The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II by Denise Kierna

The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II

by Denise Kiernan

Simon and Schuster, 2013

ISBN: 978-1451617535

315 p.p.

Most people know about some of the contributions that women made on the home front to the War Effort during World War II, and most are aware of the Manhattan Project’s efforts to develop the science and the engineering for the first atomic weapon used. Denise Kiernan’s book addresses this territory in a startlingly new way. Rather than look at the contributions of leaders, rather than tell the progress of the development of science and the military, she takes an approach rooted in oral history to tell about the lives of women working for the Clinton Engineering Works, who were the ones who enriched the uranium needed for the bomb.

The Girls of Atomic City starts in an unexpected place: an eminent domain land-grab by the US Government in eastern Tennessee. The land that was to become Oak Ridge, Tennessee was rural farmland before the war. What made it so attractive was its proximity to train lines, its relative isolation, and its connections to electrical generation plants. On these green rolling hills of farmland and family orchards would develop a series of prefab dormitories, trailers and factories that would house and provide work for 75,000 during the war. It was a wartime boom town that didn’t exist on any maps until after the war was over.

These women came from a wide variety of backgrounds, with an equally diverse range of skills. Some had college backgrounds in mathematics or chemistry. Most had simpler preparations. Although one might be interviewed on her college campus, another might be approached in a roadside diner. They came from across the Midwest, Northeast, and deep South.

This is a sprawling book, as is the case with many oral histories. We begin, as in a play, with a list of the primary characters. Early on, I discovered that this wide scope had a downside: I was reading the book on my e-reader, which makes it hard to flip pages to return to look at the maps and cast of characters. That meant I kept getting confused who each person was. I eventually resorted to the physical book, so I could look back at maps and character descriptions. There are nine primary women the book follows, another 7 women of note, and twelve men in the introductory character descriptions. This large a number of characters adds depth and detail, but it also makes it hard for the general reader to keep track of people and details. Add to this that Kiernan also runs a parallel vein throughout the book of interspersing short bits explaining the lives of scientists involved in the development of the science as well as descriptions of the advances in atomic physics—a set of stories of the “great” scientists and the lesser-remembered ones—that runs as a counterpoint to the stories of those who then ran the cubicles and maintained the buildings that could put the theory into practice. All this makes for a very richly textured history, one with many details.

Another example of the book’s wide lens is the element of the racial segregation that took place on the compound. We read of the challenges husband and wife Willie and Kattie Strickland face. Unlike white families, these two cannot share a house together. Each lives in a same-sex hutment. Kattie’s plywood hutment has four beds, one in each corner, with a potbelly stove in the middle for heat. We see a long continuation of systemic injustices and unfulfilled promises for the black workers at the Clinton Engineering Works.

I think one of the things that I enjoyed so much about this book was the element of subversion that gently ran through the account. Here’s the history of a major scientific development, and it can be told not only by grand narratives of “great men” by oral history. It is also a telling that is largely the work of women who saw it through to completion on time and so well, voices which eclipse those great men’s voices. This is also a history that goes beyond the usual telling of women’s contributions to the war effort—Rosie the Riveter wasn’t the only one helping America in her time of need, and some women were doing much, much more than driving rivets. This book also tells a history of people not thinking “let’s advance science” but the history of a bunch of women who didn’t know the science they were supporting, and were under orders not to ask. It was out of this secrecy that their work led to such advances; so much for the grand mythologies of (male) scientific advancement and solitary great thinkers.

Finally, I find that the question we’re left with by this narrative is an important one for rethinking not just this history, but other historical narratives we love to tell and retell: how does it affect our telling of the development of the atom bomb when we learn that the people creating enriched uranium for it had no idea what they were creating or why? By the end of this tale, it’s clear that even today, some people involved in the Clinton Engineering Works had no concept of what their work had accomplished. Others understood, and put it out of their minds as something that just had to be done during wartime. For others, it was overwhelming to realise their complicity in such devastation and loss of life. For us, as readers, it’s good to remember that the sweep of history has many more tales than the most-often repeated ones.

***

Denise Kiernan is the author of the New York Times Bestselling nonfiction title, The Girls of Atomic City. As a journalist, her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Village Voice, Saveur, Discover, Ms., Sports Illustrated for Kids, Conde Nast Sports for Women and others. In addition to her books for adults and children, she was head writer for ABC's "Who Wants to be Millionaire" during its Emmy award-winning first season and has produced for ESPN, MSNBC and others.