There was a steady stream of new faces at 109 East Place ... The Ulams, like the others before them, had been instructed only that they were headed for for an undisclosed Manhattan Project site in the Southwest, near Santa Fe. As recent emigres to the United States, they were totally unfamiliar with the region and, deciding to do a little advance research before their departure date, checked out a WPA guidebook on New Mexico from the college library. At the time, Stan Ulam was teaching at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and there on the back leaf of the book, where borrowers signed out the volume, were the names of all the previous members of the physics department who had mysteriously disappeared to hush-hush war work.
The Ulams said nothing about their discovery until they arrived at Los Alamos, where they greeted their former colleagues without surprise, explaining that even the tight security surrounding “Project Y” had its loopholes.
109 East Place, a narrative of the Manhattan Project by Jenent Contant
