national mall in washington d.c. , her book the liberals of atomic city. the untold story of the women who helped win world war ii. this program is about 45 minutes. [applause] >> hi. thank you for coming. and going to take a picture of everybody. okay. on account of three everybody say uranium. one, two, three. >> uranium. [laughter] >> that's a good one. thank you so much for coming. thank you, jamie, thank you to the library of congress for organizing and maintaining what i consider to be a very, very important festival. it is so lovely when we'll get a chance to take a few minutes and celebrate how wonderful books

are and how important they are in our lives in a very, very busy -- yea library of congress and all the sponsors as well. so my book, i'm going to talk a little bit about the book, try not to get too chatty because i want to leave time for questions my book came out in march. it is a nonfiction book, true story of young women living in a secret government city during world war two working on the manhattan project. however, they did not know that at the time. just so everyone is on the same page, the manhattan project was a top secret government project during world war ii designed to harness the power of the atom, the power of fission. the manhattan project resulted in a first-ever nuclear weapon. it's okay if you don't know that, but that is what it is. there were three main manhattan project sites, los alamos, new mexico, which is the one that

always pops in to our head, hanford in washington state, and oak ridge tennessee which is where the majority of my book takes place. some of that we kind of have the basics i will tell you about how i found the story because that is one of the questions i get asked most often. what made you think about writing this book. and did you come across this idea? the answer is complete and utter dumb luck. i was working on a completely different book and came across this picture that a really kind of grabs my attention. and if any of you have books you may have seen the picture in the little picture while it is in the book. it was this long room line from floor to ceiling with these huge panels that were covered in all these not sundials. sort of this continent of technology. and sitting on stools in front of all these different panels with these very, very young girls. at first i was just looking at

the image thinking it is kind of beautiful. i read the accompanying text. this was a department of education newsletter than i can across. it said demint these young women, many of them recent high-school graduates from rural areas in tennessee are enriching uranium for the world's first atomic bomb, only they don't know that. in this said, that's interesting once i got past that that is interesting to mike immediate thought was, maybe i am just an idiot. maybe everyone knows this story and i slept through that moment in history class. i started asking as many people as i could, france tour history professors a prominent universities, has been do i think is pretty smart. did you know about this. everybody seemed to have the same kind of response that i did. and read a lot about the manhattan project, love it, but my perspective and always been a very top-down perspective.

in the dollar's been, let's look at the points of view of the scientist, the decision makers, the people in the know. there are great perspectives and interesting and certainly worthy, but we are talking about tens of thousands of other people who also played all role in what many consider to be the most significant event in the 20th century. and when you think about an event that continues to have such an impact on our lives, nuclear-weapons, nuclear medicine, nuclear energy, don't we owe it to ourselves to examine the from everyone's point of view? a cup sitting with that picture and think to myself, want to know what it looked like your their eyes. what was their manhattan project like. so happily i realize the brokerage was only about two hours by car from my home in asheville, north carolina. i got in my car and drove over

there to see if it was still there. no, i knew if it was still there. the first one i tracked down was the manager in the photo. 101 the first day talked to him. sharpest attack. an amazing man. i thought, i have got to start tracking these people down because we do not have access to these stories for much longer. happily every person that i met seemed rather excited to share their view of their experience living and working on the manhattan project. by lai kao was in the lobby of connie assisted living facility when i ran into a very spunky young woman of 84 at the time, i think, name-calling, and she went on to be one of the main characters in my boat. , introduced me to two of the people, and they all invited me to a historic preservation meeting and knowing basically

talk to anyone who was still a round of the give me time and perspective. i also began spending a lot of time just in the lobby of the assisted living facility kind of stalking. were you here? and 65. i'm sorry. you look great. you look fantastic. so that this hell i started to track people down. as a writer, what i was trying to do was i wanted to examine the manhattan project through the lens of the oak ridge but more importantly of want to to give as complete a picture of oak ridge through the eyes of people i was able to interview. the women i chose to focus on had a very different engagements with the project, different experiences, came from different backgrounds which enabled me to explore different aspects of

