6 ms·

Atomic Bomb: Decision – Target Committee, May 10-11, 1945

54 points by Coxa 11y ago

dalke 11y ago
Quite tangential from the content - at the start is "Its transcription and formatting as an e-text, however, is copyright 1995-1998" I thought that Feist v. Rural Telephone (1991) established that 'sweat of the brow doctrine' was not grounds for copyright. Should I assume that the person who claimed copyright here was incorrect in making the claim?
- tzs 11y ago
  Feist established that there has to be creativity in something for it to be copyrightable. The level of creativity required is not very high. The Court said: To be sure, the requisite level of creativity is extremely low; even a slight amount will suffice. The vast majority of works make the grade quite easily, as they possess some creative spark, "no matter how crude, humble or obvious" it might be. They also use the phrase "modicum of creativity" to describe the necessary creative level. Formatting can have sufficient creativity to qualify for copyright. Such copyright will only cover the formatting, not the underlying text. If someone were to take just the text, and format it themselves (by hand or by script), that should be OK. Taking his exact e-text formatting? I don't know. Without comparing the originals to his version, I have no idea if his formatting was obvious and mechanical, or if it required creativity.
  - dalke 11y ago
    Well that was pleasantly easy to find - a copy of the original is at http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/6.pdf http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/6.pdf . I personally don't think there's creativity in this expression. If there is, then the flip side is that I change the format even slightly then it's also creative, and the underlying facts are not covered under copyright.
tajen 11y ago
No mention of Nagasaki.
- BrianEatWorld 11y ago
  I noticed the same thing. According to Wikipedia: On May 30, Stimson asked Groves to remove Kyoto from the target list, but Groves pointed to its military and industrial significance.[73] Stimson then approached President Harry S. Truman about the matter. Truman agreed with Stimson, and Kyoto was temporarily removed from the target list.[74] Groves attempted to restore Kyoto to the target list in July, but Stimson remained adamant.[75][76] On July 25, Nagasaki was put on the target list in place of Kyoto.[76] Orders for the attack were issued to General Carl Spaatz on July 25 under the signature of General Thomas T. Handy, the acting Chief of Staff, since Marshall was at the Potsdam Conference with Truman.[77] That day, Truman noted in his diary that: "This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital [Kyoto] or the new [Tokyo]. He and I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one.[78]" Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#Choice_of_targets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_a...
  - hasenj 11y ago
    > This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. I find this very ironic ..
  - asanagi 11y ago
    Nuking Kyoto would have been an irredeemable loss to humanity; anyone who has ever been there would surely understand this. The city is concentrated with ancient wonders and cultural vibrance of the highest order. Not to mention that the indelible injury to the national psychology of Japan would have been magnitudes greater. It's astounding to me that the decision to destroy it would come down to just a few men on a war council. Thank God that Stimson prevailed.
calibraxis 11y ago
> It was agreed that psychological factors in the target selection were of great importance. Two aspects of this are (1) obtaining the greatest psychological effect against Japan and (2) making the initial use sufficiently spectacular for the importance of the weapon to be internationally recognized when publicity on it is released. Nice when people are honest enough about their own terrorism. (Like "shock and awe".)
- hasenj 11y ago
  Your comment does not deserve a down vote.
  - qmalxp 11y ago
    Agreed, though I would genuinely like to see a rebuttal.
    - yareally 11y ago
      Wouldn't be too hard to rebut. Just do some skimming over the Second Sino-Japanese War and Japanese actions/attitudes/writings towards the Chinese at the time. If one's time is short, just look up Japan's infamous Unit 731, who were involved in Japan's own "shock and awe" through providing the means (and gruesome testing) of carrying out Japan's chemical and biological warfare. All countries do awful things during war, just some more deliberate and unethical than others. As William Tecumseh Sherman once said, "War is Hell."
- rhino369 11y ago
  I think terror bombing was unquestionably terrorism but I'd disagree about shock and awe. That is just trying to break the enemy armed forces moral with quick overwhelming strength. The cavalry charge of the modern war.
  - calibraxis 11y ago
    We can read about the "shock and awe" doctrine, because such concepts are carefully developed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_and_awe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_and_awe): "Shutting the country down would entail both the physical destruction of appropriate infrastructure and the shutdown and control of the flow of all vital information and associated commerce so rapidly as to achieve a level of national shock akin to the effect that dropping nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had on the Japanese. " "The second example is 'Hiroshima and Nagasaki' noted earlier. The intent here is to impose a regime of Shock and Awe through delivery of instant, nearly incomprehensible levels of massive destruction directed at influencing society writ large, meaning its leadership and public, rather than targeting directly against military or strategic objectives even with relatively few numbers or systems. The employment of this capability against society and its values, called 'counter-value' in the nuclear deterrent jargon, is massively destructive strikes directly at the public will of the adversary to resist and, ideally or theoretically, would instantly or quickly incapacitate that will over the space of a few hours or days." (Disclaimer: I read those quotes in the original context, to guard against taking them out of context. But I haven't read the whole thing.)
evo_9 11y ago
I went to Hiroshima about 15 years ago with my ex-wife when we toured Japan (she is Japanese). I was struck by a few details I'd never heard before growing up in the US: 1) The center of the detonation was a hospital. It's unlikely they tried to hit the hospital, but the fact remains it was 'ground zero'. 2) A good portion of the hospital's metal frame was still standing and was a focal point of a monument; grass was growing and generally speaking it didn't match up with what I expected to see as 'ground zero' (aka a crater, nothing growing, nothing standing). 3) No active US President has ever visited Hiroshima or the museum there dedicated to the atomic bombings; Carter visited after he was no longer president. If you have a chance to visit Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum it's well worth a visit. Quite humbling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima_Peace_Memorial_Museum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima_Peace_Memorial_Museu...
