The Atomic Bomb : A Nations First Thoughts

 Beginning in my senior year of high school I first asked a question  which I would ask probably 300 plus times over the next years. Unfortunately , I never kept careful notes on all my responses , it was just a question that I was curious about as I had grown up in what we used to call 'The Atomic Age'. My question was a simple one. What were your first thoughts after you heard we had dropped something called an atomic bomb ? It was one of those time periods that people remember where they were when a a major event happened. Like 9/11 or President Kennedy's assassination. I would guesstimate that  upwards of 80% first thoughts were it will end the war. Simple as that. From discussing this time period with people I discovered that it was quickly associated with the one scientist most people had heard of. Albert Einstein. He is still a man known by all most everyone. Soon on radio and the newspapers an equation was loosely associated with the event E equals Mc 2. Ever wonder why so many people from cooks to science teachers have heard of this piece of math. It appears that it was from this event. It became branded on our collective conscious as a nation and in the world. Some people had other thoughts . As my uncle finally told me his thoughts about a week before he passed away. He was on the Pacific airbase where the Enola Gay had taken off from. He knew like everybody else on base something important was going on with that plane and you dared not even think about going near it. On the early morning it took off he like many other airmen were awakened because word had gotten out it was being readied for take off. He watched it take off and went back to bed. It was at least 17 hrs before he was informed by his commanding officer that this awesome new device had been dropped on a place called Hiroshima. His first thought.....I hope we killed a lot of the bastards. Such was and is war. The only other thing I will mention is this .....World War II ended  in August of 1945. Places like my home town of Castleton N.Y. had a VJ parade and a huge celebration as did the nation. It was over with a lot left to be done. The  A-Bomb and it's power were still not widely understood by the general public , but soon Labor Day  arrived and a relieved nation began to return to what would be called the cold war. But this war was over and we demobilized and returned to a more peacetime world. Children returned to school and school teachers and science teachers began the new school year and discussed what happened over the summer. School children began  to learn new facts about the age we were now in and came hold and told their parents about this new and frightening weapon. It then truly began to dawn on our war weary nation just what was unleashed and we would never be allowed to go back to that home again.