Today marks the 65th anniversary of the second atomic bomb used against Japan at the end of World War II. Last week, Tom interviewed a Marine Corps veteran who recalled what the city of Nagasaki was like less than two weeks after the explosion, and wrote up the interview for the North County Times.

“I could stand on top of the mountain, and look down the long slope to the ocean, east,” he remembered. “Out in the ocean was this archipelago of little islands, guns on every one of them. Had we invaded, we would have had to go through those guns. I was out there at 5 in the morning, and I would watch the sun come up. It was a beautiful thing, it would reflect (through) the archipelago, it would hit the mountain itself and the sun would come up. I used to watch that every morning.”

CARLSBAD: Veteran recalls Nagasaki two weeks after bombing

When James Henkel tells the story of the four months he spent in one of the only two cities ever to suffer an atomic blast, he starts right where any good screenwriter would —- in the bow of a Higgins landing craft.

That’s where, on or around Aug. 20, 1945, Henkel rode across Nagasaki Bay toward the Japanese mainland and a city shattered by a strange new kind of weapon.

“As soon as we got to shore, they dropped the ramp, and I ran off with my rifle, ready to shoot,” Henkel, 86, recalled during an interview this week. “There was a Japanese cop, standing there, saluting me. Saluting me so hard I thought his arm was going to break. (He was) afraid I was going to shoot him. Had he resisted or tried to get the drop on me, I’d have shot him. But he didn’t have any weapon.”

Henkel said he ran past the petrified police officer and into the most interesting four months of his life.

Read the rest at www.nctimes.com.

And here is a portrait of Henkel that the Times decided not to use. As you can see, a true Marine.