We were waiting for take-out food, and an elderly gentleman in a veteran’s unit cap sat down next to me while his son went for their car. I asked him if he had been in WWII, or Korea. He said WWII, and I said he must be just a bit older than my father, who had been in boot on VE Day, and in an advanced school on VJ Day, and had then served with the Japan Occupation force.

He said that he had been in the Pacific, training for the invasion of the Japanese mainland, in August of 1945, and that the atomic bombs and subsequent Japanese surrender were the best news he had ever gotten. I told him he wasn’t the first person I had heard that from, that everyone I had ever met who had been there agreed with him. He nodded.

I said, “That’s not what they are teaching these days, you know. The newer history books are saying that Japan was already beaten, and that we dropped the bombs to scare the Soviets. He shook his head.

“You will never hear that from anyone who was there,” he said. I said I didn’t imagine that I would.

His son returned, he stood, I stood, I shook his hand, and wished him well.