109 East Palace (40 page)

Stan Ulam, who had watched Oppenheimer overhaul the lab from top to bottom, marveled at what he called the “American talent for cooperation” and how it contrasted with what he had experienced in Europe:

People here were willing to assume minor roles for the sake of contributing to a common enterprise. This spirit of teamwork must have been characteristic of life in the nineteenth century and was what made great industrial empires possible. One of its humorous side effects in Los Alamos was a fascination with organizational charts. At meetings, theoretical talks were interesting enough, but whenever an organizational chart was displayed, I could feel the whole audience come to life with pleasure at seeing something concrete and definite (“Who is responsible to whom,” etc.).

As equally striking to Ulam as the cooperation was the conviviality, not only among the physicists, both theoretical and experimental, who differed greatly in temperament, but also among mathematicians, chemists, and engineers. “People visited each other constantly at all hours after work,” he wrote. “They considered not only the main problem—the construction of the atomic bomb and related physical questions about phenomena that would attend the explosion—the strictly project work—but also general questions about the nature of physics, the future of physics, the impact of nuclear experiments on technology of the future, and contrastingly its influence on the future development of theory.” Beyond this, there were wide-ranging discussions of the philosophy of science, and of course the world situation, from daily progress on the war fronts to the prospects of victory in the months to come. “The intellectual quality of so many interesting persons and their being constantly together was unique. In the entire history of science there had never been anything even remotely approaching such a concentration.”

Luis Alvarez, who had come to Los Alamos after stints at both the Rad Lab in Cambridge and the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago, was amazed at how effective Oppenheimer was at the helm of Los Alamos:

Remembering the unworldly and longhaired prewar Robert, I was surprised to see the extent to which he had developed into an excellent laboratory director and a marvelous leader of men. His haircut was almost as short as a military officer’s; he ran an organization of thousands, including some of the best theoretical and experimental physicists and engineers in the world. The laboratory’s fantastic morale could be traced directly to the personal quality of Robert’s guidance.

No one recognized better how difficult it was to achieve such solidarity and concentration of effort than James Conant, who had been traveling to the site every three weeks since August and was becoming a close advisor to Oppenheimer during the last, difficult stage of the project. The two tall, thin men, who shared a love of the mountains and rugged hiking trails, could often be seen heading into the hills at a rapid stride, deep in conversation. Conant was a man who had distinguished himself far beyond his profession as a chemist; he had served as chairman of the S-1 executive committee, was a member of Groves’ Military Policy Committee, and was one of the elite few with the background and knowledge of the new weapon’s development who could act as an intermediary between the White House and the scientists on the Hill. He had a firm grasp of the political and military problems facing them in the months ahead, and according to Manley, Oppenheimer came to view Conant as a statesmanlike figure, “a very wise, elderly person who in a normal sense of events he would have liked to have had as a godfather.”

By October, their relationship had reached the point where Conant often tried to cheer Oppie on, and perhaps understood that he was one of the very few outsiders who could provide the kind of encouragement and moral support Oppenheimer needed at this critical juncture. “Just a line to tell you again how satisfactory I think everything is going at Y,” Conant wrote after one of his inspection visits. “In all seriousness, you are to be congratulated on the progress made and the organization as it now stands. I enjoyed my trip immensely, and I am particularly grateful to you and your wife for your hospitality.”

Oppenheimer was restored to his old self again, if more nervous and distracted than ever. He paced constantly. From behind her typewriter, Shirley Barnett watched him do rings around the large conference table in his office, trailing plumes of gray smoke from his pipe. With so much doubt and uncertainty hanging over the project, everyone was showing signs of strain. On his last fly-by visit, Groves, who was always instituting more security strictures, berated Oppenheimer for wearing his trademark porkpie hat. “He said it made him too recognizable when he left the site, and that anybody could pick him out in an instant,” recalled Barnett. “Well, Oppie didn’t take kindly to that sort of thing.” The next time Groves came to visit he was prepared. He had an elaborate Indian headdress of eagle feathers that someone had given him as a gift, which he kept hanging on a wall. “It was enormous,” said Barnett. “So he put it on, and greeted the general by saying, ‘Is this better, sir?’” Oppenheimer was so pleased with his prank, he told everyone. While people laughed at the story, what they remarked on later was that despite all the battles of the past few months, their director and general still enjoyed a remarkably good relationship. “Both of them had a sense of humor,” added Barnett, “and they had a real mutual respect, which went a long way.”

