aOR Sakae

eo A story of what must never happen

x

by HAL GRIFFIN

asleep. It struck just above the waterfront in the Hastings East area and in that

ae bomb fell on Vancouver at 12:47 that morning when most of the city was

instant of searing heat and the fires that raged for days afterwards it took an esti-
mated eighty-seven thousand lives. Fully half the dead were people. who perished in the
ruins of their homes as wooden structure blazed to wooden structure in a vast consuming
funeral pile. The exact number will never be known,

You coulg not take burned
flesh and charred bones and say
with certainty that this was a
man or a woman, perhaps the
man who sat beside you in the
streetcar and said he could not
be bothered with politics, or the
girl you once approached to
join the union, the one who tos-
sed her head and said she was
doing all right, let the others
look after themselves. It was

too late then, and futile, because .

grief and anger can only be
measured by the actions of the
living and never by the cold
statistics of the dead.

Perhaps in that last moment
an awareness of enormous de-
ception flashed upon some of
those who died. But again it
was left to the living to remem-
ber how once before a huge pre-
tense of peace fashioned at Mun-
ich had collapsed upon them.
Only the living could learn from
what least expected direction the
bomb had come, although all had
heard the madmen who possess-
ed it threatening to loose it
upon the world.

All that is history now, the
beginning of the history the peo-

FRIDAY, MAY 2, 1947

ple made when they proved to
those who had brought the dis-
aster upon them that even the
atom bomb could not prevail
against the will and courage of
men and women who asked
nothing more than the right to
walk freely, living their lives se-
cure from fear and want. Those
words, too, were already written
large enough in history that
even madmen might: have read.
But there was no time in that
last moment for anything but
shock and pain, and for those
who survived, the agony of sur-
vival.

Y name is Miles Mason and

I was one of those who sur-
vived. Sometimes the horror of
that night seems no more than
a nightmare because the con-
scious ming recoils from the
memory of what it has seen and
sometimes, in sleep, the mem-
ory breaks through with such
dreadful clarity that I wake up
screaming. The doctors who
treated me for shock told me
there were hundreds of such
cases.

But it was not the incredibly
bright flash of the bomb’s ex-
plosion lighting up the North
Shore mountains as though for
some gigantic panoramic photo-
graph, nor the terrible spectacle
of the city aflame from the tree-
lined shore around the univer-
sity to the slopes beyond Hast-
ings East, that left those mem-
ories.

It was such things as the lit-
tle boy who staggered screaming
from the crumpled frame house
whose every window had been
blown in, his hands held to his
bloody face, covering his blinded
eyes. \

I can hear him still, his shrill

- voice taut with terror. “Mommy,

I can’t see—I can’t see.”

You cannot forget things like
that.

Earlier that night I had driven
out to Horsehoe Bay to see some
friends and it was after mid-
night when I Jeft. I drove home-
wards slowly. It was one. of
those cool nights after a hot
day that made Vancouver such
a pleasant place to live, as it
will be again when the city is

rebuilt and the green second
growth, struggling out of the
poisoned earth, covers the burn-
ed mountainsides.

A faint breeze from the south
rippled the moonlight on the
water and stirred the shadows
on the’ dappled slopes. Across
the inlet the lights of the city
stretched in an “endless pattern.
It was, as it had always been,
a peaceful scene touched by no
more than the violence within
itself visited upon picket lines
and hungry unemployed.

Here and there along the nar-
row winding road, wherever
space offered, cars were parked,
their lights out, cigarettes glow-
ing red in the dark. And in the
summer cottages people were
still up, laughing and talking on
the porches. High on the hill-
side a door opened as I passed
and I heard the chink of milk
bottles before it closed again.
Nowhere was there any hint of
the terror to come.

@

| HAD just passed Caulfields

when the huge blinding flash
filled the sky. In the fraction of
a second before I ducked, the
rocky cut on either side of the
road, the bungalow standing
above it and the cedars flank-
ing it were etched on my eyes.
Later, I knew it was the cut,
breaking the force of the blast,
that saveq me. The car swerved
towards the ditch and _ instinc-
tively I stepped hard on the
brake.

My mind still refuses to recall

what happened immediately af-
ter that. There are times when
I almost have it and then it is
gone again. The next thing I
remember is standing by the
roadside, dabbing at a gash on
my cheek with my handker-
chief. :
The headlights of my car were
still on, but beyond their range
it seemed to have grown sud-
denly dark, Then I realized that
the moon was gone and the stars
were blotted out. Not a light
showed anywhere. The city
across the inlet seemed to have
vanished.

