INVENTING Los ALAMOS This page intentionally left blank INVENTING LOS ALAMOS The Growth of an Atomic Community JONHUNNER Also by Jon Hunner (coauthor) Las Cruces (Chicago, 2003) (coauthor) Santa Fe: A Historical Walking Guide (Chicago, 2004) This book is published with the generous assistance of the McCasland Foun- dation, Duncan, Oklahoma. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-PublicationData Hunner, Jon. Inventing Los Alamos : the growth of an atomic community / Jon Hunner. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8061-3634-0 (alk. paper) 1. Los Alamos (N.M.)-History-20th century. 2. Los Alamos (N.M.)- Social life and customs-20th century. 3. Los Alamos (N.M.)-Social con- ditions-20th century. 4. Family-New Mexico-Los Alamos-History- 20th century. 5. Community life-New Mexico-Los Alamos-History- 20th century. 6. Nuclear weapons-Social aspects-New Mexico-Los Alamos-History-20th century. 7. Nuclear weapons-Social aspects- United States-History-20th century. 8. Cold War-Social aspects-New Mexico-Los Alamos. 9. Cold War-Social aspects-United State. I. Title. F804.L6H86 2004 978.9'58053--&22 2004046086 The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources, Inc. m Copyright O 2004 by the University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Publishing Division of the University. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the U.S.A. CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix INTRODUCTION 3 CHAPTER l Rendezvous at Site Y The Instant City 12 CHAPTER 2 Fishing in the Desert with Fat Man: Civic Tension, Atomic Explosion CHAPTER 3 Postwar Los Alamos: Exodus, New Growth, and Invisible Danger CHAPTER 4 Los Alamos Transformed: Federal Largesse and Red Challenge CHAPTER 5 A Cold War Community Up in Arrns: Competition and Conformity CHAPTER 6 Toward Normalizing Los Alamos: Cracking the Gates CHAPTER 7 Atomic City on a Hill: Legacy and Continuing Research NOTES BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX This page intentionally left blank PHOTOGRAPHS J. Robert Oppenheimer The original road up to Los Alamos Looking south to the Tech Area Guards at the East Gate stopping traffic at Site Y Central School Otto Frisch Eric Jette, Charles Critchfield, and J. Robert Oppenheimer Trailer parks and hutment areas Norris Bradbury Atomic bomb explosion at Trinity, July 16, 1945 Willie Higginbotham and Popovi Da The earliest known photograph after the Hiroshima explosion Looking across the devastation at Nagasaki A train bringing aid to Nagasaki Norris Bradbury, 1945 Boys' Ranch Fuller Lodge, with wings added to accommodate official visitors to the laboratory A 1948 aerial photograph showing rows of wartime dormitories The newly constructed Western Area of Los Alamos right after the war The interior of a new home in the Western Area A modern duplex in the Western Area Test Baker in July 1946 at the Bikini Atoll AEC guards ILLUSTRATIONS The stores of the Community Center 129 An AEC guard at the East Gate, controlling access to Los Alamos 132 Guard gate controlling access to Omega West 134 The Omega West reactor at the bottom of Los Alamos canyon 135 High school students learning to type at Central School 148 Experiments at the Nevada Test Site 167 The aging Western Area 171 Elementary school children preparing for a community evacuation, 1956 210 Teenagers filing out of the new high school as part of civil defense exercises in 1956 21 1 Cars clogging the streets of Los Alamos as residents try to evacuate the community in 1956 212 Radiation monitors inspecting the feet of a Hill resident 213 An aerial view of Los Alamos looking southeast 22 1 MAPS Los Alamos in the 1940s Los Alamos in the 1950s Many people have assisted me with Inventing Los Alamos. First, I would like to thank those I interviewed concerning their experiences growing up at Los Alamos. Their stories fomed the foundation of Inventing Los Alamos. Carlos Visquez with the Oral History Program and Rose Diaz with the General Library at the University of New Mexico helped me in listening to and recording their voices. The faculty and graduate students (especially Abbe Karmen and Tom Gentry) of the History Department at UNM also greatly assisted me as I explored the social history of Los Alamos and the cultural history of the Atomic Age. The dedicated historians at UNM and later my equally gifted colleagues in the History Department at New Mexico State University have guided the creation of Inventing Los Alamos in numerous ways. At UNM, Richard Etulain, Ferenc Szasz, Virginia Scharff, and David Holtby all helped with the early drafts of this book. Walter Ganz, Polly Rose, and Steve Pate critically read the final drafts. Jay Fultz, copyeditor for the University of Oklahoma Press, carefully went over the final draft and provided invaluable input. All of them helped correct my mistakes both simple and serious. The mistakes that remain are solely mine. As I researched and wrote Inventing Los Alamos, many libraries and archives provided the grist for my historical mill. At the Los Alamos Historical Museum Archives, Hedy Dunn, Theresa Strottman, Rebecca Collingsworth, and Theresa Connaughton provided able assis- tance. Roger Meade at the Los Alamos National Laboratory Archives allowed access to his extensive holdings, as did Richard Ray and Virginia Salazar at the National Atomic Museum in Albuquerque. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Tom Ribe at the Los Alamos Environmental Reading Room aided me in tracking down some of the recent publications from the laboratory concerning environmental issues. Nancy Brown at the Center for Southwest Research at the UNM General Library in Albuquerque hauled numerous boxes out of their Special Collections. At the New Mexico Archives and Records Center in Santa Fe, Paul Saavedra assisted in combing through the state's records, and Ingrid Vollnhofer, the Southwest Librarian at the New Mexico State Library in Santa Fe, also provided cheerful service whenever I arrived, often unan- nounced. Claudia Thompson of the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming also assisted me with finding the atomic holdings in their collection. The presidential libraries of Dwight D. Eisenhower and Harry S. Truman hold essential material on the first years of the atomic age. Jim Leyerzapf at the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas, and Randy Sowell at the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, sug- gested where to look and quickly processed my requests for items in their holdings. The staff at National Archives I1 in College Park, especially in the text reference room and with the photographic col- lection, were always friendly and professional. The archivists at the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., also greatly aided my research. Inventing Los Alamos was vastly improved by this essential research at the National Archives and the Library of Congress, made possible by a faculty research grant from the College of Arts and Sciences at New Mexico State University. Finally, toward the end of the preparations of the manuscript, I received a Senior Fulbright Fellowship in Sweden. While there, I had the luxury to think about Los Alamos in new ways. At the University of Oklahoma Press, Charles Rankin took on this manuscript. For that, I am forever grate- ful. Also at the Press, Marian Stewart, Candice Holcombe, and DiAnne Huff helped with the concluding stages of production and marketing. Thanks, too, to Bill Nelson for the fine maps. Finally, this history of the community at Los Alamos would not have happened without the support of my own family. My mother, Anna Jane Fair, and my father, Paul Hunner, veterans of both World ACKNOWLEDGMENTS War I1 and the Cold War, introduced me to the Atomic West as a young boy. Since my father administered nuclear weapons for the Air Force, we lived on bases dedicated to the new duties of managing these weapons. Mary Ellen, my wife, encouraged me by listening to my half-formed ideas and, after reading various drafts, offered valu- able comments and suggestions. And my son, Harley, who patiently waited for me to finish a thought or a paragraph before we could play catch or more recently, go for a driving lesson, continues to remind me of the responsibilities of the present generation to the future. This page intentionally left blank INVENTING LOS ALAMOS This page intentionally left blank Although Los Alarnos's military contribution to the defeat of Japan and then to the arms race that followed has been acknowledged many times, the complete story of Los Alamos must include (and often does not) its hesitant evolution after the war into a permanent outpost on the frontlines of the Cold War. From its location in north-central New Mexico, Los Alamos even today holds the distinction as the nation's premier center for nuclear energy and weapons research and develop- ment. Since 1943, when the United States Army constructed an instant city at Los Alamos to house the top-secret Manhattan Project, scien- tists, technicians, and their support staffs have conducted experiments at the site to release the binding energy of the atom. As a consequence of the Manhattan Project, the men and women at Los Alamos created the frst nuclear bombs and, after the war, developed ever more power- ful weapons. Inventing Los Alamos narrates the incredible growth of the town, first as a wartime army post and then as a permanent fixture in the nation's nuclear firmament. To do so, Inventing Los Alamos not only focuses on the scientific and technical accomplishments of the laboratory but also on the establishment of a town that confronted many of the social and cultural issues of the Atomic Age before the rest of the country. Out of the chaos of the wartime post, Los Alamos invented itself as a modern model community, an atomic utopia for postwar America.