"Everyone
here has been glued to his radio for the past 36 hours; hoping to hear the big
news. It's rumored that Dr. Shaw school
director, has predicted that grades will fall on today's tests. The unsettled
condition hasn't exactly been conducive to study.
"Even
if V-J day does come within the next week; don't expect me home too soon. I suppose that they'll keep us busy studying
for sometime yet. However, it's not
entirely impossible that they might pull us out of school for direct shipment
to Japan."
-- Letter from my father, Boulder, Colo., to his family, Bloomington, Kans., Saturday,
August 11, 1945. On Monday, August 6, a
U.S. bomber dropped a uranium-based atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, killing an
estimated 80,000 people instantly. On
Thursday, August 9, a U.S. bomber dropped a plutonium-based atomic bomb on
Nagasaki, killing an estimated 70,000 people instantly. Tens of thousands more died of radiation in
the months and years that followed. As
my father was writing, Americans were waiting to learn if Japan would
surrender.
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