In late July of 1945 my mother, my little sister, and I boarded the single passenger car of a small freight train, called the “Doodlebug,” that served the five-contiguous-counties farms in central Texas. My father had been stationed in San Antonio for about two years working in the motor pool of an Army Air Corps airbase. But just a few days earlier my mother was surprised to learn that he was now in Spokane, WA. His bomber squadron had flown up from San Antonio, and we were going up to visit him. That is about all she told us two kids.
I was born before the war, but I had no real memory of my father. He had been in the service for a few years along with six uncles. The train ride to Spokane took three or four long days and nights. We were traveling constantly and the train was jammed with young men in uniform. They were having a great time, going up and down the aisle, playing cards, shooting dice, telling stories and helping Mother look after her two little ones. We changed trains often and it seems that in every situation, as we settled into a car, the young men would arrange two facing seats into a little room-like arrangement for us. I would get sick when we had to stand in line for the dining car so Mother and my sister would go to eat and bring back something for me. Mother would ask one of the young men to watch me, and they did. I had a great time. I got to follow my guardian as he made his rounds. It was great fun. I’ll never forget the energy, the vigor, those young men displayed.—they were alive.
When we got to Spokane my father met us at the station, I did recognize him, but he looked a little different from what I expected. We took a taxi and the streets of Spokane were jammed with soldiers in uniform. On one evening our family got to attend a performance of the Dr. I.Q. radio show. It was a lot of fun. I still remember the scene.
We stayed on the airbase—there were several in the area that had been built to serve the aircraft that were pouring into the west coast as America got ready to invade Japan. There were quite a few families staying on the base, to spend some time with their father. I met several of these soldiers, my heroes, and I met all of my father’s bomber buddies. He was a belly gunner. They would sit around and talk and they talked about flying bombing missions. They knew about suicide fighters from Japan. They were very concerned. Anyhow I got the idea that it would not be long before my father and his bomber buddies would be loaded onto a ship and they would go to an island somewhere in the Pacific close to Japan so they could fly frequent missions.
We finally had to go back to Texas, and it wasn’t too long before I realized that I might not see my father ever again. The train was practically empty and almost no one was in uniform. I realized that all those young men we had ridden with on our way to Spokane were staying on the coast as they prepared to invade Japan. I realized that they might not ever come home. I was jolted and I still am.
At one point along the way home, we had to change trains. As we left the track area and walked into the main depot, we walked into pandemonium. Unrestrained joy was on display everywhere. People were running and jumping, throwing things in the air, laughing, praying, crying, etc. My Mother asked someone what was happening and she learned that the public address announcer had told everybody that a big bomb had been dropped on Japan. Mother told us kids that Poppa might not have to bomb Japan after all.
I don’t remember when the second bomb was dropped, but I remember being at my friend’s sixth birthday party. He and I had grown up together and we were about to start first grade together. All of a sudden the town fire siren blasted. It climbed all the way to the top and did not come down. It just blew and blew and blew. This was the agreed upon signal that the war was over. My friend’s mother told us what it meant and she said that we should all be preparing to go back home. My mother walked in, we did not live very far away, and we started walking back to her mother’s house where we lived during the war. We lived on a farm usually and we had a car, but Mother was not a very good driver and she did not want to be out in the country with two small children. So we went to town. As we were walking back to Grannie’s place, she decided that we should take a little detour and walk the two-block Main Street of our small Texas town. As we turned the corner onto Main Street we walked into pandemonium again—pure joy was in evidence. We saw the same emotional displays that we had seen just a little while earlier on our return trip from Spokane. As we walked down Main Street, we stopped and shared joy with a lot of friends. As we reached the park at the bottom of Main Street, Mother stopped and looked back.
She said, “Son, look back and remember what you see. On ordinary days Main Street would be almost empty except for the merchants. All of the people you see dancing in the streets were not on Main Street when they heard the fire siren. They were at home or at work somewhere else and it didn’t take them long to realize what had happened. They wanted to share in the joy so they all came to town, and here they are.” She gestured up the street.
She said. “Remember this day. This has to be the biggest celebration ever in our town, and it will probably always be.”
I am grateful that my parent’s generation of millions of Americans who grew up suffering the hardships of the Great Depression had the courage to win World War II.
I know that at this time of year a lot of people second guess what happened and think we should not have dropped the bomb. But they are wrong. If we had not dropped the bomb my father and at least a million of other young American men would have done their duty and obliterated Japan anyway. The conventional weapons they would have dropped would have killed just as many Japanese citizens, maybe more, than the bomb, and many American troops would have died. Harry Truman made the right decision when he decided that if we want to value all life equally then when we get into a virtually impossible situation like that he faced in Japan the only thing you can do is take the path that will end the war as soon as possible and minimize the total casualties: Japanese as well as American. That is what happened.
PS: My parents conceived their third child during that visit to Spokane and a fourth came along two years later.