What did you do in the war daddy?
Corson, Ross
WHAT DID YOU DO IN THE WAR, DADDY? SON OF 'ENOLA GAY' ROSS COHSON IN SCHOOL I used to look forward to history class when the teacher discussed the end of World War II, the bombings of Hiroshima...
...The group moved in 1945 to the Pacific island of Tinian and there my father helped to prepare the Enola Gay for her mysterious, momentous mission in early August...
...The missions to Hiroshima and Nagasaki are nothing to be proud of at all...
...But they are missions to be remembered...
...Diplomatic ineptitude, it seems, allowed the atomic bomb to be used...
...Our eyes should be on the present and future...
...There is no room for pride anymore and there is no room for self-righteous condemnation either...
...And never repeated...
...Little Boy" and "Fat Man," the Nagasaki bomb, may indeed have been triumphs of American military and scientific might, but they are not triumphs wormy of glory and honor...
...By the standards of today's nuclear arms, fobugh, "Little Boy" hardly qualifies even as a powerful weapon...
...They have documented the American government's unreasonable refusal to negotiate with Japan and its stubborn demand for unconditional surrender, which was dropped immediately after Nagasaki...
...Ever again...
...The photographs and anecdotes were awe-inspiring proof for me as a child of my father's important role in one of the great events of the twentieth century, an event honored in history class...
...This offered me the opportunity, which a young son likes to take advantage of, to boast of my father...
...The atomic bomb was inevitably portrayed by both teacher and textbook as a glorious triumph of American military and scientific might...
...The sentiments in his concluding remarks to We Dropped the A-Bomb ought to be even more compelling today man when they were first expressed...
...Apparently, however, most Americans did accept Truman's "arsenal of righteousness" vision and subscribed as well to bis opinion mat the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs "saved millions of lives," both American and Japanese, by avoiding an invasion of Japan...
...This gave me special reason to feel proud of my father and proud to be his son, Humbling moaghte have since intruded, however...
...Anywhere in the world...
...they are photographs of the plane much like those I found in my history textbooks...
...Robert Oppenheimer warned that "the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and Hiroshima...
...A year after Abe Spitzer dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki as pilot of The Great Artiste, he wrote a book with Merle Miller describing his experiences and ultimate misgivings...
...SON OF 'ENOLA GAY' ROSS COHSON IN SCHOOL I used to look forward to history class when the teacher discussed the end of World War II, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki...
...Most of the casualties were civilians, exposing President Truman's effrontery in describing Hiroshima as a "military target...
...A couple of months ago, I watched a documentary film by Jon Else on Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project...
...The Enola Gay, with just one bomb in justoneflight, managed to do on the morning of August 6th, 1945, what previously could have been done only by two thousand similar B-29s loaded full with conventional high-explosive bombs...
...When selected for the 509th in 1944, he knew only that it was involved in some unidentified "big deal...
...The Enokt Gay's, single bomb, known informally in the 509th as "the gimmick" (officially as "Little Boy"), killed close to 100,000 Japanese that day...
...Feeling shame and placing blame are not so important now mat those particular events are thirty-eight years old...
...My father had been a jack-of-all-trades, troubleshooting mechanic on B-29s...
...Sad reflection on our history seems to be in older now mat we are burdened by global nuclear peril...
...If this is true, (hen my father was a cog - albeit a small cog - in that human machinery which produced the only incidents of atomic warfare so far...
...An atomic bombing was die necessary conclusion to the Manhattan Project and the 509th Composite Group...
...Today there are many people - from high-level scientists and administrators to low-level technicians, assemblers, and operatives - doing their jobs and following orders in the nuclear weapons industry...
...He was just an ordinary guy doing his job, following orders, doing what had to be done...
...sive magazine...
...Even more fascinating was my father's ability to describe in detail, from personal experience, the circumstances and events I read about in those textbooks...
...During the past two decades, revisionist historians have brought into serious question America's atomic righteousness in 1945...
...The morality of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as of nuclear arms in general has become quite dubious...
...Truman referred to the atomic bomb as "merely another powerful weapon in the arsenal of righteousness...
...The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki may have been the first shots of die cold war as much as the final shots of World War JJ...
...These historians have also revealed the hidden purposes in the atomic bomb of intimidating the Soviets and denying them a rote in the Japanese surrender...
...But, it was not just another powerful weapon and most people grasped that from the start...
...He replied that it probably could not have been any other way because the bureaucratic machinery had been in motion for too long and its motion led invariably to the use of the atomic bomb...
...That time has not yet come, but it does seem close...
...An historian was asked whether Hiroshima had to be bombed and his answer was shocking for the fatalism if implied...
...By then an ordinary traveling salesman in Minnesota, my fattier was distinguished by his service in World War II with the 509th Composite Group, the small military outfit responsible for finishing what the civilian Manhattan Project started - responsible, in other words, for dropping the first atomic bomb...
...Pride in and celebration of the atomic bomb are grimly inappropriate...
...These are all difficult thoughts for me, considering the great enthusiasm and pride I once felt for Hiroshima and Nagasaki because of my father's past...
...Our family photo album holds several fascinating black-and-white shots of my father with the Enok Gay...
...They may feel proud of their work, but they may wish to consider whether their children will be equally proud or instead will curse, assuming they'll have the chance...
...rosscorson (Ross Corson, a student at Harvard, worked for two summers as a reporter on the Rochester, Minn., Post-Bulletin, and as an intern at the Progressive magazine...
...And he could tell me some things that weren't in the hooks - the extremely tight security in the 509th and the drunken celebration afterwards when "the brass came pinning ribbons on everyone...
Vol. 110 • August 1983 • No. 14
