Chapter 1
November 1944
THE BUS TO OAK RIDGE WAS PACKED WITH OTHER GIRLS JUNE’S age, along with a few soldiers and laborers in the back. June had sat in the front by a window to watch the farms and trees pass by, but nerves kept forcing her to look around. The recruiter in Knoxville had pointed the bus out to her, yet she was terrified that she’d gotten on the wrong one. None of the buses in and out of Oak Ridge were labeled because officially the city didn’t exist.
June had felt sophisticated and grown-up this morning, with her hair curled and her mouth painted red, even though she was wearing one of her sister’s hand-me-down dresses. She was on her way to her first job, paying seventy-five cents an hour. Now panic rose up in her belly. Everyone else seemed so calm. How did they know they were headed in the right direction? She looked over at the bus driver, a wide man with a roll of fat at the back of his neck in between his hairline and his shirt collar. She could ask him if she was going to the right place. That’s what Mary would do. Mary had no fear of talking to people. June turned to the middle-aged man sitting beside her. His head was tucked into the Knoxville Journal. “Roosevelt Makes History” read the large headline, and below, in smaller print, “Elected to Record Fourth Term.” Of course June already knew that.
The last time she’d come out this way was two years ago to move her grandfather out of his house. Since that afternoon, they’d heard lots of stories about what was happening in Bear Creek Valley. The Army had built a city, folks said. Mary had been working in Oak Ridge for almost a year and assured June there were plenty of good jobs for the taking. Her sister lived in a house with five other young women. There was no room for June at the moment, so she was going to have to live in a dormitory. June didn’t really mind, though. Mary got on her nerves more than ever now that she was going steady with a sergeant.
A tall fence topped with barbed wire ran along the road, and June could see buildings beyond it in the distance. A sign in front of the fence read MILITARY RESERVATION. NO TRESPASSING. The bus slowed and finally stopped, stuck behind traffic. She craned her neck to see out the front. The cars were stopped at a large gate and lookout tower, where a soldier stood, holding a rifle.
They sat in traffic for twenty minutes. Once through the gate, the bus wound past endless neighborhoods of houses and trailers, all newly built. She couldn’t believe that this was the same land on which her grandfather had lived. It was a large town now, an expanse of buildings and homes that went on as far as she could see. Some neighborhoods were obviously not yet finished. An entire subdivision was made up of only chimneys, which would presumably become whole houses one day, and another was filled with tiny aluminum trailers. The cars on the road kicked up clouds of dust, which seemed to have landed on everything in sight. The bus drove into a business area, with various shops and people coming and going, waiting in lines—young girls, soldiers in uniform, and workmen in plainclothes. It was startling these days to see so many young men in one place.
When the bus driver dropped them off in front of a large white building, he announced, “All new employees report to the front desk.” She was in the right place.
June was sent to a place called the bullpen, the training center where new employees had to wait while their security clearances came through. A throng of other girls sat in a white-walled room with a blackboard at the front where a tall man in a gray suit took roll just as in school and handed out a general information bulletin to them. “You are now a resident of Oak Ridge,” it read, “situated within a restricted military area . . . What you do here, what you see here, what you hear here, let it stay here.”
“Welcome to Oak Ridge,” said the man. “You are all going to be working at one of our plants here on an essential wartime project. We are going to train you, but we cannot tell you what you are working on. It is a matter of national security. But I promise you, ladies, that it is of the utmost importance. If our enemies succeed in this endeavor before we do, God have mercy on all of us.”
The man’s tone softened. “You will work six days a week, ten-hour shifts with an hour lunch break. Shifts will rotate around the clock. It will be hard work, but you can rest easy at night knowing that you are helping to bring an end to the war.”
He passed around a drawing of some kind of a machine with knobs, meters, and levers; none of it meant anything to June. “This is a drawing of the machines you will be operating. The machines may look confusing, but your job is very simple.”
A stern man in Army uniform came in. He walked quickly to the front of the room and began talking. “I’m going to tell you a story about a girl who was working here at Oak Ridge. She knew she wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about what she was doing here. But she decided to write a letter home to her mother describing what the town looks like. She mentioned how many dormitories there were, how many houses she supposed had been built in the last month, how many cafeterias there were.” For a moment, he silently paced across the room.
“Another story. A man working in a plant went to Knoxville on his day off. Ran into an old friend in a tavern, who asked him where he works. Now, this man also knew better than to talk about his job. But he told his old friend that he worked at the Clinton Engineer Works in a plant and went on to describe what it looked like.” He shook his head, as though marveling at the man’s idiocy.
“A schoolteacher here struck up a conversation with an acquaintance, another Oak Ridge woman she met in church. Began telling this woman about some of her students, where they’re from, what their parents do. Little did this woman know that her friend was reporting back to Army Intelligence. Her friend knew that by having this sort of conversation, the schoolteacher was putting our project at risk, as well as the lives of our boys overseas. The man in Knoxville didn’t know that a secret agent overheard him at the tavern talking to his friend. And the girl who wrote the letter to her mother didn’t know that all mail going out of Oak Ridge may be examined.”
He stopped pacing and faced them head on. “You are living on a military reservation. Everything about this place is secret. The most inconsequential detail could provide important information to our enemies if it fell into the wrong hands. It is up to you to keep your mouths shut. And it is also your responsibility to report anyone who breaks security.”
