A Rare Look at the Secret Site of the Atomic Bomb

In 1942, one thousand families were pushed out of Oak Ridge, Tennessee as part of The Manhattan Project - the US government's top secret initiative to engineer an atomic bomb.

From: AERIAL AMERICA: Tennessee

[rce]

My best friends dad worked at Y-12 . Throughout his whole life, he never told anyone, not even family, what he did. He only said that he worked on a machine.

[bgorveatt]

My first cousin twice removed, Dr Donald MacRae, who was a physicist and later the Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, and yes, he was a Canadian, landed a job there to find ways to enrich plutonium for the Manhattan program. He worked closely with the Oppenheimer team to undertake, albeit a hurried process, to insure the program was ready for deployment.

[phillybruce]

I'm from that area. The video talks about it like it was one plant. In reality there where three plants codename X-10, K-25, and Y-12. An entire city was also built near the plants to house the workers brought in. You had to go through a checkpoint and have your car searched to enter the town. That town is the city of Oak Ridge today. My mother and much of my extended family worked on the Manhattan Project.

[swagger]

The old "Katie's Kitchen" is no longer there. It was demolished in the eighties after being abandoned for decades. It was very interesting. A reinforced concrete structure with a wooden barn covering it for camouflage. Many hidden things buried and long forgotten.

[bruce]

I'm from that area, many of my relatives worked there during the Manhattan project.

[Ghostwalker]

That is true. There was Berkley, and Lawrence, but Oak Ridge was the main factory.

[ericwilson]

I was one of the last babies born in a federal hospital in Oak Ridge. I'm sitting in a former Manhattan Project warehouse typing this note out.

[TheFlightLevel]

Title should be “View of Oak Ridge in modern times where plutonium was concentrated for the first atomic bomb”.

[blackcitroenlove]

I was born there in 1982. A strange, yet interesting heritage, aside from my being half Eastern Cherokee (the Native people of the area)

[resistor]

I went through the tat welding training program in 1977 at Y12.

[EmikoCult]

I live there, and I’m learning about WW2 in school.

[forty]

My freind bob worked there during the MP. He says he saw mercury in 4 different forms, gas, solid, liquid & the fourth he couldn’t disclose.

[tinalouiseking]

I'm really proud to have grown up there.

[robertmoir-vjkq]

the eruption of Mt. Saint Helen nearly 40 years ago was the power of 500 atomic bombs but the casualties were much higher when the atomic bomb was dropped

[americanlibertas]

Same thing in Weldon Spring, Missouri.

[derekwall]

is the Y-12 complex still in operation today?

[brogle]

I grew up in Knoxville but spent many summers in Oak Ridge and still work in OR today. Despite its roots of war its a very forward thinking, intellectual, and liberal place in Tennessee. (the only liberal place in TN)

[DECYYK]

Don't blame the workers. They were totally clueless and only realized what they did after the nukes were dropped above Japan.

[haydenfrase]

I live 25 minutes from there in Lenoir city

[genquiett]

My husband working here Washing the dirty dishes 😄