The Positive Effects of the GI Bill

The Positive Effects of the GI Bill

In 1944 the world was caught in one of the greatest wars of all time, World War II. The whole United States was mobilized to assist in the war effort. As history was being made overseas, as citizens learned to do without many amenities of life, and as families grieved over loved ones lost in the war, two students on BYU campus were beginning a history of their own. Chauncey and Bertha Riddle met in the summer of 1944 and seven months later were engaged to be married. Chauncey was eighteen and a half and Bertha nineteen as they knelt across the altar in the St. George temple five months after their engagement. Little did they know that in just the first years of marriage they would be involved with the effects of a significant historical event, the atomic bomb, as well as government legislation, the GI Bill, that would not only affect the course of their lives but also the course of the entire country.

Chauncey and Bertha honeymooned in the Grand Canyon late in the summer of 1945. Upon returning to Cedar City, they learned the news that "the United States [had] developed this wonderful bomb and [they'd] dropped it and it hopefully [would] shorten the war greatly." The first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 7, and the second on Nagasaki on August 9. The official surrender came on August 11, 1945, officially ending the bloody campaign in Japan. The climate in the country was not one of alarm, in reaction to the bomb, but of tired relief. Bertha reflected this attitude. "Those people of our generation saw how many of their friends had died in bloody combat with the Japanese so they were grateful to see it ended." The atomic bomb seemed the long-awaited answer to concluding the war quickly.

The bomb was not without its controversies and consequences, however. Before it was dropped, Leo Szilard, leading scientist in the development of the bomb, "opposed it with all [his] power" (Truman 68). His close contact with the destructive weapon caused him and others to argue against its use. It didn't take long after the end of the war for scholars to assess the atom bomb and its potential in future warfare. In the Yale Review, 1946, Bernard Brodie looked in depth at its future implications and influence on the security of all nations.