Nuclear issues

Songs and black humor in dire times?

Thank you for joining me for this Sunday Special commentary.

As with most everything, there are many ways to interpret things, especially with something as controversial as today’s topic. Comments and questions are welcome. Please be respectful of others’ opinions if they should differ from yours.

For Japanese students, vocabulary words in bold are provided in Japanese below.

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(688 words)

I’m reading a book at the moment, Life Under a Cloud: American Anxiety about the atom, by Allan M. Winkler. He tells the story of how the first atomic bomb was created by a group of international scientists, backed by an enormous amount of money from the U.S. government.

After the two bombs were released on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, those same scientists had a change of heart. They called for an international organization to control the use of the atom. Well, they were disappointed. Those efforts were stopped because of missed opportunities for communication with “the enemy” and political pressures that prevented the establishment of a working plan.

Winkler goes on to discuss the change in American attitudes after the war, some regret but still a strong belief that using these weapons was justified and helped to bring an end to the war and the loss of more American lives.

In the 1950s, Americans were worried about being attacked. The government published instructions on what the public should do if there was a nuclear attack. A film, Duck and Cover, and its “catchy” song, was from 1951. This link provides the video and a transcript.

Later, with nuclear testing, the American public became concerned about the fallout from nuclear tests. Strontium 90, a radioactive isotope, was found in children’s teeth as a result of their drinking contaminated milk. Some babies were born with defects. The government started a propaganda program to tell the public there was no problem. Nuclear power could be the energy source of the future! People would work fewer hours a day, and they would power their cars with a tiny piece of nuclear fuel. The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) did not release the results of studies on fallout.

Today, we understand that nuclear power is extremely expensive (mining the ore and processing it, construction costs for facilities, maintenance, and paying for storage of used fuel - not to mention the costs of dealing with nuclear disasters). It is also extremely dangerous if not controlled.

As are weapons.

In the book, Winkler mentions several songs, some I was familiar with, others, not. The ones I knew were by Tom Lehrer, We’ll all go together when we go, So Long, Mom, I’m Off to Drop the Bomb, Who’s Next?, and one I’d never heard before, The Wild West is Where I Want to Be. Lehrer was a strong opponent of nuclear weapons and gave sharp criticism using black humor. You can find his songs with lyrics on YouTube.

Pete Seeger wrote and sang a song in 1964, Mack the Bomb (a parody of Mack the Knife, made famous in 1955 by Louis Armstrong) about the problem of fallout. He also sang a Japanese song, Hiroshima Song, not well-known today, but, apparently, it was in 1955.[1]

Fred Kirby recorded Atomic Power in 1945.[2] Other upbeat songs were released. Sheldon Allman had an entire album of songs about nuclear weapons and power, Folk Songs for the 21st Century, which included Crawl Out Through the Fallout and Radioactive Mama. Al Rex sang Hydrogen Bomb in 1959. As late as 1986, there were still “humorous” songs such as “Weird Al” Yankovic’s Christmas at Ground Zero.

As I listened to these last few songs on YouTube, I thought of the Will Rogers quote, “Everything is funny, as long as it’s happening to somebody else.”

There is no ‘somebody else’ when it comes to nuclear weapons and energy. One mistake and we all are affected.

I wonder how different the world would be today if that international group of scientists had put their heads together and, backed by an enormous amount of money from the U.S. government, had come up with a powerful way to create peace without the threat of annihilating most living things on earth.

Today, there are about 13,000 nuclear weapons in 9 countries and about 440 nuclear reactors in 30 countries.

I’ll leave you with one song below, a simple song by Malvina Reynolds (1967), What have They Done to the Rain?, about a little boy caught in a rain shower, radioactive rain that comes after a nuclear weapon has exploded.[3]

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VOCABULARY

atomic bomb 原子爆弾

disappointed 期待外れ

establishment 確立

justified 正当化された

fallout 放射性降下物

radioactive isotope 放射性同位体

contaminated 汚染された

propaganda 宣伝攻勢

mining 鉱業

ore 鉱石

annihilating 全滅

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NOTES

[1] by Ishiji Asada and Koki Kinoshita©1955 English lyrics by Ewan MacColl. For full lyrics and information, see http://unionsong.com/u236.html

[2] The song was also released in the same year by the Buchanan Brothers.

[3] More notes about this song at https://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/MALVINA/mr183.htm

Winkler, Allan M. Life Under a Cloud: American anxiety about the atom. 1993. University of Illinois Press.