Recruitment
In early 1943, construction began on a facility at Los Alamos, New Mexico. There were already three Manhattan Project facilities located across the United States. The Metallurgical Laboratory (where I first worked) was located in Chicago, there was a facility for separating U-235 from U-238 in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and plutonium-239 was procured at the Hanford, Washington facility. General Groves, the director of the project, felt the need for another facility, one where all of the best theoretical and experimental scientists (and mathematicians) engaged in nuclear research could be brought together.
General Groves appointed J. Robert Oppenheimer to serve as Los Alamos's scientific director, and Oppenheimer's first job was persuading America's best scientists to come to Los Alamos. During his recruitment efforts, he visited the University of Chicago. As soon as he mentioned moving to a remote area in New Mexico work for the government, I was convinced. I strongly suspected that we would be working on the atomic bomb, and despite my unease about the destructive power we would be working to unleash, I was fascinated by the idea. Also, I would not be leaving any family behind. My parents died when I was 17 years old, and my little sister Anabelle was studying at St. Mary's Hospital School of Nursing in California.
I packed my bags and took a train to Santa Fe in April, 1943. I had been instructed to report to 109 East Palace Street, Santa Fe. There Dorothy McKibben (nicknamed the Gatekeeper) gave me a badge to get me inside the facilities at P.O. Box 1663, located on a mesa about 45 miles to the southwest. People in Santa Fe named it the Hill, people who lived at the facility called it Los Alamos or the mesa, and in Manhattan Project jargon, it was Site Y. The Manhattan Project was infrequently referred to as the Zia Project- instead it was usually just the Project. When I was traveling to Los Alamos, I heard quite a few people speak of it as Shangri-La.
In early 1943, construction began on a facility at Los Alamos, New Mexico. There were already three Manhattan Project facilities located across the United States. The Metallurgical Laboratory (where I first worked) was located in Chicago, there was a facility for separating U-235 from U-238 in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and plutonium-239 was procured at the Hanford, Washington facility. General Groves, the director of the project, felt the need for another facility, one where all of the best theoretical and experimental scientists (and mathematicians) engaged in nuclear research could be brought together.
General Groves appointed J. Robert Oppenheimer to serve as Los Alamos's scientific director, and Oppenheimer's first job was persuading America's best scientists to come to Los Alamos. During his recruitment efforts, he visited the University of Chicago. As soon as he mentioned moving to a remote area in New Mexico work for the government, I was convinced. I strongly suspected that we would be working on the atomic bomb, and despite my unease about the destructive power we would be working to unleash, I was fascinated by the idea. Also, I would not be leaving any family behind. My parents died when I was 17 years old, and my little sister Anabelle was studying at St. Mary's Hospital School of Nursing in California.
I packed my bags and took a train to Santa Fe in April, 1943. I had been instructed to report to 109 East Palace Street, Santa Fe. There Dorothy McKibben (nicknamed the Gatekeeper) gave me a badge to get me inside the facilities at P.O. Box 1663, located on a mesa about 45 miles to the southwest. People in Santa Fe named it the Hill, people who lived at the facility called it Los Alamos or the mesa, and in Manhattan Project jargon, it was Site Y. The Manhattan Project was infrequently referred to as the Zia Project- instead it was usually just the Project. When I was traveling to Los Alamos, I heard quite a few people speak of it as Shangri-La.
First Impressions
The most direct road to Los Alamos was a treacherous washboard running through the Indian pueblo of San Ildefonso, over the muddy Rio Grande, and then up a series of narrow switchbacks. About one or two miles away from the settlement, I had to show my temporary pass to the MP on duty. He wrote down my pass and car license number on the record for the day, and I traveled on.
When I arrived at the facility, the first thing I saw was the fence. A barbed wire fence surrounded the entire facility, and armed soldiers patrolling it. This was slightly unnerving to me, but I wasn't as bothered by it as some of my European colleagues. They said it reminded them of Hitler's concentration camps.
Inside the fence sat a dusty little community that looked as if it had been thrown together overnight. Before it became a top secret government facility, Los Alamos had been home to the Los Alamos Boys Ranch School. The boarding school's stone and log buildings made for comfortable homes and meeting areas, but the rest of the town consisted of hastily built houses, barracks, and trailers.
My favorite thing about Los Alamos was the view. It was breathtaking. On one side of me lay the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. When the sun set, they were bathed in hues of scarlet and lavender. Below my feet lay the desert, its flatness broken by majestic palisades. I heard one say in awe that they looked like "the ruined cathedrals and palaces of some old, great, vanished race." Beyond the mesa was the Jemez Mountain Range, forming a stunning backdrop. I often thought of Los Alamos as an island in the sky.
