I remember very well when those bombs were dropped, and there was cheering in the streets.

I have to comment on that. I remember vividly hearing the news about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. I was fourteen at the time. It was early afternoon and my dad and I were sitting in the car waiting for my mother and my two sisters. We were going swimming. While we waited, the news came over the car radio. That morning, the entire city of Hiroshima had been destroyed by a single atomic bomb. The announcer went on to describe that the bomb made use of nuclear fission, the process that powered the sun, and that for a moment, it was as if the sun had appeared a thousand feet above Hiroshima and incinerated the whole city. Among the other details the special news bulletin included was the comment that due to radioactive contamination from the fissionable material in the bomb, the surrounding area would be uninhabitable "for perhaps as long as the next seventy years." The scientific details were not all that accurate, but at the time, even the scientists didn't really know. This was something new, even to them.

Dad and I sat there in the car, quiet and feeling pretty damned sober. When my mom and sisters got into the car, the news was being repeated. We went about our business that day and ran into a lot of people both at the swimming pool and in downtown Seattle. There was no jubilation, no celebrating, and no dancing in the streets. Everybody was pretty quiet and sober. All of the implications had not yet sunk in. It was evident that the war was about over--but it was also evident to most people that the world had changed that day and nothing would ever be quite the same.

My dad was on vacation for the entire month of August, and we had planned a trip to Vancouver, B.C. We arrived in Vancouver in the late afternoon of August 14th, and the whole city had gone berserk! Cheering people everywhere. We didn't had the car radio on, so we hadn't heard the news. The Japanese had surrendered. The war was over! And indeed there was dancing in the streets!

But not on August 6th. People were hopeful that the war was all but over and they were glad about that, but most people were aware that, despite some news reports, Hiroshima was not just a military base, but a city, filled with civilians, and that a horror beyond belief had been unleashed on them. "Hell," a few people said, "they were only Japs!" But despite the fact that feelings against the Japanese ran pretty high during the war, most people felt pretty ambivalent about the bombing of Hiroshima--and especially Nagasaki. Battles between armies and navies are one thing, but the incineration of tens of thousands of civilians, even if they were "the enemy," was not something most Americans felt very good about.   

For those who like carrying "a big stick," the A-bomb was a glorious new toy, but for the the rest of the world, August 6th was not a good day.

A little over a year later, John Hershey's book Hiroshima was published. It also came out in a 35¢ paperback edition, so a lot of people read it. It should be required reading for everybody.

Talk about sobering. . . .

Don Firth