ORAL HISTORY OF AGNES HOUSER
Provided by Y-12
Date and Interviewer Unknown
INTERVIEWER: How did you find out about the job at Y-12?
MRS. HOUSER: The paper. All the papers was full of it. Apply for a job. I had been up to Detroit, Michigan, and I come home. I hated it. That cold weather just really killed all ambitions I had up there, but my father was working for Hudson Motor Company, and you had to have a birth certificate, and you were froze to your jobs. So I worked for Park Davidson Company, at that time the biggest pharmaceutical company in the world.
INTERVIEWER: When did you begin working at Y-12?
MRS. HOUSER: October of 1943. I know we had to train. We had to come here to train, and they tried to, well I’m just arithmetic dis—I couldn’t get it. Anyway, I sat there. I went through the schooling, and then I know I got up and caught a bus from home to Knoxville, got a bus from Knoxville to Oak Ridge, then come back to Knoxville and caught the last bus home which let me out two miles from home about 7:30 at night. Dark. I said I started towards the house. I’d run. You’d listen, and you didn’t hear nothing, but when you’s running somebody else was running. That was you. And I said when I got to the top of the hill our house was about nearly a mile away, and I could see me mother and my little brother, a lantern bobbing coming to get me. So that was; I think I that was about six weeks. Then we came back. Then that’s when we went to the heater room in the training building.
INTERVIEWER: What was your job at Y-12?
MRS. HOUSER: I started out as a cubical operator, and I ended up as a cubical operator. In fact, uh we went; first there was no buildings finished when I got here. So they trained us in the training building first down in the heater building, and then you would go upstairs to the actual cubicles and play with dummies till they got our job done. That was about, well, that’s were I adjusted to any kind of living. We were on the swing shift, and if they’d say, “Everything’s broke down. We can’t use it right now.” Well, you had to stay there, and I could stretch out on a little, old, narrow bench and go to sleep with everybody around me talking. That was my one accomplishment that I still enjoyed the day. I could loose myself and let them go home, and I’m sleeping.
I was an A operator, and when everything else; when we didn’t have nothing for me to do or when it broke down, I had the privilege of going out with the men on the start up crew and to work there. I know one of the things that I didn’t know till later, it was dangerous, but I thought it was, I thought it was exciting for me was pulling this little trap along. It had a gas muzzle like a gas pump, and you put liquid nitrogen, and if you over filled it you’re supposed to stop, but if they happened to make a mistake and overfilled it I know that silver would just—everywhere. But that’s one thing. We wore protective shoes. We had to wear steeled towed shoes the whole time.
Oh, we had uniforms, and we had steel shoes, and you put those steel shoes on, and you wore them each shift. I mean the shoes from down there. They had the locker room there, and we’d change cloths and wear our street cloths in, but you had to have your uniforms and your shoes. And if you were going out on the dock there to work we had to have big gloves and headwear and a heavy coat. Well, I remember I loved it. I didn’t know. We had a bunch of gauges we had to watch. If it went to high, one was on the left and the other was on the right, If it went to high you lowered it, and if it went to low you tried to keep it on an even keel, cause if you didn’t they did what you call keel the load, and they didn’t want that done. So we really had to be on the ball to watch it, and I don’t know. I just, I enjoyed the ride even. I told my daughters this morning that I live right now where when I worked here. And I said it’s funny but it went fast, and I made friends there. Now, nobody went by their first name. You didn’t know hardly the first person to you. Last name. At that time I was a Johnson. So when they’d holler “Johnson” I was the only one there named Johnson at that time, and I’d know it was me.
We had to be uh I guess you’d say dedicated because if you; you could not leave the job till your person come to fill in for you, and I know one time we started, and it was a big snow. Now, they had something like a tractor trailer. The cab and the driver was there and then the whole thing was like a bus, and you sat on each side of it, and we were coming down here to work. The bus slid off. Well, sent another bus. It slid off. We got down to Solway, and there was a car going there and he picked up what of us he could, and they took us there, and the poor little girl that we relieved had been there sixteen hours. And I guess maybe two or three times I had to work sixteen hours till our relief got there, and it was; they stressed that.
INTERVIEWER: Did you live in the Y-12 dormitories?
MRS. HOUSER: Part time. Now, they didn’t have no place for us at Oak Ridge then. So they sent what looked like a school bus. It was painted army brown or dull colored, and they sent it plum to Seven Islands. I live right now where I lived when I started here which is as far in Knox County as you can get being close to the Sevier county line, and they sent a work bus up there. I was the first one to get on, and as they went down the road they picked up workers that worked here at Y-12, and not necessarily where I worked, but workers. And then when they got the facilities done we, the work was cut out. You either moved into the house or they had the dormitories ready for you. So I stayed in Richmond Hall first after they cut the bus service out.
I was living in Richmond Hall, Jackson Square in the dormitory. And oh, we really enjoyed it. They had a restaurant right across the street from us and a drug store that had everything in it, but one night. I got up one morning and they said, “Did you hear the excitement last night?” And I said, “What?” They said, “Well, there was a girl strangled to death right down the hall.” I said, “Oh no.” And come to find out later I found that her boyfriend had broke in there and strangled her. So it wouldn’t be a serial killing, but it scared us bad enough that I was so uneasy. I’d go down to the drugstore. I started my library then buying books, and I’d come back. That’s the way I spent my spare time. I wasn’t out like the freedom we did have until I had a friend who lived on West Outer Drive and she asked me would I like to move in with them, and I did. I stayed there then until it was over.
INTERVIEWER: Do you remember a red safety line in your work area?
