POSTSCRIPT ON MEMORIAL DAY

ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY

I recently asked my “boys” if they remembered having to practice for a bomb attack when they were in school. This is what they responded with:

Craig:

”We did have to do duck and cover. I remember vividly having to get under my desk in first grade and I think going out into the hall and crouching down in the second grade. I don't remember knowing what it was all about. We just treated it sorta like a fire drill.”

Matthew:

“We did it. I remember it well. They played the old training movies from the 50's on the projector.”

Craig was in the First Grade in 1964 in Midland. I’m sure if there had been an attack, the oilfields around the Permian Basin would have been a target..? Matthew, however, didn’t start First Grade until 1975 in Irving. By then, surely they knew how useless the “duck and cover” would be in a nuclear attack! I wonder why they continued this frightening practice.

Funny, I don’t remember doing this at all as a kid. I moved around so much in grade school (remember it was called primary school, grade school, grammar school, and then elementary school?), maybe they practiced these drills on days I was in transit! Did you have to practice these drills when you were in school here in Ballinger?

I do remember being horrified by the atomic bomb. When my dad came home from World War II, I followed him around asking him questions about the war and what he did in Japan. I was too young – seven years old – to really understand about the bomb then, but I had seen enough images in magazines and the newsreels (remember those?) at the movie theaters to know that little children were affected, too, and often killed. My sister and I were left with different relatives in different states from time to time throughout the war. I recall that my prayers were always ended with “God, please don’t let the 'Japs' kill my daddy.” My fear for my dad was resolved upon his return, but my compassion for the little children only increased. I still remember how angry he got with me when I asked him if he had to kill a little child! Only as an adult did I find out that he did not see combat in Japan, but was there with the Occupation forces.

A couple of years ago I got Dad to talk a little about his experiences as a paratrooper in the South Pacific. They were sent to an island in the Philippines to do a mop-up action. Apparently, there were some Japanese gunners hiding out in the caves in the hills. He said they had to sweep the hillsides, and when they came to a cave, throw grenades into it. When I asked if he knew whether or not he actually killed anyone, he said they didn’t stick around to find out… and that he really didn’t want to know. My dad was only 27 years old at the time of the bombing of Hiroshima.

My dad was stationed at Fort Sam Houston during the Korean “conflict” when I was in the seventh grade (it was junior high then, now middle school!) in San Antonio. I read a small book called Hiroshima, which outlined in vivid detail everything about that attack. I don’t know why I read that book – or where I got it. Certainly not at the school library. Anyway, I did a book report on it, and from that day forward I was against war. 

It was so unreal to think that people could be reduced to a mere “shadow” on a sidewalk. I would stand in the sun and look down at my own shadow and try to imagine that that was all that was left of me. Even worse were the reports of survivors with their faces melted, or all their skin coming off if someone tried to hold them or pick them up. For years I followed reports on the aftereffects of the A-Bomb and what it did to the poor people who survived the attack. Horrible, horrible health problems… deformed babies -- if they could even give birth again. Those were the times I was almost ashamed to be an American. And I was only 12 years old.

I also read about the pilot and crew of the Enola Gay, who dropped those bombs. I could not imagine human beings wanting to deliver such destruction on so many innocent people. But then, there are a lot of things about war I do not understand – whether “they” are doing it, or we are!

A side note and not one I am particularly proud of: In the late 80s I was doing some genealogical research on my dad’s family and discovered he had a first cousin in Houston. I found him in Who’s Who in America, and found out he discovered/developed the electromagnetic process that made the first atomic bomb possible. He was among the scientists at Los Alamos during the testing of these bombs. When I met his sister in New Orleans, who was in her 70s at the time, she told me he went blind many years before. I wondered if this was a result of his exposure to radiation at the test sites when the bombs went off. (2021 - I have since discovered this is an error. There were two Moragnes with the same name. My cousin was not the one who worked on the bomb.)

About the same time that I found this side of my family, my oldest child, Craig Young, was the youngest member of the board of directors of the Texas Freeze Voters Association. He was aghast when I told him of our “infamous” relative. He didn’t want anyone to know. 

“Where have all the young men gone?”………………Too many of them are in Arlington National Cemetery and others scattered in cemeteries around the country. “When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn?”…

May we honor the soldiers and not the wars.

Too bad, good stuff doesn't always happen.

Marilyn