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Few places in the world can compete
with America's Secret City, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, as a
history maker. Not only was history literally made here,
it was achieved with a level of secrecy that could never
be duplicated today. Was the result
good or evil? That is still being debated. What is
undeniable is that it changed the course of warfare
forever. Man had unleashed a power that if misused could
destroy the entire planet.
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| One of the "Flattop
Houses" set up in Oak Ridge at American Museum
of Science and Energy |
I was thrilled when I got the
chance to actually enter the site and visit not only the
American Museum of Science and Energy, where our tour
started but some of the actual buildings used in the
Manhattan Project. One of the original houses is on
exhibit at the museum. It is one of the flattop house
used by families brought here to work on the project.
These compact homes complete with furniture and
accessories were hauled in on trucks and assembled in
about 20 minutes. Our guide, Willis
Baker, was a knowledgeable septuagenarian who grew up in
the area and whose parents lived the history. He told
about cases of workers leaving for work in the morning
and not being able to find their homes when they
returned that evening because entire streets of
businesses and houses had been assembled during the few
hours they were away.
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Museum lobby with replica of guard house used to
restrict entry to secret city |
I could have spent days in just the
museum and come out with the equivalent of a PHD in not
only nuclear physics but post WWI and WWII history it is
so extensive. One important item on display is a simple
letter that changed the course of history forever. The
letter is a typewritten one dated August 2, 1939
addressed to President Roosevelt and signed by Albert
Einstein; it was the most famous letter the genius ever
wrote.
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Copy of famous Einstein Letter |
The letter, telling the
president that
Germany might be in the process of developing a bomb
unlike any destructive device ever before created.
Einstein
based that on the fact that Germany had increased mining
of uranium. Because of what was going on in the world,
President Roosevelt didn't see the letter until October
11, 1939 about a month after Germany invaded Poland.
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The museum has a great exhibit of scientist who
contributed to our nuclear knowledge. |
Seeing the reasoning was sound,
Roosevelt appointed a committee which ironically did not
hold its first meeting until Dec. 6, 1941, the day
before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The exhibit states,
"Suddenly the atomic bomb went from theory to necessity
with no one knowing how, or if, such a device would
work."
Maj. Gen. Leslie
Groves, who headed the Manhattan Project, decided on
this rural valley in eastern Tennessee which now had
ample power supply thanks to the new TVA dam on Norris
Lake, as the location for the project and on October of
1943, the Corps of Engineers began acquiring property
for the development of the Secret City.
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Museum map showing how Oak Ridge still fits into
national nuclear program |
The entire city of Oak Ridge was
built from scratch in just 30 months.
Compartmentalization was set up so that workers had no
idea what they were building. The museum
is filled with exhibits showing scale models of all of
the project buildings, artifacts ranging from uniforms
and badges to actual machinery used in the creation of
the world's first atomic bomb.
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Exhibit of Ed Wescott Oak Ridge photos at
Children's Museum & copy of newspaper 1945 |
On the second floor there are
models of other bombs and many interactive exhibits that
will appeal to younger visitors. We can thank a man
named, Ed Westcott, for the photographs of Oak Ridge we
see today. He was the only one allowed to photograph
workers at the sites for government records.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
located there is still the site of some high level
nuclear work so there are certain places you cannot
photograph or enter. To enter or tour, anyone over 18
will need a driver's license from a state that meets
government regulations or have a valid passport. Foreign
visitors are regulated even more strictly. Bus tours are
limited to adults and children over 10.
We went by bus to our next stop,
Y12, the New Hope Center, where we got an overview of
the project. This is where the Calutron Girls,(seen in
the header photo) mostly
young women high school graduates manned the calutron
control panels at Y-12. This functions as the visitor's
center for the project but is still in use by the
government.
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Bethel Valley Church |
The bus made a short stop at the
Bethel Valley Church and graveyard. We drove by the
George Jones Memorial Baptist Church these are some of
the very few remaining structure left from the original
communities.
Next stop was my favorite part of
the tour. We went inside the X10 Graphite Reactor where
the elements needed to produce an atomic reaction were
extracted from raw uranium. The reactor is "manned" by
three mannequins representing the men placing small
slugs of raw uranium into the small holes of the
reactor.
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Heart of the complex, the nuclear reactor |
Upstairs in the control room was
where the results were tallied and recorded. Remember
this was before computers so all of this exacting work
was done by hand. The log book on display is open to
November 4, 1943 at 5a.m., the date when the reactor
first reached critical mass, the minimum amount of
fissile material needed to maintain a nuclear chain
reaction. I was standing in the world's first
continually operating nuclear reactor. Our guide assured
us we were safe as all raidoactive material was buried
deep underground. Oh Boy!
Another little known fact, the
first nuclear produced electricity happened here in
August 1948. The small steam engine displayed there was
part of an experiment where they produced electricity by
means of nuclear fission. It was only enough to light a
small flashlight however.
K25, the former uranium production
facility, was then the largest building in the world. It
has since been torn down but we visited the site. The
distance between each facility was usually about seven
miles. This was another deliberate method of keeping
things secret. It worked. Workers only learned what they
had built after "Little Boy" was dropped on Hiroshima
followed shortly by "Fatman" dropped on Nagasaki.
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Oak Ridge exhibit in Children;s Museum |
For younger visitors there is an
excellent children's museum in Oak Ridge with exhibits
explaining the Manhattan Project in simpler terms. There
is much there that will interest an adult as well
including an exhibit of Ed Wescott's photos of the
project.
In the present city of Oak Ridge,
there is much dating back to the days of the Manhattan
Project. As you drive through the city you can spot some
of the original homes; many have been remodeled and
enlarged. The Alexander Inn, which was the complex's
hotel where important visitors would have stayed, is now
an assisted living facility. The Chapel on the Hill that
once served as a place of worship for all denominations
is still in use. We ran into a kind gentleman, Dr.
Richard Raridon, who volunteers at the chapel and told
us a little about its history. He let us in to see the
interior. There is Jackson Square where residents
celebrated the war's end; it is still is home to shops
and restaurants.
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Former Alexander Inn |
The scope of the project is
reminiscent of a science fiction novel except this
was—is--real. Oak Ridge shaped and continues to shape
the destiny of our world.
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