It was always a wonder to Dorothy that with so much work to do the scientists still found time to stir up trouble. That autumn, the talk on the mesa turned to the coming presidential election, and people became agitated about their right to vote. Roosevelt stirred deep emotions in the scientific populace, and they were worried that because of the usual last-minute problems, they might find themselves disenfranchised. They had surrendered their freedom and privacy in order to serve their country, but those who were citizens were not about to give up their vote. People raised their voices at town meetings, and the issue became the focus of much excited chatter on the vine. Dorothy learned that before the war Los Alamos had been entitled to its own ballot box. But the box had disappeared along with many of the school’s more civilized features, and it seemed unlikely the army would be in a hurry to put it back anytime soon.

In the beginning, the post administration assured the scientists that they would be able to vote. The first group of citizens eager to register volunteered to make the seventy-five-mile trip to the county seat, Bernalillo, which at the thirty-five-mile-per-hour wartime speed limit promised to take the better part of a day “Ten of us in two groups went, and all of us were Democrats,” recalled Priscilla Greene. The only problem was that when the local sheriff caught wind of the expedition, he worried that hundreds of liberal voters would swing the county and possibly lose him his job in the New Mexico Republican administration. “Los Alamos was part of Sandoval County, which at that point had a one hundred percent Republican majority,” explained Priscilla, “and they got an injunction [against letting the Hill people register].” The army promised to look into contesting the injunction, but kept putting them off with various excuses, and finally decided against doing so because the scientists’ names would have to go on the voters’ rolls if they registered, and that was out of the question. All lists of names were restricted and had to remain classified information. The senior scientists had been told all along that if they wanted to vote, they would have to vote by absentee ballot, so the few who had made arrangements to do so were the only civilian members of the Los Alamos community who voted that year. There was nothing the rest could do but chalk it up to the stupidity and madness of life under military rule.

Nevertheless, there were many victory bashes after FDR’s reelection, not that they needed much of an excuse to celebrate. Despite the accelerated work schedule, their enthusiasm for parties was undimmed. Saturday night gatherings, whether large and loud or small and intimate, usually lasted until dawn. The walls were too thin, their private lives too exposed, and the liquor too strong for it to be any other way. It was impossible to seriously misbehave, but for all their awareness of being monitored, they were, as Bob Bacher’s wife, Jean, put it, “peculiarly uninhibited and completely unrelaxed.” They went to see
Our Hearts Were Young and Gay
in the post theater and felt incongruously happy and safe in their secretive little utopia, where no one was old, or sick, or handicapped, and children could roam freely without fear of strangers or crime. They jammed incredible numbers of people into their little GI apartments for cocktails, and couples danced in the hallways and out on the porch. For all their worldly sophistication, even the most serious scientists engaged in adolescent binges and frat-house hijinks. Pranks, practical jokes, and ridiculous propositions were usually the climax of a long evening of drinking. During a particularly rowdy affair at the Bainbridges’ house on Bathtub Row, a pretty young wife wagered five dollars that no one would dare take advantage of the enviable porcelain fixture—one of only six on the mesa—to “take a bath then and there.” Naturally, a young man came forward to take up her challenge. “When he discovered the door to the bathroom had no lock, he borrowed a pair of Ken’s trunks, drew a tub full of hot water and prepared to soak in comfort,” recalled Bernice Brode. “But of course, everyone crowded in as witnesses, offering to scrub his back and wash behind his ears. When a couple of not-entirely-sober friends tried to climb in too, the water started to run into the hall, and Peg put a stop to the fun.”

After another Saturday night bash, a number of guests deliberately hung around until the early hours of the morning to arrange several dozen empty liquor bottles beside the front door of the stone house where George Kistiakowsky lived. They placed a large sign over the bottles, which read, “Milkman, only two quarts today, please.” Apparently, Kistiakowsky, who was not religious, could be counted on to sleep in while churchgoing families passed by his house on the way to and from Sunday services. “George was quite angry about the prank, and none confessed to it,” recalled Brode. “However, the next Monday morning, the Bainbridge family could not get out either door, as huge piles of logs had been banked against them. Ken had to climb out a window to go to work.”

