Sales increased again. People are buying paper like never before. Just read an article that the population in the US will reach 165 million by 1990 and then decline. Came from the census bureau. They must know if anyone. I wonder why it would decline?
You know the fighting in Europe sure doesn’t make the news as much as WWII. I guess we’re all tired of it. Bad attitude to take if you ask me. Those Reds are more of a threat than the German’s I think but then again maybe not. It could just be another way of running a government. I don’t suppose I could get a copy of that Marx guys writing in this day and age. They probably have censored all that kind of thinking. Capitalism has been good to me since there were some limits put on it by the unions and Teddy Roosevelt. No more Robber Barons for us. Those days are over. Thank God the unions are too strong for that to happen again. Some people call the unions communist. Well if that’s so then that kind of communism is what we need. I heard that deaths in the coal mines were down again this year and child labor laws are a god send.
Senator Taft and a congressman named Hartley are trying to pass a bill that would greatly curtail the unions. Sounds pretty draconian to me. I guess Truman is fighting against it and calls it a threat to freedom of speech. This will be a battle to watch.
Diary of Burt Post September 18th, 1946
Heard from Maxine’s brother… my brother in-law. I guess he’s coming to visit. Says he’s going to head out to Alaska and take up commercial fishing. Some place named Cordova. Right now he’s in Hurley as a logger. I wonder how he’s staying out of the army? The guy is pretty much of a jerk.
Gets drunk all the time and starts fights in the bars. I only went with him once and that was it. Reminds me of a John Wayne movie where Wayne goes into a bar and picks a fight and the two fighters become best friends after they beat the tar out of each other.
People don’t realize that a punch in the face from a 6’4” 200lb man is a devastating thing. Breaks a lot of stuff in the other guys face as well as your hand. The only time I hit a guy it really busted my hand up. Hurt like hell. The movies are far from accurate. Two big grown men throwing haymakers at each other is not funny.
Anyway he’s coming and I have to figure out a way to not go out drinking. I guess I have a good excuse with a new baby in the house. The guys a maniac when he gets drunk. He belongs in Alaska far from women and children. I wonder how that part will work out. The women seem to love him for some reason.
Diary of Burt Post Sept. 22nd, 1946
Thank God they finally charged that women, Evelyn Dick, with murder. I know the Canucks are slow but jeepers. A bloody torso that is missing arms, head and legs is found in town by school kids. They find body parts partially burned in the furnace. We have a woman whose husband is missing, borrows a friend’s car, brings it back with blood all over it, there are bloody clothes in back, claims an “Italian hit man” came to the house, then claims her daughter bled all over the car, then claims that another man made her drive to a dump site with a large bag, has a body of a baby boy encased in concrete in her attic, another guy’s wife claims she saw the trunk when her husband yelled at her to get out of the garage where a bloody saw, bullet holes and bloody shoes are found. And they are just now getting around to charging her with murder! The torso was found by the kids in March for god’s sake!
I heard there’s a song the school kids sing as they jump rope.
How stupid can you get? Well at least she will not get away with it now. I understand that Canada still hangs people. I hope she gets the noose. What a strange story. I suppose someone will write a book or make a movie about it. Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction.[9]
http://home.cogeco.ca/~mrcarle/evelyn.htm
September 22nd, 1946
Bikini Atoll
South Pacific
07:23 hours
The fireball rose in the classic manner we all have come to fear and admire. The stem of the mushroom and blast of light and heat, followed by visible rings of concussion are a sight to behold on a movie screen. You do not want to experience them in person. A handful of army personnel did just that. The cap of the mushroom was reaching for the sky, pulsing with light and energy, visible energy reaching out to destroy all in its path. The trouble with this atomic explosion was that it was totally unexpected. It shocked the thousands of spectators and scientists floating at a safe distance out in the Pacific Ocean far from prying eyes but not far enough that the pens of hundreds of reporters could be stopped.
Months before the world’s supply of polonium 210 ended up in the lungs and organs of tens of thousands of American nuclear scientists, their friends, families and other innocent victims. Much of the polonium was buried six foot under along with the bodies of its victims in caskets lined with lead and covered in dirt, flowers and tears. The American nuclear scientific community was devastated and barely existed. New students were being taught by more experienced students but the professors, were for the most part, dead. They had died an excruciatingly painful death that they had designed for others. Much like the ones their work had visited on the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Their students had cobbled together enough material for 6 more atomic bombs. There were enough parts left in the assembly rooms and nuclear storage areas to fashion even more atomic bombs. From these bits and pieces they had fashioned one Mark I atomic bomb which was on its way to be dropped on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. In the target area were dozens of surplus ships. The test had been originally scheduled for July, 1946. Then the war broke out. The plan was code named Operation Crossroads.
The original operation was to prove or disprove theories about the survivability of naval vessels during an atomic attack. The ships were to be anchored and filled with live animals and supplies etc. that would be studied after the explosions to determine if naval personnel and their ships could function after being subjected to the power of atomic fission. Some saw it as a test for the very survival of the US Navy and its relevance in a world filled with atomic destruction.
The atoll’s inhabitants, some 167 Bikini islanders, were convinced using prophecies of the bible, to leave their island paradise and were moved out of harm’s way. The purpose of the tests had been altered and many of the ships and the preparations that would have occurred were hastily forgotten. Now the test was to be of the Mark I atomic bomb. The design was inherently dangerous and that is why the Mark III had been designed using polonium 210 as a major part of the weapon. The Mark III Fat Man was considered much safer the Mark I.[10]
Many things could go wrong with the Mark I and many things could make it prematurely explode either conventionally or in an atomic explosion. The Mark I was the bomb that everyone knew would work because of its simplicity. The Mark III was somewhat of a question mark until Nagasaki. Because of its significant improvement in safety the Mark III using polonium 210 was the bomb destined to fill America’s nuclear arsenal and not the much more dangerous Mark I. That was until George Koval used the world’s supply of polonium to sabotage the US atomic weapons program.
The students of the original designers and engineers who brought the world the Mark III atomic bomb had to improvise and the Mark I was their answer… or so they thought. The reason the Mark I is so dangerous is because any number of things can go catastrophically wrong. A simple electrical short, getting hit by lightning, getting wet or a fire could set it off. No one knows what happened aboard the bomber. The former student of Robert Oppenheimer during one of his rare semesters teaching at Caltech, had designed the trigger mechanism. He had never assembled it before in earnest. This would be his first attempt under simulated combat conditions and he apparently failed his test.