Operation Redwing
US Atomic Veterans
Steve Osborn
To: Keith pdxavets@aracnet.com
Subject: Mushroom season again.
Date: Thu, 04 Aug 2005
From: Steve Osborn theplace@whidbey.net
Hi Keith,
Hope all is well with thee and thine. Here is a poem I have been
working on for VJ Day plus 60. Also, a link with a very appropriate
message from the chaplain of the bomb group that hit Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
http://www.bruderhof.com/articles/zabelka-hiroshima.htm?source=DailyDig
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VJ Day plus 60
by
Steve Osborn
15 August, 1945 and the world went wild!
The insanity that had begun in 1939 was over.
Imperial Japan had surrendered, its one wish granted.
Few knew it had been trying to surrender for months,
Asking only to keep its Emperor, but no one would listen,
Except a small group who wondered why.
We had a lesson to teach, to Japan and the world at large.
On 16 July, 1945, in the American desert, Trinity was detonated.
Far more powerful than expected, the super weapon worked!
Horrified, many scientists said, "It must never be used."
The war department said, "Just what we need."
Intelligence said, "They're trying to surrender."
"Bomb an offshore deserted island," the scientists said.
"Maybe it won't go off," the military said, "we'd look foolish."
"Destroying a city without warning is barbaric," said the diplomats.
"They really want to surrender," said intelligence.
"We'll call the city a military target," said Truman,
"The Russians will get a big surprise."
6 August 1945, an elderly gardener looked up from his spade
Admiring the silver plane flying far above.
His shadow remains etched in the concrete wall behind him.
Schoolchildren, housewives, tradesmen
Blown to rags of flesh or vaporized, the lucky ones.
Thousands of others doomed to slow death and disease.
"They keep asking for someone to take their surrender," said intelligence,
"Can't we at least talk to them?"
"They have to be taught a lesson and the world must see our power,"
"Besides, we have to test the second bomb,"said the military.
And so the wheels were set in motion for the second demonstration
Of Hell on earth.
9 August 1945, above the city of Kokura, the Gods of Chance roll the dice.
A hundred thousand or more go about their business,
Unsuspecting of the doom flying above the thick cloud cover.
In Nagasaki, the people enjoyed the sunshine as the cloud cover broke.
"Secondary target is clear," and their world suddenly ended in fire and
shock
And radiation sleeting through their bodies.
"Now let them surrender," said the military, "The test is completed."
Two cities vaporized, two hundred thousand dead,
Survivors to suffer, some for days, some for decades,
And the nuclear arms race begun.
"By golly, we sure showed them!"
"We'll let them keep their Emperor."
15 August, 1945 and the world went wild!
The end of the war and of war itself!
There was dancing in the streets and love in the parks,
The blackouts ended in the streets and the homes.
Japan and Germany licked their wounds and hoped to recover.
In Washington, and the Kremlin, midnight oil was burning.
15 August 2005, nations have risen and fallen;
War and genocide again ravage the world.
Treaties made by thoughtful men have been discarded
In the name of profit and greed; nuclear horror again hovers
Over a world exhausted by war, famine and disease.
Only the aging survivors remember the bloody lesson, taught so long ago.
Steve Osborn
15 August 2005
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As always, comments and critique welcomed.
Yours for peace and sanity in our time,
Adrienne and Steve
--
Steve Osborn
--
Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a
disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.
Baruch Spinoza
1632-1677
From: Steve Osborn theplace@whidbey.net
To: Keith pdxavets@aracnet.com
Subject: Armistice Day 2003
Date: November 11, 2003
Armistice Day 2003
A Remembrance
by
Steve Osborn
I sat listening to CBC's Remembrance Day program about five years
ago. As I listened to the music, interspersed with recordings of Winston
Churchill, reports radioed from the front lines and with memories of
veterans, I was moved to tears.
I was just a boy during the war and it was largely an adventure to
us, but I remember the quiet pride and the sadness in the eyes of the
increasing number of mothers who hung a gold star in their window, never
knowing if my mom might be next and my big brother gone.
The wars, great and small, were legion this past century. My dad
lost his leg in the Philippines in 1913. Then came World War I, the "war
to end all wars," where an entire generation died in the trenches. One
of my uncles, who lied about his age, was the first, and youngest,
soldier from Oregon to die in that war, at the battle of Chateau Thierry.
The memory of man is short and only twenty years passed before
another generation was thrown into the meat grinder to stave off
domination by Hitler's Nazis, Mussolini's Fascists and Imperial Japan's
expansion.
We had hardly buried the dead and recovered from the shock of the
realities of nuclear annihilation when East and West went at it in
Korea. Even though the fighting finally stopped by mutual agreement, a
half-century later the confrontation still goes on.
The cold war and the covert wars went on, then along came Vietnam.
Since then, the "little" wars have gone on all over the world, like bush
fires in the California hills, consuming human and material resources.
On September 11, 2001, we saw the tragedy of the attack on the World
Trade Center and its aftermath. Then we watched another war in
Afghanistan, which has been swallowing up armies since the time of
Alexander the Great, followed by a war with Iraq, which, despite
declared victory, still goes on, with casualties mounting on both sides.
Once more the toll, on someone, has been enormous. Afghanistan and Korea
are heating up again and we are staring at the specter of yet another
"preemptive" war in the Middle East, with perhaps more in the offing.
Amongst the dead may be the man who would have discovered the cure
to cancer and other deadly diseases, the composer who may have surpassed
Mozart or Brahms, the playwright or poet who might have succeeded
Shakespeare, the statesman who could have brought about world peace or
the person who might have been able to end world hunger.
Those are the might-have-been's. The reality is the millions of
humans who have died, fathers, brothers, sisters, mothers, children,
fighters and civilians in this past century, all with the dream of peace
and human dignity before them. Yet, with the new millennium, war still
goes on around the world.
Let us give pause in remembrance of those who died, often alone and
forgotten, victim of mine and booby trap, sniper fire or disease and
infection, whose resting place is unmarked save for perhaps a little
more verdant growth where they have nurtured the soil.
Let us give pause in remembrance for those who survived, maimed in
body or soul by the atrocity of war.
Let us give pause in remembrance for those who survived to carry on,
with nothing but memories, of which they do not speak.
Let us give pause in remembrance for those whose lives ended
abruptly, without warning, on 11 September. And for those who continue
to die by war and terrorism.
Let us give pause and reflect, that we might carry out our lives in
such a way that love and tolerance might overbalance hatred and bigotry
in the scales of life and the dream of peace might become a reality, so
those we remember today did not die in vain.
Yours for peace and sanity,
Steve Osborn
Email: theplace@whidbey.net
Keith Whittle
November 11, 2003
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