Harris/English 101 NUCLEAR INTERVIEW: A NUCLEAR VETERANWorld War II was the benchmark for the use and threat of nuclear warfare universally. For the first time in history, the detonation of nuclear explosives became not only a possibility, but a reality. At 8:15 in the morning on August 6, 1945, the world’s first atomic bomb named “Little Boy” was dropped on Hiroshima by the Enola Gay, a Boeing B-29 bomber. Three days later the Allies dropped another bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. The bombs destroyed everything within 8 miles and killed about 80,000 people automatically.Many who survived were later killed by radiation, or were severely burned and/or crippled. At the same time, 17 year-old Maurice Frederick parks, (or, as I know him, Fred) was on a ship in the Pacific Ocean, a soldier for the united States military.I first met Fred while accompanying his granddaughter, my girlfriend Katie, on a visit to her grandparents’ home in Westville, NJ. Now an aged 77 year-old World War II veteran, Fred was eager to tell his war stories. He showed me his tattoo of a bald eagle holding an American flag on his now frail arm. “I may be old and worth no good now,” he says, “but when I was seventeen you should have seen me. I’m just lucky I got this far; a lot of people didn’t make it past the war.” Fred tells me the story of his tattoo. Since the legal age to enlist was eighteen, which was also the legal age to get a tattoo, Fred reasoned if he had a tattoo that they would let him enlist, despite the fact that he was secretly just seventeen. It worked. Fred shows me pictures of a younger version of him in his uniform. The only recognizable trace is the look in his eyes of determination, only now Fred isn’t determined towin a war against Japan, but rather a war against colon cancer.In the other room, Fred’s wife, Ethel, rummages through boxes at the dining room table, returning with a certificate and a decorative box. Fred shows me his medals of honor, which some day will be passed down to Katie. “I fought this war not only for myself, but for all of America, and the future of America,” he says. “Without this war, my grandchildren may never have gotten to experience freedom.”I asked Fred what conditions were like fighting in a war. “Well, they were rough,” he replies, “but you know what? So were conditions backat my house. Times were rough then, especially when so many people were at war. I figured if I went, at least I would be doing something to help the situation.” Fred also tells me of rats on the ships and the everyday stresses and worries of being in a war. “Air raid drill sirenswould go off all the time, and we would always worry if maybe it was the real thing this time.” I ask him what an air raid drill was like. “They’re no fun at all,” he tells me, “especially when you’re on a ship, because it’s like you’re stuck and you have nowhere to go.” He tells me of the deafening siren, “enough to blow your eardrum out,” and thefeeling of nerves on edge, “hair standing up on the back of your neck.”He tells me of how the feeling got even worse after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “We knew the effects that bomb had on them firsthand, and we were terrified of that happening to us or any Americans, for that matter,” he tells me. “Of course I knew it was coming before most of the world,” he says. “I remember when I first heard o f such technology I didn’t believe it, I couldn’t believe it would be as powerful as they were saying, but boy was I wrong—it turned outeven worse than I had imagined.”After this I ask Fred if he feels that the decision to drop these bombs onJapan was the right one. “Of course I do,” he replies. “What was the other choice? Lose the war? We are Americans, we don’t do that,” he states. Fred explains to me that these bombings were the quickest, most effective way of putting an end to the war. “We had the technology,” he says, “we might as well put it to use before somebody else beats us to the punch and uses it against us.” Fred then reminisces about the Cold War. For years there was the threat of nuclear warfare and the impending doom that at any moment a full-fledged nuclear war may erupt. “We wouldn’t have wanted to have something like that happen during a time already filled with enough threats; better just to take action, reap the consequences, and be donewith it,” Fred informs me.I found myself curious as to what impact being in the war had on Mr. Parks. “Most of all,” he says, “I think it just made me happy to be alive. I appreciate life so much, every day of it. I appreciate having had all I’ve had. I have a lot of friends that didn’t come out of the war alive. I have one friend that lost his arm from a piece of shrapnel. I have another friend that had to have one of his legs amputated. Seeing stuff like that makes you feel like the luckiest man alive.” Fred also tells me of psychological impacts of the war. “For a while I would have bad dreams about the war,” he remembers. “Night terrors, Fred,”his wife, Ethel, corrects him. “Okay, I had night terrors. I would wake up all of a sudden sweating, with fear flowing through my veins. I would always dream that we were under attack and bombs were being dropped. It was rough. I also think I had survivor’s guilt. I almost felt bad that I still got to be alive and uninjured when so many weren’t so lucky. I felt like I didn’t deserve that right anymore than those many brave soldiers that lost their lives or were severely injured.”Before I left Fred, I had one last question for him: if you could go back and decide not to enlist, would you? “I would get right back on that ship in a heartbeat,” he tells me. “I did it for all the right reasons, and they’re still right today—freedom and American. And the future of America. This is the best country in the world with the best government in the world, and we have to do all that we can to make sure that it never changes.” As I leave Mr. Maurice Frederick Parks, World War II veteran, I know that I am leaving a true American hero—someone willing to risk whatever it takes to preserve all that he loves about the country he loves—America. In interviewing Mr. Parks, I was able to gain perspective on nuclear war. The threat of it may often be ludicrous and many