The Shadow
Prior to my birth on Mon., July 7, 1941, the atomic bomb had not been invented despite Albert Einstein having warned the U.S. about German scientists working on a nuclear chain reaction bomb.
In fact, Einstein, a world-renowned physicist, wrote a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939, warning Roosevelt about the impending threat.
After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Roosevelt uttered his famous words via the radio to the nation regarding the unprovoked Japanese attack, “…a date that shall live in infamy.”
By Aug. 13, 1942, the U.S., Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union and to a lesser extent, China, were the Allies warring against Nazi Germany, Italy and Japan on the date that the Manhattan Project was authorized.
Oak Ridge, Tenn. was selected as the site for building a secret pilot plutonium enrichment plant and the uranium enrichment plant where 30,000 workers were eventually secretly employed to contribute to the Manhattan Project.
Although it was the official startup date in Manhattan, N.Y. where its office was established at 270 Broadway, the actual project took place in other states. Los Alamos, New Mexico was where Robert Openheimer was placed in charge of what turned out to be a secret $2 billion research and development project that produced the first atomic bomb.
On Aug. 6, 1945, slightly less than three years later, the U.S. B-29 Bomber, the Enola Gay, dropped “Little Boy,” the first atomic bomb, on Hiroshima.
The reason why the city of Hiroshima was chosen as the target was that it was the only city on the U.S. military’s list of target cities that did not have a prison camp housing Allied Forces. The bomb reportedly killed 80,000 Japanese on impact, and thousands more died from radiation fallout and injuries shortly thereafter.
I had recently turned four, and I can recall the radio newscasts about the atomic bombs being dropped on Japan.
I grew up in coal country in Floyd County, Ky., and my father, a coal miner and lawman, was serving in the U.S. Army in Indianapolis before the war ended, a few days following the second atomic bomb, “Fat Boy,” that was dropped on Nagasaki from another B-29 bomber on Aug. 9, 1945.
My father’s two brothers were both overseas, his youngest brother in the South Pacific serving in the U.S. Marine Corps and his older brother serving in the U.S. Army in England.
My mother’s three younger brothers were serving in the military too, one in the U.S. Army Air Corps as a pilot, and the other two in the U.S. Navy on different ships in the South Pacific.
Also, I recall the day that I was playing on a sandbar under a bridge across Left Beaver Creek when I heard the radio broadcast from a nearby house announcing that President Roosevelt had died.
I remember Kentuckians weeping after receiving the sad news. That was, of course, before the atomic bombs were dropped on the two Japanese cities.
Vice-President Harry S. Truman was sworn in as President following President Roosevelt’s death, and it was Truman, Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Military, who approved the dropping of the atomic bombs.
General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Allied commander in Europe, opposed the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan as did Secretary of War Harry Stimson, both citing humanitarian reasons.
However, Truman, who served as a U.S. Army Captain in the Field Artillery in France during World War I, made the decision to drop the atomic bombs to save the lives of thousands of the Allied Forces by forcing Japan to unconditionally surrender without invading Japan.
Japan, despite the devastating firebombing of Tokyo by the Allied Forces that had already taken place, was continuing to resist surrendering unconditionally while maintaining that the Empire should be left for Japan’s Emperor Hirohito to continue to rule without Allied Forces being permitted to occupy Japan.
On Aug. 15, Hirohito became the first Japanese Emperor in history to address the Japanese people directly. He did so on the radio, accepting the unconditional surrender, thus ending hostilities and unofficially ending World War II.
The official end of World War II came about on Sept. 2, 1945, with the signing of the official document of unconditional surrender aboard the USS Missouri with General Douglas McArthur in command of the Pacific Theater of War.
Historians have written that another one of Truman’s motives to end World War II sooner than later was to prevent Russia from participating in the occupation of Japan.
Mistrust of Russia by the U.S. during and after World War II, especially after Russia developed its own atomic bomb, led to the Cold War that lasted until the Berlin Wall was torn down to reunite East and West Germany and bring about détente.
My memories remain vivid of radio broadcasts about the Berlin Blockade by the Russians that began in June of 1948, just before I turned seven, and the Allied response that followed with the Berlin Airlift of food and fuel to the city to keep it under the Allies’ control.
With Russia now threatening to use nuclear weapons in its invasion of Ukraine, I am reminded of sitting in the Morehead State University’s North Men’s Hall dormitory’s lounge watching President John F. Kennedy address the American people on TV about the Cuban Missile Crisis and the threat of nuclear war with Russia.
That was just over 60 years ago in Oct. of 1962, and after 13 days of high tensions, Russia agreed to remove its nuclear warheads from Cuba in exchange for President Kennedy’s promise not to invade Fidel Castro’s Cuba and to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey.
With so many nations now having arsenals of nuclear weapons, Earth has become a far more dangerous planet than it was in 1962.
One thing appears to have remained constant, Russia’s aggression toward other nations demonstrated after the turn of the century by its annexation of Crimea during President Barrack H. Obama’s administration and by its invasion and occupation of more of Ukraine’s territory during President Joe Biden’s administration.
As the nation celebrates Veterans Day on Nov. 12, Russia continues to occupy Crimea and a large area of northeastern, eastern, and southeastern Ukraine.
