Cold War Survivors?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I used to frequent the SDMB, but I haven’t been here in a while… Wow, subscriptions and paid memberships. How things change. (I do remember people jump on you if you post stuff in the wrong forum, though… if this is the wrong forum, please move it to the correct one.)

Anyways, I need your help. My history teacher assigned my class a project on the Cold War, and I need to interview someone who lived through that time period and can remember stuff about it. The problem is, I live in Southeast Asia, and around here there’s a serious dearth of people who’ve actually been affected by the Cold War. I’m at my wits’ end. I’d be truly grateful if you (or anyone else who you can pull to the computer screen, friends, relatives, etc.) could answer as many questions in as much detail as possible. Discussion of other people’s responses would also be cordially received.
The Questions:

  1. Where did you live during the Cold War? Did that have any influence on your experiences with the Cold War?

  2. As a child or teenager, what fears did you have as a result of the Cold War?

  3. What do you remember thinking about or hearing about communism?

  4. What were your experiences with civil defense efforts? How did you or your family feel about them?

  5. What actions or people made you feel the nation was secure or insecure?

  6. What was your position on the amount of spending on the military budget?

  7. What do you remember being told about radiation, nuclear testing, uranium, and other products of nuclear weapons?

  8. What historic events do you remember? (For example, the Berlin Wall, Cuba, U-2, Khrushchev, Korea, McCarthy, etc.) What was your reaction?
    Thank you for your time!

2

I was born in 1973, and lived in Indianapolis until 1985. I didn’t really know about the cold war until I was 10. Once I knew about it, I saw signs of it everywhere.
Our minister preached a sermon about how a single button could be pressed, and some people would go to heaven and other people would go to hell. Modern John Edwards, I guess - except we were living at the whim of God through the whim of the superpowers.

The thing that I was most afraid of was the half-hour or so of knowing that the missiles were on their way. I frequently dreamed that my parents got me and my brother out of bed and brought us down to the living room. There’d be a news broadcast saying that a missile had been launched from a little-known part of the USSR, and it was headed right for us.
In one variant, I would run out into the garage and try to start the car myself. Nobody else would leave the house.
I tended to avoid the news, because I didn’t really want to know how close we were to a nuclear war.

I was surprised to learn what communism actually was. It sounded like a decent philosophy. I kept asking grown ups what was wrong with it, really. It took a while for me to understand that the USSR was finding out that communism, at a practical level, is a nasty parody of the ideas of Karl Marx.

I thought SDI was a very bad idea. I still think so… if a full nuclear exchange does start, it would be because one side thinks they can get away with it. Or because one side thinks that the other side will soon think they can get away with it.
At home, our defense efforts consisted of keeping extra cans of soup. That way, my brother and I would have enough food before soldiers from either side came marching down the street if WWIII started whilemy parents were at work.

I felt very insecure with Reagan - I didn’t like the way he dealt with Andropov and Chenenko. Gorbechev, on the other hand, was my hero.

I just knew that it was a very bad thing. Bad enough that I could understand why people wouldn’t want to survive a nuclear war.

Really, the only major crisis I remember is when Korean flight 007 was shot down over the USSR in 1983. I didn’t give it much thought until my mom came home from work. She was standing in the kitchen, telling my dad, “My heart was in my throat all day… I thought that any minute now there’d be a flash of white light.”

Of course, I remember the end of the cold war much better, because I was a teenager by the time the Berlin Wall came down in 1989. One thing I’m very sorry about is that I didn’t leave my pre-calc homework to watch it happen on CNN. Math homework isn’t worth missing a historic event.

Interestingly (to me, anyway), the thing that I remember being most worrisome in Russo-American relations happened after the cold war. I was rather bothered that Yeltsin might mean what he was saying when we started the Kosovo war in 1999. I reassured myself by saying that things would be fine as long as the Russians didn’t launch ships into the Mediterranean… :eek:

Thank you for your time!
[/QUOTE]

Sure. In about forty years, I look forward to being interviewed about how we survived the horrible 2000 - 2010 decade. I’m sure I’ll be able to give much more informed, reasoned responses by then.

3

The Questions:

  1. Where did you live during the Cold War? Did that have any influence on your experiences with the Cold War?

Until 5 years old, a miltary base in Germany. Until 6.5 on a miltary base in Alaska, until 9 Fort Huachuca in US.

