Latinas/os of 1940s Hanford (U.S. National Park Service)

Article written by Drew Gamboa

The Manhattan Project at Hanford and Hanford’s surrounding communities, commonly known as the Tri-Cities, are well known for producing plutonium for nuclear weapons during WWII and the Cold War and the resulting complicated legacy that changed the world. Hanford and the Tri-Cities also hold rich stories from many diverse and unique communities, where the roots for some people were defined by race and ethnicity. During the 1940s, the Manhattan Project and the Tri-Cities looked like many areas of the South. Practices of segregation, discrimination, and racism were embedded into the fabric of the community. Acknowledging the area’s past shows how customs and practices of racism can be imported from the American South to communities like the Tri-Cities.^[1]

Jim Crow left its mark in the makeup of the Tri-Cities today. Seventy five percent of people identify as White in the city of Richland, a city that housed White administrators of the Manhattan Project.^[2] Kennewick—a ‘sundown town’ in the 1940s—is comprised of forty-four percent of people who are non-White.^[3] Nearly eighty percent of People of Color call the city of Pasco home—the city used to segregate Asian Americans, African Americans, and Mexican Americans.^[4] Demographics are only one indicator of the impact of racism and segregation.

Even as Jim Crow haunts the Tri-Cities today, people from different backgrounds were involved in the Manhattan Project. During the 1940s, Spanish speakers, Mexican Americans, and Puerto Ricans worked, played, and adjusted to life in the Tri-Cities. For the estimated 150 Latinos/as who migrated to work on the Manhattan Project, their presence in the area shows how race, ethnicity, and gender impacted how workers were recruited to the Manhattan Project.^[5] The different spaces that this modest number of Latinos and Latinas occupied share how instances of discrimination could become contradictory and unstable. During the 1940s, Latinos and Latinas show changes occurring within the Tri-Cities regarding race and ethnicity.^[6]

Historic newspaper job listing in Spanish for Empleados de Ambos Sexos from US Employment Service. — One of the last La Prensa job listings placed by Dupont on April 6, 1944.
La Prensa Texas (San Antonio), John Peace Library, University of Texas San Antonio

During March and April of 1944, the War Manpower Commission (WMC) attempted to recruit Mexican Americans to work on the Manhattan Project. With the intent to bring labor from Texas to Hanford, the WMC’s Region X—stationed in Dallas, Texas—carried out recruitment “of bilingual non-manual personnel.”^[7] Recruitment targeted borderland communities of El Paso, Brownsville, and Laredo as well as the city of San Antonio.^[8] With the help of the US Employment Service (USES) and DuPont, WMC advertised Hanford job opportunities through Spanish newspapers and local radio stations. In San-Antonio’s La Prensa newspaper, job listings for work at Hanford listed a variety of work opportunities—day laborers, mechanics, telephone operators, and engineers, to name a few. The listing called for applicants of both sexes and stated that applications for essential farm workers would not be accepted.^[9] WMC, USES, and DuPont also contacted community organizations—like the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)—local businesses, churches, and schools. Representatives of USES even attended a local high school assembly of around 500 students.^[10] Only about sixty Texas Mexican Americans (Tejanos) ended up being hired and moved to the Tri-Cities through all these efforts.^[11] The recruitment campaign was short-lived and abandoned within a few weeks.

The appeals that WMC gave about work at Hanford did not convince many Tejanos to work for the government. According to a report from DuPont, recruitment and the Manhattan Project did not consider the needs of many Tejano and non-White families:

The employment of males only, with no family living conditions existing on the Project, was not an attractive inducement to these people, inasmuch as the large migrations of Latin-Americans are in family groups... These Latin-American peoples were accustomed to earnings based on the combined earning power of the whole family, and the Project’s rate of wages for common labor for male help only, was not attractive to them.^[12]

As the report shows, preference most likely was given to male workers, and WMC probably had preconceived ideas about Mexican Americans from the government’s Bracero Program, a program that brought Mexican males to work in the United States during World War II. These recruitment efforts also overlooked the value of close and extensive families that Tejanos held dear.

The targeting of single male workers shows how race, ethnicity, and gender operated together. At the time, many White understandings of family were organized through patriarchy, with a male breadwinner dictating families’ decisions. As the report stated, Tejanos found power within the family collectively. By only attending to living arrangements for single males, the government prioritized more affluent White settlement in the Tri-Cities. During the Manhattan Project, recruitment limited non-White families from permanently staying in the Tri-Cities. Recruitment sought Tejano peoples’ labor while ignoring their livelihoods based on family.

