Where I was when the Balloon went up

The Big Bang

I read this today:

"On this day in History:
First atomic bomb exploded near Alamogordo, New Mexico

1945: The Manhattan Project, a joint effort by scientists at Los Alamos, New Mexico, culminated in the explosion of the first atomic bomb at 5:30 AM on this day at a site on the Alamogordo air base, 193 km (120 miles) south of Albuquerque, New Mexico. The bomb generated an explosive power equivalent to 15,000 to 20,000 tons of TNT, and the surrounding desert surface fused to glass for a radius of 730 metres (800 yards). The following month, two other atomic bombs produced by the project, the first using uranium-235 and the second using plutonium, were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan."

Then it was this day in 1945, when I was 9, that Daddy, home early from work, took me aside and said something very important had happend. Namely, that the government had exploded the biggest bomb ever out west in New Mexico. It had melted the tower it was exploded from, and created this huge ball of fire and a cloud that could be seen in other states. Daddy did not often talk seriously about this sort of thing. I think he was trying to soften or prepare the news I would be hearing in a few days about, first, the destruction of a whole city, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, Japan a day later! He was telling me the world had changed again forever....

The effects on those like me, (I was 5) in December 1941, when the Japanese destroyed Pearl Harbor (on Daddy's birthday). I only understood later. And certainly later when news of the Austwitz-style concentration camps in which Jews were gassed by the thousands, the news-reels of the blitz of London, people sleeping in Subways, all men of a certain age gone to fight, my uncles and a cousin brought it all home. Dad was given a 4F, because of a heart condition, and his age, 36. But on the home front he was an air-raid warden, with a flashlight covered with blue celophane. When we had an air-raid warning, and the terrifying wild-cat whistle on the Lock Hosery Mill sounded off, all terror broke loose and lights were doused. Dad and some other men his age were on the streets shutting off the give-a-way powerMaking sure the enemy could not see us. We did not know if it was practice or real!!

By that summer of 45, though, Germany had already surrendered, Hitler had committed suiside, troops in that theater were sent to the South Pacific for what looked like an invasion of Japan. Then the bomb. And the surrender of Japan.

The days of all the flag waving, fund drives like saving bonds and saving stamps sold at school, Kate Smith singing "God Bless America", Irvin Berlin's anthem many thought should become the National amthem... every night somewhere on the radio, were coming to an end. There was not a TV anywhere I knew of for four more years. We got it all on the radio, anyway. Such things like rationing were ended. We all hated rationing, since everything from Coffee to shoes required rationing stamps. Gas was available depending on your job sensitivity and importance!

Boy Scouts had paper drives. There were copper drives. Once, the Cabarrus Theater, down town, had a special showing of Bambi, with the price of addmission, something copper scrapped from a junk pile. Nobody could find anything like that around our house, so they gave me copper pennies. It cost nine of them to get in anyway, if you were under 12 then. My, how times have changed!!!!
Bambi made me cry. I had not seen it before.

We saved bacon fat in Crisco cans, and turned it in at certain food stores, for the war effort. We saw movies like "20 Seconds over Tokyo" and "Guadacanal Diary", and cried for the dying and the dead on the battlefields. We had days of prayer for the troops. Every house that had a son or father serving overseas had a special sticker for the front window. The pledge of alliagence to the flag did not contain the words "under God" but we prayed and read the bible at school anyway. Around our house, it was God and Franklin D. Roosevelt that will see us through. (It was only later that I found out that Dad was not a Democrat, and disliked FDR! But he was a strong beliver in God.)

War. What is it good for????

More WW2 memories.