Late Veteran's Day Post

Commentary By Ron Beasley

I am a Vietnam era veteran but my service consisted of two and a half years on the frontier of freedom in downtown Munich Germany so don't think about me.  I have discussed my father before, a WWII veteran who served in Burma/India and won a bronze star.  But today I would like to talk about my mothers cousin, Richard H. Nelson.  We hear about what the atrocities of war do to the soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq.  Dick Nelson, who I new but didn't know while I was growing up was the radio operator on the Enola Gay when it dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.  I won't get into the right or wrong of Hiroshima here although I do think that thousands of Japanese died in Nagasaki to send a message to Stalin.  Richard H. Nelson and other members of the crew of the Enola Gray spent the rest of their lives trying to justify what they had done.

When I was growing up Dick Nelson used to visit us often.  He was a salesman who was often in Portland and always paid us a visit.  He was a good man who chain smoked and drank hard.  It would be easy to blame the drinking on his WWII experience but if truth be known he came from a long line of hard drinking Swedes most of whom had never been in the military.  But the crew of the Enola Gray got together once a year to discuss how they had won the war.  Yes, we know now that the war was just about over anyway but there are Japanese who claim that Hiroshima actually save Japanese lives.  

But Dick Nelson spent most of his life trying to justify an incredible loss of life.  The chain smoking and hard drinking eventually killed him. 

Dick Nelson has an autobiography, 43 Seconds To Hiroshima.  You won't find any regrets but in my mind Richard H. Nelson remains one of the good people.

Note:  During my career as a manufacturing engineer I spent a great deal of time in Japan and spent a lot of time with Japanese who like me were born after WWII.  The didn't want to talk about Hiroshima.