MRS. HOUSER: Oh yes I do. Their equipment; that’s one thing from the time we began they stressed safety and silence, and so those two things. The magnet; they explained to us don’t wear a watch, and then when you went out there if they see anything you have to open in a little door on anything, ground it. And so I know we were, I was on the shift where a painter came in there and evidently he hadn’t been instructed or he forgot or something, and he started to paint something and it wasn’t grounded, and it fried him right there. He died right there on the spot. And so that, that’s like seeing a wreck on a highway. You sure will die. So we all, that safety, well it was for your own good. You know, sometimes you can get hurt in a hurry, but it didn’t pay you to.
INTERVIEWER: Did you know you were working on a secret weapon?
MRS. HOUSER: Well, the day that the bomb was dropped they called us together and told us what we had done and that the bomb was dropped. Now, I’ve heard individuals say, “Oh I know what was going on.” They didn’t. You’ll hear people, “I know what was going on.” And while we worked about every other one or two or three everywhere was FBI agents. We didn’t know it. They just rubbed shoulders with us and worked, and I recon that was for the safety sake and for the country’s sake. And someone told me, “As long as you been there you should be a boss.” But said, “You know why you don’t make a boss?” I said, “No.” Said, “You didn’t know how to handle people.” I said, “You’re right. I didn’t” Because if they’re going to sit there, and the thing started going on and off, and they’re out there talking I’d say, “Hey you’re going to ruin that. Go over there and tend to your machine.” I just didn’t have no tact. I still haven’t got too much.
I was very proud, and I thought, and I thought President Truman. I’ve been a republican all my life, but I really admired President Truman and his courage, and some people said, “Well, do you regret the bomb and all that.” I said, “No.” I said, “I hate that it killed innocent people, but if our troops had to take Japan they would have been slaughtered, and a whole lot more hurt.” So I’ve always thanked God that I had the ability to work, and while the boys was fighting, well I had several relatives overseas. In fact, my husband stayed over there four years, and I was just. I don’t know. I look back now, and I just thank God I was able to do it. Well, it made me feel like a soldier. I felt like that I was individually involved, and I knew it was very, very dangerous because they kept talking to us about the electricity we’s handling and to all the safety standards, but I never dreamed it was that. I had no idea of what, but it was essential. Well, in fact, everybody that was here that was a cubical. I’ve talked to some of the workers and they said, “Well, I’ve never heard of it.” Well, I’ve got a certificate. It has a big Manhattan project thing in the middle, and it’s from the secretary of war—saying that I helped in World War II by my work here, and I’ve got it framed hanging on my living room wall.
It was a dangerous time we were living in, and but it turned out good. I think President Roosevelt; I think that would be the hardest thing. Well, it’s like it said the secret city, and I think people even around here was very astonished at what was going on right in their back door you could say. But that was one ticket that they—I say when you see that sign when we’re going in, the first thing you see is them three monkeys sitting up there on the wall “hear no evil”, and then it’d say “loose lips sink ships” everywhere.
They stressed out over and over, and so they’d just lie if people say, “What are you doing.” “Well, I’m working. That’s all I can tell you.” And you wasn’t supposed to talk about it, and I didn’t.
INTERVIEWER: When did you leave Y-12?
MRS. HOUSER: December. I said if you’d look at could pull up my attendance, my absentee list or something for my job I don’t think I missed very many shifts in all those two years I worked here, but he hated every minute of it. He was a guard, and he was just coming out of the army, and he said he had had enough saluting and saying “yes sir” to do him for life, and he begged me to quit. Before we quit though I was telling my children now, I think a disadvantage, you know, if you’ve not got everything right up to date. Well, when we went to house keeping, we went to house keeping and Gammel Valley in one of those big old bullet trailers, and it didn’t even have water. You backed into there and there was a building right in the middle, and it was the wash house, bath house, bathroom, everything there. I said if they had to do that now they would squeal and holler, but that wasn’t why we left. We left because he wanted to get out of the army.
INTERVIEWER: Did you know about the picture Ed Wescott took of the ladies leaving Y-12?
MRS. HOUSER: No, I didn’t even know it was made till later on, and my son was, had saw it. It had come out in a journal first I think, and we don’t take the journal. We take the sentinel, and my son said, “mama, you’re pictures in the paper.” I said, “Who’s with me?” He said, “Nobody.” I said, “It ain’t me.” Because they stressed of us going two, not solo but two. So this girl was coming out with me then, and she wasn’t looking up either. if you see me in the picture, I’m looking down, And I looked, and I said, “Yeah, that’s me.” But we Pumped the picture when we had the group meeting last year here, and one of the girl was, my daughters was with me and they were showing her the, I had an 8x10 of it, and uh she showed us which one was her, and she said, “that’s my sister.” So we had a good time there, but they were just about I think four or five of the ones that worked with the cubicles.
INTERVIEWER: Have you been keeping up with news from Y-12?
MRS. HOUSER: Yes, I had a friend that was, and he kept me up on part of it, and then my cousin was one of the nurses here for a while. Then she went to Oak Ridge Hospital, but she was here at Y-12 as a work nurse for the, I think she was in the engineering plant, but anyway, through that, and I’ve seen all those activists and I say, “Phooey. You ought to be in the army. Let’s see what you object too.” But uh I don’t know. I follow the news and read where that they’re tearing the buildings down. I knew that ours was gone and they were using it for something else, but I’ll always remember coming to work at Oak Ridge.
INTERVIEWER: What did you think of Y-12’s new face?
MRS. HOUSER: Well, I was full of anticipation, but I was really surprised because everything was changed. The only thing is the gates where they inspect us as we go in and out on the busses. I rode a bus for a long time, and I was just amazed. It was thrilling and just brought back a world of memories. I’m proud of what they’re doing, and I think we have to look ahead. You can’t just sit down and stop until, well, that’s just it.
[End of Interview]
