a low profile.  What about the scientists in our story?  Ida Noddack got a raw deal because she saw the possibility of fission at a time when the theory hadn't caught up to the point where anyone could see how it could be possible.  By the time theory caught up, she was lost in the shuffle.  Lise Meitner fared better, but I remember when I first became aware of her (probably in the early '50s) there was a feeling that she had been shortchanged on recognition.  Only Otto Hahn got the Nobel prize for their work, but that means that Fritz Strassmann was also left out, so it's hard to know what to make of it.

[Frybabe]

Back in business; I came home with another copy of the book from the library.

[PatH]

Good.  When I went to renew mine, I couldn't because there were holds--annoying, because there weren't any two days before.  So I quick got the paperback.

[JoanP]

I was sneaky.  When the library wouldn't let me get on the hold list because I still had a copy out, my husband signed up and was on hold for only three days.  The day I returned my copy, he was notifed that "his" copy was ready to pick up.

PatH, does your paperback have a section of photos in the center of the book....in the middle of Chapter 12?  I feel pretty silly hunting the Internet for current photos of the "girls" - Denise Kiernan has already done that work for us.  The photos are right there!

There's a question over these chapters that has me thinking -  Would people now accept those conditions  on blind trust that they are helping to win the war?  I had to ask myself - would I do what these girls did - knowing that the enemy was watching closely and that the success of the Project depended on my cooperation and silence?  It's a tough one.  I think I'd need some assurance that the Gadget I was working on would be used only in warfare - and not to harm innocent civilians.  I realize this sounds naive,  And that back in the 40's, if I'd have asked such a question, I would have been rejected.

 Back to the big question - about other people - it's awful to think that offered  good money during hard times, people would do the same as the girls did - - especially if it meant winning the war and bringing loved ones home, no matter how destructive the weapon would have been harming civilians.
Still, there are the images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki...

Off to read more closely Jean's find on today's women of nuclear science...
Another question - where were American women in nuclear science in the 40s - do we know that?

[PatH]

Clever sneaking, JoanP.  Yes, my paperback has the same pictures as the hardback.

I think people trusted the government more then than they do now.  There would be a lot more skepticism to the request "we want you to come work really hard in appalling conditions and we won't tell you what you're doing, but it's important".

[Frybabe]

I was skimming the rather extensive article on Wikipedia where I saw this map of all the Manhattan Project sites. I had no idea it was so extensive.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Manhattan_Project_US_Canada_Map_2.svg


One of the sites mentioned in the Wiki article was the Argonne National Laboratory. I've always associated it with photonics research, but apparently they do a lot more. I had no idea they were involved with the project. it turns out that Enrico Fermi's Metalurgy Lab and Argonne one and the same, just a short move and a name change. http://www.anl.gov/about-argonne/history

[PatH]

What happens when you split the nucleus of a uranium atom?

To split it, you hit it with a neutron.  If it’s U-235, it turns into U-236, which promptly splits into barium and krypton (3/5 and 2/5 of the original weight).  In the process several neutrons are emitted, and a huge amount of energy is released.  U-238 splits similarly, but the neutrons are lower energy.

How can this lead to a bomb?

There are two keys: 1) The reaction propagates through the U-235; the neutrons produced hit other uranium molecules, causing them to split, releasing more electrons, which hit more molecules, an increasing chain reaction.

2) The incredible amount of energy produced means you can cause an unbelievably large explosion with a small amount of material.  One bomb will blow up a city.

[PatH]

Research timetable:

1932: Chadwick discovers neutrons.  You can’t hit something with a neutron if you don’t have one.

1934: Fermi bombards uranium with neutrons, but can’t discover the product.  Ida Noddack suggests the atom has split into much smaller pieces, but this isn’t believed.

1936: Niels Bohr proposes the liquid drop model for atomic nuclei.

1938-9: Hahn and Strassmann identify the product of splitting uranium—barium.  Lise Meitner and Frisch figure out how this could happen, using Bohr’s model.

[bellamarie]

JoanP.,   

Would people now accept those conditions  on blind trust that they are helping to win the war?

I would say NO, the American people would NOT go on blind trust today.  I saw a poll the other day that showed only 38% of Americans trust in president Obama to keep us safe.  These recent polls show his approval is low.   


http://www.gallup.com/poll/175697/trust-federal-gov-international-issues-new-low.aspx

http://www.gallup.com/poll/124922/Presidential-Approval-Center.aspx

There are many other polls but most all of them will show the American people do not have strong trust in the president or in any part of the government.  Americans have too much access to information today, they don't have blind trust, and since Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and now the present war in Syria, there is a lot of mistrust.  Today Americans do not see "ends to wars" they see ongoing conflicts, throughout the world.  It's not about lack of loyalty or patriotism, it's all about lack of trust.  We have been lied to, and there is no transparency, too much saying one thing, and doing another.  World leaders refuse to trust in the U.S., and refuse to join us in this most recent war.  Back in the 40's the Americans were willing to trust, work and participate in ending the war, along with making a good wage.  Today more people live off of entitlements, unemployment, their families, or other subsidies that they have gotten comfortable with, and would not risk their health working in total secrecy, on "blind trust."

