Seventy-one years ago some people of my country crunched some numbers and decided to kill some other people in Japan.

First, some American people flew planes over Japanese cities and dropped a lot of relatively small explosive devices on them.

These people of my country killed or wounded something like 800,000 men, women and children.

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Then, 71 years ago last Saturday, some people of my country flew a few planes really high and dropped one relatively large explosive device on one of those cities called Hiroshima.

It exploded directly over a clinic.

These people of my country killed or wounded something like 160,000 men, women and children.

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Then, 71 years ago today, some people of my country flew another few big planes really high and dropped another relatively large explosive device on a city called Nagasaki.

These people of my country killed or wounded something like 80,000 men, women and children.

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That’s over 1 million men, women and children that people of my country killed or wounded with explosive devices dropped from planes in Japan.

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The generation to which the people belong who did those things is sometimes called The Greatest Generation.

There are some people of my country now who shout the slogan “Make America Great Again” and when they do, they think about an earlier time, a time many see as peaceful in this country and prosperous. For a lot of white people of my country, it seems to have been so.

The leaders of my country have never apologized for killing and wounding those hundreds of thousands of people in those Japanese cities.

I ponder greatness today.