Anniversary of Hiroshima

Michael Linn Jones over at the Gun Toting Liberal inspired this post...

With all the turmoil in the world today we have days to remember like today. Today is the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima Japan that started the end of WWII. Three days from now will be the anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki Japan. These days in history are to be remembered not because it ended a horrible war but what steps it took to end WWII. These days were forever destined to be recorded as the introduction to the world of the nuclear generations of people to come.

My own father served in the United States Navy as a medic in the Pacific attached to the Marines in WWII. He later served in the Korean War but stateside in Boston notifying medical persons that the government paid to educate that they were being activated for duty in Korea. He was given the Purple Heart for shrapnel that went through his leg on Iwo Jima. They patched him up and back he went. Something he never told any of his seven children. I was twenty three and the baby boy of the family and never knew that he was ever wounded in the war. We all knew that Dad served in WWII but we never heard him tell us directly about it.

In his later years he started to talk a bit more about what he experienced. How the medics and doctors and anyone with medical service training in the Pacific were gathered up immediately after the surrender of Japan. How they went in afterwards to help the people of Japan that needed medical care. What he saw he told me once made him sick to his stomach for days. After all the carnage he had seen just getting through the island hopping what he saw in Hiroshima was worse. Treating so many children and woman and the elderly for so many weeks and months swore him off a medical career forever.

How my father stayed even remotely normal after living through what he did and then was able to raise seven children is beyond my comprehension. When you have been to hell and back and seen what it has to offer it changes you.

This is the view from our side of the fence. How do you suppose the people of Japan see this day in history? Both sides are the only peoples of the world that know what a nuclear weapon can do and we should both be telling the world to never forget these days.

Directly over my entertainment center in my living room is our nations flag that draped my Dad's coffin. The day of his burial I was presented by two United States Navy sailors as part of the honor guard. I will never forget what he went through for his country and that is something that nobody can ever take away from him or me. God bless ya Dad and thank you for being my Dad...

Papamoka