A Biography of Dr. John M. Googin - Y-12 National Security ...

FYI
At the end of the first week there were instructions
for this candidate to find the way to the place
called Y-12, a building numbered 9202, and report to
a man named Robert J. Schmidt. It appeared that the
real work was about to begin, and sooner than was
expected because others had been in the “Pen” for
weeks.
The work buses left for Y-12 from the nearby WV-
34 cafeteria bus stop every few minutes at shift
change time. A bus was caught for the Y-12 North
Portal and the first of thousands of trips to the plant
was started. The route went through an unexpected
area, not found on the city after-work bus trips,
where there were many poorly constructed
hutments and lots of black people.
This came as a surprise to a young northerner
whose experience with black people in his youth had
been dominated by doing business with one
George A. Ross who had a basement “Celebrated
Ice Cream” store in the house where he lived on the
second floor. This store was half way between home
and elementary school and an easy summer time
walk from home. Mrs. Ross ran one of the better
tea-rooms in town on the ground floor.
During college at Bates, there had been black
students who were very competitive, and also black
students in the less-advanced classes who were
helped by a laboratory assistant. In fact the trip to
the Induction Center had been made with one J.
Wesley Parker from Washington D.C. who was black,
and one Hank Fukui from California who was Japanese,
but somehow managed to avoid the internment
camps.
FYI 34
The final leg of the trip, WV-34 to Y-12, was very
short even if the thoughts along the way were very
many before arriving at the massive bus terminal at
the Y-12’s North Portal. Here buses from as much as
fifty miles away delivered workers every shift. They
arrived and left every few seconds from many places
at shift change and once an hour from the Oak Ridge
Bus Terminal all day long.
The correct guard room was found, the papers
were in order, badges were made, one of the row of
guards in their little stands along the portal allowed
entry and pointed out the short walk down the hill
to Building 9202. It was May the 17th in 1944 and the
badge number was 17,187. A lot of people had made
the transition into the secure system in the year and
a few months since the project had started at Y-12, if
the badge number was any indication.
The cultural shocks were to continue for the
author, and there were to be some for B. J. Schmidt.