Esther Branson was a secretary in Los Alamos, New Mexico during WWII. She was 24 when she entered the army in 1944 along with her brothers after being denied by the Navy (denied for having a heart murmur). Esther was sent to work on the Manhattan Project as a secretary. She had known nothing about where she was going, what she was doing, nor able to tell her family her whereabouts. Esther had been stationed in Santa Fe and was subsequently bussed to Los Alamos. One of her most memorable jobs was typing out peoples’ last wills and testaments before the atomic bomb was tested.
National Museum of Nuclear Science & History
