THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 2, 1995 TAG: 9508020460
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: ATOMIC AGE TURNS 50
SOURCE: BY BILL SIZEMORE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 87 lines
When the United States used a devastating new weapon against Japan in the closing days of World War II, it launched a new era here at home - an era of fear and preparation for apocalypse.
Americans saw what the atomic bomb did 50 years ago in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And it soon became apparent that the nation's emerging Cold War rival, the Soviet Union, had also acquired the know-how to unleash the horrible power of nuclear fission.
The atomic age was on. And Americans hunkered down for the attack that many feared was likely as the two superpowers armed themselves to the teeth and blustered at each other.
Nowhere was the fear more palpable than in Hampton Roads, whose huge concentration of military bases would have been a prime target in any nuclear exchange.
By the early 1950s, residents were building backyard fallout shelters that they hoped would shield them from an atomic blast and the ensuing radiation. Local newspapers published long lists of first-aid items that civil defense authorities recommended they be stocked with.
Shortly after J. Herbert Simpson was hired as Portsmouth's civil defense coordinator in 1955, city officials sent him to Yucca Flats, Nev., to see what he was up against.
There, in the pre-dawn desert stillness, Simpson donned thick red goggles and watched as a test bomb several miles away was detonated.
The sight was breathtaking.
``It looked like a thousand suns had come up suddenly,'' Simpson said. ``It lit up the whole desert. And it felt like somebody had hit me in the chest real good and hard.''
The blinding flash of light was followed by the tall, billowing mushroom cloud that became the bomb's signature and an icon for the age.
Back home in Hampton Roads, Simpson and his fellow civil defense officials got busy setting up elaborate emergency response plans. They designated dozens of public shelters in schools, libraries and other city buildings. Marked with distinctive yellow and black signs, the shelters were stocked with canned water and tins of vitamin-enriched biscuits.
Each city had a command center where officials were to gather in an emergency. In Portsmouth, it was a 7,200-square-foot complex 4 feet under the Circuit Court building on Crawford Street. It was equipped with 16 double bunks, food, clothes and medical supplies for 30 days, decontamination rooms, a well, a 5,000-gallon water storage tank, an emergency generator and 10,000 gallons of fuel oil.
Emergency hospital supplies were stored at strategic sites around the area. A network of warning sirens and radiation testing stations was constructed.
Once a month there was a bomb drill. When the sirens wailed, area residents flocked to their shelters, and schoolchildren dived under their desks.
People took the exercises seriously, Simpson said: ``My job in those days was almost law. When I said somebody had to do something, they had to do it.''
Simpson retired in 1985. In the decade since then, the Berlin Wall has come down, the Soviet empire has collapsed and the Cold War has faded into history. With it has gone much of the fear bred by the bomb.
Simpson still has some of the canned water and vitamin-rich biscuits in his garage, mementos of a scarier time. But the shelters have all been emptied and the sirens taken down. Schoolchildren no longer dive under their desks, unless it's to retrieve a dropped pencil.
As the atomic age turns 50, Hampton Roads is breathing easier. MEMO: Coming Thursday: Human guinea pigs and the legacy of nuclear testing. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Color Photos
D. KEVIN ELLIOTT/Staff
The Old Dominion Fixture Co. at 500 Granby St. in Norfolk is among
Hampton Roads' designated fallout shelters, remnants from the height
of the Nuclear Age.
MARK MITCHELL/Staff
J. Herbert Simpson, former Portsmouth civil defense coordinator,
still keeps in his garage some fallout-shelter mementos, such as the
canned water he's holding.
by CNB