The term “Cold War” elicits different thoughts in individuals. These are likely to be different for those who lived through the experience and those who have only read about it. I interviewed three individuals to obtain their experiences with the cold war. These individuals are a great aunt, Sarah, my next door neighbor, Karen, and my grandfather, Bill. Sarah and Bill are both elderly. Karen is approximately 40 years old.
When asked, all three of them associated the term “cold war” with the nuclear arms race between the Soviet Union and the United States. This belief tends to be consistent with the definition of the cold war. While the cold war was between the western countries and the countries of the Eastern Bloc, it is often associated with the Soviet Union. The term “Eastern bloc” was associated with the cold war. All agreed that this was a cold war issue.
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Sarah and Bill both stated that they had not studied the Cold War in school. They do, however, remember having drills in school. These drills were in the event that a nuclear bomb was dropped on the country. In retrospect, Bill stated that this was essentially useless. The only thing it did was to scare the school children. The children practice hiding underneath their desks. In reality, he said, this would not protect them in the event of a nuclear war. However, they were raised to believe that the Soviet Union and other communist countries were a constant threat to them. These “duck and cover” drills have been well-documented. This includes pictures of school age children wearing gas masks. Since Karen was not alive during this, she said that it is hard to believe this was a common practice (Weeks, 2011).
Sarah and Bill both said that they remember the drills. However, their most significant memory of the Cold War was the Cuban Missile Crisis. Both said that the entire country truly feared that a nuclear war was coming. This crisis is considered to be the closest the world has ever come to an actual nuclear war. While nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan at the end of World War II, retaliation was not a threat. Sarah said, “I remember everyone praying. There were a lot of prayer services. The world stopped for a few days, with everyone focusing on President Kennedy and Cuba.”
Karen had a different view since she was significantly younger. She did study the Cold War in school. In particular, she remembers studying the Cuban Missile Crisis. She said that this was one of the aspects of Cold War history that she remembered the most. She was in grade school during the early 1980s, when the Cold War was still escalating. Her clearest memory of this was a movie shown on TV. The movie was called “The Day After.” Apparently, the movie had received significant publicity. The teachers at her school sent a letter home to all the parents. It asked the parents to not let the children watch this movie. She was not allowed to watch it. She remembers being scared of this movie without seeing it. The teachers described that the movie would show how horrific a nuclear war would be. When asked, she said she has still never seen it (Corry, 1983). She also said that she clearly remembers the Berlin Wall coming down while she was in high school. Her parents had told her horror stories about this wall as a child. No one could pass it. She was taught that people would be shot if they tried to escape. She said, “When that wall came down, it was as if there was a tremendous sense of freedom that was released into the world.” She called it an amazing moment in history.
Overall, all three of the interviewees remember parts of the Cold War with tremendous clarity. It is apparent that this was an important aspect of their childhoods. They were forced to confront the reality that the world always appeared close to war, which would surely end all life. It is fascinating to hear different perspectives on a historical reality.
- Corry, J. (1983, November 20). TV view: “The Day After.” TV as a rallying cry. The New York Times. Retrieved March 16, 2014, from: http://www.nytimes.com/1983/11/20/arts/tv-view-the-day-after-tv-as-a-rallying-cry.html
- Weeks, L. (2011, March 17). Living in the atomic age: remember these things? NPR. Retrieved March 16, 2014, from: http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2011/03/17/134604352/images-of-the-atomic-age
