The Manhattan Project Was Just Another Job for Many Folks

Extremely tight control was maintained by the staff of each site, and in keeping Germany from creating the atomic bomb they were successful. However, Russian operatives were still able to infiltrate the project via so-called Met Lab spies and other contacts- among them Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were later tried and executed for their crimes.

In order to prevent what could have been a deadly leak of information, employees working all over the country were only given as much information as needed to the do their jobs and no more. This way, their knowledge was limited. Such secrets could not easily be kept in the labs where the most fundamental nuclear discoveries were being made, but for the regular people on the job, many had no idea what they were a part of.

Information on the Manhattan Project for many years was kept under wraps, but the whole shebang was photographed quite a lot by government workers with clearance during the war and that’s where these photographs come from. The only photographer at Oak Ridge was Ed Westcott, who later said he had figured out halfway through what the U.S. military was creating. Most people who worked there, however, only had access to one or two areas, whereas the official photographer had access to all parts of the compound.

It’s interesting to see the women who likely did secretarial or maintenance work at shift change, most of whom had no clue what was happening (or at least so some of them said years later).

The bombs developed as part of the Manhattan Project included the “Fat Man” which was the type dropped on Nagasaki and “Little Boy” which was dropped on Hiroshima, both designed at the Los Alamos facility.