I thank all those who participated in the bombs. From designing, engineering, manufacturing and dropping. It ensured that I, my brother and sister would be born and know a wonderful father.
My father was part of an airborne combat team on the USS James Jackson -- going through the Panama Canal on August 8th -- when he heard about Hiroshima.
He said everybody on the ship was convinced they had just avoided certain death -- that had they made it to either Guam or the Phillipines staging areas for Operation Majestic -- they would have never seen home again.
But I still wonder about a world where -- had Hitler been a little more patient with his military plans and more trusting of his scientists -- atomic warfare would have become oh too imaginable.
I still feel sympathy and horror thinking about the children killed in the two atomic blasts. Man as a species came very very close to practical extinction. The British, Japanese and Soviets were much closer to building gun-type U-235 bombs then was realized since most of our efforts were to get implosion plutonium bombs workable before the Nazis.
The mind truly boggles had Operation Barberrosa been delayed and the Nazis been able to develop and marry atomic weapons and superior rocket-based delivery systems before or contemporaneously with our efforts.