Davison's Doodle

Awakening

I grew up in a time when this tone on TV and radio was only a test or a signal of the end of the world.  Anything other than a test meant that nuclear bombs were minutes away. Sometimes is was used to announce bad weather.  I can remember only a couple of times when that was true where I lived.  I am old enough to call the loud outdoor blasts that blare out in neighborhoods “civil defense” instead of tornado sirens.  Following the EBS (emergency broadcast system) tone I waited to hear that it was only a test while the visual of what a nuclear blast would do to buildings and people ran through my head thanks to the films we saw at school twice a year.  My sister and I must have looked worried one summer afternoon during the weekly EBS test.  I remember her telling us.  “They test this stuff and you can ignore it.  It is scary, but the people in charge are not going to use the weapons that can hurt their families as well as ours.  Do you hear the outdoor sirens too?  No.  So, there is nothing to be afraid of.  Don’t be afraid, but pay attention.  If you are out playing or out with friends and hear the sirens come home if you are not far away.  If you are more than a five minutes from home go to your friend’s house.  Their parents will know what to do.  If you are at school the teachers will know what to do.  Listen to them and do what they say.  Ok.  Alright.  Now, go outside because it is a beautiful day.”

“The Day After,” a made for TV movie aired in November 1983.  It told several stories about people living in and around Kansas City following a nuclear exchange.  The very next day I had to give an eight minute speech in my “Introduction to Public Speaking” course on a topic I pulled from a hat.  My speech was about the necessity of nuclear deterrence.  In 1984 the BBC broadcast “Threads” which also depicted what people in London might experience in an exchange of nuclear weapons.  Scientists can theorize, determine blast radius, and plot the course of radiation fallout that will damage humans, and all creation, at a cellular level.  My father-in-law and other soldiers that landed in Japan following its unconditional surrender in WWII saw what nuclear weapons could do.  He never spoke of it, but his body told the story of time spent in radiation fallout through a muscle disease and liver cancer.  Only the ruins and survivors of the first blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki really know what these weapons can do, will do, when let loose.

President Obama, contrary to Republican talking points or perspective, delivered important and prophetic remarks at Hiroshima last week.  Arguments continue about the necessity of dropping those crude weapons and the motivation behind the use of nuclear weapons. They indeed shortened the war, scared humanity, set off an arms race, a cold war, and now, if not secured by people who embrace the fear of mutually assured destruction (MAD), or disarmed by countries that have such weapons, there is a brand of political and religious fanaticism around the globe that would use nuclear weapons and lead to another, maybe the final, World War.

Below are the opening and closing paragraphs of President Obama’s speech at the Peace Memorial in Hiroshima.

President Obama Speaks at Hiroshima Peace Memorial
May 27, 2016

Seventy-one years ago, on a bright, cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed.  A flash of light and a wall of fire destroyed a city and demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself.

The world was forever changed here.  But today, the children of this city will go through their day in peace.  What a precious thing that is.  It is worth protecting, and then extending to every child.  That is the future we can choose -– a future in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not as the dawn of atomic warfare, but as the start of our own moral awakening.

Click here to read the President’s entire speech.