Letter 13 - Site Y
Site Y
Site Y: also known as Atomic City, The Hill, Secret City or “Project Y” was the code name for the creation place of the Atomic Bomb. The actual name of the city was Los Alamos, New Mexico.
In 1943, dubbing it a suitable location due to its reasonable isolation, the United States government exercised “eminent domain” (see definition below) over all surrounding homesteads in the Los Alamos area. Buildings and facilities were quickly thrown up and then scientists and physicists from all over the world began pouring in to work on what was then codenamed “the Manhattan Project.”
The two most best known men behind the project were:
Lieutenant General Leslie R. Groves:
https://www.atomicheritage.org/profile/leslie-r-groves
and
Dr. J Robert Oppenheimer:
https://www.atomicheritage.org/profile/j-robert-oppenheimer
The happenings at Los Alamos were kept so secret that most of the city’s residents had no idea what they were building. They also weren’t allowed to have a physical address in case family decided to drop in uninvited. All mail during the development of the atomic bomb was directed to a single address in Santa Fe.
Eminent Domain: derived from the Latin term dominium eminens, “supreme ownership.”
“The property of subjects is under the eminent domain of the state, so that the state or those who act for it may use and even alienate and destroy such property, not only in the case of extreme necessity, in which even private persons have a right over the property of others, but for ends of public utility, to which ends those who founded civil society must be supposed to have intended that private ends should give way. But, when this is done, the state is bound to make good the loss to those who lose their property.”
Source: "Eminent Domain". The Free Dictionary. Farlex, Inc. Retrieved 26 July2017.