Atomic Bomb Cloud over Hiroshima
The smoke cloud rising over Hiroshima, Japan. The city of Hiroshima was the target of the world's first atomic bomb attack at 8:16 a.m. on August 6, 1945.
This photograph was taken about three hours after the bombing.
Management
By Fear and Intimidation and August 6, 1945
Traveling around Old Sol for over seven decades, I’ve witnessed a lot. My first phone was on the wall and had a cord with a dial instead of buttons. My career in sales, executive management began in the last ten years of the ‘Mad Men’ era. I had a boss, though really my boss’s boss, but he seemed keen to keep an interest in me, was a very Irish O’Malley from Chicago. He saw to my earlier promotions.
The ‘Don’, loved to take us out drinking, often until 2:00 AM plus. He would discreetly take notes on napkins on what we said in an inebriated state, then hold us to the fire the next day based on his written evidence. I always made it a point to go home to Ann Arbor (a thirty plus minute drive), get an hour rest, shower and be back at the plant around six in the morning. I had to prove I could outwork him.
He was always there, standing, surveying his domain and when he saw me, he would often say, “You look like hell.”
I remember one time being chastised by him for not spending more alcohol on my customers, even threatening me.
Don loved to instill fear in his subordinates. Being of farm stock and stubborn I resisted often, getting into some extreme shouting matches when I was plucked from under him and assigned a new leader. I still had to work with him, his region bordering mine and common customers between us. But I no longer had to cower under the fear he installed in subordinates, as his method over control ‘over the masses’.
He must have flipped out when I started promoting women from customer service to sales, including one who did not have an undergraduate degree. That was a big no in the world of ‘Mad Men’. Then, she not only became the most successful salesperson, exceeding my own records as I handed my accounts over to her, I was able to get her college degree paid for by the company. At that time it was the world’s largest paper company and one who owned more land in the United States of America than anyone but the Catholic Church.
My reasoning was simple. Women worked harder than men because they had to prove more. And ‘mine’ were smart on top of it. I would not call myself a ‘feminist’. I simply picked, in the words of Steve Jobs, ‘A’ people. They could be of any gender or race. I just wanted to take the best and encourage them to do better.
The current Administration of the ‘Home of the Brave’ is a classic example of Don with one exception. Don did tell you the truth even though he was often harsh. Today’s ‘Administration’ just lies, pathologically in many cases, destroying truth. It has come to the point you cannot believe what you read in the news (unless you are in the science section).
It’s a classic example of management by fear and intimidation. So, we’ve gone back at least fifty years or more.
Then, starting with January 6, 2016, the ‘state of anarchy began’, mostly propelled by one person, a Commander in Chief. This was my father’s greatest fear - we would dissolve into a state of anarchy. He says so in his book, Because of Love: A True Story of the Defenders of Bataan, because the greatest generation is no more, only its sons and daughters and many of their children now preparing to shed more blood in countries around the world on the orders illegal or not of their ‘commander in chief’.
In the ‘Land of the Free and Brave’, every day we see more examples of anarchy. Politicians completely ignore the rule of law and getting away with it daily. Deportations of innocent people along with horrid treatment. Every day you read about mass killings, some motivated by personal hatred of someone they know and others by radical idealist who believe killing mass amounts of people pleases their god.
It is a depressing situation.
Now we have the major ‘powers’ threatening each other with nuclear war. NBC had an excellent article on the anniversary of Hiroshima, August 6, 1945.
An excerpt from it…
Sasaki’s is not the only family that has avoided talking about that day. More than 70% of the respondents in the Kyodo poll said they had never spoken about their experiences.
Even so, some feel it is their duty to speak up.
“As long as I live, I want to continue telling,” Yahata said. “I’m a survivor.”
NBC News
The full article is at https://www.nbcnews.com/world/asia/80-years-later-hiroshima-bombing-survivors-warn-new-nuclear-warfare-rcna220177
My father was a POW of the Japanese for three and a half years. He called it being a ‘guest of the emperor’. He weighed one hundred and eighty pounds when he left for the Philippines in September of 1945, ordered illegally by Roosevelt, with no congressional approval until December.
He left his last prison camp, Roshu Roki, twenty-five miles from Hiroshima, weighing ninety pounds. After surviving starvation, diphtheria, beri beri, torture and a host of other tropical diseases, the fallout from that bomb followed his health the rest of his life. And it apparently also impacted my only sister and sibling and me, who both encountered a mass of health problems to the point where I am considered a medical anomaly. All my physicians wonder why I am still alive after thyroid cancer, prostrate, and seventeen bouts with melanoma along with Parkinson’s and a myriad of blood disorders.
The ripple effects.
I do not have an answer to any of this other than I am sure by the grace of God and His Divine mercy I am still able to do some work for him. Nothing I write will impact enough people, but I am in firm belief that if you can get one person to think differently, preferably about those in greater need, you accomplished His Will.
Also, I write to not forget the horrors of the past as we repeat them.
So that by miracles, we don’t.
My hope, my belief, my faith and my love tell me that if we would just…
1. Love our Lord and be grateful to Him all the time.
2. Love every person and be grateful God brought them into our lives – even if some are a bit cranky!
Clement