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What is life like for the millions of our globe’s population that are destined to live their entire lifespan under the threat of brutal attack?

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Do we remember the community terror instigated by the fear that Russia was going to launch nuclear weapons at America?

The following letter (link below) was sent home from public schools after the events of the Bay of Pigs April 15 – 21, 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 14 – 28, 1962.  This was the closest the world has ever gotten to all-out nuclear war — so far.

— I remember my parents sending all of us older kids outside the Jamesway where I could still clearly hear through the canvas walls mother’s rantings at father about what she wanted him to do if/when the Russians invaded.  She told him to shoot her first and then gave him the order in which she wanted him to shoot the rest of us before he shot himself.

I remember standing at the kitchen of the log house doing dishes probably in the spring of 1962.  I kept looking over my shoulder out the window at the woods in back of the house waiting for the Russians in full military regalia to appear at the door.  I knew Alaska was only two miles from Russia at the narrowest passage point, and based on the adults’ terror at this time I was quite certain that an invasion was likely.

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I could THINK about this externalized terror — and I could fear it.  I had no capacity, however,  to ever think about the terror that existed within my own home.  There was a concept for attack from ‘the outside’ enemy.  There was no concept for attack from ‘the inside’ enemy — the mother who birthed and abused me.

The entire culture surrounding me in my small childhood world feared the Russians and a devastating attack from them.  There was no culture about fearing my mother!

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*Age 10 — 1962 Civil Defense Letter from School

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