When my hubby went to check my book out of our library it was to be for the normal 3 weeks.  Knowing it was for my book discussion he asked if he could extend it and they gave me an extra week on it.  Should I go over, I will just keep it and pay the few cents in fees. 

Ciao for now~ 

[ursamajor]

If you are not old enough to remember Pearl Harbor, you have no idea what the feelings were in this country during the war.  The few days after 9/11 is as close as we have come in recent times.  Not only that, people were scared of further attacks on the American states, especially people along the coasts.  Our installations in the Phillipines had been overrun.  Every able man or boy of military age had been drafted, and they were dying on two fronts.  Everybody had a loved one in one of the armed services.  Fear and hatred of the enemy was rampant. Thousands of soldiers were waiting for the assault on the Japanese homeland, and most didn't expect to survive it.

  If Japan had chosen to surrender after Hiroshima (they were given a chance) there would have been no atomic bomb in Nagasaki. The atomic bomb was hailed as a a miracle weapon that ended the fighting.  Immediately after the war at least one Oak Ridge business had a mushroom cloud as part of its logo.  It was only later that people began to have misgivings, and most of those were people who had never been under threat.

Re: women scientists:  Lisa Meitner was done out of the Nobel prize that was given for what was mostly her work.  The men who received the award intimated that she was no more than a student.

http://www.planet-science.com/categories/over-11s/science-celebrities/2010/09/lise-meitner-(1878-1968)-.aspx

[bellamarie]

With all due respect, I think we all can understand the feelings of war.  We are all human, and can feel the devastation of war, regardless of what war you were living through.  I believe we all, no matter what our age is, can express our own personal feelings, and not have to have lived in Oak Ridge, or in that particular era/war time.  I think there is a misconception, that we must be in sync and thought, with the author, the ladies in the book and anyone who has lived in Oak Ridge.  What makes a discussion even more interesting are opinions, thoughts and feelings of others who are not a part of any of these equations, and we need to respect those.  It is common for some to question, speculate and even possibly doubt certain things, although we do have much information provided to us.

I, like a few others in the discussion, can see ourselves not feeling the same as these ladies.  We are more curious, more independent thinking, and more hesitant to trust in a government project full of secrecy, and all the other issues about the living conditions and how the workers were treated.  While we continuously are reminded, "you had to be there" or "you must remember to put yourself back in this time frame"  it is normal for some of us to still question.  In D. K.'s interviews the person doing the interview asked and expressed many our our similar questions and feelings.  I don't think anyone questions the pride the country/residents of Oak Ridge felt ending the war, using the atomic bomb.  But, I do believe we learned a big lesson, it is NOT something we would want to repeat today.  We saw the devastation, and must realize other nations have the same nuclear advantages today.  I am certain every American hailed the victory, but it would be an assumption, to think or say, every American, agreed with the use of the bomb.  

This quote came to my mind..“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."  George Santayana

This quote also came to mind, where Ursa reminds us Japan had the chance to surrender, and I can see it fitting for all conflicts and wars that preceded and followed WW11.

“When the situation was manageable it was neglected, and now that it is thoroughly out of hand we apply too late the remedies which then might have effected a cure. There is nothing new in the story. It is as old as the sibylline books. It falls into that long, dismal catalogue of the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability of mankind. Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong–these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.”
Winston Chruchill—House of Commons, 2 May 1935, after the Stresa Conference, in which Britain, France and Italy agreed—futilely—to maintain the independence of Austria. (My book* page 490).

http://www.nationalchurchillmuseum.org/blog/churchill-quote-history/

[mabel1015j]

Joan mentioned that she would have had to have been assured that the "project" was to be used only in the war. I know i told this story on some other discussion some time ago, but it fits here.........

My husband and i were at a Cell Institute at Syracuse U in the late 70s. One of the presentations was by a man who had done research at U of Kansas on improving crop output. He had developed a chemical that would vastly improve crop output and was pleased that he could lessen the amount of hunger in the world. However, he was warning researchers to have as much control as they possibly could as to how their research would be used. His "beneficial" chemical had been taken over by Dupont and, by using much greater amounts of it in application, was the basis for Agent Orange-type DEfoliant in North Vietnam and in areas held by the Viet Cong. And you are probably aware of the damage that was done to human beings, including our soldiers, in the way of cancer and other diseases. That must be a concern to any researchers who are not in total control of their research and i would think that would be most of them.

