NUCLEAR WAR AND ME: Annihilation Inscribed Across Time and Place, Part 2

View inside Building 802, the “Escape Hatch” at the rear of the “Sleeping Quarters”, facing south. – Naval Air Station Fallon, 100-man Fallout Shelter, 800 Complex, off Carson Road near intersection of Pasture and Berney Roads, Fallon, Churchill County, NV. This file comes from the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) or Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS). These are programs of the National Park Service established for the purpose of documenting historic places. In the public domain.

by Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D.

Crouching Under School Desks as Warning Sirens Blared

By the latter days of the WWII, fear of nuclear bomb attacks gripped our nation. For children in elementary school, the shrill blaring sound of a siren meant you were immediately to stop what you were doing and crouch beneath your heavy wooden desk.

As l learned more of the atomic bomb’s total destruction in Japan, I wondered how a desk would protect us?  There was barely enough desk-top for coverage.

Was this the best our school, our city, our nation could offer for protection? Did they care? I believed neither I, nor any of my school mates, would survive. I was bewildered! Should we stand bravely and sing God Bless America?  Was this assertion of courage better than hiding beneath a desk, cowering, awaiting death? Should I assume leadership for the class: “Get up from your knees, if we are to die, then let it be as brave children, not hunkered victims? We don’t kneel to foes! John Wayne never did!”   

I awaited death for reasons I could not understand. We were told there was the possibility of another war. War! What do I have to do with war? I am just a kid living in a basement, trying to survive, caring for family and friends, hurting no one! I was confused, torn between passively awaiting death, and struggling for survival. Movies were socializing my mind! War movies, cowboy and Indian movies, cartoons imitating good and bad in life.     

I reflectively complied with the teacher’s orders: “Get under your desk! Stay there until I tell you to leave.” Where did the teacher go? Did she hide under her big desk?  That was protection!”  Her desk was an old-fashioned wooden four pedestal teacher desk. I remember she turned it away from the windows. Did she take off her high heel shoes?  No email or tweets at the time.

Was this a drill or the real thing? In the moment, we never knew. We relied on the teacher to tell us! What would she say? Some kids were frightened, I could see it on their faces.

I tried not to show any fear. My uncles, veterans of WWII, told me always be brave! Do not cry! That’s what a soldier would do. This was my foxhole. We stared at each other, smiles, fear, resignation on faces. Some classmates whispered: “Are we going to die?”

So be it! I would die with my buddies, and with some pretty girls dressed with ribbons and bows in their hair, crouching modestly protecting any stares at their panties from peaking boys who took advantage of the situation.  “Hey, Patti has pink panties! I saw them when she crossed her legs.”  Patti stuck her tongue out at Howard; Howard laughed!

The all-clear siren blared. We had survived the unimaginable. At least for the time. No annihilation!

1950s – 1960s New Wars, Threats, Villains, Words:

Childhood fears of war and nuclear annihilation were compounded when the end of WWII did not bring an end to war. Within years, the Korean War furthered my fears of injury and death.

        “Where the hell is Korea?” New battle fields! New terms and villains:       Communism, China, Russia, Stalin, North and South Korea.  Does it   ever end? These guys have atom bombs too; some American citizens         gave them the plans. Who did that? The bastards!”

Mid 1940s’ war movies added to my fears. For ten cents, I could sit in the Union Square Theater all day:  Back to Bataan, Wake Island, Guadalcanal Diary, Sands of Iwo Jima.  John Wayne could not protect us! Neither could William Bendix, Lloyd Nolan, Richard Jaeckle, Henry Fonda, Errol Flynn, Randolf Scott, Anthony Quinn.

Screen images were burned in my mind. I watched bayoneting, shooting, flame throwers, bombs, machine guns, and dead bodies. “Jesus, a soldier shoved flame throwers into a cave and pill box filled with people!”  

I recall a dream! A nightmare, returning today, usually prompted by some words or events I see on TV.  My recurring dream:

The Chinese Communist soldiers are running down a hill toward our position, screaming, firing guns. There are endless numbers. We wait for commands to fire. We are afraid, and know we cannot win!  I accept my fate! I         look at my rifle.  It’s my toy rifle, bought for me by my uncle in the 1940s. I have no weapon! I need a real rifle! How can I protect myself or others? I am going to die.  I wake up sweating, breathless,   afraid.

