The author started grade school in Atlanta, Texas, in 1953. The census of 1950 had counted 3,782 people in that small city in northeast Texas. One of the strongest impressions from the two years I attended Miller Grade School was the day the teacher brought a movie projector to class. We watched with great interest a film featuring Tommy Turtle who taught us all how to "duck and cover" in case of atomic attack. We then practiced the drill by hiding under our desks. Those desks, incidentally, were the old-fashioned kind at which two students sat. The top was hinged to allow access to a storage compartment, and there was a hole for the inkwell.
In introducing Tommy Turtle the teacher explained the great danger we all faced since the Russians had the bomb. Atlanta was certain to be one of the targets highest on the Russian list because of its proximity to an ammunition factory. I have to admit that my fear was mixed with a little pride in learning that I lived in one of the most important places in the United States.
As an adult I checked on the levels of the atomic arsenals of the Soviets and the Americans in 1955. The Soviets possessed 200 atomic weapons and the Americans 2,600 (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, vol. 45. no. 9, November, 1989). In addition the Soviet Union had no known delivery system capable of striking Atlanta at the time I was ducking and covering. In the light of these statistics it appears that the threat was greatly overstated. Did the leaders not know the real dimensions of the Soviet threat. Certainly President Eisenhower did. His military background enabled him to sift through the information he was receiving about our nation's military position and arrive at sound conclusions.
Why were students involved in the duck-and-cover drills that would have proved so ineffectual in the case of an atomic attack, the possibility of which was so remote?
The easy answer is that northeast Texas, like much of the rest of the country, was caught up in a Cold War hysteria, one result of which was the exaggeration of the Soviet threat. Recent commentators have offered the position that such civilian defense measures had greater significance. The fear associated with such measures generated support for higher levels of military spending and reassured the popula tion that their government was doing something to protect them from the ultimate threat.
Whatever the motivation, at least one effect was that young Americans were being socialized into the values of the atomic age--thinking that atomic war was possible, even likely, so we better get ready for it.
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January 27, 1996