Hiroshima. Nagasaki. Enola Gay. Little Boy. Fat Man. Remembering the horrific event 80 years ago that trumpeted the advent of the now-inescapable Nuclear Age is impossible to forget; nor should we. Two Japanese cities disappeared in their respective instants. Few stop really to think about their meaning, much less the desperate savagery of fanatical Japanese armies ripping through Southeast Asia, China, eastern Russia and the Pacific, essentially necessitating that first exercise of the world-shattering atomic phenomena we and others have converted to the “nuclear option.”
Radioactivity’s terrible effects were felt in Utah in the months and years before 1945. A particularly “hot” uranium mine in Utah’s southeasternmost corner cursed with many cancers the mine’s Native tribal workers and families, especially the Navajos near Monument Valley, for generations to follow the Manhattan Project. The rush to build the first bombs continued the mine company’s pattern of suspending respect, compassion and ethics in favor of revenge, engineered finality and profits.
Cold War nuclear development converted bomb-making to power generation, creating the endless illusion of “sustainable” electricity, never mind uranium mining at enrichment’s front end, or mine closure, processing waste disposal, and “forever” isolation of radioactive end products at locations like Camp Williams, Dugway, Moab’s White Mesa Mill, or even at 3300 South, on the Quickcrete site on the west side of I-15, right in the heart of our Salt Lake Valley (insofar as it has a heart).
Nuclear options are proliferating in the hands of the madmen of our age. Nuclear submarines deployed threateningly in the North Atlantic. USAID funding and humanitarian supplies destroyed by Trump/Musk/DoGE in a Nagasaki-like instant, consigning untold numbers of Gazan Palestinians to probable death by famine, and understandable generational fury as the legacy of Netanyahu and Trump, each fleeing prison sentences. Trump administration equivocation to avoid spending money and Putin’s “love” through responsible arming of Ukraine. Texas Gov. Abbott’s threat of his “nuclear option” to declare vacant the seat of any Democrat who flees the state to preclude a vote endorsing the Trump mandated gerrymandered redistricting map — retribution for GOP’s vacant minds and hearts. ICE masked secret police. Tom Homan. Stephen Miller. Furious eyes, thinly buried nuclear sensibilities.
May we all take a moment to consider the meaning of Aug. 6, 1945, and the cascading psychoses of “going nuclear” figuratively, or, God forbid, literally.
Ivan Weber, Salt Lake City
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