THE UNITED STATES OF AMNESIA, Part 1

American military intervention since 1950. Author: Andrew0921. In the public domain.

by Stefan Schindler

America has the largest empire in world history, guarded by a thousand military bases around the world; yet most Americans don’t know there is such a thing as the American empire, even though they’re paying for it.  Most Americans don’t know that dismantling the empire would be the single most important step toward world peace and the solving of our ever deepening federal deficit and domestic financial crisis.

Gore Vidal coined the phrase “The United States of Amnesia.”  Of course, citizens can’t forget what they never knew.  Here are some facts to compensate for the American system of compulsory miseducation, political disinformation, and mainstream news media distortion:

1 – If U.S. naval commander Commodore Perry had not sailed his warships into Tokyo harbor in 1853, forcing Japan to end two centuries of international isolation, Japan could not have industrialized so quickly as to invade China in 1936, bomb Pearl Harbor a few years later, and launch the Second World War in the Pacific.

2 – Mark Twain, witnessing America’s eight-year terror campaign against the people of the Philippines in the so-called “Spanish-American War,” declared: “America’s flag should be a skull and crossbones.”  During the Spanish-American war, America never went to war with Spain, but simply took for its own the former Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico and the Philippines.

3 – American troops invaded Russian in 1918 in an effort to reverse the Russian Revolution of 1917, which overthrew centuries of Tsarist dictatorship and economic apartheid.  American soldiers were ordered to side with the remnants of the Tsar’s army, thereby helping create and sustain a devastating Russian civil war, preventing Lenin from instituting democratic reforms, and giving rise to Stalin’s dictatorship.  Woodrow Wilson’s invasion of Russia sought to prevent the rise of “social democracy” as a political, egalitarian alternative to capitalism.  This agenda was furthered by Harry Truman, who, after WWII, demonized Russia to frighten the American people into paying for a monstrous and unnecessary war machine.

4 – President Truman created an unaccountable national security state in 1947, when he sanctioned a secret government in the form of the National Security Council and the Central Intelligence Agency.

Co-founder of The National Registry for Conscientious Objection, a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, a recipient of The Boston Baha’i Peace Award, and a Trustee of The Life Experience School and Peace Abbey Foundation, Dr. Schindler received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Boston College, worked one summer in a nature preserve, lived in a Zen temple for a year, did the pilot’s voice in a claymation video of St. Exupery’s The Little Prince, acted in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” and performed as a musical poet in Philadelphia, Boston, and New York City.  He also wrote The Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Awards for Howard Zinn and John Lennon.  He is now semi-retired and living in Salem, Massachusetts.

Religions as revolutions

By guest author Majed Ashy, Ph.D.

Moses and escape from Egypt
Israel's escape from Egypt. Image in public domain

From the time of…

  • Moses, who helped guide the Israelis out of slavery and oppression to freedom, to
  • Jesus, who preached equality and love and changed the whole human understanding of power structures, to
  • Mohammad, who fought tyranny and oppression in Arabia and preached for justice and human dignity …

… one can see that these religions were in some ways revolutions, forces against existing oppressive power structures and traditions.

No doubt, some of the followers of religions established their own oppressive power structures and committed violence, but violence and oppression can be committed by non-religious as well as religious individuals and forces.

What did any religion have to do with the 20 million people killed in WWI, or the 60 million killed in WWII?  With Vietnam, Korean, or Japanese wars, the Cambodian or Rwandan genocides, or the dropping of the nuclear bombs over Japanese civilians?  Or the oppression and killing of millions in Russia and Eastern Europe by Stalin and other dictators, or the oppression committed by military dictators in the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Latin America, among many others?

Linking violence to one religion or another reflects:

  • Selective attention and reading of the history of violence and oppression that existed before and after any of these religions were established
  • Overlooking the role of religions and religious people in fighting oppression and contributing to humans’ well being in many areas of life
  • A dangerous way of offering unexamined answers that feed popular cultural prejudices and fears
  • A simplification of the problem of human violence,l which transcends race, culture, or religion

Instead of falsely attributing violence to religion, we need a serious scholarly non-ideological discussion to find the real roots of violence and the way toward greater peace.

To achieve peace, we need courage to look in the mirror and see our own faults before we point fingers at others, and we need courage in our struggle to be fair — even with those with whom we disagree.

Dr. Majed Ashy, assistant professor of psychology at Merrimack College and research fellow in psychiatry at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School