It’s here again, August 6, A-Bomb Day–the day we dropped the big one on Hiroshima. Three days later the United States dropped a plutonium type A-Bomb on Nagasaki. Ironically, the last survivor of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, died last week. Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk seemed to have few regrets about the decision to drop the bomb and when asked, once eloquently responded “It’s really hard to talk about morality and war in the same sentence.”
Yet 69 years later, the debate continues. Only select Americans knew anything about an atomic bomb. The Manhattan Project was top-secret and in those days, when things were top-secret, people didn’t find out. In fact, until he assumed the Presidency, Harry Truman knew nothing about an atomic weapon being built. After the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, only then did the rank and file American begin to contemplate and discuss the moral responsibility of dropping such a deadly weapon of mass destruction.
