My mother, Claudy F. Osborn, was employed by Clinton Engineer Works/Tennessee Eastman Corporation (CEW/TEC) from 3 Aug 1944 until 18 Feb 1947. During that time, she worked as a chemical operator in Y-12 Buildings 9203 and 9206. She died on 17 Oct 1979. The cause of death was pancreatic cancer. This simple set of facts entitled my father, F. N. Case, to compensation as her surviving spouse under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Act (EEOICPA) without the necessity of filing a civil lawsuit or establishing a causal connection between her work at Y-12 and the subsequent illness that caused her death.

One evening in 2006, Dad told me about the EEOICPA claim he had filed with the Department of Energy and the work my mother and her co-workers at CEW did during the Manhattan Project. He was uniquely qualified to discuss those matters since he had been their foreman. During our conversation, he mentioned that some of the processes at Y-12 from 1944 through 1946 brought workers into contact with dangerous levels of radioactive materials. 

I asked for more details, and he told me that the primary source of exposure was inhaled uranium dust. The uranium in question was the enriched product of the Alpha Calutrons. Because it was so scarce and difficult to produce, the project could not afford to lose any amount of it, no matter how small. So periodically, the workers had to wipe all horizontal surfaces in the workplace with rags to recover the enriched uranium dust for reuse. The only enriched uranium dust not recovered was the dust that the workers inhaled. However, it was clear that the workers were inhaling significant amounts of it because they produced bright uranium-yellow mucus whenever they sneezed. 

"Surely the workers had respirators didn't they?" I asked. Dad hesitated momentarily, then dodged the question by replying, "Well, health physics then was not what it is today." When I objected that his reply did not address whether the workers had respirators, he paused our conversation and looked away. When he turned back to face me, he had tears in his eyes.

"Dave," he replied, "...the country was at war. No one who did not live through it can imagine the pressure we were under to produce enough enriched uranium to make a bomb. It was a twenty-four hours a day, seven days-a-week effort, and it never stopped until Japan surrendered. They were expendable, like soldiers on the battlefield."

Puzzled by the last part of his remark, I asked, "Who, Dad? Who was expendable?"

He replied, "The workers, of course."

The words were shocking enough, but even more stunning was their implication: the potential risks to health inherent in their workplace environment, while unknown to the workers, were deemed "acceptable" by project management in the interest of carrying out the mission of producing an atomic weapon.

"There is one thing wrong with your analogy," I said. "Mom and her co-workers were not soldiers. They were civilian employees. It was wrong to conceal the truth from them. They had a right to know the risks they were taking."

At that point, I no longer wanted to continue the discussion. It was late evening; tomorrow was another workday, so I said goodbye and left. As I drove home to Sevierville, my emotions ranged from disappointment to anger. On the way, I remembered a puzzling letter I had discovered as a young boy. It was from Dad to his parents and written in late 1947. I didn't know what to make of it then, but now in light of our conversation, it made more sense.

~~~

The composite image below contains the photograph of my father made in 1986 upon his retirement from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (foreground) and a group photo of one of the Building 9206 shifts he supervised during the Manhattan Project years (background). 

In the group photo my father is standing at the far left in the last row. My mother is seated in the second row, second from the left. (The co-workers on either side of her have their hands on her shoulders.) Her close friend, Mary Lou Bass, is seated at the far left, in the third row.