Article

2014-08-01 -Land of the Free

How The Last Surviving Member Of The Enola Gay Justified Dropping The World's First Atomic Bomb

Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.

Posted by Uncle Phester 2014-08-01 00:00|| || Front Page|| [8 views ] Top

#1 I was only following orders!

Posted by Jush Gray2994 2014-08-01 00:47|| 2014-08-01 00:47|| Front Page Top

#2 He most likely saved millions of lives - both American and Japanese by helping to end the war 'early'. Including Japanese civilians.
And don't forget that the firebombing of Tokyo took almost as many, if not more, lives.

Posted by CrazyFool 2014-08-01 01:25|| 2014-08-01 01:25|| Front Page Top

#3 Sorry iPads and dup posts...

Fixed.

Posted by CrazyFool 2014-08-01 01:26|| 2014-08-01 01:26|| Front Page Top

#4 Hey, he helped the west win, and that's good enough for me.

Posted by Bright Pebbles 2014-08-01 07:59|| 2014-08-01 07:59|| Front Page Top

#5 All the hand wringers never seem to acknowledge this little work by the Japanese months earlier.

Posted by Procopius2k 2014-08-01 08:13|| 2014-08-01 08:13|| Front Page Top

#6 Any takes on what would have happened with USSR taking part if the war hadn't ended?

IIRC Stalin was on the verge of moving on Japan via China when Hiroshima went boom.

Posted by AlanC 2014-08-01 08:21|| 2014-08-01 08:21|| Front Page Top

#7 Japanese were killing, directly or through starvation two hundred thousand Chinese a month. More than the number of the victims of both A-bombs. Shortening the war by a single month saved more Chinese lives than Japanese have been killed by the A-bombs. I suspect most Chinese think they were not dropped soon enough.

Posted by JFM 2014-08-01 09:03|| 2014-08-01 09:03|| Front Page Top

#8 AlanC. Soviet Union went to war against Japan _after_ and not before Hiroshima. Don't get me wrong: it had taken at least two months to transfer from the Western Front the soldiers and tanks who tore the Japanese Army in Manchuria. But for invading Japan with what ships? With what landing barges?

Posted by JFM 2014-08-01 09:13|| 2014-08-01 09:13|| Front Page Top

#9 I suspect most Chinese think they were not dropped soon enough

I suspect the Chinese think not enough were dropped too.

Posted by Procopius2k 2014-08-01 09:58|| 2014-08-01 09:58|| Front Page Top

#10 Ive said it before. Akira Kurisawa's biography made it clear the people of Japan were waiting for the suicide order rather than be conquered. The bomb saved Japan. Its hard to swallow for some but the bomb was by far the lesser evil.

Posted by rjschwarz 2014-08-01 09:59|| 2014-08-01 09:59|| Front Page Top

#11 It is all about the racist narrative and the imperialism narrative left over from the 60s, my goodness, those guys on the left haven't had an original idea since Hegel died.

Posted by Bill Clinton 2014-08-01 11:10|| 2014-08-01 11:10|| Front Page Top

#12 More to the point, the Japanese had some 200,000 whites and Eurasians interned throughout South East Asia. According to a survivor (she was made a translator by the Japanese), the Japanese were planning to kill all the internees by August 15.

Then came Hiroshima. Then came Nagasaki. Then came the Emperor's announcement on August 15th.

200,000 Western civilians owe their lives to the A-bombs.

Any takes on what would have happened with USSR taking part if the war hadn't ended?

Stalin actually rushed to get in before Japan surrendered. The Russian generals had planned to go to war around 8/28. When Hiroshima when off, Stalin ordered them to go in early. The supplies were not ready, and one wing of the attack ran out of fuel.

Posted by Frozen Al 2014-08-01 11:19|| 2014-08-01 11:19|| Front Page Top

#13 JFM, Chilly Al,

Those are both relevant to my question, thanks. I knew that Hiroshima interrupted Stalin's plan what I'm wondering is what that plan would have entailed without the bomb.

If the war had dragged on for another 6 to 12 months what would the USSR position, in the field, have been?

Posted by AlanC 2014-08-01 11:30|| 2014-08-01 11:30|| Front Page Top

#14 #1 I was only following orders!

Ah, the Nuremburg Defense - offered as an excuse for certain actual war crimes.

By some coincidence, I happened to watch a Netflix docu on Hiroshima the other day. Quite a bit of interview footage with the Enola Gay crew. None, repeat NONE of the crew expressed this sentiment. All of them felt they were doing their part to end a very ugly war. As Van Kirk said, they thought they had just ended it with that one mission. Not a bad days work. As we know, the Japanese needed a bit more convincing.

Judging by his attitude in the clips, Paul Tibbits, the pilot, would have whacked you with a stick for even hinting at such a thing.

Posted by SteveS 2014-08-01 11:53|| 2014-08-01 11:53|| Front Page Top

#15 If the war had dragged on for another 6 to 12 months what would the USSR position, in the field, have been?

If the war had dragged on for six more months it would have been winter. Siberian winter that makes Russian winter seem mild. The effort against Japan homeland dependedn on the single and very, very long Transsiberian railroad. I doubt the Soviets could have used road transportation during Siberian winter. In fact Soviet Union was able to build a big force (some of it well west from the Pacific) and start aBlitzkrieg against Japan. Protracted operations are another matter. Protracted ioperations from the very end of the TranSsiberain railroad are still another matter and then thre is the problem of crossing a strait. Just remember how close D-day came of failure. Except Russians had no LSTs and no planes able to land a decent tank. My guess for Soviet forces landing in Japan required that a previous American landing had attracted and even destroyed most of Japan's forces.