dollars through their eyes because it was their voices that have really wanted to kind of come through. so i ended up, you know, with some girls from tennessee, grow from pennsylvania, grows from the coast of north carolina. i also -- this is special. i also ended up with and there's who came down from chicago. that nurses here today. rosemary's year. [applause] rose mary will be signing books later. it she is in the book. and all these people allowed me to go in to the oak ridge through a different door. so the woman i chose to describe getting to the oak ridge was of a woman named sylvia. she grew up in a coal mining town in shenandoah, pennsylvania. actually working in 1942 for the manhattan project in manhattan.

of course she did not know that. she was doing a great job at work, and her boss called her in one day and said, we are moving headquarters. you have been fantastic and i would love for you to come with us. are you open to moving in taking this promotion. she does, that sounds great. where we going? welcome i can't really get into any specifics about that. she does, okay. he does commit will be in the south. all right. what will i be doing? pretty much what you are doing here, but that could change. i don't know. okay. how long we billing for? may be six months, possibly nine. okay. don't know where i'm going to might be doing this and to not, six to nine months. if i don't know where i'm going to melamine going to get there? which is a fair question. and they said, don't worry. we will take care of everything.

a car will pick you up your house and take you to the train station. tickets will be waiting. someone on the train is going to tell you when to get off, and someone will meet you at the platform, but you in a car and take you somewhere else. she says, okay. sign me up. she, you know, buys a new address, packs one suitcase, and off she goes. when i give talks about this, people, especially younger people, how could she do that, just go without knowing. didn't she want to know. she was curious, but one of the things that i realized working on this book and talking to some many people live to this time is unless you live through it, i have no idea what it was like to get through world war two. it really touched everyone, everybody knew someone who was away fighting. everybody -- most people knew someone who had been lost.

sylvia was no different. the day she got taken off on that crazy train ride one of her brothers was shift of tip of -- italy. a couple weeks after that her other brother was going to the pacific. in her mind you can know exactly where you're going on what you will be doing but it will be in support of world war ii. that was fine with her. she very much wanted to do her part, and this was something that i found echoed in a lot of interviews. when cecilia ride was a little bit of rude awakening. the dates. kate's and guards and barbwire and guns, all of those were a part of security. you cannot enter into oak ridge unless you had our residents -- you were supposed to have either a resident's pass or guest pass. otherwise you would be shuttled off somewhere else.

in order to live there you had one particular pass. if you work that you had a batch that was specific to work you worked. you cannot even get on a bus. there were security forces everywhere. make sure you were not going where you were supposed to go. you can live years and never even see or know about some of the facilities that were there. within the plans themselves badges would have colored cones and of the times number codes that would indicate everything from what floor you're allowed to be on, what cafeteria you're allowed to it even. it was a lot of control about where people were able to go and whether or not able to go. one of the first thing they see is a ton of money because of rage was, and it is interesting to learn about the origin of

this, it was not the real purpose town. a lot of things for the purpose during the war. people who have factories that made pots and pans are suddenly making show casings, things of that nature. oak ridge as it exists today did not exist before 1942. that is when they created what is considered of kids today. have they did that, and was about 56 to 58,000 acres. there were roughly 1,000 families living there, and these families were moved out the land by eminent domain. some of them and has little as two weeks to completely move off of farms and find some more else to go. very trying for a lot of people. some of those folks have already been moved out from their land ivan p. ba. some were unlucky enough to have been moved three times, won by the smoke in national park, one buy the dam, and the third time by oak ridge.

there was a lot of of -- of people. from the moment they broke ground to the middle of 1945 of rage wind from pretty much nothing to having close to 75, 80,000 residents using more electricity than new york city and with one of the nation's largest bus systems. and it was not on the map and would not be on a map until 1949, several years after the end of world war ii. and so this is why security was so tight. when you get there you did -- there was a lot of security. your car was often checked. every aspect of it, backseat, front seat, the trunk. there was a list of things are not supposed to bring in side.

