Here Comes Trouble - Michael Moore [124]
“But did you know on the morning of August sixth that the Enola Gay was going to drop that bomb? Did you even know what that bomb was?”
“No, we didn’t,” Zabelka said. “All we knew was that it was ‘special.’ We said it was ‘tricked up.’ Nobody had any idea that it had the capability to do what it did. The crew had special instructions, they knew not to look, and to get out of there as fast as possible.”
“Then if you didn’t know, you’re not responsible.”
“Not true!” he said firmly. “Not true! It is the responsibility of every human to know their actions and the consequences of their actions and to ask questions and to question things when they are wrong.”
“But George, this was war. No one is allowed to ask any questions.”
“And it’s exactly that kind of attitude that continues to get us into more wars—no one asking any questions, especially in the military. Blind obedience—we didn’t let the Germans get away with that excuse, did we?”
“But George, the difference was, we were the good guys, we were the ones who were attacked.”
“All true. And history is written by the victors. A good case can be made that the Japanese had already decided to surrender. We wanted to drop those bombs. We wanted to send a message to the Russians.”
He looked straight at me.
“You can say I didn’t know anything before Hiroshima, about what that bomb would do. But what about three days later? I knew then. I knew what would happen to the next city, which turned out to be Nagasaki. And yet I blessed… I blessed the bomb. I blessed the crew. I blessed the slaughter of seventy-three thousand people. God have mercy on me.”
George told me how in the mid-to-late sixties he had his “St. Paul moment” where he was “knocked off his horse” and he realized that the men in power were up to no good and that it will always be the poor who suffer. He decided to dedicate his life to total pacifism and became an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War in his Sunday sermons. He got involved in the civil rights movement in Flint. He was the very definition of a radical priest. He supported SDS, and when the Weathermen had their infamous War Council meeting in Flint in 1969, he opened up the doors of his church to the participants (who were all certainly not pacifists) so they’d have a place to sleep. He became known as the priest who wouldn’t back down, wouldn’t give in on matters of war and race and class. I had heard of Father Zabelka during all those years. I just never knew why he was the way he was. Now I did. And no matter how much he worked for peace, he could never not be the priest who “blessed the bomb.”
“I will have much to answer for when I meet St. Peter at those gates,” he said. “I am hopeful he will be merciful to me.”
I was grateful he told me his story and I wrote about it in my paper. He continued to help at the Voice, doing whatever menial tasks needed to be done, like dropping stacks of the paper off at locations in the north end of Flint.
Four years later, Father Zabelka decided it was time to perform further penance—and spread his gospel of peace. He began a walk across America to the Holy Land—a literal walk from Seattle to New York, then a plane ride over the ocean (he hadn’t perfected the walking-on-water bit), and then continuing on to Bethlehem. A total of eight thousand miles. And he did it in just over two years. At stops along the way he would tell the story of his transformation from pro-war atom bomb chaplain to hardcore pacifist.
When he returned, he stopped by the Voice one day, saying he wanted to see me.
“Michael, I’ve been thinking for some time and wondering why you left the seminary, why you didn’t go on to be a priest.”
“Well,” I said, “a number of reasons. I was only fourteen when I went. By fifteen, the hormones kicked in. Plus, I didn’t—and don’t—care for the institution and its hierarchy. And what the institution says it stands for has little to do these days with the teachings of Jesus Christ.
“Oh, and they also told