We are going to do this the way the Republicans do it...

[usaf-vet]

24. A Bomb. A Radioman. A River. And a Father I Almost Never Knew.

During reading this post discussing the moral and strategic arguments surrounding the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It reminded me of a piece of my own family’s story—one that almost erased my existence before it began.

My father served in the U.S. Navy during World War II as a radioman. He didn’t speak German or Japanese, but he was trained to hear the rhythm of Morse code, recognize its meaning, and type it—letter by letter—as it came in. His first deployment? A jungle radio station “20 miles up from the mouth of the Amazon River,” where for 18 months, he intercepted German Morse traffic. His work helped track U-boat movements and likely contributed to the intelligence used in breaking the Enigma code or targeting U-boats, such as U-505.

After the South America assignment, in late 1944, he was sent to Washington State. It was only years later, through my own research, that I discovered the school he attended there was teaching Japanese Morse code. His service record next places him at a radio station in Hawaii. And then—shortly after the atomic bombs were dropped—he was sent home and honorably discharged.

For decades, that’s all we knew.

But in the mid-1990s, long after he had retired and started making trips to visit my sisters and me in Wisconsin, he let something slip during a quiet moment on a boat fishing with my brother-in-law, a former Coast Guard sailor. He told him that he had been scheduled to be deployed to a clandestine radio outpost, similar to the one in the Amazon—this time near Japan—to intercept Japanese communications ahead of the planned invasion.

I wasn’t there to hear him say it. But months later, my brother-in-law repeated the words that still echo in me:
“If your dad had been sent to that radio station, none of you kids would be here.”

And he was probably right. My dad, like many older Pacific vets in 1945, would have been among the first wave—shock troops in a brutal island campaign. Had the bombs not been dropped, the invasion would likely have gone ahead. His orders may well have already been written.

His military record supports this timeline. His training matched what would be needed. His movements aligned with the progression of intelligence prep toward Japan. And a small but telling detail: a section of his file remains sealed, even to this day—denied to me as recently as last year by direct order of the Chief of Naval Operations.

This isn’t a defense or a condemnation of the bomb. But it’s a real story, about a real man, and about six kids who got to exist because fate—and history—took a turn.