The first atomic bomb used in war was made from uranium-235 and was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. The isotope of uranium needed for the bomb was separated in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, as part of the Manhattan Project. My father is Hubert P. Yockey, and he is a nuclear physicist who studied under Robert Oppenheimer and Ernest Lawrence at the University of California at Berkeley. After earning his Ph.D., he was sent to Oak Ridge. That is where he met my mother.
I will update this tomorrow with a video of my father.
Thank you, Dr. and Mrs. Yockey. My father was in the Pacific Theater. Among other places he made that long walk through the water after the boats hung up on the reef at Tarawa. A lot of good men didn’t. Just stepping into a shellhole, the way they were loaded down was a death sentence. So was an otherwise survivable wound.
Toward the end of that fight he got dinged and taken, eventually, to Hawaii and then home. After the hospital he was put into a new outfit, training for Operation Olympic. This, sir, as you know, was the invasion of the Home Islands. Your work stopped that. My dad never talked much about the war, mostly to other veterans. Then to me as I was on my way to the Southeast Asian War Games, a little bit. Mostly the tricks on how to stay in one piece.
I remember, though, not too awful long before he died, just blowing his top at an anti-nuke whelp, braying about how awful that bomb was. I had never seen him so angry, and that includes through all of my boyhood devilment. He told that child of the women and children that were being armed with bamboo poles with bayonettes attached. The Kamikazis and the hundreds of thousands of Japanese troops left. Oh, Dr. Yockey, if you could have only seen that then little old man stand straighter than he had in years and thunder in what was still a Marine Noncom’s voice, “And I thank GOD for the atomic bomb!” before marching off. It was blocks, sir, before he remembered to go back to that old man shuffle.
It was your work that saved hundreds of thousands of American and Japanese lives. It was your work that helped us keep the Russians out of Japan, changing Asian history for decades. And, sir, it was your work that enabled my dad to come home and raise his family. Thank you.
.-= Peter´s last blog ..Obama Just Does Not Understand Americans =-.
Great story Peter…….your heritage is one to be proud of.