Memorial Day is more than just a day off from work. It's a day to honor veterans who died protecting the U.S. Here are just a few of the many memorials you can visit to commemorate these brave men and women.


Salon columnist Camille Paglia, answering a letter from a reader, explained that her father and his Army unit, which was slated for an invasion of Japan, were “spared from certain decimation by the two atomic bombs and Japan’s surrender.’’

Hundreds of thousands were spared because of President Truman’s order to attack Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. My uncle, Maj. Tom Ferebee, was the bombardier aboard the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the first atomic bomb and ushered in the nuclear age.

As President Obama visited Hiroshima on Friday, I recall my uncle’s personal reflections. As the bombardier, peering through his Norden bombsight, he was the last man to see Hiroshima in any detail before it was leveled, making his perspective on the event somewhat unique.

Though he is distinguished in his hometown of Mocksville, N.C., he was occasionally accused of having blood on his hands. He took pride in the critical job he performed in bringing the war to an end. Four days after that bomb destroyed Hiroshima, Japan offered its surrender. Maj. Ferebee, 26, knew what that meant. For months before the bombing, the War Department had been preparing for an invasion of Japan, the planning for which included casualty figures.


A study for the office of War Secretary Henry Stimson put the figure at 400,000 to 800,000 dead GIs, with Japanese fatalities reckoned between 5 million to 10 million military personnel and civilians. In addition to combat casualties, the more than 27,000 American POWs held by Japan were subject to immediate execution should the U.S. invade.

The nuclear attack on Hiroshima was terrible. All warfare is. The power unleashed by the splitting of the atom was monumental. But tragic as the bombing of Hiroshima was, it was also necessary. The alternative to Hiroshima would have been one of the bloodiest, if not the bloodiest, slaughters in human history. These facts were not far from my uncle’s mind that Aug. 6, and they were near the surface of his consciousness in all the years after.

During the 71 years since Hiroshima, the world has occasionally marched toward the nuclear abyss before wise men decided against the annihilation that attends the use of such weapons. Since then, the United States and other nations have reduced their stockpiles of nuclear warheads. God willing, wise men will continue to prevail.

These are the lessons the president should carry with him to Hiroshima. No apology is necessary for sparing Japan the unspeakable horror of an invasion. No contrition is needed for an act that preserved hundreds of thousands of lives.


My uncle did.

James Martin served in the Marine Corps and is the founder of the 60 Plus Association, a non-partisan seniors advocacy group.

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