Growing up near Oak Ridge , Tenn ., I thought I knew what went on there . Not many people
did in the beginning . In 1942 , the U . S . government began building a secret city in East Tennessee as part of the Manhattan Project . By 1945 , though Oak Ridge still wasn ’ t on any maps , 75,000 people were living and working there , most unaware that the town ’ s sprawling plants were designed to enrich uranium to be used in an atomic bomb . The secrecy of that ominous goal intrigued me as a kid . But what I didn ’ t fully appreciate back then was that most of the people working in those plants were women .
All history is women ’ s history , but we aren ’ t always taught about it that way . The history we learn in school is usually the history of great men , with a few great women sprinkled in along the way . But behind the epic tales of kings and generals are the stories of the everyday people who just as surely leave a mark on the world . That ’ s often where we have to look for women ’ s history . As a kid , I learned about the boys fighting “ over there ” in Europe and the Pacific . I learned that Einstein co-signed a letter to President Roosevelt warning him that the Nazis might be developing an atomic weapon . I learned that Robert Oppenheimer led the team of scientists designing the weapon . I learned that President Truman made the ultimate decision to drop two atomic bombs on Japan .
But , even though their story was a local one , I didn ’ t learn about the “ Calutron Girls ,” until I was an adult . These young women were mostly recent high school graduates from local areas hired to work in Oak Ridge ’ s Y-12 plant , operating Calutrons , the devices developed at the University of California , Berkeley to use an electromagnetic process to separate uranium isotopes . The women sat in front of large panels covered in meters and dials , which they were tasked with adjusting as needed . They had no idea what the dials and meters controlled and were under strict instructions not to try to find out . Adjust the meters and ask no questions — that was the relatively simple job . Still , some Y-12 physicists balked at the idea of hiring uneducated females for this work , which had previously been performed by graduate students at Berkeley . In fact , the women proved to be more efficient workers than the men they had replaced and produced enriched uranium faster .
Many of these women had never left their rural homes before and enjoyed living together in dormitories in this makeshift city , full of other young people . The Army provided them with recreation centers , roller rinks and cinemas , and quite a few people met their future spouses while working in Oak Ridge on the Manhattan Project . The Calutron operators only found out the purpose of their jobs when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima , made from material they had helped to create . Soon after , most of them left Y-12 , as operations dramatically scaled down with the end of the war and more effective methods of uranium enrichment were developed .
The Calutron Girls ’ story gripped me , and I began researching a novel about them because I wanted to bring the history of those young women to life . I wish I had known their story when I was younger . Growing up , I sought out stories about women , not just in literature , but also in history . Those stories weren ’ t always easy to find . The history of wars particularly bored me , because it was always about men . I found it alienating , because I couldn ’ t picture myself as part of it . As I got older , I learned to project my imagination outside my own gender , as girls must