ShreyaDarker Than Imagination
These were some of the speculations people made about the secret project in Oak Ridge: that the town was producing synthetic rubber or making campaign buttons for President Franklin D. Roosevelt as elections were coming up. But these speculations are way off the mark. The truth was something way darker.
Blind Patriotism
Whenever the military put up ads for jobs they made sure to keep them as vague as possible and not draw too much attention. It was important for the entire operation to be a secret and for people to not even guess the specifics and the wartime instilled a sense of blind patriotism in people so they did not even question things.
Abiding By Off-Limits
The authorities did not entirely trust the residents of this top secret place so they even hired spies internally to keep people in check- to make sure they did not go around snooping places where they shouldn’t be.
Obedience And Paranoia
The residents knew they were under constant vigilance and that contributed to them being obedient naturally. This went on for years until that fateful day when the residents of Oak Ridge realized what they had been contributing to all along.
Moment Of Revelation
The date was 6th August and the year 1945. The news came. People rushed to Jackson Square- the public gathering area of the town and there was commotion all around. Then to most people’s horror, the realization of what had been going on all along came.
The Confusing Emotions
There was a group of people who were beyond ecstatic and then there were some who were still grappling with the magnitude of the impact they had created. One sentence rang in all their ears- that their work would help end the war, and it did.