  1. As a child or teenager, what fears did you have as a result of the Cold War?
    I didn’t really think about it at all until about the age of 9 when I noticed the ‘clock’ ticking down the time that occasionally made it onto the news. As a teen we covered it in the various history classes. I was never popular in civillian schools as I was raised with a very military viewpoint on life. I cant say I was scared or nervous, just pissed that adults couldn’t seem to be able to sit and talk over differences like us kids were forced to.

  2. What do you remember thinking about or hearing about communism?
    Again, I know I had no trouble getting along with german kids, and other NATO kids. I was upset that the adults couldn’t manage to discuss things and find a solution. Later on after 10 or 11 and more exposure to less structured adults I realized that discussioon wasn’t really an option until something would happen to catalyze a change in political viewpoints.

  3. What were your experiences with civil defense efforts? How did you or your family feel about them?
    ROFL, being military it was a matter of course to know what to do on base if anything happened. Drills were just something that one did. Luckily by the time the 60s rolled around the whole ‘duck and cover’ thing was dead.

  4. What actions or people made you feel the nation was secure or insecure?
    Well, I thought the whole Vietnam thing was a cock-up. In retrospect I wasnt too far off. I dislike it when certain military units and facilities are canceled out as a strong defense, and a strong offensive capacity does tent to keep one safe. Like Roosevelt said, walk softly and carry a big stick. Just because you have a seriously deadly military does not mean you have to deploy it…but you should be able to deploy it to handle certain matters. FWIW, I do think we have a thing for poking our noses into other countries business …but I do think that if another countries government commits acts of terrorism or expedites terrorism [afghanistan] OR they are commiting atrocities such as tribal genocide, expansionist tendancies by conquest vice treaty and proactively aiding terrorists we should be able to step in.
    I do NOT like the rest of the world wanting us to keep a pax americana and then dissing us over it. They cannot have their cake and eat it too.

4

The Questions:

  1. Where did you live during the Cold War? Did that have any influence on your experiences with the Cold War?

Born and raised in the U.S., so yes, that certainly affected my experiences and perceptions. My family’s ancestral origins are also entirely in the former East Bloc, and Jewish, so that fact certainly colored my perceptions as well. The news I had access to, and the view on Soviet history and the Cold War that I received, were rather skewed, to say the least. To give you more perspective, I was born in 1968, so my earliest impressions of contact with the East Bloc world are of mid-70s vintage (more on that later).

  1. As a child or teenager, what fears did you have as a result of the Cold War?

I never could understand why I should be in a panic at the prospect of nuclear war, no matter how much I read about it. I guess I just always figured that Soviets were people, too (I went to summer camp at the local Jewish Community Center at a time of massive Jewish emigration, so half the camp was recently arrived, Russian-speaking, Jewish immigrants). And if they were people, they wouldn’t want to blow me to smithereens any more than I wanted to blow them to smithereens. Mostly all the propaganda I was fed made me really curious what the big deal was about the USSR, and left me with a burning desire to travel there and learn the language (more on that later).

  1. What do you remember thinking about or hearing about communism?

We got only a very superficial presentation of the ideology, and nothing whatsoever about the various subdivisions of that ideology, of Soviet or East Bloc history, or of changes in the practical implementation of communism across regions or over time. My public school education pretty much ignored everything east of Germany (with a brief detour to Poland during WWII to stop off at Auschwitz). But that’s a much longer rant. We did touch on communism during a college economic thought survey class, but by then I knew I was going to Russia in a few months and would find out firsthand what it was like.

  1. What were your experiences with civil defense efforts? How did you or your family feel about them?

I have no memory of them other than seeing clips of 50s-era “duck and cover” films. It seemed ridiculous that hiding under your desk would protect you from a nuclear explosion.

  1. What actions or people made you feel the nation was secure or insecure?

I couldn’t stand Ronald Reagan. He seemed full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Same for Jaruszelski, except he seemed just plain evil. (But then I’m from Chicago, which has more people of Polish descent than pretty much anywhere outside Warsaw, so that view is probably pretty skewed too.) I remember really admiring Lech Walesa for his chutzpah, and Pope John Paul II for his efforts at peacemaking. And I couldn’t understand why Carter kept the U.S> out of the 1980 Moscow Olympics; it seemed counterproductive. By the time I had enough info about any other specific individuals to form opinions, I had some real-life experiences to filter my opinions with.

  1. What was your position on the amount of spending on the military budget?

Being from a liberal upbringing over several generations, I grew up believing that pretty much anything spent on the military was too much. That opinion has been tempered with time, but I still think the U.S. spends too much on the military overall.

