A Memento from the Truman Library

I am back in my home town, Kansas City, this weekend and I took my parents to see the Truman Library in nearby Independence, Missouri. We had not been to the library in many many years, and I highly recommend it to anyone who has not visited.

By the standards of more recent Presidential behemoths, the Truman Library is modest and unpretentious, much like the man himself. Perhaps equally important, the library doesn't present a whitewash of Truman's presidency either, offering both sides of the argument about what was one of the most fateful decisions of his presidency, which occurred sixty years ago this week, the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan.

One of the most moving pieces in the library was also one of the smallest. It was a Purple Heart awarded to a serviceman who had been killed in Korea. The soldier's parents blamed Truman for their son's death; they sent him back the medal with a note, saying in effect: he can have no use for this medal because he is dead due to your policies, so we are sending it back to you. The medal, and the note, were discovered in Truman's desk at the library after he died. Apparently he had kept it close to him all those years as a reminder of the human cost of the decisions he had made.

It is an act that I would commend to all Presidents, past, present, and future.