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Bound by the bomb

'An invasion was going to be bloody'

Marshall Seawell was a 17-year-old, gung-ho Marine in the spring and summer of 1945.

Plans were afoot to launch 4.5 million Allied troops at Japan's mainland, and the young 200-pound leatherneck wanted to be part of that blitzkrieg.

"I was unquestionably headed for the invasion of Japan," said Marshall, a longtime Tri-Citian who legally dropped his surname in 1975.

Marshall graduated from high school at 15 and was a sophomore at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas, when doing his part for the war effort became more important than his pre-med studies.

He signed up for a four-year hitch on Feb. 19, 1945, the same day Marines landed on Iwo Jima. It was a time of great uncertainty.

Young Marines like Marshall heard about the bloody combat on Iwo Jima and flinched.

Their resolve was tested again in April, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt died at 63 of a cerebral hemorrhage. Many wondered if his vice president, Harry Truman, could lead the country out of war.

And the Marines cried two months later, when another 15,000 Americans died at Okinawa, the final stepping stone on the way to Japan.

"We knew an invasion was going to be bloody, and we knew we were going to be in it. Okinawa had opened the door for the invasion."

By July, Marshall's unit was making 40-mile forced marches through North Carolina swamps to prepare.

"What we really expected was a slaughter - ours."

But American scientists and Hanford workers intervened.

"Using the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a horrible thing to have to do," Marshall said.

"But considering the uncertainty about whether or not the two types of bombs would really work, the uncertainty of whether or not a harmless demonstration would have convinced the Japanese to surrender and the fact that we had only two bombs, I'm convinced that President Truman took the only action that would almost certainly end the war in the shortest time.

"I believe that his action saved many more lives than it cost, including most probably saving my own life."

In later years, Marshall would oppose the Vietnam War and campaign for the U.S. Congress in 1968 and for U.S. Senate in 1992 and 1994 as an avowed dove.

"The horrors of what I learned during World War II and my belief that Vietnam was wrong have led me for many years to try to find a way to bring peace to the world without continuing to have wars."

Even so, he explained, "I don't agonize over what we did at the end of World War II. It was then the only thing to do. The fighting had to end."