The most direct road to Los Alamos was a treacherous washboard running through the Indian pueblo of San Ildefonso, over the muddy Rio Grande, and then up a series of narrow switchbacks. About one or two miles away from the settlement, I had to show my temporary pass to the MP on duty. He wrote down my pass and car license number on the record for the day, and I traveled on.
When I arrived at the facility, the first thing I saw was the fence. A barbed wire fence surrounded the entire facility, and armed soldiers patrolling it. This was slightly unnerving to me, but I wasn't as bothered by it as some of my European colleagues. They said it reminded them of Hitler's concentration camps.
Inside the fence sat a dusty little community that looked as if it had been thrown together overnight. Before it became a top secret government facility, Los Alamos had been home to the Los Alamos Boys Ranch School. The boarding school's stone and log buildings made for comfortable homes and meeting areas, but the rest of the town consisted of hastily built houses, barracks, and trailers.
My favorite thing about Los Alamos was the view. It was breathtaking. On one side of me lay the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. When the sun set, they were bathed in hues of scarlet and lavender. Below my feet lay the desert, its flatness broken by majestic palisades. I heard one say in awe that they looked like "the ruined cathedrals and palaces of some old, great, vanished race." Beyond the mesa was the Jemez Mountain Range, forming a stunning backdrop. I often thought of Los Alamos as an island in the sky.
Top Secret
At Los Alamos, life was very regulated. It was vital that nothing about the facility leaked to the public. This was the reason for its remote location. All of the scientists had code names- mine was Ernest C. Ferrell, and Enrico Fermi's was Eugene Farmer. It was forbidden to mention any scientist's real name. Even the scientists' wives had to be called by their husbands' code names. Security details also insisted that no one ever used the words 'physicist' or 'chemist,' so we developed our own code. We called physicists "fizzlers" and chemists "stinkers."
Although the limitations due to security were sometimes frustrating, I thought that they lent a sense of adventure and excitement to the whole thing. My mail was censored, my long-distance phone calls were monitored, and I wasn't allowed to travel farther than 100 miles away. Any contact with outsiders was limited, some scientists were trailed by bodyguards, and I was forbidden to open a checking account in a local bank or take out a life insurance policy. Trips to Santa Fe required special permission. Also, the workmen and the women and children were kept in the dark about our work.
We had an extremely strict system of badges and passes. There was always someone checking for passes outside the facility. If you lost your pass, you were incarcerated in the guard's primitive hut. Once, my pass expired just on the day I had planned to take a hike in the mountains. Getting back in was a rather unpleasant experience.
At Los Alamos, life was very regulated. It was vital that nothing about the facility leaked to the public. This was the reason for its remote location. All of the scientists had code names- mine was Ernest C. Ferrell, and Enrico Fermi's was Eugene Farmer. It was forbidden to mention any scientist's real name. Even the scientists' wives had to be called by their husbands' code names. Security details also insisted that no one ever used the words 'physicist' or 'chemist,' so we developed our own code. We called physicists "fizzlers" and chemists "stinkers."
Although the limitations due to security were sometimes frustrating, I thought that they lent a sense of adventure and excitement to the whole thing. My mail was censored, my long-distance phone calls were monitored, and I wasn't allowed to travel farther than 100 miles away. Any contact with outsiders was limited, some scientists were trailed by bodyguards, and I was forbidden to open a checking account in a local bank or take out a life insurance policy. Trips to Santa Fe required special permission. Also, the workmen and the women and children were kept in the dark about our work.
We had an extremely strict system of badges and passes. There was always someone checking for passes outside the facility. If you lost your pass, you were incarcerated in the guard's primitive hut. Once, my pass expired just on the day I had planned to take a hike in the mountains. Getting back in was a rather unpleasant experience.
Living Conditions
Los Alamos itself was a mess. It was a construction site. There were housing shortages, crowded laundries, and frequent issues with water supply and plumbing. I lived in one of the old school buildings with a bunch of other young physicists and chemists. We were all crammed onto bunk beds, and only the top scientists (like Oppenheimer) lived in houses that had tubs. I didn't mind the conditions, though. Besides the fact that I worked 10 to 12 hours a day, so I was hardly ever in my dorm, I was too absorbed in the Project to care; nuclear physics fascinated me.
Los Alamos itself was a mess. It was a construction site. There were housing shortages, crowded laundries, and frequent issues with water supply and plumbing. I lived in one of the old school buildings with a bunch of other young physicists and chemists. We were all crammed onto bunk beds, and only the top scientists (like Oppenheimer) lived in houses that had tubs. I didn't mind the conditions, though. Besides the fact that I worked 10 to 12 hours a day, so I was hardly ever in my dorm, I was too absorbed in the Project to care; nuclear physics fascinated me.