- bjourne 11y ago
  > 3) No active US President has ever visited Hiroshima or the museum there dedicated to the atomic bombings; Carter visited after he was no longer president. To add to that, Japanese leaders aren't so keen on visiting the Pearl Harbor site either. Though their emperor has now spent a visit there: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/4918516/Japanese-emperor-to-visit-Pearl-Harbor-for-first-time-since-war.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/4918516... Neither country has come up with a formal apology.
  - njharman 11y ago
    I don't think apology is warranted. You apologize for atrocities and war-crimes, not for "trying to win".
    - hasenj 11y ago
      I heard somewhere that Obama wanted to do an apology for Hiroshima, but the Japanese government advised him not to.
  - kiiski 11y ago
    Considering all the bad things Japan did during their wars, it seems strange that you would bring up Pearl Harbor as an equivalent of Hiroshima. Pearl Harbor was a major military target and almost all casualties there were military (only ~100 civilians). All in all, the attack seems like a legitimate military action in every other way, but for the fact there wasn't a formal declaration of war first (at least as far as I know; I haven't studied the pacific war that much).
ramgorur 11y ago
I have seen a lot of WW-II movies with almost all sorts of stories/plots, but can't find anything on atomic bombing, does anyone know why ?
- PhantomGremlin 11y ago
  I've seen a number of documentaries about it. Are you asking for a Hollywood movie? I wouldn't want that. When the 2001 film Pearl Harbor came out, one of the quips was something like "World War II disrupts a love triangle". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_Harbor_%28film%29#Reception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_Harbor_%28film%29#Recept...
- jleyank 11y ago
  Fat Man and Little Boy. Can't remember that much, and a very quick glance at Wikipedia suggests a personality piece rather than a documentary.
- twoodfin 11y ago
  There really is a great movie waiting to be made about the Manhattan Project and its ultimate "success". In the meantime, Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb[1] is both epic and quite readable. [1] http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16884.The_Making_of_the_Atomic_Bomb http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16884.The_Making_of_the_A...
- yareally 11y ago
  The BBC Oppenheimer miniseries is probably the best I've watched on it, though it's not just about the atomic bomb in WW2. I've also seen the "Fat Man and Little Boy" film mentioned by another poster. The later was ok, but it's sort of fictionalized and the Oppenheimer series covers the same events far more accurately and at much greater length. BBC also had a documentary series on nuclear weapons and espionage that was pretty good. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppenheimer_(miniseries) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppenheimer_(miniseries) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Secrets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Secrets
Munksgaard 11y ago
I was slightly curious that Von Neumann appeared at this meeting. The Wikipedia page about him has some more information[0]. Most notably, it states that: Von Neumann oversaw computations related to the expected size of the bomb blasts, estimated death tolls, and the distance above the ground at which the bombs should be detonated for optimum shock wave propagation and thus maximum effect. The cultural capital Kyoto, which had been spared the firebombing inflicted upon militarily significant target cities like Tokyo in World War II, was von Neumann's first choice, a selection seconded by Manhattan Project leader General Leslie Groves. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Nuclear_weapons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Nuclear_weapo...
- jamespitts 11y ago
  Turing's Cathedral covers von Neumann's wartime work, the IAS machine and the purpose for which it was built, and many other aspects of his life. http://www.amazon.com/Turings-Cathedral-Origins-Digital-Universe/dp/1400075998/ref=sr_1_1 http://www.amazon.com/Turings-Cathedral-Origins-Digital-Univ...?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
protomyth 11y ago
Under section 5. Gadget Jettisoning and Landing: "This operation will inevitably involve some risks to the base and to the other aircraft parked on the field." That has to be one of the most true statements ever to be written.
- tajen 11y ago
  Yeah, no kidding. On the other hand, the story of the plane is quite funny in terms of details (see wikipedia). The second gas tank couldn't be refilled, and the armed bomb couldn't be moved to another plane, so they took off with a half functionnng device. As famous, the winds drew the smokes over the first target, so they diverted to another one, and a third one, Nagasaki. They actually had to save gas while flying. They had to land on another military stripe on an island. For some reason (I think the stripe was too short because they were on the wrong landing place, because of the fuel, because of the disabled tank) they didn't have enough lengh to land, so the pilots had to stand straight on the brakes. Quite circomvoluted for the most important bomb in the XXth century.
dekhn 11y ago
This decision is covered in extensive detail in Making of the Atomic Bomb. It was deliberated extensively, in a time before governments had lawyers at every target committee. One of the generals, LeMay, said there was no way to avoid bombing civilians because the Japanese had "deintegrated" their industry (his comment was that after bombing a civilian area, they noticed every house had a drill press still standing after everything else burnt down). Nagasaki, by the way, was a last-minute addition due to weather at the planned target for the second bomb.
scrumper 11y ago
Why would salt water ingress cause a nuclear reaction in Little Man? Also it seems like this was the scariest of the two 'gadgets' to fly with; those emergency procedures (removing gunpowder!) seem like they probably wouldn't have much chance of success in a real flight emergency.
todd8 11y ago
My dad, who is still alive, was an officer on Okinawa during WWII. He still has interesting recollections about the war there and the end of the war. They were all issued gas masks right after the the atom bomb was dropped because of the fear of escalation to chemical weapons. After hostilities ceased, he had an opportunity to fly over and see Hiroshima with a handful of other Marines. As I get older I realize that I don't remember everything he told me about that time very well anymore. A friend suggested that I hire someone to go visit with him every week and and help him record his still quite vivid memories: the great depression, growing up in the dust bowl, traveling around the country with hobos on trains before the war, WWII, the civil rights movement, and more.