radius cameras. this was tennessee in the 1940's. it was like moonshine central. one of the beast activities people and was trying to figure out ways to a sneak a local moonshine colts' blow into oak ridge. they came up with pretty creative ways a different alcohol struggling stories. the scene the -- the thing and worked best was hiding the alcohol at the bottom of a bag of dirty baby diapers because that is the one place the cuts would refuse to go. it is kind of jarring for a lot of young women and men when they arrive. eventually they would get used to it. one of the women i interviewed because in a direct experience with having her land taken was tony from a nearby town of

clinton, 10 miles down the road being so close to of courage tony had grown up, always very curious about it throughout high-school. you know, because of rage was a secret city, but it was not invisible. it is not like there was an invisibility dumps around in it. if you were living nearby you cannot help but notice the trains, the trucks, the deliveries, the thousands of construction people who were suddenly showing up. everyone in clinton, her will graduate in class was like, going to keep a job and figure it out. whenever someone will get a job it would come back and say, you're end, they get a pass. people would say, i don't know what they're doing. what are you doing? and hanging sheet rock. what is the building for?

there won't tell me. it was amazing how well they get this under wraps. a funny rumors started. it kept saying everything is going in and nothing is coming out. you would see all of this equipment and supplies the wind and every train car that came out was empty. every truck that came out was anti. everything that came up was empty. it is because the only thing that was leading was occasionally a thermos about this big and a briefcase handcuffed to a guys wrist. i got on a train and went to los alamos. the city kept getting bigger and bigger, and no one ever saw anything leave. the mystery was quite intense, even for people who live there. calling to mind the one but i mentioned earlier, the lobby of

the assisted living facilities. she helped me examine what life was live for families. a very, very large family. there were about nine of them who win at the same time. housing was very tight. when they first decided to create oakridge they said, we should plan for about 13,000 people. they blew past that very quickly . the dorms kept getting filled and the houses, long waiting list. it would bring in trailers, these giant trailers and dumped them on the mind and the dust and people would live in these trailers. enormous trailer camps, one of which became known as happy valley. normally you can see a picture of happy valley in the book. it does not release a happy valley. it says old rusty trailer on a

pile of dirt is what it looks like. at one point calling was living in this trailer with nine family members. what did it was because there was around-the-clock shifts there would arrange there work schedules so that there would work in shifts, sleep in shifts, eat in shifts. someone would be around. that is how they made it work. and colleen, when she was working actually worked for her mother. her mother went to work as well. this is a very new thing for women at this moment in time. as we all know, world war two created incredible opportunities for women not only to do different things but to make money that they've never really made before. colleen's father could not get a job because he needed something that was called a certificate of

availability. some of you might know what this is. basically during world war ii it did not want people job hopping, constantly putting a job to give it a better job because of the movement would create problems for production. if you quit you could not get what was called a certificate of availability in be hired on elsewhere. there really wanted to go worked in post ridge. during this time collins' mother was the brighter for her entire family. they would not let her because she was a woman. it did not matter that she was the only one of earning money in the family, obama and in a managerial position.

not declared head of household. and often find it interesting of was an interesting way to like it here you have on of these increased opportunities collins mom allowed me to look at the which was interesting. the home for the gaseous diffusion process. the majority of plants were dedicated to enriching uranium which means separating out visible isotopes of uranium away from the ones that will not fission as well. that is what in richmond means. the largest building in the entire world. it remained the largest building

in the world for many years after. people wrote on bicycles to get from one part of the plan to another. but cracks me up is if you see -- and they're is a picture of it in the picture in the book. if you see kaytoo five in an aerial view it is shaped like a giant you. i don't think that is the greatest idea for a town that is supposed to be keeping his secret that is enriching uranium but they create the biggest building in the world that can practically be seen from space and is shaped like you. so calling worked as a leak in factor. she worked on pipes. they would present these pipes terror and she had a probe.

