My favorite book, written by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts, which I read when the world was still young, vividly describes the events leading to that fateful day of Aug. 6, 1945. Its title: The Enola Gay.
There are three particular reasons why I consider this a favorite. First, this book is memorable for me. Aside from the fact that it was given to me by a dear friend, this was the first full-length book that read from cover to cover. Although at first I was intimidated by its length, it eventually beckoned me to read more and become the voracious reader that I am today.
Secondly, it has given me the occasion to know and meet some great personalities of those time: Presidents, royalties, generals, soldiers, and most especially the scientists of Manhattan Project who conceived of the possibility of using nuclear fission in weapons: J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, and Neils Bohr.
It allowed me the chance to follow the development of Little Boy, the world’s first nuclear weapon. Weighing just over 9,000 pounds, it has an atomic yield of 12.5 kilotons and a cost of over $2 billion for the American people.
Enola Gay, whose wingspan was 101 feet and was No. 82 from the production line, weighed 55 tons (including the A-bomb and 7,000 gallons of fuel) upon the commencement of Special Bombing Mission No. 13 at 2:45 a.m., Aug. 6, 1945 to Hiroshima and back again to Tinian.
Thirdly, and maybe the most important to me, it opened my mind to be a bit more analytical and critical, most especially on the issues of war and the need for peace.
By today’s standards, the Hiroshima bomb was a crude nuclear weapon. Today’s warheads are hundreds of times more powerful and to think that there are 50,000 of these scattered across the globe! Bombers are no longer necessary to deliver drop these bombs to their targets because of the presence of nuclear-capable cruise missiles (Matador, with a 960 km. range; Mace, with a 1900 km. range; and the stealthy Tomahawk with a 2,500 km. range and a radar signature no larger than a seagull) and ballistic missiles (MX, Trident I & II aboard the Ohio class submarines where each submarine can fire 24 missiles over 7,700 km. to rain 240 warheads within 500 meters of target). The tag price of $1 million for every 400 kg. equivalent of high explosives in these weapons is dumbfounding!
To borrow the words of the great statesman Benjamin Franklin: "Even peace may be purchased at too high a price."
When the world was plunged into a full-scale global conflict in World War I the casualties totaled 37 million, wounded, and missing. Two decades of relative peace passed when World War II broke out in Europe where the casualties reached 50 million killed, wounded, and missing. The staggering cost of WWI reached $337.9 billion while that of World War II was estimated at $1.3 trillion.
Even President Dwight Eisenhowever agreed when he said, "Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hope of its children...We pay for a single fighter plane with a half a million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people...This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
Andrei Sakharov, inventor of the Soviet H-bomb, said, "The destruction (by nuclear war) of hundreds of millions of people, the genetic deformation of future generations, the destruction of cities and industry, transport, communications, agriculture, and the educational system, the outbreak of famine and epidemics, the rise of savage and uncontrollable hatred of scientists and intellectuals on the part of the civilization surviving victims, rampant superstition, ferocious nationalism, and the destruction of material and informational basis of civilization – all of this would throw humanity centuries back, to the age of barbarism, and bring it back to the brink of self destruction."
Man’s search for peace is as old as history. But the terrible lessons of WW1 and WW2 point to the necessity of collective action among men not only to build peace in the world, but also to preserve peace. Alliances, leagues, treaties, etc... were formed just to achieve peace, but still the dogs of war though leashed comes howling.
President Harry S. Truman pointed out the only possible basis for the success of any organization for peace: "We all have to recognize – no matter how great our strength – that we must deny ourselves the license to do as we please. No one nation, no regional group, can or should expect, any special privilege which harms any other nation. If any nation would keep security for itself, it must be ready and willing to share security with all. That is the price which each nation will have to pay for world peace. Unless we are all willing to pay that price, no organization for world peace can accomplish its purpose. And what a reasonable price that is.
Lastly, let us take a look at the earliest tale of man’s inhumanity to man in Genesis 4: 8-9, "But Cain had words with his brother Abel, and when they were out in the field, Cain assaulted his brother Abel and killed him. Then the Lord asked Cain, ‘Where is your brother Abel?’ He said, ‘I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?"
Can it be then, that peace will finally be attained in this world, if we assume the role of our brother’s keeper?