54 points by Coxa 11y ago

dalke 11y ago

Quite tangential from the content - at the start is "Its transcription and formatting as an e-text, however, is copyright 1995-1998" I thought that Feist v. Rural Telephone (1991) established that 'sweat of the brow doctrine' was not grounds for copyright. Should I assume that the person who claimed copyright here was incorrect in making the claim?

tzs 11y ago
Feist established that there has to be creativity in something for it to be copyrightable. The level of creativity required is not very high. The Court said: To be sure, the requisite level of creativity is extremely low; even a slight amount will suffice. The vast majority of works make the grade quite easily, as they possess some creative spark, "no matter how crude, humble or obvious" it might be. They also use the phrase "modicum of creativity" to describe the necessary creative level. Formatting can have sufficient creativity to qualify for copyright. Such copyright will only cover the formatting, not the underlying text. If someone were to take just the text, and format it themselves (by hand or by script), that should be OK. Taking his exact e-text formatting? I don't know. Without comparing the originals to his version, I have no idea if his formatting was obvious and mechanical, or if it required creativity.
- dalke 11y ago
  Well that was pleasantly easy to find - a copy of the original is at http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/6.pdf http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/6.pdf . I personally don't think there's creativity in this expression. If there is, then the flip side is that I change the format even slightly then it's also creative, and the underlying facts are not covered under copyright.

tajen 11y ago

No mention of Nagasaki.

BrianEatWorld 11y ago
I noticed the same thing. According to Wikipedia: On May 30, Stimson asked Groves to remove Kyoto from the target list, but Groves pointed to its military and industrial significance.[73] Stimson then approached President Harry S. Truman about the matter. Truman agreed with Stimson, and Kyoto was temporarily removed from the target list.[74] Groves attempted to restore Kyoto to the target list in July, but Stimson remained adamant.[75][76] On July 25, Nagasaki was put on the target list in place of Kyoto.[76] Orders for the attack were issued to General Carl Spaatz on July 25 under the signature of General Thomas T. Handy, the acting Chief of Staff, since Marshall was at the Potsdam Conference with Truman.[77] That day, Truman noted in his diary that: "This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital [Kyoto] or the new [Tokyo]. He and I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one.[78]" Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#Choice_of_targets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_a...
- hasenj 11y ago
  > This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. I find this very ironic ..
- asanagi 11y ago
  Nuking Kyoto would have been an irredeemable loss to humanity; anyone who has ever been there would surely understand this. The city is concentrated with ancient wonders and cultural vibrance of the highest order. Not to mention that the indelible injury to the national psychology of Japan would have been magnitudes greater. It's astounding to me that the decision to destroy it would come down to just a few men on a war council. Thank God that Stimson prevailed.