ms the trawler, which she did not know was a mass spectrometer would be if there was a leak. in one of another door. did you wonder what the pipes for for? she goes to my whole view of the entire project was pipes. i thought what is behind that door? pipes. that door, that is where they go. what's over there? probably more pipes. interesting that people's relationship to their job would often kind of color what they thought the manhattan project was all about, what this big mysterious thomas -- town was all about. why 12 was managed by tennessee

eastman. most people knew at the time that he had something to do with found development. no, you know what, i bet that these machines were turning. i bet this had something to do with developing those newsreels that we see before all of the movies at the movie house. she had not sought and tennessee eastman all day. another woman i interviewed, her friend took her aside convinced she had figured that the secret. she said, i know what is going on. it has something to do with your in. [laughter] now, when you got hired on to the manhattan project there were many things to do. you had to sign the espionage act, went through security interviews. you also got a physical. during the physical your height and weight and you gave a urine

sample. this woman labeled everybody's yarn samples. that was her view of the project she was convinced he had a weapon nuys to iran, and that was what was going on but everyone would come up with their own ideas of what was happening. a lot of jokes. there were not supposed to talk about it. people tried not to get to into the conversation. all of this is an interesting way to look at what was referred to as compartmentalization. that was the key to security, a compartment position. everybody was trained exceptionally well to do there one thing and do it as best they could. there were never given an ounce more information than they needed. the idea being, if you did not know what was going on you cannot talk about all was going on. you still were not supposed to talk about what you're doing.

but this did -- there were chemists who had ideas that they were working with. there were working with uranium but were not allowed to call its uranium. there were told, i know you know what this is. you cannot call it that anymore. you can call it product, to bully, stuff, but you cannot call it uranium. this idea of only giving people as much information as they needed to do their job while was one of the keys to the entire manhattan project. another key to the manhattan project was having this security force that was in place, not just to make sure people were not going with it or not supposed to be going but to make sure they're not talking about things that were not supposed to be talking about. in addition to the official security force, people who were

actually -- people who might have been armed, people who might come up and ask you for your credentials, your badge, there was a sea of informants. one of the women that i featured , and 18-year-old who was recruited right out of the diner, working at a diner in murfreesboro, tennessee read within two weeks of arriving she it's a visit from a couple of guys. it sounds cliche, the hats and dark suits. it to occur outside and said, we're wondering, would you mind just kind of when you're in the cafeteria or work or in your dorm room, pay close attention to the conversations around you. if you think someone is being a little too carriers are asking too many questions or just getting a little too chatty, would you please fill up these forms. there pre married.

if you know the person's name, like the name down compared happened. then we have these little pre addressed envelopes. it is an anonymous drop box. no one will ever know that it is you. the envelopes or attract -- addressed to the acme insurance company which i thought was something out of wile e. coyote or something. they said, this is a. when you lived and worked there in new that at any moment anything you were saying might very well be reported back to somebody else. so for some people this was a lot of encouragement not take it to curious and not to get to charity. it worked for the most part. people who did talk to much out of turn, you were simply just not at work the next day. i interviewed a number of people who would talk about, i remember silence are used to work next to

me. she talked a lot and one day she just was not there anymore. you would be given your papers and have to leave. a tremendous amount of self-censorship which was interesting because nobody really wanted to be responsible for screening of the war effort. people told you, don't talk about this, people didn't talk about it. and it certainly was not exclusive. we have all heard the phrase loose lips sink ships. the idea of not talking about troop movement, that was very common in the united states during this time. there were a lot of posters that encouraged silence and keeping quiet about anything you might know or any factory you might work in. working on the manhattan project, this was taken to a more extreme length.

