Local history author Joe Boyle had just finished his talk at a Walinsky History Group dinner at the Beruit and was taking questions from the audience. My ears perked up when a gentleman asked Joe what he knew about a group of buildings in Toledo that were used to machine Uranium-238 for the first nuclear bombs. I was sure Joe would say he didn't know anything about them since I assumed the story was an urban legend, but instead, he laid out an incredible story that blew my mind. His grandparents worked at the Oak Ridge facility in East Tennessee during World War II, so Joe had a personal interest. Here are the details.
At the corner of Harleau and Post Streets, nestled within a residential neighborhood just a few blocks west of Rosary Cathedral, a cluster of brick buildings stands quietly inside a fenced-in industrial area. Today, it's hard to imagine that these unassuming structures once played a crucial role in Toledo's connection to the groundbreaking effort that led to the creation of the nuclear bombs that ended World War II.
As the United States entered the war in late 1941, secret projects were already underway to unlock the power of nuclear fission for developing an atomic bomb—known as the Manhattan Project. A critical component of this endeavor involved refining uranium to create the bomb's material.
Between June 1943 and July 1944, DuPont and the University of Chicago subcontracted Toledo's Baker Brothers to machine-roll metal rods into uranium slugs for the Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the Hanford nuclear reactor complex in Washington. Most of the 200 employees at Baker Brothers were unaware of the top-secret work happening in the off-limits "North Building," as they were focused on supporting the war effort by building machinery for tank turret rings and aircraft propeller hubs. It's estimated that between 90 and 300 tons of uranium were processed at Baker Brothers over thirteen months. The uranium slugs produced in Toledo ultimately played a role in generating the plutonium used in the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945, killing around 40,000 people instantly and injuring 60,000 more. Ultimately resulting in the deaths of 74,000 people.
The work at the Baker Brothers facility did not last long. After the subcontract was terminated in 1944, the site was decontaminated and determined to comply with the current guidelines. Later that same year, Baker Brothers' assets were liquidated, and the property was sold to two independent interests that probably didn't receive detailed information on what the buildings were recently used for. You would think the story would die here in 1944 or a year later after the end of the war, but just like the Uranium slugs machined in Toledo, this intriguing tale had quite a half-life.
Beginning in 1989, at the request of the U.S. Department of Energy, a team from Oak Ridge National Laboratory conducted radiological surveys at the former Baker Brothers site, then occupied by REMS, Inc., and the Doug Beat Company. The goal was to determine whether radioactive residues, particularly uranium, remained from the Manhattan Project era. The investigation involved gamma scans, measurements of alpha, beta, and gamma radiation levels, and sampling of soil, dust, debris, and air for radionuclide analysis.
The results revealed four areas where radionuclide concentrations exceeded the DOE's safety criteria, including surface contamination on shelves in one building. A radionuclide is an unstable element that emits high-energy ionizing radiation from the atomic nucleus.
Consequently, a $6 million remediation project was launched in 1994 to address the contamination and ensure the site's safety. By 1995, approximately 356 cubic yards of low-level radioactive waste and five cubic yards of mixed waste were removed from the Toledo site and transported for disposal to a licensed disposal facility in Clive, Utah. The site’s remedial action was certified complete in 2001.
When interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, Doug Beat, the facility owner during the clean-up, said he asked if the contamination level was dangerous. "They said, well, I might not want to sit in the back corner to eat lunch."
When the cleanup operation began, employees were interviewed to determine if they recalled any materials being removed from the site. During these interviews, it was revealed that dirt from the facility had been used as fill on a 7-acre farm in Whiteford Township, Michigan (about 15 miles from the site) as a favor to the farm's owner. This property was remediated in 1996, with approximately 1,920 cubic yards of contaminated material being excavated and transported to a disposal facility in Utah. This included soils, gravel, asphalt, concrete debris, and organic material (e.g., grass, roots, stumps, and shrubbery).
A 1995 report about the clean-up in the Toledo Blade featured an interview with Milton Aelig, who had served as the chief draftsman for Baker Brothers during the war. Aelig revealed that he didn't discover what was being secretly machined in the "North Building" until the 1980s. “We knew something was going on, but we didn’t know what. No one ever knew the entire story. I only learned about it in the paper,” he said.
Despite the government's secrecy surrounding the Manhattan Project, how could Baker Brothers' employees not directly involved in machining suspect something unusual was happening? For one, armed guards patrolled the scrap, turnings, and burned oxides—an unmistakable sign that these materials were highly sensitive. Moreover, spontaneous fires frequently ignited in the shavings during machining, raising further suspicion. One particularly alarming incident occurred in June 1943 when a fire broke out in a shavings container. Despite the fire department's best efforts, the flames burned for days, consuming 100 pounds of uranium before finally dying out after running out of fuel.
Today, as I drive through the neighborhood surrounding the old Baker Brothers facility, I can't help but wonder what the residents might have thought had they known about their neighbor's secretive and critical role in one of history's most consequential projects.