The article on the opinion page Marietta Times Aug. 6, 2025, (Truman made the right decision to drop the bomb), brought back memories to me. As a young 18-year-old man in the U.S. Navy in the early spring of 1959, I boarded a U.S. Navy ship in Long Beach, Calif., that would take me to Sasebo, Japan. From there, I would travel to a U.S. airbase in Japan and fly to Okinawa to join my Seabee battalion.

As best as I can remember, the trip across the ocean to Japan took two weeks or more. I was only in Sasebo for a couple of days when I was given orders and a ticket to board a train that would take me to an airbase somewhere around Yokohama.

As we stopped at every small town, Japanese by the hundreds boarded the train, some carrying crates of chickens and other animals. One man had a small pig under each arm. All seats were filled and many were standing. I was the only American on the train.

Suddenly the train slowed to a crawl as the Japanese rushed to look out the windows. As I looked, I knew immediately that it was Hiroshima. I saw the dome-like structure, the only thing that remained that wasn’t obliterated by the atom bomb.

The ground was bare and cracked. Most of the Japanese ignored me, but a few gave me unfriendly looks. To say that I was uncomfortable was an understatement. However, I didn’t feel guilty or ashamed. For you see, less than two weeks before that the ship that I was on stopped at Pearl Harbor and I saw for the first time the Arizona under water with the American flag flying over it, as well as other ships along the shoreline partially sunk.

All of this devastation as a result of a sneak attack on America by the Japanese that resulted in more than 2,000 of our military being killed and many more wounded. So in less than two weeks’ time I saw where the bombing began that started the war as well as where the bomb was dropped that ended it.

Finally, when the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, my sister, brother and I was living with our mother in Beavertown, Ohio.

Our father was in the U.S. Army and was training for the invasion of Japan. That invasion was estimated to result in hundreds of thousands of American casualties as well as millions of Japanese deaths.

Thanks to Harry S. Truman’s decision to drop the atom bomb on Japan and bring a quick end to the war, three kids from Beavertown, Ohio, grew up with a father — a loving father that we had for the next 58 years.

Gary Cochran

New Matamoras