Upon arriving to the Tri-Cities, Spanish-speaking workers of the Manhattan Project lived in a variety of places. Some Latinos were intentionally segregated, while others were accepted into White living, recreational, and work environments. Spanish-American individuals in top positions—like Adolfo Linares, the Pile Project’s fiscal director—moved to Hanford from New York City. Born in Puerto Rico, Linares was an earlier person of Hispanic background to move to Hanford for the Manhattan Project. In 1952, the year of Adolfo Linares’ death, the Linares family lived in Richland.^[13] Coming directly from Puerto Rico, Ivan M. Garcia contributed to the Manhattan Project as an electrical engineer. During the early 1960s, Garcia was part of a Spanish club in the Tri-Cities that assisted Cuban refugees. He worked for multiple contractors at Hanford well into the 1970s and was a longtime resident of Richland.^[14]

1940s cars in black and white before rows of single story temporary housing extending into distance. — “Little Pasco” temporary housing, 1943
US DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

In reference to the sixty recruits from Texas, Colonel Franklin Matthias had opposed the recruitment of Mexicans to Hanford because of their racial ambiguity—being neither Black nor White. Matthias had concerns about where and how to racially segregate these new recruits.^[15] A 1945 report about the history of the Manhattan Project stated, “The housing of these people represented a potential racial problem in the construction camp at Hanford, but arrangements were made to accommodate [Tejanos] in a separate camp.”^[16] Mathias’s diary recorded that these recruits were housed fifteen miles east of Hanford in “Little Pasco,” an area meant for temporary workers.^[17] Ethnicity and the line of work people did for the project directed where Latino/a workers would live.

During and after World War II, segregation and prejudice remained a defining experience for Tejanos, given the spaces that Tejanos were allowed to live in the Tri-Cities. They were discouraged from staying permanently in the region. Mexican Americans were looked at with suspicion by top officials even before being hired. General Leslie Groves and Colonel Matthias discussed necessary conditions to accept “Spanish American labor on the project.” This included “careful checks as to citizenship and loyalty before these people were employed.”^[18] Additionally, the living arrangements for new Mexican Americans encouraged movement of these workers. At the time, “Little Pasco” sat east of the main railway area in Pasco, where new arrivals to the Project first set foot in the Tri-Cities. It was just north of Pasco’s City View Cemetery.^[19] Similarly segregated in Pasco as Blacks and Asians were, Tejanos had been intentionally placed along the border of Pasco’s city limits. Their living situations demonstrated that top officials did not expect nor encourage Mexican Americans to live in the area for long.

A man and woman stand side by side facing a woman who is handing them an award. A 5-person band is in the background. — Billie Carey and Victor Valdez at a Richland dance competition, October 1944
US DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

To be sure, some Latinos/as did find senses of belonging in the community. Those that found belonging often had to accommodate and assimilate into White environments. Along with his partner Billie Carey, Private Victor F. Valdez appeared in Hanford Engineer Works’ (HEW) weekly newspaper, the Sage Sentinel, for the couple’s victory in Richland’s jitterbug dancing contest. The article pictures Valdez and Carey accepting their award with the NAS Jive Bombers—a traveling Black jazz orchestra—in the background.^[20] Hanford’s boxing club attracted transportation worker Myles Martinez of Minneapolis and “Hanford’s own bantam battler” Abran ‘Abie’ Chavez of New Mexico. In a hard-fought bout that he had lost on November 20, 1944, Chavez’s fight with Joey Dolan generated much excitement. It filled the Auditorium of Mess Hall 2 at Hanford.^[21] Part of the Alpha Upsilon sorority’s local chapter, Miss Vera Martinez was crowned “Valentine Queen” for the third annual Beta Sigma Phi formal in 1950. This was two years after Vera moved from southern Colorado to work with the General Electric Company’s Construction Division.^[22] Stories such as Victor F. Valdez, Hanford’s boxing club, and Vera Martinez demonstrate how people had occupied spaces in the community, even as race defined the roles People of Color could play while in these spaces. Their presence shows how Latinos/as helped to make race, ethnicity, and segregation unstable in the Tri-Cities.

Though it would be about twenty years before a more permanent Spanish-speaking community, Latinos/as demonstrated the unique and important roles that they brought to the Manhattan Project and to the Tri-Cities. In an environment influenced by Jim Crow, these individuals opened doors to understand how race, ethnicity, and gender worked in the area. Tejano recruits demonstrate how White family standards discouraged non-White permanency in the Tri-Cities and impacted Tejano families’ willingness to move to the area. Puerto Ricans were welcomed into Richland because of the top work positions they had in the Manhattan Project. Some Latinos/as were forced to deal with segregation and discrimination, while others were allowed to move and assimilate into spaces otherwise meant for White people. These stories highlight the emerging contradictions needed to uphold ethnic and racial prejudice, segregation and discrimination and show the changing nature of race and ethnicity in the 1940s.

