"Thank God for the Atom Bomb!"

"When the atom bombs were dropped and news began to circulate that "Operation Olympic" would not, after all, be necessary, when we learned to our astonishment that we would not be obliged in a few months to rush up the beaches near Tokyo assault-firing while being machine-gunned, mortared, and shelled, for all the practiced phlegm of our tough facades we broke down and cried with relief and joy. We were going to live. We were going to grow to adulthood after all."
Ace linked to an essay by a World War II soldier, who thought he was going to have to land on the beaches of Japan. Then, news of the dropping of the atom bomb on August 6, 1945 reached the soldiers, who believed they would never experience a full adulthood. The writer points out that Harry Truman was the only president in our lifetime who "had experience in a small unit of ground troops whose mission it was to kill people." "Having found the bomb," Truman said, "we have used it...we have used it to shorten the agony of young Americans." Read the whole essay here.