Truro, Cape Cod, Monday, August 6
A pouring rain all day and the plane could not get off. I finally caught a train to Providence and there a bus to Hyannis, where Tess met me with the car. While waiting, she says, she picked up the tail end of a broadcast about some atom bomb being dropped by us on Japan. I suppose it’s important, but am too tired to care this night.
Truro, Cape Cod, Monday, August 7
So...So this— since yesterday— is a new age. And how do you feel in a new age? Suddenly, like that?...The very first day?...And how long will it last?...How powerful did they say the bomb was?...And the old-fashioned ones that you dodged in Berlin and London and Liège? Mere toys?
I took the youngsters for a swim. It would be difficult to explain what an atom bomb was, and why it was— why was it necessary in our world of grown-ups— and I didn’t try.