A passage that moved me and that I really enjoyed is, “Within twelve minutes the other two B-29′s had joined him. At 6:07 the three bombers dipped their wings in a departing salute to Mike, Harlon, Franklin, and the thousands of other boys buried below. The pilot was one of thousands who flew to Japan unimpeded because the Marines had conquered the sulfur island. But there was something different about his flight. Secured in his jacket were twelve cyanide tablets: one for each crew member, in case they were shot down. They were on a mission whose secrets were too vital to be divulged under Japanese torture. The pilot’s name was Paul Tibbets. His plane was the Enola Gay. His payload was a single weapon nicknamed ‘Little Boy.’ His target was Hiroshima.”
    The first thing that I noticed about this passage was that the pilot and his crew were willing to die for this mission. They might have had to die had the Marines not been so courageous and captured the sulfur island for the United States. As the passage pointed out, Paul Tibbets was not the only pilot that benefited from the capture ofIwo Jima . While I was reading this passage I thought about how many Marines were killed and the sacrifice that it took to make sure that America won the war. I remembered that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was what ended the war because the Japanese were devastated and extremely intimidated by the United States. I realized that the mission to Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have been made much more difficult, if not impossible, for the pilots. I found it extremely patriotic that the pilot was able to carry lethal medicine just in case him and his crew were captured.
    I really enjoyed this passage because it claims victory for the United States. It tells a little bit about the voyage that the planes made when they were carrying their nuclear bombs. This passage also made me come into the realization of how many people died forIwo Jima and the war. I thought the nickname for the bomb was interesting, so I went online to find out a little more information on the “Little boy.” I found out that the “Little Boy” was the first atomic bomb used as a weapon. I also found out that the bomb of Nagasaki was nicknamed the “Fat Man.” They called it the “Little Boy” because it was relatively small compared to the amount of energy that it had the ability to create. It also created many different kinds of radiation, which had many devastating effects on the survivors of the bombings.