On August 6, 1945, the United States became the first — and so far, only — nation to use a nuclear weapon in war. That was the day the Enola Gay dropped a bomb codenamed “Little Boy” that decimated the city of Hiroshima, Japan.
But Hiroshima didn’t have to happen.
And in 1991, I met a man who tried to prevent it.
His name was Martin Quigley. In World War Two he worked for the Office of Strategic Services, or OSS — the forerunner tp the CIA.
Quigley told me that in finding and recruitingv just the right person to get a message to Tokyo, he had a critical choice to make:
So Martin Quigley got secret messsages through his contact to the Japanesee foreign ministry, in the form of two diplomatic cables.
In any case, the communication continued — and Martin Quigley put his mark on history:
Martin Quigley died in 2011 at age 93.