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Growing up in the Atomic Age: America's Youth Face an Uncertain Future

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Growing up in the Atomic Age: America's Youth Face an Uncertain Future Mānoa Horizons Volume 2 | Issue 1 Article 28 9-22-2017 Growing Up in the Atomic Age: America’s Youth Face an uncertain Future Kacey Martin University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Follow this and additional works at: https://kahualike.manoa.hawaii.edu/horizons Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Martin, Kacey (2017) "Growing Up in the Atomic Age: America’s Youth Face an uncertain Future," Mānoa Horizons: Vol. 2 : Iss. 1 , Article 28. Available at: https://kahualike.manoa.hawaii.edu/horizons/vol2/iss1/28 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Kahualike. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mānoa Horizons by an authorized editor of Kahualike. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Growing Up In The Atomic Age America’s Youth Face An Uncertain Future Kacey Martin History 496B (Senior Tutorial in History: United States) Mentor: Dr. Suzanna Reiss From the emergence of giant insects on the big screen, to the bomb tests on well-dressed mannequin families, the 1950s mark a captivating period of history and culture dom- inated by the presence of atomic power. However, atomic power was strongly tied to increasingly intense developments in the Cold War, disrupting the optimism Americans felt following World War II. This project examines the experiences of Americans during this time, focusing on the youth who confronted a future that they could lose at any moment. Youth were exposed to messages from the government and larger culture inspiring both fear and captivation with atomic power. Youth also dealt with the transformation of their commu- nities into war preparedness zones. This project thus utilizes various historical sources to reveal how youth became familiar with atomic knowledge and themes of survival. This project also looks at the different responses youth made toward this learning process to highlight their capacity to shape their own understandings about the world. In doing so, this research offers a character study of a generation in which the threat of nuclear war significantly influenced who they would become as adults. munities and enjoying the new consumer items America Introduction had to offer, such as flashy cars and television.1 Couples, both old and young, felt they could bring new children In the years following the Second World War, Americans into the world, starting off America’s baby boom peri- increasingly bought into the prosperity they felt from od. This tranquil picture did not come without its rips, being spared the devastation that the war had wrought upon their overseas counterparts. They found that they 1 Margot A. Henriksen, Dr. Strangelove’s America: Society and could settle into post-war life with ease and comfort, and Culture in the Atomic Age (Berkeley, CA: University of California sought to improve it by living in growing suburban com- Press, 1997), 88–90. I am a recent graduate from the College of Education, and an educator in secondary level social studies. This paper was written for my senior tutorial in U.S. History with Professor Reiss in Fall 2016. I was inspired by the post-apocalyptic, retrofuture universe I encountered while playing the video game, Fallout 4. It led me to wonder about how Americans in the 1950s prepared themselves for the destruction of an atomic attack, and then specifically how children and teenagers felt about having to duck and cover in the classroom—because surely that would protect them, right? Mānoa Horizons, Vol. 2, 2017, pp. 149–157 Copyright © 2017 by the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa 149 150 Mānoa Horizons Vol. 2, Fall 2017 however. Americans were aware of the government’s als, and materials produced in popular culture and the continued efforts to develop and improve its arsenal of media—give insight into what the physical, political, and weapons of mass destruction. In addition, news of the cultural landscape looked like for America’s youth at the Soviet Union’s success in building atomic weapons, and time. To see how these young people navigated this land- the government’s increasing efforts at building civil de- scape, testimonies and reflections written by their older fense, made Americans anxious that the safety and com- selves are examined. fort they had could all disappear.2 The future no longer seemed certain, and it was in this environment that baby boomers and other older children would grow up. “Don’t They Know It’s the End of the World?” America’s youth offer an interesting perspective on this tense time, in that the Cold War and the atom- On August 6, 1945, America unleashed its new weapon ic bomb touched their lives in different ways than from on an unsuspecting Hiroshima, and again a few days adults. Specifically, children and adolescents were ex- later on Nagasaki, resulting in Japan’s rapid surrender posed as