Awe, beauty, and heroism are the feelings conveyed by William L. Lawrence, in his article "Atomic Bombing of Nagasake Told by Flight Member" as he witnesses that final flight and the dropping of the second A-bomb. He says that he is one of the few to watch the assembly of the bomb and is obviously taken with it as he says, "It is a thing of beauty to behold, this 'gadget'" (247). He is in awe with the "millions of man-hours of what is without a doubt the most concentrated intellectual effort in history. Never before had so much brain power been focused on a single problem" (247). From the midnight briefing on through the flight to Japan, Lawrence focuses on the details of suiting up, the details of the flight, the storm, and the men he is traveling with who are faced with the task of carrying this mission out. He describes Captain Bock as "nonchalant and unperturbed" (249) describes the quiet efficiency of Sergeant Curry by reporting the conversation that they had. Lawrence even admires the way the B-29 flies in the midst of the storm, reporting that,
Our great ship took some heavy dips through the abyssmal darkness around us, but it took these dips much more gracefully than a large commercial airline, producing a sensation more in the nature of a glide than a "bump" (248).
When Nagasaki is finally selected as the target and the bomb is dropped, Lawrence describes the "giant ball of fire...belching forth enormous white smoke rings" (251), and the evolution into a "giant pillar of purple fire, ten thousand feet high, shooting skyward with enormous speed" (252). He is awestruck by the beauty and vitality of the blast, describing it as "a living thing, a new species of being, born right before our incredulous eyes" (252). At the end he describes the blast as a "monstrous prehistoric creature" (252).
Contrasted to this admiration of the bomb is the article "What Did You Do in the War, Grandma?", by Zoe Tracy Hardy. Sh...