Day of the Bomb Read Online Free Page A

docking
in Nagasaki. I’m going to send you ashore to visit at least one of
those two cities that we blew to kingdom come with those atomic
bombs just so you can see what happened first hand.”
    “But why, sir?”
    “Word is that they’re going to be doing some
more tests on atomic bombs now that the war is all over. They’re
going to need more than a few Navy ships for it from what I’ve been
told by the Admiral. It would mean that you would have to extend
for a while; my guess is probably for a year. Best I can tell it
would be best for you to do it.”
    “Extend? Why me? I just want to go home.
Isn’t that all everybody wants to do now?”
    “Ensign Rhinehardt, you’re still a certified
basket case. I’ve seen what you’re going through happen to at least
twenty of my men during this war. You need time to pull yourself
back together. You’re not Humpty Dumpty. You’re a man. But you
still are probably going to need a whole lot of time judging by the
way you’ve been acting. You’re even losing weight.”
    “I am?”
    “Yes. Look, I’m telling you all this as a
friend. I can’t order you to extend but I think you really need to
decompress slowly back into being a civilian. Lord only knows
you’re not meant to make the Navy a career. But to be fair I want
you to see the aftermath of an A-bomb before you decide one way or
the other on whether to extend.”
    ***
    Kong had been the first one to welcome Jason
to Monkey Island. When he did, the rest of his troop screeched and
hollered warnings to not get close to the species that had
kidnapped their ancestors from lush jungle filled with many fruits
and then abandoned them on this tiny island of sand and coral.
    In the 1800s a Spanish galleon sailing from
Mexico to the Philippines had made an unscheduled stop on the
island to conduct a funeral. Diego Luis Salvador Esperanza Vargas’
appendix had burst during the voyage. Try as he might, the ship’s
surgeon’s operation failed to save him. Diego’s wife Lucia blanched
at the thought of her husband being buried at sea until the captain
agreed to put ashore for a burial. “Oh thank you, captain! Now the
fishes won’t eat my husband.” She left the two monkeys her husband
had bought in Mexico on the island because, “they serve no other
purpose than reminding me of my dearly departed Diego.”
    A male and female, the monkeys survived on
the coconuts and breadfruit that grew high up in the trees. They
formed a loose alliance with birds that nested in them. Together,
they battled rats, the only other mammals that inhabited the
island. Survivors, the rats would scale the trees in search of
eggs, baby birds, and later on, baby monkeys to devour. But the
growing band of monkeys hated the vermin and enjoyed knocking them
to the ground. After high tides receded, the rats gobbled up
anything edible left on the beaches. Always resourceful, the rats
dug up Diego’s corpse and feasted on it. Crabs that came ashore at
high tide finished off what little the rats left.
    Generations of monkeys later and two years
before PFC Jason Dalrumple washed up on shore, a PT boat crew had
been temporarily marooned on the island. A squadron of Japanese
Zeroes used the PT boat for target practice until it ran aground on
a reef a hundred yards from the nearest beach. The crew spent two
weeks on the island before being spotted by a flight of P-47
Thunderbolts who were returning to base. What first drew the
American pilots’ attention was the lone Zero that was strafing the
island. Two of the P-47s peeled off from their formation and
approached the Zero from ten o’clock high and two o’clock high, the
favorite tactic of their two pilots. Whenever they did so, the
enemy aircraft in their sights was caught in a deadly crossfire and
either ended up as a statistic painted on the sides of the
Thunderbolts or if lucky, limped back to base.
    After sending the flaming Zero into the
Pacific, the two pilots buzzed the island to see why the