a target audience to contradictory messages during the war. Whereas many Americans had thought from the government and larger culture about nuclear that the war would continue for at least another year, the energy and weapons. They found themselves in a new war had shockingly ended within weeks at the cost of landscape as their homes and communities were trans- many Japanese lives.4 At that point, the public realized formed into war preparedness zones that they learned there was something radically dangerous in their midst. to navigate on their own. With their newfound nucle- For several years, they co-existed tenuously with the ar knowledge and experiences in hand, they were then awareness of this power while enjoying the prosperity of able to shape their understandings about the war and the postwar years. However, by September 1949 Ameri- their role in it, as well as their expectations for the fu- ca’s monopoly over atomic power had ended in the wake ture. What follows is an examination of the mixed mes- of the Soviet Union’s successful detonation of an atomic sages children and adolescents came across during the weapon. Moreover, the growing conflict in Korea made early Cold War, after the Soviet Union detonated its first the idea that the bomb could be used against the United atomic bomb in 1949, and before the Nuclear Test Ban States a real possibility.5 It was in this environment that Treaty of 1963 prohibited all nuclear weapon tests above the Atomic Generation would come of age. ground and under water. These messages range from Scheibach identified the Atomic Generation as peo- those in the media inspiring fear and anxiety with their ple born between 1928 and 1942, emphasizing that “[n]o explosions and radioactivity, to those produced by the generation before or since has been as informed about government to reassure youth of their futures through the actualities and repercussions of the atomic bomb and civil defense and scientific breakthroughs. Finally, this the inherent dangers associated with its constant threat.”6 paper looks at the specific ways that youth responded Children and adolescents learned about these actualities to their circumstances. As Michael Scheibach argues, and repercussions across a variety of mediums, such “without acknowledging the participants’ interaction as their parents, teachers, newspapers, film, and radio. with these narratives, much of history remains unstated, Across these mediums, they kept track of recent devel- even inaccurate.”3 opments in America’s nuclear program and its cold war To achieve these aims, this paper employs material with the Soviet Union. This exposure provided a ground from a variety of sources—from books and journal arti- for anxieties to grow. cles looking back on this strange time in America’s past, Under Eisenhower’s administration, the United to the accounts produced by the very people who grew States adopted a “New Look.” This policy defined Amer- up then. The former provide historical context, and of- ica’s military and foreign policy in the coming years, and fer different ways to think about the latter; whereas the involved the strengthening of its nuclear arsenal in order latter—which include government-distributed materi- 4 Robert A. Jacobs, The Dragon’s Tail: Americans Face the Atomic 2 Ibid., 91–93. Age (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010), 7. 3 Michael Scheibach, Atomic Narratives and Atomic Youth: Com- 5 Henriksen, Dr. Strangelove’s America, 93–95. ing of Age with the Atom, 1945–1955 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & 6 Michael J. Carey, “Psychological Fallout,” Bulletin of the Atomic Company, Inc., 2003), 175. Scientists 38, no. 1 (1982): 20. Martin Growing Up In The Atomic Age 151 to deter foreign aggression.7 News cameras increasingly and adolescents, opening new worlds as they projected captured the results of these developments for the pub- different messages about a future in which humans con- lic to witness. Children and adolescents became familiar tinue to live with atomic weapons. In Them!, Dr. Harold with unnerving images of mushroom clouds rising over Medford reflects on America’s fight against giant ants: Bikini Atoll and Nevada, and of buildings and manne- “When Man entered the Atomic Age, he opened a door quins being annihilated. Still, public knowledge of the into a new world. What we’ll eventually find in that new effects of these weapons remained minimal, as the gov- world, nobody can predict.”12 In The Incredible Shrinking ernment contained the issue of radioactive fallout, even Man, writers toy with the concept of existence, as Scott managing to keep the obliteration of the Marshallese is- realizes that he will not disappear, that he will continue land of Elugelab a secret. However, as officials increased to mean something even as he shrinks.13 the frequency in which they tested nuclear weapons, and In addition to the big screen, children were intro- as incidents where people fell ill from the resulting radio- duced to atomic themes via radio waves.
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