Again, a Net of Fear Over Our Kids

I was 6 years old in 1950 when Mayor William O’Dwyer announced a plan to protect New York City residents from the atomic bomb. The plan included the use of the basements of school buildings as air raid shelters.

My second-grade teacher handed out booklets about what to do in the event of a nuclear attack. “STAY CALM,” it said in big red letters. And it showed a picture of a little boy and a little girl smiling and staying calm.

At least once a week at noon, an air raid siren would go off. This was the signal for us to slide under our desks and put our hands over our heads -- “duck and cover.” Other times we had “sneak attack drills.”

“Drop,” the teacher would say, and we had to drop under our desks. Crouched there, I would watch the other children scrunch their eyes shut, squirm and tremble.

Those memories have come back to me recently, as the terrorism color alert moved from yellow to orange. Are children trembling today, as I did back then?

I remember clearly that grown-ups had plans, but I knew they couldn’t protect us; it was all a sham. Back at PS 75, we watched movies on Fridays. One featured a turtle by the name of Bert.

And Bert the Turtle was very

alert.

When danger threatened him,

he never got hurt.

He knew just what to do.

He’d duck and cover. Duck

and cover.

Dog tags were given out in the second week of October. “Just in time for Halloween,” our teacher said, cheerily. “You can dress up as soldiers.” Modeled after military dog tags, they were made of a lightweight aluminum, stamped with each child’s name, address and phone number. With their long chains, they dangled right down to our belly buttons.

What fun! In the event of a catastrophe, we could be easily identified.

Or could we? Wouldn’t the aluminum be incinerated?

A minister’s wife, Mrs. W.H. Melish, mother of two, formed a group of concerned parents. “Dear Parent,” she wrote in a letter circulated widely and subsequently published in the New York Times on Oct. 20, 1950. “Were you shocked when your children came home and reported that they had A-bomb air raid drills? Is your child one of those who is waking up in terror because of these drills?”

The newspaper of record then went on to report Mrs. Melish’s address in Brooklyn, from which, it could be inferred, she ran her communist cell called, subversively, the Parents’ Committee to Safeguard Children From War Tension in the School.

One day, I went up to my teacher and asked whether I could see the bomb shelter. “It’s not ready yet,” she said. “That’s why we have to use the desks.”

There was a bomb shelter where my friend Diane lived. A yellow and black radiation sign was tacked to the front of her building. One day we persuaded the building superintendent to let us see the basement “shelter.”

It contained: dark gray metal cans without labels, jars of peanut butter, dried fruit, jugs of spring water, tinned candies, tinned cigarettes, cots and blankets, candles, a table and chairs, a radio, a gasoline lantern, a gasoline stove and a large medicine kit filled with Band-Aids and iodine.

Diane wanted to stay and play, but I said no. I was scared. The shelter was a tomb.

“You kids,” the superintendent said affectionately as he escorted us back upstairs. “Get outside into the sunshine. Roller skate or something.”

So that’s what we did.