Here are two letters from my Navy Letters book, the only two that mention the Atomic Bomb. I was of course in boot camp at the time. The relevant passages are in bold.

Aug. 10, 1945

Good evening friends!

   Yesterday I received your brush which will receive its trial run in about ½ an hour plus those chocolates which are already successfully consumed: They were good. This morning, father’s letter got here, & this afternoon, Junior’s with the incinerator jokes. 

   News isn’t unusual from here. We had two more shots without any bother, some more drill & work. I missed road work this morning (I was so sad) since I stood relief guard from 0900 to 1030. A worthwhile exchange.

   Next week we have service week – I’ll get a fairly easy job in the barracks (due to the choir). 

   No one, however, knows when we’ll be thru here until about a week before. Peace

rumors & everything else has very little effect on it. The war will be over within weeks anyway due to atomic bombs, Russia and me!

   I really have trouble writing anything interesting, so I might as well quit now. OK?, OK!

                                    Solong

                                                      Rudy

Aug. 15, 1945

Hello, –

   They gave you a nice birthday present yesterday, Mutts! While I’m not jubilant (there is too much to be done still and the destruction of the atomic bomb is too infinite) the war is over. This morning there will be services & sure that tonight, Jackson Heights services will be held. Last night when the news came, one thousand of us were rehearsing for tonight’s event. We’re observing a Sunday schedule today, but what will happen to us – we do not know. My guess though, is everything will go according to schedule – for a while anyway.

   I just came back from services which—in one word—weren’t. Something got mixed up and there were no Jewish services at all. Even in the efficient Navy . . .

   Tonite that big show is going on (I doubt whether they’ll broadcast it.) Moving that huge volume of singers often resulted in chaos – especially when they wanted us to march in formation. Baritones & Bases – AttenTION! etc. etc. We’ll see how it comes out. Though I do have an inkling that it sounds good – being in the midst of Baritones I can’t hear the whole business.

   Now – our being here has lost the quarter part of its purpose though I’m not even sure what I want (I’ve got nothing to say anyway – so it doesn’t make much difference).

   Mail from you has been getting rather thin – so let’s hear what’s going on in N.Y. (Times Square must be a mad place now).

                                    Solong

                                                      Rudy

   We didn’t know any more than that the bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and that the damage was devastating and that Japan would now surely have to surrender, as they did. I don’t recall any additional discussion among us eighteen-year olds.  For me, the talk came much later, in college, where I was on the fringe of those who regretted the existence of the bomb; Edward Teller was the villain du jour. It was not until much later that I came across the persuasive arguments about World War II  by Paul Fussell, a professor of literature and writer who had served in that war. He points out vividly that the Japanese would not have surrendered in the face of superior forces, but would have fought to the death for their emperor. The cost of American and allied lives in the planned invasion of Japan would have greatly exceeded that of the victims of the two atomic bombs. See his “Thank God for the Atom Bomb,” The New Republic, August 1981).

"And not just a staggering number of Americans would have been killed in the invasion. Thousands of British assault troops would have been destroyed too, the anticipated casualties from the almost 200,000 men in the six divisions (the same number used to invade Normandy) assigned to invade the Malay Peninsula on September 9. Aimed at the reconquest of Singapore, this operation was expected to last until about March 1946—that is, seven more months of infantry fighting. 'But for the atomic bombs,' a British observer intimate with the Japanese defenses notes, 'I don’t think we would have stood a cat in hell’s chance. We would have been murdered in the biggest massacre of the war. They would have annihilated the lot of us.'" (p.5).

  

   We have been fortunate—given the turbulent state of the globe—I’m inclined to say “lucky”—that those Japanese atomic bomb explosions have been the only ones, other than of (more or less) harmless tests. But such diplomacy as the ongoing negotiations with Iran notwithstanding, in time, ever more countries will have access to The Bomb and given that large parts of the world are still governed in ways that stuffy people like me would consider irresponsible, I rate the likelihood of an additional malicious use of an atomic bomb to be well above 50%.  While such aggression would be suicidal—retaliation would be swift and devastating—flamboyant suicides are nowhere nearly as rare as one would hope.

    Enough lugubrious speculation.

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To get the ebook, A Sailor Writes Home from His Time in the U.S. Navy: Letters of 1945-1946, Aftermath of World War II, go to http://www.amazon.com/Rudolph-H.-Weingartner/e/B001H6NSB4 and click on the book.