Audrey S.

Imagine a project so important, so discreet, that even its employees are not subject to knowing what they are truly working on; two nuclear bombs. My great grandpa, Jessie Stice, was one of these engineers who worked with the US government for years without knowing the real desire of his work. Early on in the project, he was asked to build a part but had no idea it was for a bomb, specifically for one that would ruin Japan’s most prominent cities. However, for many good reasons, uninformed labor is just one of many ways the government kept this project top secret.

The Manhattan Project was a groundbreaking research and development endeavor during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. In 1941, Japan raided and bombed Pearl Harbor, a military base located in the Hawaiian Islands. Shortly after, Einstein sent President Roosevelt a letter urging him to take action, and that the discovery of a new element, uranium, could help construct nuclear bombs. Shortly after, on December 8th, 1941, Roosevelt declared war on Japan, and America’s role in  WW2 was just beginning.

A history article about the Manhattan Project said it started “On December 28, 1942, [when] President Roosevelt authorized the formation of the Manhattan Project to combine these various research efforts to weaponize nuclear energy.” The project quickly expanded, involving multiple secret sites across the United States, the most notable being Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, Oak Ridge in Tennessee, and Hanford Site in Washington. The project advanced rapidly, and by July 16, 1945, the first successful test of a nuclear device, codenamed "Trinity," was conducted in the New Mexico desert creating a 40,000 ft. high mushroom cloud. This was followed by the deployment of two nuclear bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively, leading to Japan's surrender and the end of World War II. The Manhattan Project marked a significant advancement in warfare and physics and initiated the nuclear age, with profound implications for international relations and ethical considerations in science.

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, President Roosevelt decided that something needed to be done. In 1943, thousands of engineers, scientists, and other workers migrated to three cities that were rapidly built in rural areas of the US; they were called Oak q2wooRidge, Los Alamos, and Richland. And although they looked like completely normal cities, their true purpose was much, much deeper than that. 

In an article called “Off the Map” by David Smith, he educates the reader on these cities' occupants, and how over 125,000 scientists, technicians, and support staff occupied the three cities by the war's end. Not only did they need scientists and engineers to test and build the bombs fully, but they also needed distractions and a “fake population” to make these cities look more alive and real. Most of these people treated it like any other community; they went to school, went shopping, and played with their friends as if there wasn't a groundbreaking bomb building right under their feet.

Concealing the locations where the Manhattan Project's testing took place already posed a significant challenge; however, hiding the project's true objective from many of its personnel proved to be just as important yet complex. Much like my uncle, many people who were called to work on the bomb and other parts of it were not informed of what they were doing or why.

Only the top priority workers knew what was going on, and even most of them didn’t

 know the full story. Only essential scientists and project officials were allowed to know

 about the nuclear bomb testing. When being interviewed for the job, Bill Wilcox (who 

later went to work at Oak Ridge) asked them what he would be working on, and they 

replied “Cannot tell you! Secret!”