KENNEWICK, Wash. – March is Women’s History Month. We’ve heard names of the people who worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II, most of them men, but what about the women who contributed to the project?
Many women answered the call and moved to Hanford during World War II to help the war effort. Terri Andre, with the B Reactor Museum Association, said it was not what they expected when they got to Hanford.
Although their contributions are primarily unknown and their names lost to history, the jobs women performed at Hanford were essential to the war effort.
According to Andre, most of these women worked behind the scenes as secretaries, mess hall workers or in the dormitories.
“They emphasized that they were here because they wanted to help win the war,” said Andre. “They were patriotic. Many times when they were interviewed they emphasized the pleasant things and de-emphasized the things that were a challenge.”
Andre said the people pulled together, and the women were the glue that held everything together and made it work.
Beauty was their badge of courage, a nationwide campaign to keep the morale up for the women and, as a result, keep the morale up among the men at Hanford.
According to the Manhattan Project National Historical Park, about 9 percent of the workforce at Hanford during World War II were women.
Megan Simpson, with the B Reactor Museum Association, tells me less than one percent of supervisory roles were women. She tells me Buena Maris was one of them.
Maris was one of two women supervisors. She was on loan from Oregon State University after General Leslie Groves requested that she supervise a program for the safety and well-being of the women who worked on the project.
“The barracks had house mothers,” Simpson said. “She made sure the women got a day off and an exclusive bus that would be able to take them off site to Pasco to go have fun and do things to basically keep the morale up.”
Simpson said that many of the things she began are still in our community today, including the Girl Scouts and Red Cross.
According to Simpson, during the Manhattan Project, There were between 3,000 and 5,000 women at Hanford, primarily in support roles.
