It's a memoir about Greene's father, who raised his family in Columbus, Ohio. And it's about Paul Tibbets, another Columbus resident, who happens to be "the man who won World War II."
Tibbets was the commander of the 509th Composite Group and the pilot of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
Greene's father, Robert Greene, also served in World War II, holding the rank of major and fighting in Italy.
The book is about Greene's effort to know his late father - to understand his dad's life and the impact the war had on it. His conversations with Tibbets yielded a series of newspaper columns and grew into an ongoing friendship. He had lingering questions he never got to ask his father, so he poses them to Tibbets - things like how today's sexually liberated America squares with the morals and standards his generation professed and what's become of civility and good manners in public.
He also probes Tibbets' feelings about committing what was at the time the single most violent act in the history of mankind and whether incinerating Hiroshima troubles his conscience.
It's a book that deserves a wide audience, especially among those who question the rightness of Harry Truman's decision to use atomic weapons to end the war.
Tibbets' answer, echoed by countless soldiers who would have had to invade Japan, as well as by many Japanese, is that Truman and Tibbets did the right thing.
Tibbets' mission was a factor in the lives of most of the people I know - certainly those who count American soldiers, sailors or airmen among their ancestors.
That includes me. Had there been no war-ending atomic attacks, my first father-in-law, an Army captain in the 144th Field Artillery Group, would almost certainly have been shipped from Europe to the Pacific to participate in the invasion. He wrote to his wife on V-E day that he expected to be ordered to the Pacific soon. Had he been one of the predicted hundreds of thousands of casualties, my first wife would not have been born in 1946. And, while I may have fathered two sons with another woman, they would not be the two fine young men I call my sons today. And my granddaughter, had she been born, would have a different heritage.
Greene writes about a Memorial Day weekend trip he took to Branson, Mo., with Tibbets, his navigator and his bombardier and their wives. One evening, they were guests of a Japanese-born violinist - now an American citizen and country music star (yeah, go figure). The entertainer tells Tibbets he and his family lived near Hiroshima at the time of the attack and afterward fled into the mountains.
He said his father told him that if the war had continued "all would have died;" that his father had said the end of the war spared the lives of men, women and children all over Japan.
And he thanked Tibbets for his role in ending the war.
Tibbets turned 91 in February. At the time of the writing of Greene's book, he was still driving - a Toyota - and enjoyed dining at Bob Evans restaurants.
He still makes occasional public appearances. I had the honor of shaking his hand at a militaria show in Louisville, Ky., a few years ago.
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