Page 3420 - 1970S

During the Korean War, 1 was
stationed on a U.S. naval air–
craft carrier just offshore Ko–
rea. On board were huge
"blockbuster"-type bombs weighing
up to 2,000 pounds. 1 used to help
lower them into their bins with pul–
leys. Between loadings we would
sometimes take time out for a little
catnap. r would actually stretch my–
self out on the back of one of those
great big bombs and go serenely off
to sleep. After all, it didn't have a
fuse in it. I felt just about as safe as
if l'd been in my bunk.
After a few days of personal ac–
quaintanceship with big bombs and
guns, they don' t look so deadly any- ·
more. You tend to think of them as
completely safe and harmless- you
never think of one suddenly going
off.
Human beings learn to readily
adapt their Lives to very dangerous
circumstances. People just don't
think of spaceship earth in terms of
an enormous arsenal of thermonu–
clear weaponry both buried under–
ground in missile silos and in
underwa ter submarines.
Opening Pandora's Box
When man began to tamper with
the makeup of matter and to split
the atom, he was dealing with the
very building blocks of the universe
and intruding into an area of
unknown consequences. The bomb
he fi.nally built , it was feared, would
feed on mankind's very environ–
ment - the air, the ground, people,
horses, animals, buildings - every–
thing would explode and be
changed into instant energy in a gi–
gantic chain reaction.
Man had succeeded in finding a
key with which he could unlock just
a tiny bit of the energy contained in
matter. The final result is this
spaceship called earth is currently
harboring a giant , unwanted
stowaway capable of rendering all
life into just so many tons of pure
energy.
We began living in this kind of
by Garner Ted Armstrong
world in 1945. Incredibly, it was
then possible for the fi.rst time in
history for one bomber - high in
the stratosphere - to carry enough
destructive force to obliterate an en–
tire city. Sorne thirty years later, it is
now possib/e for one bomber to
carry sufficient firepower to repre–
sent the entire destructive force un–
leashed by all participants in World
War JI - including the atomic ex–
plosions at Hiroshima and Naga–
saki.
We have cometo the point where
the United States and the Soviet
Union possess enough nuclear
stockpiles to annihilate all human
life of many, many separate worlds
like ours. This kind of nuclear over–
kill defi.es human description - it
boggles the rnind!
How lt All Came To Be
About five years ago, on the occa–
sion of the 27th anniversary of the
dropping of the first two atomic
bombs, an editorial by David Law–
rence, the late editor of U.S. News &
World Report, appeared in that pop–
ular American news weekly. It was
actually a verbatim reprint of the
editorial he had written on August
6, 1945, following the destruction of
the two Japanese cities.
It began: "Man has at last brought
forth a weapon that reduces war toan
absurdity. Man has discovered that
a means of destroying whole nations
is available out of the minerals of
the earth and that no people can
hope to remain secure ag-ainst the
atomic bombs of another people no
matter how distant one country may
be from another. A single airplane
riding high in the stratosphere,
unobserved and undetected because
of its great speed, propelled by this
new energy, can appear suddenly ·
over London or Washington or
Detroit or Pittsburgh ... and
destroy human lives by the hun–
dreds of thousands in just a few
seconds."
Remember, this editorial was
originally written in 1945, before the
present age of missiles and space–
craft.
Later in the article, Mr. Lawrence
continued: "All the world knows
that the secrets of the atomic bomb
cannot long be withheld from the
scientists of nations Jarge and small.
The tiniest nation with a laboratory
and certain raw materials will have
a weapon that can be used to de–
stroy its neighbors."
How prophetic that was! We've
come a long way since "Little Boy"
was dumped out of a B-29 bomb
bay over Hiroshima. Now forty na–
tions are ready to join the nuclear
club - each one able, perhaps by
1985, to make a few bombs of the
low-yield kiloton range - the type
that destroyed Nagas.aki at the ush–
ering in ofthe nuclear age.
India already has the bomb. lt
has been commonly reported that
Israel has the bomb. The Arab
world has nuclear reactors. In the
Middle East, where passions and
continua! threats of war are potenti–
ally explosive, billions of dollars of
arms are being stockpiled. History
has taught us nothing.
Has the world gone completely
mad?
Yerucham Amitai, former deputy
chief of the Israelí Air Force, is
quoted as saying: "In the end, we
may have to choose between actioo
that might pull down the Temple of
Humanity itself rather than surren–
der even a single member of the
family to the executioners" (quoted
from 90 Minutes to Entebbe, by Wil–
liam Stevenson).
"Pull down the Temple of Hu–
manity"! What an electrifying state–
ment! What implications! You can
draw your own conclusions. What
Amitai may well have meant , in this
1970 conversation with author Ste–
venson, is that Israel has the bomb.
and that she would be willing to use
it if the nation were. ever again
threatened with extinction. Will
Israel plunge the world into a nu–
clear holocaust rather than accept
destruction by her enemies? Only
Every night the whole world goes to sleep aboard a huge mu/timegaton bomb - tul/y capable ot
exterminating every man, woman and child trom the tace ot this earth. Yet most people - tocusing
only on their own day-to-day concerns and how·to eke out a "good lite" in the midst ot economic
uncertainty - seem oblivious to the awesome and trightening signiticance ot nuclear proliteration.
The PLAIN TRUTH March 1977 21