[b]THE U.S. AT WAR[/b]
Wednesday, Oct. 05, 1983 - [i]TIME[/i]
[b]THE PEACE The Bomb[/b]
The greatest and most terrible of wars ended, this week, in the echoes of an enormous event—an event so much more enormous that, relative to it, the war itself shrank to minor significance. In what they said and did, men were still, as in the aftershock of a great wound, bemused and only semi-articulate, whether they were soldiers or scientists, or great statesmen, or the simplest of men. But in the dark depths of their minds and hearts, huge forms moved and silently arrayed themselves: Titans, arranging out of the chaos an age in which victory was already only the shout of a child in the street.
With the controlled splitting of the atom, humanity, already profoundly perplexed and disunified, was brought inescapably into a new age. The race had been won, the weapon had been used by those on whom civilization could best hope to depend; but the demonstration of power against living creatures instead of dead matter created a bottomless wound in the living conscience of the race. The rational mind had won the most Promethean of its conquests over nature, and had put into the hands of common man the fire and force of the sun itself.
Was man equal to the challenge? In an instant, without warning, the present had become the unthinkable future. Was there hope in that future, and if so, where did hope lie?
When the bomb split open the universe and revealed the prospect of the infinitely extraordinary, it also revealed the oldest, simplest, commonest, most neglected and most important of facts: that each man is eternally and above all else responsible for his own soul.
[b]"My God!"[/b]
The run was short and straight. At 9:15 a.m. Major Thomas Ferebee pressed the toggle and the single bomb was away, down through the substratosphere. Colonel Paul Warfield Tibbets, the pilot, took back the controls and ten pairs of eyes strained at the plexiglass windows as Tibbets turned the plane broadside to the city of Hiroshima.
It took less than 60 seconds. Then the brilliant morning sunlight was slashed by a more brilliant white flash. It was so strong that the crew of the Superfortress Enola Gay felt a "visual shock," although all wore sun glasses.
A few seconds after the flash, the shock wave from the blast reached the Enola Gay, several miles away, and rocked it like a giant burst of flak. From the men who had rung up the curtain on a new era in history burst nothing more original than an awed "My God!"
Hiroshima had once harbored 344,000 people. Reconnaissance photographs showed 4.1 square miles—60% of the city's built-up area—destroyed by fire and blast. There was no crater in which the blast effect would have been largely wasted; the bomb had exploded well above ground. How many tens of thousands of Hiroshima's people had perished was not yet and might never be known.
Three days later, the Superfort Great Artiste was out on a similar mission. Major Charles W. Sweeney had a rough trip to Japan in bad weather; his primary target was socked in. Over the second-choice target, Nagasaki, he had just enough gas left for one run.
This bomb was even more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima, so much of an improvement that the first bomb was obsolete. It exploded on or near the ground, blasted a ghastly crater. It destroyed only one square mile of the Kyushu seaport, but spokesmen said that it had been more devastating than the first.
[b]We Interrupt This Program . . .[/b]
When the first news of Japan's surrender came to the fighting fronts, G.I.s yelled wildly, pounded backs, fired guns, drank hoarded whiskey. On Okinawa the night was lighted by millions of tracer bullets as men fired rifles, machine guns, antiaircraft guns. Green and yellow flares glared in the darkness. Ships offshore, fearing a Kamikaze attack, laid down a smoke screen, opened up with antiaircraft guns. Veterans had seen nothing like it during the whole battle for the islands. The celebration had tragic consequences: six men were killed, 30 wounded.
Manila echoed as soldiers drove jeeps and trucks madly through the dusty streets, blowing horns, beating on fenders with iron pipe. Over the din sounded the shrill voices of children screaming: "Beectory . . . beectory. . . ."
The great Cunard liner Queen Elizabeth approached New York Harbor with a captured Nazi flag flying at her main mast, an effect achieved by laughing, shouting soldiers. Manhattan's excitable garment workers threw tons of paper and cloth shreds into the streets.
Therefore thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will bring evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape; and though they shall cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them. Then shall the cities of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem go, and cry unto the gods unto whom they offer incense: but they shall not save them at all in the time of their trouble. For according to the number of thy cities were thy gods, O Judah; and according to the number of the streets of Jerusalem have ye set up altars to that shameful thing, even altars to burn incense unto Baal.
Therefore pray not thou for this people, neither lift up a cry or prayer for them: for I will not hear them in the time that they cry unto me for their trouble. What hath my beloved to do in mine house, seeing she hath wrought lewdness with many, and the holy flesh is passed from thee? when thou doest evil, then thou rejoicest.
The LORD called thy name, A green olive tree, fair, and of goodly fruit: with the noise of a great tumult he hath kindled fire upon it, and the branches of it are broken. For the LORD of hosts, that planted thee, hath pronounced evil against thee, for the evil of the house of Israel and of the house of Judah, which they have done against themselves to provoke me to anger in offering incense unto Baal." - Jeremiah 11:9-17
[b]A Strange Place[/b]
Monday, Aug. 20, 1945 - [i]TIME[/i]
This was a new room, rich with hope, terrible with strange dangers. The door that slammed behind man at Hiroshima had locked. Life, as always, was irreversible. There was no choice but to grope ahead into the Atomic Age.
Pain and a price attended progress. The last great convulsion brought steam and electricity, and with them an age of confusion and mounting war. A dim folk memory had preserved the story of a greater advance: "the winged hound of Zeus" tearing from Prometheus' liver the price of fire.
Was the world ready for the new step forward? It was never ready. It was, in fact, still fumbling for the answers to the age of steam and electricity. The kindly physicists handed plain people (like Harry Truman and Clement Attlee) the fissioned atom,.and said: You have to decide who owns it; who can kill whom with it, and under what circumstances. How fast is it to be developed? Certainly, it will change the world. You have to make laws to fit it.
And if plain people (like Harry Truman and Clement Attlee) did not understand and control it, who would?
They faced up to it. There wras no pretending Hiroshima had never happened; no ignoring a source of energy that might spin all the wheels ever cast.
Man had been tossed into the vestibule of another millennium. It was wonderful to think of what the Atomic Age might be, if man was strong and honest. But at first it was a strange place, full of weird symbols and the smell of death.
