When I was a 5-6 yr old kid, our family toured the Truman Presidential Library in Independence, MO. The woman at the admissions desk said the former President is speaking to a group of college students right then and to go in and join them. It was a small 50-100 seat theater for just this type of event. Besides fighting over the armrest with my little brother, I remember (mainly because my WWII sergeant dad repeated it over the years) a student asking Harry if he’d drop the bombs if he could do it all over. It was an emphatic without hesitation, “yes! It saved millions of Japanese civilian, US and Japanese military lives.“ Truman undoubtedly was asked that question a thousand times.
I had four uncles who would have been involved in the Japanese invasion, one who fought from beginning to end of the battle of Iwo Jima to secure the airfield for the invasion. He was 17 when we deployed. The second was an electricians mate who’s LST was off shore at Iwo Jima landing supplies as needed and available. I didn’t realize how close it was to Japan until the other day when I let Google Earth take me there. A third uncle was a B-29 bombardier, and a fourth trucked bombs up the Burma Road to bomb the Japanese military in China. Dad landed in France D-Day+4, and was still there at VE Day and had gotten his discharge. Being single at the time, he got to spend a month on the French Riviera living it up while the married guys got shipped home ASAP. He probably would have been called up and redeployed to Japan had that been necessary.
