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April 1971
Statcs B-29's approached Hiroshima,
Japan. One plane, the EnoJa Gay,
carried a single atomic bomb.
The culmination of years of pains–
taking research, scientific theory and
experimentation, rrulitary intelligence
reports of the mysterious new "super
weapon" the Germans were working on,
an awesome, towering explosion as a
test - and the final "go" signa! from
the Commander in Chief, Harry S.
Trumao, had contrived to place the
bulbous, massive shape securely in place
in the belly of the EnoJa Gay.
The "fat man," as it was menacingly
dubbed in tragi-comic jesting, com–
prised the accumulated knowledge,
research, sacri.fice, effort, and prodigious
cost of man's latest and most advanced
"achievernent." It was being stcadily
borne, now, nearer the target, selected
almost by chance occurrence of clcar
weather - equally necessary for the all–
important films and observation as for
sighting in on the target correctly.
Released of its burden, the EnoJa
Gay, Iightened, surged noticeably
upward, requiring a re-trimming of
controls.
Momcnts later, about 100,000 human
The
PLAlN TRUTH
beings ceased to exist. One moment they
were there. The next, they were noth–
ing. Another 140,000 suffered the muti–
lating, searing, tearing effects of the
flash, resultant tires, and force of the
huge explosion. They died. Another
100,000 would carry the mutilations for
years - many to finally die.
The "atomic age" had arrived.
No one felt likc applauding.
A war was brought quickly toan end;
and a new era - with the growing
realization of a more awesome power
poteotial for destruction than the most
hideous of nightmares - dawning on
human minds.
From then to now, men have
changed.
We live, now, in the vortex of a spi–
raling arms race. It races dizzyingly
upward, as the combined forces of sci–
enti.fic research, discovery, experimen–
tatioo and invention contrive to devise
ever more ghastly means of disintegrat–
ing, pulverizing, burning, vaporizing,
blasting, tearing, searing, maiming, or
exploding human flesh.
We have arrived.
We h&ve made it. Now, we can kill
the world.
Wide World Photo
The Quarter-Century War
of Nerves
5
For more than twenty-five years,
human governments have vied for
position, jostled, maneuvered, parlayed,
fought, struggled, talked, argued, threat–
ened and conciliated as they somehow
stcered a death-defying course between
a war which must not be fought, and a
peace which always eluded their grasp.
Between the larger jostling among
the superpowers, the mjndless, agoniz–
ing record of terror has continued to
mount as thc smaller nations - almost
always helpcd by the larger, nuclcar–
powered nations - fought bloodily.
From the end of World War
JI,
and
the horrifying explosions at Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, more than 50 separate
struggles have been fought, with two of
them, Korca and Vietnam, becoming of
such major proportions they vie with
World Wars I and II for numbcrs
killcd, bomb tonnages expended, and
towering costs.
Somehow, the world provcd it could
still go about the grisly business of war
in efficicnt, pragmatic fashion, killing
one another by the "conventional" means
of searing napalm, exploding mortars