Daily Herald opinion: The legacy of John Hersey: We in the suburbs should be proud that one of our schools carries ‘Hiroshima’ author’s name

American author and Time Magazine war correspondent John Hersey is shown driving a U.S. Army jeep at an unknown location during World War II, in 1944. An Arlington Heights school bears his name. AP File

Two consequential 80-year anniversaries passed last week. History's first dropping of an atomic bomb occurred over Hiroshima on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945. The subsequent dropping of another took place three days later over Nagasaki on the evening of Aug. 9, 1945, the last time humanity endured the use of a nuclear weapon in war.

The magnitude of those two events is so great that mentioning the names of the cities is a sufficient identifier without adding the country of their locations.

Those two unprecedented attacks achieved their important short-term objectives to end World War II w