calibraxis 11y ago

> It was agreed that psychological factors in the target selection were of great importance. Two aspects of this are (1) obtaining the greatest psychological effect against Japan and (2) making the initial use sufficiently spectacular for the importance of the weapon to be internationally recognized when publicity on it is released. Nice when people are honest enough about their own terrorism. (Like "shock and awe".)

hasenj 11y ago
Your comment does not deserve a down vote.
- qmalxp 11y ago
  Agreed, though I would genuinely like to see a rebuttal.
  - yareally 11y ago
    Wouldn't be too hard to rebut. Just do some skimming over the Second Sino-Japanese War and Japanese actions/attitudes/writings towards the Chinese at the time. If one's time is short, just look up Japan's infamous Unit 731, who were involved in Japan's own "shock and awe" through providing the means (and gruesome testing) of carrying out Japan's chemical and biological warfare. All countries do awful things during war, just some more deliberate and unethical than others. As William Tecumseh Sherman once said, "War is Hell."
rhino369 11y ago
I think terror bombing was unquestionably terrorism but I'd disagree about shock and awe. That is just trying to break the enemy armed forces moral with quick overwhelming strength. The cavalry charge of the modern war.
- calibraxis 11y ago
  We can read about the "shock and awe" doctrine, because such concepts are carefully developed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_and_awe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_and_awe): "Shutting the country down would entail both the physical destruction of appropriate infrastructure and the shutdown and control of the flow of all vital information and associated commerce so rapidly as to achieve a level of national shock akin to the effect that dropping nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had on the Japanese. " "The second example is 'Hiroshima and Nagasaki' noted earlier. The intent here is to impose a regime of Shock and Awe through delivery of instant, nearly incomprehensible levels of massive destruction directed at influencing society writ large, meaning its leadership and public, rather than targeting directly against military or strategic objectives even with relatively few numbers or systems. The employment of this capability against society and its values, called 'counter-value' in the nuclear deterrent jargon, is massively destructive strikes directly at the public will of the adversary to resist and, ideally or theoretically, would instantly or quickly incapacitate that will over the space of a few hours or days." (Disclaimer: I read those quotes in the original context, to guard against taking them out of context. But I haven't read the whole thing.)

evo_9 11y ago

I went to Hiroshima about 15 years ago with my ex-wife when we toured Japan (she is Japanese). I was struck by a few details I'd never heard before growing up in the US: 1) The center of the detonation was a hospital. It's unlikely they tried to hit the hospital, but the fact remains it was 'ground zero'. 2) A good portion of the hospital's metal frame was still standing and was a focal point of a monument; grass was growing and generally speaking it didn't match up with what I expected to see as 'ground zero' (aka a crater, nothing growing, nothing standing). 3) No active US President has ever visited Hiroshima or the museum there dedicated to the atomic bombings; Carter visited after he was no longer president. If you have a chance to visit Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum it's well worth a visit. Quite humbling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima_Peace_Memorial_Museum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima_Peace_Memorial_Museu...

bjourne 11y ago
> 3) No active US President has ever visited Hiroshima or the museum there dedicated to the atomic bombings; Carter visited after he was no longer president. To add to that, Japanese leaders aren't so keen on visiting the Pearl Harbor site either. Though their emperor has now spent a visit there: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/4918516/Japanese-emperor-to-visit-Pearl-Harbor-for-first-time-since-war.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/4918516... Neither country has come up with a formal apology.
- njharman 11y ago
  I don't think apology is warranted. You apologize for atrocities and war-crimes, not for "trying to win".
  - hasenj 11y ago
    I heard somewhere that Obama wanted to do an apology for Hiroshima, but the Japanese government advised him not to.
- kiiski 11y ago
  Considering all the bad things Japan did during their wars, it seems strange that you would bring up Pearl Harbor as an equivalent of Hiroshima. Pearl Harbor was a major military target and almost all casualties there were military (only ~100 civilians). All in all, the attack seems like a legitimate military action in every other way, but for the fact there wasn't a formal declaration of war first (at least as far as I know; I haven't studied the pacific war that much).

ramgorur 11y ago

I have seen a lot of WW-II movies with almost all sorts of stories/plots, but can't find anything on atomic bombing, does anyone know why ?

