A family friend issued a writing challenge to Ethan. Now they take turns picking topics, and each one writes an essay. The friend, a former teacher, grades Ethan's essays.
The current question is whether President Truman was justified in using nuclear weapons against Japan in World War II.
Ethan's essay is here.
The day after Ethan posted it, he and I went to visit my mother in Atlanta. Talking about family history, mom mentioned that her father, born in 1914, had been exempted from the draft during World War II because he had a family. By the summer of 1945 that had changed. With the military planning an invasion of Japan, grandpa was expecting to be drafted and go off to war. But the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki altered the course of events.
So the topic has unexpected immediacy for me.
My granddaddy was in the Pacific Theater as a Marine, and if the U.S. had to invade Japan... yeah, I might not be here.
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