Daddy said it was not and there was no firestorm there. He said Tokyo looked a lot worse. He and other sailors from his ship walked all over and were told nothing about dangers of radiation. He bought a set of china from some local guy by the side of the road and sent it to his mother. It never arrived. I'm sure someone ran a geiger counter over it and dumped over the side of the ship.
We were shown films, we didn't have videos back then, at school and they were the opposite - designed to convince us we could actually survive a nuclear bomb on DC. We were about 20 miles from DC as the crow flies. Things like what to do if you're walking on a golf course and see the flash. (Hide in a ditch. No, really.) We also had drills to practice hiding under our desks - super nuclear protection there - and drills to walk home from school and time how many minutes it took. We were told during a nuclear attack to walk straight home and shove wadded up newspapers in our chimneys. Are you getting the idea? This was all to convince children that they would be just fine if a DC was bombed. I'm surprised they didn't tell us to use umbrellas.
None of this helped when, during the Cuban missile crisis, our teacher cried all day, telling us we were all going to die that night when the bombs hit DC. See, you young whippersnappers don't have a monopoly on crazy teachers.
Daddy said it was not and there was no firestorm there. He said Tokyo looked a lot worse. He and other sailors from his ship walked all over and were told nothing about dangers of radiation. He bought a set of china from some local guy by the side of the road and sent it to his mother. It never arrived. I'm sure someone ran a geiger counter over it and dumped over the side of the ship.
We were shown films, we didn't have videos back then, at school and they were the opposite - designed to convince us we could actually survive a nuclear bomb on DC. We were about 20 miles from DC as the crow flies. Things like what to do if you're walking on a golf course and see the flash. (Hide in a ditch. No, really.) We also had drills to practice hiding under our desks - super nuclear protection there - and drills to walk home from school and time how many minutes it took. We were told during a nuclear attack to walk straight home and shove wadded up newspapers in our chimneys. Are you getting the idea? This was all to convince children that they would be just fine if a DC was bombed. I'm surprised they didn't tell us to use umbrellas.
None of this helped when, during the Cuban missile crisis, our teacher cried all day, telling us we were all going to die that night when the bombs hit DC. See, you young whippersnappers don't have a monopoly on crazy teachers.