He swung around and pointed to a girl in the front row. “Would you turn in your father?” He turned to a man behind her. “Your mother?” Turning again. “Your brother? Remember friendship, even family ties, are no excuse. If you know of someone breaching security, it is your responsibility to the United States of America to report it.”
June had a terrible impulse to giggle. This always happened to her when she was nervous in quiet, serious places. She’d burst out laughing at a church revival once and came dangerously close to giggling at her own grandmother’s funeral.
The man produced a piece of paper from his pocket and held it in front of them. “This is the Espionage Act. It says . . .”—he cleared his throat and began reading—“‘Whoever, with intent or reason to believe that it is to be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation, communicates, delivers, or transmits, or attempts to, or aids, or induces another to, communicate, deliver, or transmit, to any foreign government . . .’”
He went on and on. June couldn’t follow the words; all her energy was going toward suppressing the anxious laughter building up in her chest. She bit her cheeks to keep from smiling and stared down at her hands. She knew she must be visibly trembling and could feel her eyes begin to water with the strain.
The man put the Espionage Act down and looked solemnly around the room. “People will ask what you do here. Don’t worry about being rude. If someone asks what you’re making, tell them lights for lightning bugs or holes for doughnuts.”
She lost control, and a muffled giggle escaped.
The man turned to her, and June prepared for him to yell. But instead he smiled. “That’s right. It sounds silly. But it’s better to sound silly than put our boys’ lives in danger.”
She smiled back, the laughter gone. The man handed out declarations of secrecy, which everyone had to sign. When they finished, he sent them across the street for lunch.
The cafeteria was bustling. June piled mashed potatoes and meatloaf onto a plate and looked for a place to sit. It was like high school, except there were three times as many people in this room as there had been in her entire school. The tables were full of people talking and laughing with friends. She wondered where Mary was, wishing for the comfort of a relative, or anyone to eat lunch with, really. Finally resigning herself to being alone, she sat at the end of a long table and ate in silence.
When she was done, she wandered back to the bullpen and found the room for the next training lecture, “Young Woman’s Guide to Oak Ridge.” A lumpy woman in her fifties sat at the front of the room, wearing black-framed glasses and a shapeless brown dress. Gray curls formed an orb around her head. She opened a large handbag and took out a pile of pamphlets, which she began passing around the room.
The pamphlet was called “Between Us Girls and the Gatepost.” June opened it and saw a drawing of a pretty young girl sitting at a desk. A man stood over her as though trying to get her attention, but she was engrossed in typing.
“My name is Mrs. Ransom,” announced the woman in a honeyed voice. “I’d like to welcome all you young ladies to Oak Ridge. I’m going to tell you about working here, woman-to-woman. For how many of y’all is this your first job?”
June raised her hand, as did most of the girls. “You’re going to have a wonderful time working here, I guarantee. But you will have to work hard. And there is some advice I want to give you about the workplace.” She said it as though she were just a good-natured woman who went around dispensing free advice to younger ladies.
“The first thing we’re going to talk about, which I’m sure is on all your minds, is what to wear.” This wasn’t on June’s mind at all. She’d never had much choice in what she wore; she was usually in dresses she’d sewn herself from whatever fabric was available, or hand-me-downs from Mary.
“The word I want you all to keep in mind is decorum. Don’t wear too much makeup. Don’t wear dresses that are too short. Don’t expose your midriff.” She put her hand across her own midriff to demonstrate, and June had a horrible unbidden image of what it would look like bare.
“Imagine your mother is here to keep an eye on you, and don’t wear anything she wouldn’t find appropriate.” Her voice was losing its sweetness.
“You will be working around a lot of men, remember, and you don’t want to distract them. Don’t flirt on the job. There will be dances where you can have fun; save your flirting for then. You have a responsibility to our boys overseas to work as hard as you can and not do anything to keep the men around you from working hard, too. You don’t want innocent boys to lose their lives because you’re wasting time flirting.”
Mrs. Ransom paused. When she spoke again, the sweetness had returned. “But that doesn’t mean we don’t want you to look attractive! You also have a responsibility to keep yourselves looking neat and pretty. Your appearance should reflect well upon the Manhattan Engineer District as a whole. Suits are always a good choice, as are sweaters and skirts. Tailored dresses are fine, especially if you can sponge-press them yourself in the dormitory.”
June owned only five dresses, and they were basically all the same shape. She’d never even seen girls in short dresses or with exposed midriffs. And the thought of flirting mortified her.
***
IT WAS TWO more days before June got her security clearance and was finally allowed to leave the accommodations in the bullpen to move into the dormitory. She was praying for a nice roommate.
The first thing she noticed about Cici Roberts was that she was tall. She stood straight with perfect posture, her navy jacket emphasizing her wide shoulders, which somehow did not look manly, but rather elegant. She carried herself as though she ought to be wearing a crown instead of the small hat that was perched on the dark brown waves of her shining hair, which perfectly framed her stunning face. Her lips were large and round, painted a deep red. She was unarguably beautiful, majestic, out of place in the drab, militaristic dorm room. Cici looked as though she had never darned a sock or weeded a vegetable garden or scrubbed a floor. She belonged in large rooms with high ceilings, sipping from porcelain teacups, ordering servants around.
And then she spoke. Her voice was coated with sugar, ...
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