1943 - NOBODY SAID ANYTHING
138,000 employees on the Manhattan Project had no clue what they were working on. Perhaps 1,000 knew atoms were involved. And only about fifty knew the whole story.
ONE OF THE FEW
It was my good fortune to work for one of the “One Thousand.” His story fascinated me, and I remember much of it 60 years later. My first job after college was with the DuPont Company in Delaware. My manager, Bill Ryan, was 45 years old. He held a Bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania, with graduate work in geophysics and petrology at Harvard and the University of Colorado. He began his career at DuPont in 1939. He admitted that he was a “know it all.” He prided himself on being a step ahead of everybody else, and he usually was. This did not always endear him to management, but they acknowledged his intellect.
CURIOSITY BRINGS A CHANGE
When the War began, he was Chief Ballistics Engineer at the Indiana Ordinance Works. His son Mike relates, “He and a friend were science fiction fans, and they regularly read a science fiction magazine. One story about building an atomic bomb intrigued them. They were overheard at lunch innocently discussing this and management ‘chewed them out’ for talking about the subject.”
Bill compiled a list of the physicists he knew who were no longer in the DuPont phone directory. He began to ask what had happened to them. He suspected they were hidden away on a nuclear project, but he wrongly thought they were designing a nuclear engine for submarines. A frustrated management finally told him, “You have been asking questions about where our people have gone. Now, you will find out.” And they promptly sent him to Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
SECRET CITY
The U.S. built Oak Ridge from scratch in 1942. At the height of the War, its uranium processing used more electricity than New York City. Home to 75,000 people, it didn’t appear on any maps until 1949.
Bill Ryan moved to the “secret city” with his wife Janet and their small son, Bill. Housing materials were in short supply everywhere in America.[i] The Oak Ridge homes came in prefabricated standard 8-foot sections. Organization rank dictated home size. The Ryan family qualified for a living room with two modules making an 8x16 foot room. The ceiling of the two modules was sealed with tape, and when it rained, water dripped in a line across the center of the room.
Anyone caught talking about work was fired and evicted from Oak Ridge. Employees spied on coworkers, and professional spies were everywhere. Once, Janet Ryan stopped at the local gas station. While the tank was filling, she was waiting in the car with her son Bill. A stranger, who appeared to be a local farmer or laborer, approached her. He wore denim overalls, the type with galluses that button to the bib front. He appeared to be friendly and chatted with Janet, asking where she was from and what her husband did. She told him nothing, not even her name. As the conversation ended, he twisted one of his galluses to reveal an FBI shield, and said, “You have a beautiful little boy Mrs. Ryan, and you answered everything well.”
Many Oak Ridge workers were young women from small towns across the South. Their jobs were shrouded in mystery. They often sat for 8 hours watching a gage. They were instructed to do nothing unless the needle moved outside an indicated “safe zone.” Then they must summon a supervisor. They had no idea what was being measured. They knew it was something big but could not piece together the purpose of their work until the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
The head of Oak Ridge never told his wife the secret. On 6 August 1944, he was at his desk when his phone rang. His wife was calling. Her first words were, “It’s a bomb, a BIG bomb! He was speechless. How could she know? She had just heard the news on the radio. The thing he had guarded for three years was no longer secret. [LINK]
HANFORD – THE LARGEST INDUSTRIAL SITE
Before the War ended, Bill transferred to the Hanford Works in the wilds of Washington state – the site of the world’s first full full scale plutonium reactor. The site was so large (625 square miles) that on an 8.5x11 inch U.S. map it would be a 1/8-inch square. He lived on site and still had to change buses twice to get to work.
Unlike Oak Ridge, most of the workers were men, and they were far from civilization. Shortly after they arrived, Bill suggested to Janet that they visit the only bar on the site. Bill got a table. The bar was so long that the far end disappeared in the cigarette smoke. He went to the bar to order drinks. When he returned Janet was laughing. In his brief absence, she had been propositioned three times even though she was visibly expecting their second son, Mike. (Mike says his parents retold this story many times.)
A MENTOR
Bill Ryan worked at Hanford through 1944. He continued at DuPont until he retired in 1970. He was a good boss, an excellent investor, and he encouraged me to work in the investment business. We remained friends after I came to R.J. Reynolds.
AND A MAN OF WISDOM
He visited the RJR World Headquarters in the early 1980s. He had a wealth of practical business experience. He looked at the half million square foot glass building housing a thousand staff people, and he said, “This cannot last.” The words were prescient. In a few short years that building would be given to charity and only about 20 of the 1,000 employees would still have their job.
He died in 2014 at the age of 96. Yet another of the “Greatest Generation” who served our country.
Soon – PART III – TIP OF THE SPEAR
[i] My parents built our small home in 1947. near the village of Clemmons, NC, population 200. This was the first building permit issued in the area since 1939. Clemmons is now a town of 21,000 people, thanks to migration to the Sunbelt.
Very interesting perspective on this pivotal period in our history. With the pervasive access to social media it is impossible to imagine today that such a project could be kept truly secret.
Love the story. Americans have a lot to be proud of.