Enjoy this great slideshow of photos about WW II workers in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
At the height of World War II, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was home to 75,000 residents, consuming more electricity than New York City. But to most of the world, the town did not exist. Thousands of civilians — many of them young women from small towns across the South — were recruited to this secret city, enticed by solid wages and the promise of war-ending work. Kept very much in the dark, few would ever guess the true nature of the tasks they performed each day in the hulking factories in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains. That is, until the end of the war—when Oak Ridge’s secret was revealed.
Drawing on the voices of the women who lived it—women who are now in their eighties and nineties — The Girls of Atomic City rescues a remarkable, forgotten chapter of American history from obscurity. Denise Kiernan captures the spirit of the times through these women: their pluck, their desire to contribute, and their enduring courage. Combining the grand-scale human drama of The Worst Hard Time with the intimate biography and often troubling science of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, The Girls of Atomic City is a lasting and important addition to our country’s history.
Oak Ridgers line up to see how Hollywood tells the story of the Manhattan Project
Oakridge Journal Newspaper
On August 14, 1945, Oak Ridgers and people everywhere celebrated the end of World War II
More end of war celebrations
Y-12 Cubicle Operators
Women Workers Shift Change
Model at Y-12 Panel
Conditioning Pipe Vats
Crowd at Hoskins Drug Store
More VJ Day Celebrations
Buy a copy of The Girls of Atomic City on Amazon
A rare Enigma machine, the proto-computer used by the Nazis to send codes during World War II, just sold at auction for $233,000 to an unnamed buyer. Of course, the Enigma code was cracked by Alan Turing and the other cypherpunks at Bletchley Park.
“It took all the skin off your hands,” says former Army soldier Rollins Edwards. “Your hands just rotted.”
People do weird things for war.
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