Every so often someone in Buzzy’s Country Store will notice the following photo tacked to one of the top shelves behind the counter.
They will correctly ask me “Is that a B-29?” I will confirm that it is and go on to explain how my Dad was a pilot in the Air Force and this was a photo of a B-29 that he flew. From there the conversation will invariably jump to another, much more famous B-29 the Enola Gay.
I bring this up because today in 1945 Hiroshima, Japan was on the receiving end of an atomic bomb dropped from a B-29 plane named after the pilot’s mother Enola Gay Tibbets (click here.)
Father Thomas Merton wrote “The Original Child Bomb” a very thorough accounting of the events leading up to and the decision to pursue this action (click here and scroll down to read it.) (Note in Merton’s comments he cites Navy Admiral Leahy as trying to dissuade President Truman and the powers-that-be not to drop the bomb. This would be the Admiral whose name was chosen for the entry street into my Piney Point Neighborhood where all the streets are named after Admirals: Leahy, Bloch, Furlong, Larimer and Stark.)
The following is an excerpt from Merton’s August 6th comments:
It brings to mind the Robert E. Lee quote “It is well that war is so awful, or we should grow fond of it” (click here.)
Before Randy started doing movie soundtrack tunes that won Academy Awards, he was more noted for his satiric and sometimes controversial tunes such as Short People, Rednecks, I Love LA etc. Here he talks about dropping the big one because “they hate us anyhow.” You know it’s good satire when folks take it seriously. Then again, maybe Randy was being serious.