so what this resulted in for some people, it could be quite stressful. this is a town that operated 24 hours a day. you were working, many people, very long hours toward a goal that was important, but he did not know what it was. a lot of people who work in a bomber factory can say we are finished. there goes that plane. we just shipped out these tanks. in oakridge you're working hard but did not know what you're doing. this could cause stress. in 1944 they brought in a psychiatrist who could deal -- and he describes some of the people he interviewed. to him it was similar to posttraumatic stress disorder. he was amazed at the effect that it had on people, especially scientists that have to do the same thing over and over again without knowing specifically what they're working on.

one of the things they did in order to try and keep morale up because they did not want our role to fail because with that would mean is people would leave and people leaving affected production. it wanted to try and keep people as happy as possible. they created this mess recreation system. it grew almost overnight. sports teams for everything. this plant would play that plant. a rabbit breeders' club. you could go bowling almost any time of day or night. at 24 hours a roller rink. orchestras, anything you could think of. the idea was that when people had to work so hard they wanted to be able to play hard as well.

and so a lot of the stories i hear from some of these people is how much dating there was because the average age as 27. they're all locked up behind a fence going to dances every now of the week. there were a lot of marriages and a lot of eventual babies have resulted from those few years. what you're used to, what you do, will plant you work at. the questions became very quickly about what part of the country you were from, what kind of music you like to and things of that nature. because no one was from zero cringe because it had not really exist before everyone was kind of a newcomer. people made bonds quickly.

what college might have been like. we will was the veil of mystery lifted? the vast majority of people who worked on in manhattan project realized what they were working on on august 6th 1945 and the first nuclear bomb ever used in combat was detonated over hiroshima. i say used in combat because a month before there had been a tent -- a tustin trinity. there was no television. people either found out by word-of-mouth, newspaper, or radio. where there were when they found out, how they found no. at first the big news was there had been some more development.

ditto radio. there was a long address about a new weapon listening to this new weapon. okay. he keeps talking and talking. it sounds like it's big. and then chairman actually mentions oakridge. you would have thought the entire town was just flabbergasted because many of them had actually gotten quite used to not knowing was going on . now not only did they know, but it turned out that there were a part of something that looked like it was going to be rather significant. it was this incredible mix of feelings for people. jury that the world looked like it would be over, confusion about how big this might be, wondering what their exact role was. so there was still many

questions after the initial news came through. one of the other big questions was will oakridge continue to exist? a lot of people thought it would pull up stakes and everyone would be sent home which was a concern. some people were ready to go. this has been fine, but i want to go home. for a lot of people that have started to feel like home. weather and not the military had intended to or not, they put the ingredients together to create a unique community. so when it turned out that there were still going to be jobs and it was going to be things for them to do, lot of people decided to just stay. cecilia had been there 70 years. so much for 69 months. i'm going to try to wrap this up

fast as we move forward the story of many of these young women and some young man just has not been explored that much, and i have only been able to give you a little bit today, but one of the things that struck me , and i will leave you with this, almost everyone i went to interview, one of the first things they said was you don't want to talk to me. i don't know anything which of course and one was very true or a least it had been. then once you got him talking, of course it's a tremendous wealth of information. i just can't say enough how important oral history project are. are we encourage anybody who has a family member to just get to your local library. if you don't want to get involved with the larger organizations in the country. the library of congress has won

for veterans. they're happy to help you get your story down. it is a tremendous gift for writers car researchers, teachers, students. the best way into some moments of history document. people of such a fascinating way and. i would encourage you if you have anybody who you think, you should really just talk about your time, sit down at the table without the tape recorder and get the story down. that is what i will leave you with. we have how much? seven minutes for questions. seven minutes. [applause] >> thank you. thank you. >> yes, go ahead. >> thank you. a fascinating story. obviously what was created here was essentially a company town.

