"And I'd have condemned the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with all the rhetorical force at my disposal."

I am holding in my hand a crude bracelet made of woven solder. The material came from a roll of solder that went into the Hiroshima bomb. I used to have a copper thimble that was also made from stock that went into the bomb, but it is lost. An employee of my grandfather was on the project but I don't know why she gave them to me.

I've seen films of survivors being treated in Japanese clinics. There is one utterly horrifying memory of a young boy whose lips are gone, along with about an inch of flesh around them. He was not blind. It's hard to argue with horror like that.

But I must try. Japan would not have surrendered without the bombs, and would have put ever younger children into uniform for two more years until they were utterly destroyed. I would hate to be the one to make that decision but the bombs ended the war before tens or hundreds of thousands of children would have died.

War imposes grim choices. But that boy's burned-away face haunts me.