Something to be grateful for today? That i, and nobody in my family, was flying anywhere today!

Jean

[PatH]

I'm supposed to be flying Sunday.  We'll see if I actually get to take off.

[JoanP]

Thanks for the timeline, Pat and the additional information on future testing after the war, Fry.  (I'm not going to ask for information on the development of the Hydrogen Bomb just yet...)

Right now, I'm trying to understand the degree of danger the workers at the K25 plant were exposed to in Clinton before the A-Bomb was used.  Am I right in concluding that the only thing that was going on in Clinton was the extraction of uranium to be used elsewhere for the actual making of the bomb?

But first- back to the testing beneath the U. of Chicago football field.  Safe to say that Fermi and scientists had little idea of the power of the experment before this - just how much of a reaction could actually  blow up a city?  This was the riskiest of all the tests that I can think of...
But Fermi had been correct in estimating that the 57th layer would "go critical."  Fortunately.  Don't you wonder how many people above ground in Chicago were aware of the experiment?

So then when did the CEW plants get involved in the testing?  I know the four plants

[JoanP]

"That must be a concern to any researchers who are not in total control of their research and i would think that would be most of them."

Jean - if I knew that the weapon I was working on was capable of blowing up an entire city... I think I would have passed on the opportunity.  But no one knew what they were working on, did they?  People higher up in the chain knew two things - that there was danger involved for the Clinton workers and that this Gadget was capable of catclysmic danger - more than these workers could possibly imagine.  (They also knew that the Germans were racing to ready a similar weapon.)  Do you think it was morally right to keep the nature of this "weapon" from those working on it?  

Bella - I will be looking for a time when the American people or the "girls of Atomic City" began to look back and show signs of remorse - regret for the secrecy they had agreed to.

[Frybabe]

Waahhhhhh! I lost my post. Oh, Well. Start over.

New word I like, "prefabulousness", referring to prefab homes.

On p99, in the first paragraph, the author mentions Mallinckrodt. I was somewhat familiar with the Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals during my studies in college. Mallinckrodt, originally G. Mallinckrodt & Co. and then Mallinckrodt Chemical Works, was the first company to introduce barium sulfate as a medium for contrasting x-rays in 1913. Here is a timeline and at the bottom, below the process section and beginning with It all began in, is a bit Manhattan Project history.  http://www.lm.doe.gov/Weldon/Interpretive_Center/Online_Tour/Tribute_to_the_Mallinckrodt_Uranium_Workers.pdf

Harshaw Chemicals still exists, but with several mergers and sales, they are now a part of Engelhard in Oakland, CA. I found this pdf of Harshaw's involvement and subsequent site contamination. http://www.epa.state.oh.us/portals/30/FFS/docs/dod/FUSRAP/Harshaw_Chemical.pdf

These are two of the companies that processed the Uranium ore and sent the purified Uranium on to Oak Ridge.

[ursamajor]

K-25 is located near the town of Kingston; no work took place in Clinton.  The Clinton Engineering Project was a name used before the Oak Ridge project got underway.  Most of the exposure to radiation and to dangerous materials did not affect the workers at the time.  The increased rates or cancer and lung disease have developed in later years.  Quite a large number of people have received a $150,000 settlement from the government because they have developed one of several forms of cancer or other disease attributeable to exposure to radiation or toxic substances at one of the plants.  It's not really enough, although treatment for the condition is is also covered for life (or what's left of it).

Good quote from Winston Churchill! 

[PatH]

Right now, I'm trying to understand the degree of danger the workers at the K25 plant were exposed to in Clinton before the A-Bomb was used.  Am I right in concluding that the only thing that was going on in Clinton was the extraction of uranium to be used elsewhere for the actual making of the bomb?

I think that's right--they took the uranium which had already been purified from ore, and separated the two isotopes.  It's a difficult process, and you don't get 100% pure U-235.  That used in the Nagasaki bomb was 80%.  So the enriched U-235 was made into bombs, but not at Oak Ridge, and the depleted U-238 was turned into plutonium, mostly at Hanford.

How much danger the workers were in would depend on the safety precautions taken.  Maybe we'll learn more further on, but I'm sure they weren't as good as they should have been.  Somewhere when I was flipping through the book I saw a scene of a worker whose job was to hold something up to each piece of laundry, and if it "clicked", she sent that item back to be re-washed.  She didn't even know she was monitoring for radioactivity with a Geiger counter.