  1. What do you remember being told about radiation, nuclear testing, uranium, and other products of nuclear weapons?

Just that they were all eeeeevil.

  1. What historic events do you remember? (For example, the Berlin Wall, Cuba, U-2, Khrushchev, Korea, McCarthy, etc.) What was your reaction?

I’m not old enough to remember any of the above firsthand except the destruction of the Berlin Wall. But I was studying in Russia during the fall of the Berlin Wall, execution of Ceaucescu, etc., which was a pretty mind-blowing period to be there. We just could not believe our eyes and ears. In fact, when I first got word about the Berlin Wall, I literally did not believe the person who told me; I thought it was another Soviet rumor (you wouldn’t believe how efficiently the rumor mill worked there). But then I saw the live TV footage.

More impressions of an American in the late-perestroika, rapidly collapsing USSR on request.

5

The Questions:

  1. Where did you live during the Cold War? Did that have any influence on your experiences with the Cold War?

Until 5 years old, a miltary base in Germany. Until 6.5 on a miltary base in Alaska, until 9 Fort Huachuca in US.

  1. As a child or teenager, what fears did you have as a result of the Cold War?
    I didn’t really think about it at all until about the age of 9 when I noticed the ‘clock’ ticking down the time that occasionally made it onto the news. As a teen we covered it in the various history classes. I was never popular in civillian schools as I was raised with a very military viewpoint on life. I cant say I was scared or nervous, just pissed that adults couldn’t seem to be able to sit and talk over differences like us kids were forced to.

  2. What do you remember thinking about or hearing about communism?
    Again, I know I had no trouble getting along with german kids, and other NATO kids. I was upset that the adults couldn’t manage to discuss things and find a solution. Later on after 10 or 11 and more exposure to less structured adults I realized that discussioon wasn’t really an option until something would happen to catalyze a change in political viewpoints.

  3. What were your experiences with civil defense efforts? How did you or your family feel about them?
    ROFL, being military it was a matter of course to know what to do on base if anything happened. Drills were just something that one did. Luckily by the time the 60s rolled around the whole ‘duck and cover’ thing was dead.

  4. What actions or people made you feel the nation was secure or insecure?
    Well, I thought the whole Vietnam thing was a cock-up. In retrospect I wasnt too far off. I dislike it when certain military units and facilities are canceled out as a strong defense, and a strong offensive capacity does tent to keep one safe. Like Roosevelt said, walk softly and carry a big stick. Just because you have a seriously deadly military does not mean you have to deploy it…but you should be able to deploy it to handle certain matters. FWIW, I do think we have a thing for poking our noses into other countries business …but I do think that if another countries government commits acts of terrorism or expedites terrorism [afghanistan] OR they are commiting atrocities such as tribal genocide, expansionist tendancies by conquest vice treaty and proactively aiding terrorists we should be able to step in.
    I do NOT like the rest of the world wanting us to keep a pax americana and then dissing us over it. They cannot have their cake and eat it too.

  5. What was your position on the amount of spending on the military budget?
    LOL, You really need to ask? For most of my life it has paid my bills…and I think that for the amount of work actually done to protect your silly protesting asses our military members get screwed royally. One time in about 1987 my husband and some friends calculated what their hourly wage was given the amount of time spent on the boat and it came out for an E1 $.87 an hour up to around $3,00 an hour for an E8. You do the math… http://usmilitary.about.com/library/milinfo/pay/bl2004enlbasepay.htm
    Currently E1 base pay is $1193.00 for essentially an 80 hour work week.

  6. What do you remember being told about radiation, nuclear testing, uranium, and other products of nuclear weapons?
    I heard the usual, though being of a studious bent, I also read up on things on my own. I always thought nuclear power was the way to go and was very disappointed that the americans never really fully converted. Later I did work in the nuclear power industry, and still think it is woefully misunderstood.

  7. What historic events do you remember? (For example, the Berlin Wall, Cuba, U-2, Khrushchev, Korea, McCarthy, etc.) What was your reaction?Hm, Berlin wall in the news whenever someone tried to go either direction over it, then it falling. Advisers from USSR in different war zones, along with our advisers in war zones. Read whatever was covered in history class. Saw whatever hit CNN about other stuff.

6

gilrandir, I think you may be missing an obvious source for Cold War tales. You say you live in Southeast Asia, which was home to the longest running “hot” piece of the Cold War. Do you know any Vietnamese, Cambodians or Laotians?

