THE ATOMIC BOMB and OPPENHEIMER
Comments by Rafael Zambrana March 3, 2024
WHO WAS THE MAN WHO DROPPED THE ATOMIC BOMB?
By Georgy K. Zhukov
Harry Truman overcame a very difficult childhood, one that took a great toll on his psyche.
Growing up on his family’s Missouri farm, he struggled to win the affection of his father, John “Peanuts” Truman. The elder Truman, though only five foot four, relished beating up much taller men to show how tough he was. He wanted that same toughness in his sons. He found it in Harry’s younger brother Vivian.
Harry, however, was diagnosed with hypermetropia, or “flat eyeballs,” and forced to wear Coke-bottle-thick glasses, so he couldn’t play sports or roughhouse with the other boys. “I was afraid my eyes would get knocked out if there was too much of a rough and tumble play,” he explained. “To tell the truth, I was kind of a sissy.”
He was picked on and bullied by the other boys, who called him “four-eyes” and “sissy” and chased him home after school. To make matters worse, when he arrived home trembling and out of breath, his mother would comfort him by telling him not to worry because he was meant to be a girl anyway.
He wrote about one incident in a 1912 letter, “That sounds rather feminine, doesn’t it. Mamma says I was intended for a girl anyway. It makes me pretty mad to be told so but I guess it’s partly so.” He later reflected that being regarded as a “sissy” was “hard on a boy. It makes him lonely, and it gives him an inferiority complex, and he has a hard time overcoming it.”
Not surprisingly, gender issues plagued him for years. He often referred to his feminine features and attributes. He would later prove that not only was he not a sissy, he could stand up to Stalin and show him who was boss.