Oak Ridge Tennessee is a small American town just like any other. In fact, Oak Ridge was at one point the fifth largest town in Tennessee between 1942 to 1945. But no one knew this as Oak Ridge technically didn’t exist. In October 1942, the 1000 or so residents of the area came home to find notes on their doors telling them because of the war they had six weeks to get out, the government had acquired their land through eminent domain. Imagine coming home to a letter saying get out we got rights to your property?!?! That’s insane! If this happen to my family I would have been devastated. Buildings and fences went up and the recruited workers were shipped in. Each worker had a task, but it was on a need to know bases, all they knew was that their work would end the war.
They didn’t know that it did, because they were building the atomic bomb in what was known as the Manhattan Project. The name “Manhattan Project” supposedly originated from the fact that the sites were quite similar to New York they used the same amount of electricity due to all the machinery, the air was toxic they had to overpay the residents to convinced them to live in bad conditions and the people all thought they were more important then they actually were. With that being said it was important that the U.S. didn't accidentally leak information to access spies, therefore the entire 75,000-person town of Oak Ridge Tennessee was 100% confidential not even the vice-president knew it existed. when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima that was the first time that all, but a select few individuals, even knew such a bomb existed it was pretty impressive the way the government kept this enormous operation confidential it was just as ingenious as the technology they were building. Oak ridge did not exist on any map to the public and in order to keep it that way the houses were built outside the town and brought in, to be placed so they can keep as few construction workers to enter the none existent town. Even when it came to mail, every single piece of mail going in or out were searched and read through. Not only to make sure that there was no details of the work going on within, but also to be sure that nobody was including codes that communicated details of the work.
There were posters all over this town reminding everyone that this was top secret and none of this should be talked about. All though the government places protocols and had people sign wavers etc. mind you with 75,000 people it was inevitable that a few spies would get in for that reason almost everyone had no clue what they were doing. I mean I’m being serious no one had any Idea they were there to build this atomic bomb. only a few dozen people knew that the atomic bomb existed before the bombing of Hiroshima. Like I said on a need to know bases. Now oak ridge wasn’t the only site for this “Manhattan project” there were other places but for now we will just talk about oak ridge. All the workers learned about what they were building from the newspaper the day after the bomb actually dropped. The way they operated this project and to keep it from leaking out to the public is that every individual would have a single task and the only people who knew how it related to other tasks were the few highest rank scientists. For example, one individual was task with watching a dial turning a valve, when it reached to 100 that was it he had no idea why he was doing that. But it was a job nonetheless so that person wouldn’t ask even though I’m pretty sure he was
wondering why the hell he was doing this. Everyone’s tasks were tiny and mundane. Even the laundry, people were told to hold up a machine to each article of clothing and listen for a clicking sound, little did that person know they were checking for radiation using a Geiger counter. Yikes!!! Security officers roamed all around Oak Ridge and monitored for anything suspicious, groups of more than seven and having the same person over repeatedly was considered suspicious so residents avoided that since they knew that if the security officers were suspicious in the slightest, even if it was unproven, they would get kicked out for good. If a leak was proven the resident would either be jailed for 10 years or fined the equivalent of $100,000. So with that being said keeping your mouth shut wasn’t that hard for these Americans.
At that time Americans were really into the idea of winning the war so even those that had a good idea of what was going on in Oakridge they kept silent out of a sense of patriotism. Besides the secretase and the government threating everyone to keep it quite oak ridge was relatively a regular all-American town they had stores and restaurants and even sports teams. Crazy right?!? I mean given that the town was building the deadliest weapon that has ever existed but hey, every town needs a mascot. Over all I thought this was an interesting thing to share with you all. Who knows, we might have a town somewhere that we are unaware of now. I mean it's possible! I hope you enjoyed this article. Thank you for reading!
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