Apropos a post from DT/CC this Memorial Day past remembering all those who gave their lives and their futures to keep us free, now let us remember those who risked it all to deliver The Bomb 62 years ago today. If you're ever near Dulles International Airport in northern VA you owe yourself a trip to the Udvar-Hazy Museum where the Enola Gay now sits quietly posing for tourist cameras like she did the morning she left Tinian before dawn headed for Hiroshima. Then-Secretary of War Stimson's memo a few weeks before estimating the casualties and cost of a contemplated invasion of the Japanese home island, coupled with the emotionally-searing angst of those who developed the bomb as depicted in the PBS documentary, "The Day After Trinity", leave no doubt as to what the course of action must be. Hundreds of thousands of Allied troops owe their lives to Truman, Enola Gay aircraft commander Paul Tibbits, and Fred Bock, aircraft commander of Bock's Car, who delivered the second bomb on Nagasaki three days later, forcing Japan to surrender and obviating the need for an assault on the home islands. KBM