But only for a moment. Even
as I stood by the roadside, star-
ing at the litter of branches, the
toppled poles and the tangle of
wire picked out by the head-
lights, I became aware of a dusty
red glow in the sky that grew
while I looked at it. Other
things too, began to impinge on
my consciousness. Somewhere in
the darkness behind me a wo-
man’s” yoice was screaming,
“Take it off me, take it off me,
take it off me,” over and over
again like a broken record.

I still had no clear idea what
had happened, but now I was
filled with panic. Some terrible
disaster had fallen upon the city,
and my mother, my wife and my
kids were there. Scrambling over
debris that tore at my legs,
stumbling and falling, E got to
the top of the rise where I had
an unimpeded view across the
water. ;

The city was on fire. From a
score of points along the dark-
ened shoreline, where only a
few minutes before the lights
had hung in long strings, flames
now leapt to a lurid sky.

I made my way back to the
car and clambered in before’ I
realized that the road was
blocked. And on foot it would
take me hours, even if the
bridges were still in. But I must
get home, I told myself, I must
get home. And taking my flash-
light from the car I started to
run along the road, heedless of
obstructions, heedless of every-
thing except the glare filling the
sky ahead of me.

@

Y clothes were in tatters,

my hands were raw from _

clawing at debris and I had
wrenched my knee climbing over
a slippery pole when finally I
reached West Vancouver. Un-
der the ruddy glow of fires the
place was scarcely recognizable.

)

Some of the shattered stores
were burning and on the slope
behind flames leapt from tree to
tree with a steady roar.

For the first time I became
aware of other people around
me. A man, clad only in cottoP
pyjamas, his bare feet bleeding;
pushed through the smoke with
a baby carriage in which two
frightened _ children nuddled,
blood oozing from their nostrils
and trickling from the corners
of their mouths.

Behind him stumbled other
gures, some clothed, some wear
ing only their night attire. Many
of them carried children, 4
one, a wizened old woman whose -
white hair was still neatly
wrapped in curlers, clutched. 4 -
big black cat to her nightgow?-
Only the fear drawn in every

line of her wrinkled face could
have driven her, for she whee?
and

ed and gasped as she ran
once she fell headlong, still
clutching the terrified cat, ove
a chair lying incongruously is
the middle of the road. All of
them were making: for the wat-
erfront.

It was then that I saw the
girl. She came slowly, like a
sleepwalker, from one of the
sideroads, holding what appe@t
ed to be a bundle of clothes t?
her breast. As she entered the
road she stoppeq _ irresolutely
only a few feet from me, be-
wildered by the fear-stricken
people streaming by. She looke
at me, a queer, vacant stare 1?
which there was neither feat
nor horror, Then she did 4
incredible thing, Putting ber
finger to her lips she tip-toed
towards me. a

“Sh-h,” she said, “He’s asleeP-

Gently she lowered her bur
den and pushed back the shaw!
disclosing a tiny burned count
enance from which the ssi?
hung in strips.

It required no more than #
glance to see that the baby W#
dead.

@

AUGHT up in the stream of

refugees I found mysel
headed towards the waterfront.
It was a strangely silent stream
in which even the children 12?
in a wordless terror. Faces dis
torted by fear bobbed painfully
along beside me and disappe?
and ¢ther faces took their place:
And behind us the crackling °
burning ‘trees and the roar 0"

‘the flames drove us forward

into a world ‘that«seemed ringed
by fire.

Then we were spilling out

spate of exhausted humanity,
onto the flats of the Indian Re*
ervation and the safety of th®
water separating us from the —
inferno of the city..
’ As I looked my heart sank.
Where the Lion’s Gate Bridg®
had spanned the narrows 10W
only a broken ramp reared 81°
tesquely from the blood-red wat-
ers. Beyond it the trees °
Stanley Park were bright with
fire. I could go no farther.

Beside me, as I sank wearily
to the gravel beach, a group of
people tried futilely to comfort
a sobbing woman.

“Oh, what shall we do?” she
moaned.

Somehow I found myself echO —
ing her broken words, turning
them over in my mind and
wondering, thinking again 45
had not paused to think since I
began my panic-filled flight.

. “Yes,” I said aloud, scarcely
recognizing the harsh, raspings
voice as my own. “What shal
we do?” ¢ :

And then I thought of Hit
shima where men and wome?
had also died, and in a causé
that was not their, own. But the
living had facea the strugele
back to life again, a new Ji°
with new hope born of that

a

struggle, just as men evel”

where would face it, challengi®8
the lust of the few to destroy
with their own indestructible
will to create.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—PAGE 1°