The Girls of Atomic City Read Online Free PDF Page A

hand, or a historical artifact that they proudly held in their possession. These groups of men often shared some sort of association, occasionally related to the business they were in. The Pleasant Isle of Aves camp, for example, boasted almost exclusively members that had some sort of association with the University of California at Berkeley.
    While the “no women” rule was hard and fast, the “no weaving spiders” directive—no business—was oft flouted. The group of Project associates meeting at the Bohemian Grove not quite a year before Celia and others like her boarded southbound trains for an unnamed station in the long shadow of the Smokies had come to do just that.
    It wasn’t the first time that Ernest O. Lawrence, the prairie-raised former aluminum salesman and Nobel Prize–winning physicist from Berkeley, had entertained military guests at the Grove Clubhouse overlooking the Russian River. But the stakes were higher now and the group assembled far more influential. Among those gathered were members of the University of California radiation, or “Rad” lab, the director of Standard Oil, Project scientists James Conant and Arthur Compton, and the slight-of-build, large-of-brain J. Robert Oppenheimer, a scientist with a penchant for broad-rimmed hats and Eastern philosophy.
    Soon-to-be District Engineer Kenneth Nichols attended—then an Army lieutenant colonel. The bespectacled engineer was emerging as the General’s right-hand man and was learning, as best he could, how to manage and maneuver the General’s seemingly unreasonable-bordering-on-unrealistic expectations, without which the impossible goals of the Project might not become reality.
    He had news for the group gathered among the redwoods: Edgar Sengier, a Belgian businessman, had a tremendous supply of high-quality Tubealloy his company was willing to sell.
    Decision made: Buy it. All of it. Secure more if possible. Lock it down.
    Also up for discussion among the men was the location of Site X. It appeared that a spot in Tennessee held the winning lottery ticket, but this needed to be finalized.
    Decision made: Buy it. Do whatever necessary to secure the land. Prepare to break ground as soon as possible.
    Virtually no one in East Tennessee knew their region was even under consideration as part of any groundbreaking wartime venture, including those who would come to inhabit and work at the soon-to-be-built Reservation. Another version of this story, one perhaps steeped more in lore than location, holds that Site X was selected in a backroom deal in Washington, DC. As the story goes, Secretary of War Henry Stimson had approached Tennessee senator Kenneth McKellar, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, asking if he might figure out a way to “hide” $2 billion for the funding of a secret war project. The dapper and oft-bow-tied McKellar had served longer in both houses than anyone else in Tennessee history—heck, practically anyone in the United States. McKellar wanted to help, but so much money? McKellar took his concerns directly to President Roosevelt and met with him at the White House. The request was the same: This project could bring a speedy end to the war. So when Roosevelt reiterated, “Can you hide $2 billion for a secret project that we hope will end the war?” Senator McKellar deftly replied, “Well, Mr. President, of course I can. And where in Tennessee do you want me to hide it?”
    Regardless of how it happened, more than half of the $2 billion eventually appropriated for the Project would go to Site X, whose primary function would be enriching Tubealloy to serve as fuel for the Gadget that this group gathered at the Bohemian Grove hoped would end the war.
    The man at the center of the Project, the General, did not attend the Bohemian Grove meeting but would officially take over the Project mere days later, on September 17, 1942. The bright star of the Army Corps of Engineers, the General had been the mastermind behind