You just can't 'duck and cover'

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Left to right: John Cusack, Dwight Schultz, and Paul Newman in "Fat Man and Little Boy." SKAN Whenever the neighbor's kids clomp down the stairs-I flinch. The slightest vibration from a car can terrify me. Like many Northern Californians since the earthquake, my dreams at night are filled with visions of the Big One yet to come.

People in the Eastern states often think that Californians are crazy to live here. "Any moment, your house could collapse on your head!" they point out. "You could be swept into the ocean!"

But Easterners-and the rest of the world-also face a Big One. The chances are great that this catastrophe won't come from deep within the earth. It'll drop from the skies. This is the Big One that killed over 200,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It's ironic that California schoolchildren, as they huddle under their desks in earthquake drills, are taught to sing, "Duck and cover!" Their parents were taught the same little jingle when they were children. But then, during the Cold War of the 1950s, it was to "prepare" for a nuclear attack.

Children were taught to fear the Russians—the "Communists." When the air-raid sirens sound, we were instructed, it means that the Russians are going to drop a bomb on us. That's what the President, our teachers, and even our cartoon friends on television told us.

The games we boys played in the schoolyard soon changed. Before, we used our stick rifles and pencil handguns to "fight" the Nazis. Now, as the Korean War wound on, our invisible enemies became the "Reds." The games took on an immediacy; after all, the air-raid sirens could sound at any moment.

The Big Lie The government and the media raised the paranoia against "warloving" Russians in order to justify this country's own military buildup —and to cow the American people from raising any effective protest.

Yet the atom bomb was first constructed (and dropped on civilian populations) not by the Russians, but by the United States. Dropping the Big One was justified then as "a step toward peace." It would force Japan to sign a peace treaty, said the government. The lives of thousands of U.S. servicemen would be saved.

This was a lie. Dropping the Abomb was the opening act of the Cold War. The people who died were expendable. In a political sense, the Big One was directed primarily against the Soviet Union, not Japan.

The U.S. government feared that the Soviets, having won the war in Europe, would seek to occupy Japan. The United States hoped to keep Japan (and China) entirely within its own sphere of influence. Thus, it was necessary to bring the war to a quick stop-even if it meant reducing 200,000 people to radioactive dust.

The U.S. government later considered dropping the Big One in Korea. The government's plans to "win" a nuclear war on the battlefield were worked out in numerous tests in Nevada and the South Pacific. Minutes after the firestorms had cleared, thousands of U.S.

On Tuesday, Oct. 17, I was sitting at my home in San Francisco's Noe Valley when the 7.1 quake hit. The house I rent was built in 1907, after the Big One of 1906. My older daughter, Bonnie, was with me. The quake was rugged; it jerked my chair so badly I could hardly get up to run and stand in the doorway. I kept yelling to my daughter to get under my doorway, and she kept telling me she was already under a doorway.

As soon as the house stopped shaking, 1 rushed over to my next door neighbor. She is even older than me and has been in bad health for some years. I had heard screams coming from her house. The door opened, and she was sitting at her los date ct. stretching from Utah to Massachussetts.

Every city had its ban-the-bomb rallies and picket lines-but for a long time they remained small. In general, socialists and a few "peaceniks" were the only ones to tell the truth about the A-bomb. After Vietnam, however, more and more people began to challenge the official gospel.

"Fat Man"

Now even Hollywood has begun to base its stories on elements of kitchen table crying. Her two grandchildren were with her; it was the young girl who was terrified.

I moved a chair to a doorway and helped the grandmother into it. I did all I could to calm the young girl.

"Fat man" has intrigued the film critics. But, while staying clear of the film's central premise that the bomb should not have been produced, they've accused its scriptwriters of bending some of the details in the plot for dramatic purposes.

The major controversy arises from the suggestion in one scene that the government injected people with radioactive material. Yet the filmmakers can cite a 1986 Congressional report that 18 people were injected with plutonium beOur phones were down, we couldn't call out. But somehow, my oldest grandson called in to say he was alright and to ask how his mother and the rest of us were. About that time, along came my husband with our two younger grandsons—who had not even felt the quake. They had been in the car.

The young man next door had a portable TV; we had the batteries. So we set it up on the steps to listen to the news. Portable radios also began to come out. It was a warm night, and no one wanted to go inside the house. Somehow we all felt better together.

I kept going in to check the beans and rice that had been on the stove when the quake hit. My neighbor kept telling me to turn off the gas, but I figured that's all we had and I wasn't going to give it up.

Then we began to get the news. It was reported that the Bay Bridge had fallen down. I didn't believe it because I could see the bridge from my house. I said the news media simply can't be trusted. But this war has diminished. The Russians might quite possibly "come to terms," we are told, but the United States will continue building up its nuclear weaponry "just in case.

In case of what? Another Korea? A Vietnam? A Nicaragua? No, the Big One will continue to lurk in our dreams—until we stop it. We can't just sing, "Duck and cover!"

An earthquake, unfortunately, will come some day. (Maybe California will fall into the sea.) But the planet can be spared destruction in a nuclear war. It's up to us. time they could be.

Finally, hunger began to set in. So I moved a table, wine, soda, and salad outside and we all joined in. Anyone who needed food got it. As usual, I cook for the masses—quake or no quake.

Then my daughter finally got home from downtown. She had had to walk down from the 23rd floor, but she had ridden her bike to work and was able to get home an hour after the quake.

Risked their lives

All over San Francisco, people helped one another with whatever they had. Story after story proved that workers, regardless of their race, risked their lives to save people from the carnage. It proved once again that human nature is not, as the capitalists would have us believe, one of greed and self-interest.

It is the capitalists who are full of greed, who live for profits instead of human need. In fact, most of the suffering from the quake is because of greed—the refusal to spend money to keep our bridges and infrastructure in shape.

We have been taxed beyond reason for Star Wars, stealth bombers, and nuclear madness. Very little of our taxes go for mass transit and other pressing social needs. It is not the working class, but capitalism that fouls things up.

Already, the politicians, business leaders, and rulers are preparing to force working people and the poor to pay for their lawless refusal to prepare for the widely predicted earthquake. We can count on them to let the planet and its inhabitants go to hell-so long as the profits keep rolling in.

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