PhantomGremlin 11y ago
I've seen a number of documentaries about it. Are you asking for a Hollywood movie? I wouldn't want that. When the 2001 film Pearl Harbor came out, one of the quips was something like "World War II disrupts a love triangle". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_Harbor_%28film%29#Reception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_Harbor_%28film%29#Recept...
jleyank 11y ago
Fat Man and Little Boy. Can't remember that much, and a very quick glance at Wikipedia suggests a personality piece rather than a documentary.
twoodfin 11y ago
There really is a great movie waiting to be made about the Manhattan Project and its ultimate "success". In the meantime, Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb[1] is both epic and quite readable. [1] http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16884.The_Making_of_the_Atomic_Bomb http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16884.The_Making_of_the_A...
yareally 11y ago
The BBC Oppenheimer miniseries is probably the best I've watched on it, though it's not just about the atomic bomb in WW2. I've also seen the "Fat Man and Little Boy" film mentioned by another poster. The later was ok, but it's sort of fictionalized and the Oppenheimer series covers the same events far more accurately and at much greater length. BBC also had a documentary series on nuclear weapons and espionage that was pretty good. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppenheimer_(miniseries) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppenheimer_(miniseries) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Secrets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Secrets

Munksgaard 11y ago

I was slightly curious that Von Neumann appeared at this meeting. The Wikipedia page about him has some more information[0]. Most notably, it states that: Von Neumann oversaw computations related to the expected size of the bomb blasts, estimated death tolls, and the distance above the ground at which the bombs should be detonated for optimum shock wave propagation and thus maximum effect. The cultural capital Kyoto, which had been spared the firebombing inflicted upon militarily significant target cities like Tokyo in World War II, was von Neumann's first choice, a selection seconded by Manhattan Project leader General Leslie Groves. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Nuclear_weapons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Nuclear_weapo...

jamespitts 11y ago
Turing's Cathedral covers von Neumann's wartime work, the IAS machine and the purpose for which it was built, and many other aspects of his life. http://www.amazon.com/Turings-Cathedral-Origins-Digital-Universe/dp/1400075998/ref=sr_1_1 http://www.amazon.com/Turings-Cathedral-Origins-Digital-Univ...?
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

protomyth 11y ago

Under section 5. Gadget Jettisoning and Landing: "This operation will inevitably involve some risks to the base and to the other aircraft parked on the field." That has to be one of the most true statements ever to be written.

tajen 11y ago
Yeah, no kidding. On the other hand, the story of the plane is quite funny in terms of details (see wikipedia). The second gas tank couldn't be refilled, and the armed bomb couldn't be moved to another plane, so they took off with a half functionnng device. As famous, the winds drew the smokes over the first target, so they diverted to another one, and a third one, Nagasaki. They actually had to save gas while flying. They had to land on another military stripe on an island. For some reason (I think the stripe was too short because they were on the wrong landing place, because of the fuel, because of the disabled tank) they didn't have enough lengh to land, so the pilots had to stand straight on the brakes. Quite circomvoluted for the most important bomb in the XXth century.

dekhn 11y ago

This decision is covered in extensive detail in Making of the Atomic Bomb. It was deliberated extensively, in a time before governments had lawyers at every target committee. One of the generals, LeMay, said there was no way to avoid bombing civilians because the Japanese had "deintegrated" their industry (his comment was that after bombing a civilian area, they noticed every house had a drill press still standing after everything else burnt down). Nagasaki, by the way, was a last-minute addition due to weather at the planned target for the second bomb.

scrumper 11y ago

Why would salt water ingress cause a nuclear reaction in Little Man? Also it seems like this was the scariest of the two 'gadgets' to fly with; those emergency procedures (removing gunpowder!) seem like they probably wouldn't have much chance of success in a real flight emergency.

todd8 11y ago

My dad, who is still alive, was an officer on Okinawa during WWII. He still has interesting recollections about the war there and the end of the war. They were all issued gas masks right after the the atom bomb was dropped because of the fear of escalation to chemical weapons. After hostilities ceased, he had an opportunity to fly over and see Hiroshima with a handful of other Marines. As I get older I realize that I don't remember everything he told me about that time very well anymore. A friend suggested that I hire someone to go visit with him every week and and help him record his still quite vivid memories: the great depression, growing up in the dust bowl, traveling around the country with hobos on trains before the war, WWII, the civil rights movement, and more.