The End of June (and the World)
June 30, 1946
In honor of the 100th
birthday
of Dr. Abraham Kremen›
born 17 June, 1905
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W
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hen
you are nine years old, new words enter your vocabulary with unexpected power.
One such word was “atoll.” I’m not
sure when I first heard the word. Perhaps in school, or possibly in the Movietone
News of the Week that played in the
theaters each Saturday, separating The Durango Kid from a Three Stooges Comedy. In any event there is no question that the word
arose in the context of the exotic geography of the Pacific—the battleground in
our war against Japan. For the whole of my eighth year our playground
“skirmishes” were marked with cries of “banzai” and “kamikaze” as we imagined ourselves battling for Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
But
in my ninth year, in the summer of 1946, the war with Japan was finished—had
been for nearly a year—and peace had returned to our lives in Baltimore. For
me, the most welcome measure of that peace was the increased frequency with
which we could go to Patapsco State Park, nearly an hour by car from our home.
On the afternoon of this memory—the last day of June—on the long and hot ride
home, I was not at all calm. My mind was not on the forested area that bordered
the Patapsco River. It was far away, conjuring as best I could a vision of the
Bikini Atoll.
The
road out of the park was dusty—clouds of fine brown dirt chased after us as we
headed home. We called the car, and all cars, “the machine,” as in “Get in the
machine. We’re going to the park.” This machine was Uncle Abe’s big black
Oldsmobile. Uncle Abe was special in our extended family. He was married to my
father’s sister—my Aunt Leona. My father was one of nine children, and most of
my aunts and uncles lived in Baltimore. Family get-togethers were big and
boisterous. Everyone was a storyteller, and the tellings were animated with
laughter. My cousins and I would sit on the edge of the crowd and pretend we
were not listening. Periodically, one of the wives of my father’s brothers
would notice us and caution the speaker of the moment: “Not in front of the
children.” And of course that got our attention.
But,
back to Uncle Abe and the machine. He was special because he was so quiet. More
than that, he was educated. HE WAS A DOCTOR! My father was a salesman. Uncle
Nathan drove a taxi. Uncle Alec played the horses at Pimlico, although it was
rumored that he worked in the clothing business as a cutter. I never did know
what Uncle Albert did. Uncle David was an engineer, but no one really knew what
that was, so he got no special attention for that. But Uncle Abe was an eye
surgeon, and we all held him in special respect.
There
was something else about Uncle Abe that was truly singular. He had served with
the Army as a surgeon on the Mariana Islands in the Pacific. If the war had not
ended the previous summer, he would have gone in with the troops in the
invasion of Japan. But he got to come home instead. That was especially
important to me that day, because I needed to ask him a question. I knew he
would have the answer, because he had been on the island of Tinian, and we all
knew that the Enola Gay took off
from Tinian bound for Hiroshima.
With
one last glance through the rear window at the road receding into the brown
dust I turned and called over the tall seatback in front of me.
“Uncle Abe?”
He
looked into the rear view mirror but said nothing.
I
asked, “Where’s Bikini Atoll?”
“In
the Pacific. North of the Marianas,” came the reply.
“How
far away is that?”
Abe
answered, “It’s thousands of miles.”
I
twisted around, got up on my knees and peered through the dusty rear window
again. Abe pursued my silence. “You’re worried about the A-Bomb?”
It
was more of a statement than a question. There had been newspaper articles all
week. The fourth atomic bomb will be detonated at Bikini Atoll. It was a test,
to measure its “effects.” It was not clear to me what effects were going to be
measured. But the Baltimore Sun,
and the neighborhood kids, were full of speculation. A scientist from Johns
Hopkins said it would crack the earth open and all the molten lava would come
up. Another predicted that the blast would set the earth’s atmosphere on fire.
Uncle
Abe said, “I’ll put the radio on. Maybe they’ll have something about the test.”
As
if on cue, an announcer was saying that the detonation of the bomb was just
minutes away. No one else in the car seemed much concerned about the prospect
of our instant incineration. My cousin Paula sat on one side of me, quietly
reading a book. Her brother David was doing the same on my other side. Finally
the announcer began a countdown, and at “Zero” we heard…nothing.
“What
happened?” I asked.
Abe
answered right away. “The bomb site is a few miles from the radio announcer. It
takes time for the sound to get that far. And sure enough, there was the sudden
crack of an explosion, followed by static for what seemed like a long time.
Again
I asked, “What’s happening now?”
Abe
simply said, “I don’t know. Maybe the station went off the air.”
Off
the air? Like incinerated?
The
car started to feel hot inside. It looked like the dirt was blowing
faster—chasing us. I remembered that when you see lightning, you count until
you hear the thunder, and from that you could tell how far away the lightning
is. I started to count, and I watched as the road receded from the back of the
car. The ground hadn’t cracked yet, but I thought the air was beginning to glow
red.
The
car lurched as we pulled out of the dirt park road and turned onto the highway.
Uncle Abe drove faster and the terror diminished slowly as we headed home.
I
can still recall the feelings of the over-imaginative little boy. What remains,
even stronger, though, is the feeling of safety in the big black Oldsmobile as
Uncle Abe took us home.
Happy
Birthday, Uncle Abe. Thanks for the ride.
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| The Enola Gay on Tinian, 1945 |