Footnotes

[1] Robert Bauman, “Jim Crow in the Tri-Cities, 1943-1950,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 96, no. 3 (Summer 2005): 124-131.
[2] U.S. Census Bureau, “Quick Facts: Richland, WA; Population Estimates, July 1, 2023,” generated using https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/, September 1, 2024.
[3] U.S. Census Bureau, “Quick Facts: Kennewick, WA; Population Estimates, July 1, 2023,” generated using https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/, September 1, 2024.
[4] U.S. Census Bureau, “Quick Facts: Pasco, WA; Population Estimates, July 1, 2023,” generated using https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/, September 1, 2024.
[5] The number of Latinos and Latinas who worked on the Manhattan Project is an estimate given the number of Mexican Americans who were hired through recruitment in the state of Texas, Spanish-surnamed individuals in personnel reports, and newspaper articles where Spanish surnamed workers and their families feature. Changing definitions around race and ethnicity also open the possibilities of contesting what the definition of Latino/Latina means, especially during the 1940s when most individuals were categorized as “Mexican,” “Spanish American,” and “Latin American” by the official sources used in this article.
[6] In a lecture program titled “Race: The Floating Signifier,” Stuart Hall encouraged people to view race as dynamic and changing, never fully static. The lecture helps to understand more fully how race and racism operate.
[7] Du Pont de Nemours and Company, Inc., "Construction Hanford Engineer Works . . . History of the Project," 4 vols. (Wilmington, Del., 1945), 1:63-64, doc. HAN-10970, ace. 9179, U.S. Dept. of Energy Reading Room.
[8] Du Pont, “Construction Hanford Engineer Works,” 1:63-64.
[9] “Empleos: E.I. Dupont de Nemours Necesita Inmediatamente,” La Prensa (San Antonio), April 6, 1944.
[10] Du Pont, “Construction Hanford Engineer Works,” 1:63-64.
[11] Du Pont, “Construction Hanford Engineer Works,” 1:63-64.
[12] Du Pont, “Construction Hanford Engineer Works,” 1:63-64.
[13] “Linares Funeral Monday,” Tri-City Herald (Pasco, WA), April 20, 1952.
[14] General Electric, “HEW Monthly Report 5/1947” (June 13, 1947), D197218301, U.S. Dept. of Energy Reading Room, 10.; “Club is Host to Cuban Youth,” Tri-City Herald (Pasco, WA), October 10, 1962.; “Funeral notices: Ivan M.A. Garcia,” Tri-City Herald (Pasco, WA), January 12, 1996.
[15] Franklin T. Matthias, "Diary and Notes of Col. Franklin Matthias, 1942-1945," August 29, 1943, ace. 8113, U.S. Department of Energy Public Reading Room, Consolidated Libraries, Washington State University Tri-Cities, Richland.
[16] JM Hennig and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, “Manhattan District History Book 4 Pile Project X Volume 5 Construction,” (December 22, 1945), D0825958, U.S., Dept. of Energy Reading Room, 4.10-4.11.
[17] Matthias, March 3, 1944.
[18] Matthias, February 26, 1944.
[19] “Group Backs Incorporation,” Tri-City Herald (Pasco, WA), February 18, 1948.; “Crack-Shot Artist to Demonstrate Shooting,” Tri-City Herald (Pasco, WA), May 1, 1949.; “Engineers OK Sewage Site Move,” Tri-City Herald (Pasco, WA), June 25, 1950.
[20] Hanford Engineer Works, “Richland Dance Winners,” Sage Sentinel (Hanford, WA), October 6, 1944. http://www.hanfordhistory.com/items/show/749.
[21] Hanford Engineer Works, “More News About Some of Our Sports Personalities,” Sage Sentinel (Hanford, WA), March 3, 1944.; http://www.hanfordhistory.com/items/show/4912 Hanford Engineer Works, “Local Fighter to Meet Dolan,” Sage Sentinel (Hanford, WA), November 10, 1944.; Hanford Engineer Works, “All-Star Fights Please; Set the Next on Dec. 4,” Sage Sentinel (Hanford, WA), November 24, 1944. http://www.hanfordhistory.com/items/show/758
[22] “Frontier Days Will Be Best in History,” Tri-City Herald (Pasco, WA), August 1, 1950.