USNews.com/Kenneth T. Walsh
♦ August 6th 1945: 70 Years Later the Bomb Still Casts Fear:
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/08/05/70-years-later-the-bomb-still-casts-fear
Video: The Hiroshima Bombing August 6th 1945:
Editor’s note: You’ve likely heard of people who were born on the 4th of July or on Christmas Day. I was born on August 6th. Every birthday since my boyhood I’ve celebrated it along with the remembrances and memorials of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
A few weeks ago I heard the powerful sounds of aircraft engines flying overhead and turned to look up, seeing the unmistakable shape of a Boeing B-29 Superfortress. I will always recognize that bomber as I’ve seen it in countless pictures and documentaries involving the “Enola Gay”, a B-29 that flew off the Pacific Island of Tinian and obliterated Hiroshima on August 6th 1945. The B-29 I saw a few weeks back, in the skies over Madison, was part of a local airshow.
If I was to recommend a single account of the immediate aftermath of the Hiroshima devastation I would strongly suggest the book “Hiroshima” by John Hersey.
As for President Truman I believe he made the best possible decision considering the best available facts. The allies were about to engage an irrational and cultic imperial Japanese war machine and citizens who would fight to the death on their home islands. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought the war to a close in short order and spared many American and Japanese lives.