Planning parties and events became a staple of mealtime conversation, and the preparations usually focused on rounding up enough alcohol to guarantee a hardy punch. Dorothy would look on in amusement as they piled cases of cheap rum in her office and passed up lunch at La Fonda to scurry around town laying in supplies for that weekend’s debauchery. Personal inspiration, private deals, and devious wangling accounted for much of the alcohol that found its way up to the Hill. When word spread that Sam Allison was coming from Chicago and would be driving his car, people rushed to put in orders for their favorite drink. On the last leg of his trip, Allison was hit by a rock slide on a steep patch of highway between Taos and Santa Fe and knocked over the edge and into the river. He survived unscathed and called the laboratory, which dispatched a jeepload of GIs to rescue him. The army boys succeeded in hauling out his car, which had somehow managed to plunge forty feet down into the Rio Grande and land upright on its wheels, its trunk still intact and packed to the brim with booze. When he finally made it up to the Hill, he found his colleagues were far more concerned about the possibility of broken bottles than broken bones.

They had become adept at making their own fun. They found any excuse to dress up, flocking to dances in Fuller Lodge in black tie—the women in floor-length gowns and carefully hoarded, prewar nylons. Costume parties drew the biggest crowds, and at one particularly wild affair, the normally retiring Klaus Fuchs led a conga line through the post Commissary before passing out cold behind the bar. By now there was a club or mesa organization for everything, and all staged magic shows, variety shows, and quiz shows, the latter requiring the theorists to display their erudition in more plebian realms. The high point came when Teller was called on to answer this trivia question: “The General wants to know whether the whistle blows at 7:00 or 7:30 in the morning.” This was greeted with hoots of laughter, as everyone was well aware that Teller disdained the Tech Area siren, slept late, and enjoyed playing his piano at all hours of the night. But he received a round of applause when he gamely stood and faced the crowd.

The biggest hit of the season was the Little Theater Group’s presentation of
Arsenic and Old Lace
, which played to a packed house, in part because nearly everyone on the post had been approached about auditioning for a role or providing props or assistance of some kind. The climax came at the end of the last act, when the dead bodies were brought up from the cellar, and the audience was delighted to see Oppenheimer, his face heavily dusted with flour, playing one of the stiffs, carried in on a board and laid out on the floor. After his scene-stealing appearance, a dozen of the leading men on the Hill joined Oppie on stage as corpses—including Deke Parsons, Bob Bacher, Cyril Smith, Otto Frisch, and Harold Agnew—each to wild applause. Afterward, everyone congratulated Oppie on his rigid performance, and Cyril Smith joked that, for his part, it was “the most restful occupation he had on the mesa.”

Winter came suddenly that year, and they woke up one morning to find a blizzard had dumped ten inches of snow on their mountain stronghold. The children whooped for joy as they headed out the West Gate for Sawyers Hill. Entertainment was in short supply, and skiing was a favorite pastime. They were surrounded on all sides by wonderful ski country, but while Hans Bethe could go up or down any kind of mountain in skiis no matter how steep or thickly studded with trees, the lack of a clear run made it difficult for the less intrepid. George Kistiakowsky, an expert skier and their resident demolition expert, decided it was high time to do something about the situation. He teamed up with Hugh Bradner and Seth Neddermeyer, and together they scrounged some Primacord and Composition C—a puttylike plastic explosive—from their experiments and set about creating a long extension to Sawyers Hill. They set up half necklaces around the trees, which when detonated, “cuts as if you had a chain saw,” recalled Kistiakowsky, “and its faster. A little noisier, though.” After a dozen jaw-rattling explosions, they managed to clear one medium-steep hill, though, according to Bradner, “in most cases the trees failed to fall the way we wanted them to.” They then liberated a length of rope from one of the laboratories and, using a snow tractor borrowed from the army, managed to rig up a reasonable facsimile of a rope tow. Such frivolous use of supplies was officially discouraged, but as on so many other occasions, they knew they could count on Oppie to look the other way.