Nostalgic Ramblings
GROWING UP WITH “THE BOMB”
It seems like it’s always been there. The threat of nuclear holocaust unleashed by accident or by an unhinged leader continues to be as prevalent today as it was eighty years ago. The attack on Pearl Harbor occurred five months before I was born and I was an infant and toddler during the most of the war years. During those years our folks lived with the the constant fear of an imminent invasion while having to struggle with day to day shortages and the rationing of food and fuel. Mom had only been home from the hospital a week following my birth when dad’s boyhood friend, Minoru Yonekura, was bused from Hayward to the Tanforan horse track for processing and the internment of Japanese American citizens that would last for four years. Dad’s job at Caterpillar building diesel engine components for the war effort and with a newborn at home excused him from military service for the duration of the war.
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki may have brought an end to World War ll, however over the next few years it created new concerns about the threat of nuclear attack from high flying Soviet bombers. I can still recall the blaring sound of the weekly testing of air raid sirens and the “duck and cover” drills at Marshall School. It was about this time in the early 1950’s that Kellog offered a baking soda powered Atomic Submarine in boxes of cereal, and Kix cereal contained a Lone Ranger Atomic Bomb Ring premium that contained a small sample of uranium bromide that you could make spark and “split atoms to smithereens”. I attended a meeting at the old Castro Valley Grammar School with dad where he received instructions to be our neighborhood Civil Defense Block Warden and I can vividly recall a large map of with concentric rings identifying the various levels of destruction radiating out from a potential atom bomb blast in Castro Valley, a terrifying image that i’m sure led to many sleepless nights.
In 1955 the U.S. Army established hundreds of costal ground to air missile sites as a last line of defense against the Soviet threat, one of which was on the upper end of Lake Chabot Road. The Castro Valley air defensive base boasted launchers and storage bunkers holding twenty nuclear capable Nike-Ajax multi-stage surface to air missiles, an administrative area for troop support, and a control area for launching and tracking. It was rumored around school that if the Nike missiles were actually launched the noise would break every window in Castro Valley
In 1957 our High School Science Club attended a controversial presentation by Edward Teller, a member of the Manhattan Project responsible for developing the first atomic bomb, co-founder of the Lawrence Livermore National Library, and dubbed “Father of the Hydrogen Bomb” speaking on the benefits of nuclear energy and advocating the development of a strong nuclear arsenal. Above ground and below ground fallout shelters were popular in the 1950’s and 60’s and my biology teacher and science club faculty adviser Wally Hennessy paid me a dollar an hour over several Saturday’s to dig a fallout shelter in the crawl space under his Castro Valley home presumably creating a radioactive safe bunker for his family.
The development of Intercontinental ballistic missiles and the real concern of nuclear attack and resulting radiation fallout became an increasing concern with the thirty six day Cuban missile crisis confrontation with the USSR in the fall of 1962. People in high risk populated areas were encouraged to develop evacuation or sheltering strategies and the building in Belmont where I worked had a full blown fallout shelter in the basement warehouse complete with a supply of rations, bottled water, cots, and a rifle (presumably to keep our neighboring publishing competitors at bay).
After eight decades of living under the threat of nuclear annihilation, countless sleepless nights, and immeasurable anxiety, it appears that hiding under a desk or behind the curtains, relying on warning sirens, shooting ICBM’s out of the sky with missiles, building bunkers under our homes, attempting to escape on gridlocked freeways, or locking ourselves in workplace basements may not have been a worthwhile use of time, worry or energy.
-Bill 5/23
