Caging the Genies: A Workable Solution for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Weapons by Stansfield Turner

Author:Stansfield Turner [Turner, Stansfield]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780429981548
Google: zQlQDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 39203326
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1997-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

7

Defenses

ON DECEMBER 7, 1941, I was a freshman at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. During the late afternoon I was walking outside the dormitory when someone shouted out of a window, "Japan has attacked Pearl Harbor." Groups of us students spent the remainder of December 7th glued to the radio while discussing how going to war would affect our college programs. Little did I imagine it would reshape not just my college routine, but my entire life.

A few months later I made my first move into what became my career—trying to contribute to national security I did it by volunteering for the Amherst College Fire Brigade. Until that point, the college had no fire department but relied on the two-engine firehouse in the city of Amherst, less than a half-mile from campus. Suddenly, the assistant dean discovered that the war had made Amherst College a strategic target. The college is located about fifteen miles almost due north of Westover, Massachusetts, site of what was then a sizable Army Air Corps base. The campus sits on a prominent hill dominated by a lovely chapel with a typical New England white steeple. The assistant dean's conclusion was that German bombers heading for Westover would use our chapel as a navigational landmark. More than that, lead bombers would drop incendiaries on the chapel so as to make it highly visible, day or night. The college needed an instant fire brigade to deal with this threat to the historic chapel and even to the entire campus. We also, of course, hoped that in extinguishing the fire we would make it difficult for the Germans to find Westover Air Base.

Somewhere the assistant dean acquired a respectable, used fire engine for this purpose. He then solicited students to operate it. On weekends we volunteer firemen would drive conspicuously around the campus in our fire engine, stopping for a training drill at some unsuspecting building that might be hazarded one day by the Germans. We learned to unroll the hoses in quick time and which way to point the nozzles. The only fire on the campus during my remaining time at Amherst was in a fraternity house amid a boisterous party one Saturday night. Unfortunately, many of our fire brigade were not fit for duty at that moment. The city's firemen came to the rescue of Delta Kappa Epsilon.

Somehow none of us asked the assistant dean too probingly whether the Luftwaffe had aircraft that could fly all the way from Germany to Amherst. Or, if they could, whether it was conceivable they could fly home again after destroying our chapel. We also didn't question whether the Germans, if they could find our little chapel after flying perhaps 5,500 miles, might find Westover Air Base on their own? My first contribution to national security may have been of questionable importance, but it was a start.

THERE HAVE BEEN MORE SERIOUS and egregious examples of overreaction to supposed threats to our national security than the Amherst College Fire Brigade. Our interment of Japanese Americans during World War II stands out as one.

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