7

Not to forget Chinese, Korean, Japanese, or Thais. Malaysians or Filippinos. The Domino Principle originated as a theory of communist expansion in Southeast Asia. Look into SEATO, the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization, the Pacific Rim counterpart to NATO. There are probably more people who felt the direct effects of the Cold War where you are than where I am, in central Wisconsin.

8

1. Where did you live during the Cold War? Did that have any influence on your experiences with the Cold War?
[ul]
Dayton, Ohio (although I was too young and the cold war had just started)
[li] Atlanta, GA from 1948 to 1961[/li][li] Pensacola, FL, Quantico, VA & El Toro, CA from 1961 to 1964[/li][li] Cincinnati, OH from 1964 to 1975[/li][li] Tupelo, MS from 1975 to present[/ul][/li]The period from 1961 to 1964 was spent in the Marine Corps. It was during this period that the Cuban Crisis happened and Vietnam was becoming more than a police action.[/color]**

  1. As a child or teenager, what fears did you have as a result of the Cold War?
    I never had any fear but more of what I’d call a healthy respect for the danger that communism presented.

  2. **What do you remember thinking about or hearing about communism?
    We never had any formal classes on communism (except in the military) but it was often discussed in school. I remember hearing the Russia had a 5 year program and everyone being afraid they were going to become stronger than the West. That was under Stalin. Later the 5 year programs became a joke, since they never even came close to achieving the goals. Then they were dropped. There was considerable hope of improvement when Stalin died. That of course never materialised. Khrushchev saying they were going to bury us mostly pissed people off. We knew that their life styles, etc. were inferior, but also knew that they were convinced their system would lead them to greater things.

  3. What were your experiences with civil defense efforts? How did you or your family feel about them?
    I had a friend that would go to Decatur, GA and sit on top of a building on weekends looking for planes. This seemed a little silly to me. My folks never seemed to worry about it and took no precautions. I really didn’t know of anyone that did. Having a bomb shelter was more of a novelty than something people actually would build.

  4. What actions or people made you feel the nation was secure or insecure?
    I can’t say that I ever felt insecure. When the Berlin Wall was built we knew it was because so many people were fleeing the communist territory. Then they tried to block off and take control of Berlin. The Berlin Air Lift was not only something that made us proud, but also built confidence in the our ability to withstand their advances. Same for the Cuban Crisis. I’d say that the U-2 incident with Gary Powers was the scarest event, but it was soon obvious that nothing was going to come of it.

  5. What was your position on the amount of spending on the military budget?
    Back then a much higher percentage of the Federal Budget was spent on defense than is spent today. There was very little said about lowering it as long as the cold war was continuing. Most people hoped it could be lowered once the cold war was won. It was the idea that after the cold war was over everything would come up roses that caused many of the problems we’ve had since the Wall came down.

  6. What do you remember being told about radiation, nuclear testing, uranium, and other products of nuclear weapons?
    We were well aware of the dangers radiation and nuclear warfare. We saw pictures from Japan in Life magazine. There were short films shown in school of what happened to buildings, dummies, etc. during nuclear testing. We knew that bombers were flying missions that could ultimately end in attacking Russia and that they were doing the same. Then the missile buildup came. When you heard about it, it was scary but I never knew anyone that dwelt on it during the normal course of living.

  7. What historic events do you remember? (For example, the Berlin Wall, Cuba, U-2, Khrushchev, Korea, McCarthy, etc.) What was your reaction?
    I’ve already commented on some of these. The funny thing about Cuba is that Castro was first looked upon as a hero that was freeing his people from tyranny. The Cuban Crisis was the most serious thing that ever happened. There was concern that some of the Latin American countries would follow Cuba into the communist camp. The Bay of Pigs was just plain embarrassing.
    We were almost driven out of Korea at first, then came back and drove them to the Chinese border. It was then that we learned about the Chinese and their lack of concern for human life. It is a lesson that we should remember.
    McCarthy drew his power from the initial fear of communism. It was the fear of something new caused by a general ignorance of the subject. He might have done some good by showing us the dangers of over-reacting.
    I think that it is too bad that the Berlin Airlift is not remembered or known about by so many people. I believe that the outcome there influenced the course of the cold war and foretold the eventual outcome. The Berlin Wall symbolized the cold war and when it came down I knew the cold war was over. If it weren’t for the Berlin Airlift the Berlin Wall would have been a minor footnote.