Santa Monica—August 6
This morning on the news, a reminder that 80 years ago today ‘the bomb’ was dropped on Hiroshima.
A personal story:
In the early 40’s, as a recent graduate of Yale Law School, married and with a tiny son, my father had opened a law practice in Des Moines, Iowa, but felt the need to support our war effort and so he went to Washington, DC. He marched into naval headquarters and asked how he could serve, knowing that lawyers were ‘useless’. He was met with “We’ve had our eye on you and we’d like you to be a guinea pig.” We had entered the war with Japan and needed officers who could speak Japanese.
My father was one of 20, including the head of philosophy at Columbia University, the leader of the Boston symphony, and 17 others of wildly diverse backgrounds, to be part of an intense learning program…five years worth of Japanese, including reading and writing, in SIX MONTHS in Boulder, Colorado.
My father’s assignment was to sail to the Marina Islands, specifically Tinian, as this is where the US was to build an air base. He was involved in the brutal takeover of these agricultural islands…horrific…and was the interpreter who talked the residents off the cliffs and out of the caves. He was then put it in charge of the huge internment camp that included 3,000 children.
This is a powerful story…(and yes I have written the screenply which is yet to find a home)
BUT/AND….he felt that the children in the camp needed to be in school..and so with zero official help, rallied the airbase builders when they were off duty and trained prisoners in the camp to teach…and built a school…a phenomenal school…50 years later he was flown to Japan for the Japanese version of ‘Good Morning America’ and hundreds of his students…now professors and doctors…met him and thanked him for his compassion, effort and brilliance in creating this ‘School for the Enemy’.
BUT/AND the reason that I am sharing this at this moment is that on August 6th, not knowing what the mission of the Enola Gay was specifically…my father and a large gathering of children stood and watched the plane take off for Japan.