i'm wondering for lack of a better word what the government shall work administrative infrastructure was to run this town? was at the department of defense, the army? >> it was a mind-boggling group of government organizations, private contractors. everyone from tennessee east trek along to monsanto to a tremendous number of private companies as well. in many ways really the growth of the military industrial complex. a lot of those companies are in my book. there's another report that was written in the 60's and out demand project by a man named a son about different companies that were involved. while it was under the war

department, they would contract out to architectural firms, construction firms. they created a company that managed the day-to-day lives of the city, making sure people have rooms and dorms. the size of it -- of course this was not just going on. it was the administrative headquarters, but there were two other major sites and and there were many, many states that played a little part in the project as well. >> hi. >> thank you very much for your book. my late father was the chief civil engineer of building that facility. the whole thing. i was born there in the hospital inside the gate. i don't know anything about it and have not been back since. >> it is still there. >> i know that it is.

>> i get this question in new york all the time. >> my dad is curtis melson. i am curtis melson jr. my mother, of course, was there. she knew what he was doing. i had two older siblings. they remember more about of rage and i do. >> did you go to school there? >> we left. three months after ana was born we were in deep river ontario, another facility. i was only there three months approximately. >> i am always amazed wherever i go from san francisco to seattle to anywhere. there is always someone who has some connection to the story. >> thank you for your book. >> hello. >> hi. >> i was wondering what happened to the people who got caught smuggling in the moonshine?

>> the biggest thing that happened was the people in the guard house had a lot of parties that is the main thing that happened. there were definitely reprimands they took your business. the guards were probably drinking it waited at night. >> to questions. one was aware of a might be going on? >> oh, yes. >> okay. >> we find that out later. >> could you elaborate? the second question, described a little bit about the process -- with a burning in uranium or and refining it, centrifuging? >> it was processed in various other facilities so that they had a more -- visually it was in

the form. went into the calutrons, started to go through the gas is diffusion process, in the form of uranium to tetrachloride, uranium hexachloride, various compounds that were prepared elsewhere. david green is one that made his way through oak ridge. and then he was out at los alamos feeding information to the rosenbergs. out at los alamos. most people know his name. what i think is interesting, an amazing the article. want to say in 2009. considered one of the most important atomic spies in russia's history and most people in this country did not even know about him until 2009.

he was honored in some event in russia. a wonderful article about him. he is in the book. it is interesting stuff. he was in oak ridge as well. one more minute. okay. >> i am a world war to oral historian. out of all the material, whether you found any previously done oral history of whether you had to go out and do it yourself? >> i wanted to do it myself. if there was someone i wanted information on who was no longer with us i would try and track down an oral history, but i wanted to find people for whom it was just going to be my interview with them because that was really kind of important to me. >> did you find very much out there? >> there were places to five right now the atomic heritage

foundation has something called the manhattan -- they had been working on gathering oral history for a long time and time now starting to put them up online. that is a tremendous project. they are just starting to put them up on line. >> thank you for your work. >> did you very much. >> you mentioned that there are two other sites did any of the research touch on those communities? and when the mystery was unveiled, communities within oakridge try to tap into or connect with those folks who perhaps may have had similar experiences? >> that i don't think so or no. you have to us certainly understand that most of those people did not know that it

existed until the day they found out about the bomb. some people who work within the atomic energy commission what gets into other places. and sure they have interesting conversations about what life was like. i talk a little bit about it in the book, but it is pretty much predominantly about of rage. i know that in later years there was more of, i don't know if you would say an alliance, but more sharing going on between the sides as the idea of preserving the history, it became important to people. they reached out and wanted to join forces, but there were a lot of people who would work at several different sites. you did see -- or to places like rocky flats of the university of chicago or columbia. there was a little movement between the sites. abcaeight. i am being given the cut.

thank you very much. [applause] >> this event was part of the 2013 national book festival and washington d.c. for more information visit the website. >> next on book tv her father, the internationally known scholar and her experiences growing up in new york city as the daughter of arab-american parents. this is about an hour. [applause] >> hi. thank you so much. it is an unbelievable honor to be here as