Posted by JFM 2014-08-01 13:52|| 2014-08-01 13:52|| Front Page Top

#16 Read Richard B. Frank's book "Downfall". It describes what could have happened if the US hadn't nuked Japan. Besides the massive military and civilian casualties othat would have resulted in an invasion, the US was planning on bombing the railroad bridges. These brought food from the farms to the cities. The result would have been mass starvation.

Posted by Rambler in Virginia 2014-08-01 14:18|| 2014-08-01 14:18|| Front Page Top

#17 The war was already lost for Japan at this point. The only questions remaining where A) How many allied troops would die in taking the islands, B) How many Japanese (including civilians) would die resisting or by suicide (Okinawa), and C) what would become of Japan post-war.

The best of all possible answers was achieved by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, allowing the Emperor to overcome the military hard-liners and racists, and instead peacefully and unconditionally surrender. This not only spared US and Japanese casualties, which would have been massive, it also reduced what would have been a lingering hatred toward Japan that would have prevented rebuilding Japan (materially and culturally) as quickly and successfully as the US accomplished it.

So, in the face of reality, the bombings produced the best possible outcome of the outcomes that were realistically possible.

Posted by OldSpook 2014-08-01 14:43|| 2014-08-01 14:43|| Front Page Top

#18 And D) How many Chinese, Malays and Indonesians would have died.

Posted by JFM 2014-08-01 15:01|| 2014-08-01 15:01|| Front Page Top

#19 Let's not forget Okinawans who are not ethnic Japanese and were massacred or used as human shields by the Japanese.

Posted by JFM 2014-08-01 15:14|| 2014-08-01 15:14|| Front Page Top

#20 Well said OS

Posted by Shipman 2014-08-01 16:19|| 2014-08-01 16:19|| Front Page Top

#21 Maybe Hiroshima saved the world from annihilation.
I'm still glad that Germany capitulated in May 1945.

Posted by European Conservative 2014-08-01 17:06|| 2014-08-01 17:06|| Front Page Top

#22 Van Kirk interview:

"Number one, there is no morality in warfare — forget it," he told The New York Times in 1995. "Number two, when you're fighting a war to win, you use every means at your disposal to do it."
He elaborated on his view of the importance of the mission during a 2005 interview with Time:
You fight a war to win. There were over 100 numbered military targets within the city of Hiroshima. It wasn't a matter of going up there and dropping it on the city and killing people. It was destroying military targets in the city of Hiroshima — the most important of which was the army headquarters charged with the defense of Japan in event of invasion. That had to be destroyed. The Hiroshima bombing and its lingering effects killed approximately 140,000 people by the end of 1945, including 20,000 soldiers, according to the Hiroshima Day Committee. Of around 76,000 buildings in the city, 92% were destroyed by the explosion and subsequent fire. "It's too bad that there were so many casualties, but if you tell me how to fight a war without killing people then I'm going to be the happiest man in the world," Van Kirk told the Witness to War Foundation in another video interview.
The many Americans and other allied POWs interred in Japanese prisoner camps were glad the atomic bomb was used on Japan. They were terribly mistreated and many died.
--the Bataan Death March (which had even more Filipino deaths than US fatalites). Some sources indicate a 28% mortality rate over just 6 days.--being a US flier (these were referred to as "Special Prisoners" by the Japan, received worse rations and treatment and had a higher mortality rate)--being in a camp near the end of the war (Japan's War Ministry issued an edict that all prisoners were to be killed by any means necessary. As a result, at least one prison in Japan, another in the Phillipines burned all of their POWs alive. The ~ 28% mortality rate on the Bataan Death March held for the POW camps as well. POWs in Japanese Camps. Treatment of POWs by the Japanese was barbaric during WWII.

Posted by JohnQC 2014-08-01 18:54|| 2014-08-01 18:54|| Front Page Top

#23 Japan was working on its own atomic bomb + other WMD Weapons.

Posted by JosephMendiola 2014-08-01 19:26|| 2014-08-01 19:26|| Front Page Top

#24 People overlook the fact that the US would have ended up starving millions of Japanese to death if the surrender took to long. They also overlook that other WMD, specifically chemical weapons (gas and persistent nerve agents), was under consideration for use against Japanese targets, including agriculture.

Posted by OldSpook 2014-08-01 20:08|| 2014-08-01 20:08|| Front Page Top

#25

Posted by spano bellingbo3665 2014-08-01 21:50|| 2014-08-01 21:50|| Front Page Top

#26 My current job involves working with Mitsubishi Aircraft on their new Regional Jet; it takes all my self-restraint NOT to wear an Enola Gay Tie Tack on days when they want to play hard ball with us on contractual issues. Find it also ironic ( never mentioned in their press releases) that the RJ will be built in the same hangars as the Zeros......

Posted by USN, Ret. 2014-08-01 23:16|| 2014-08-01 23:16|| Front Page Top

23:16 USN, Ret.
22:45 JosephMendiola
22:42 JosephMendiola
22:42 USN, Ret.
22:40 USN, Ret.
22:38 JosephMendiola
22:35 USN, Ret.
22:19 JosephMendiola
22:05 Frank G
22:01 Frank G
21:50 spano bellingbo3665
21:50 Frank G
21:37 anon1
21:29 anon1
21:24 anon1
21:19 Bill Clinton
21:18 Bill Clinton
21:16 Bill Clinton
20:56 Pappy
20:46 Pappy
20:41 Pappy
20:40 trailing wife
20:19 DepotGuy
20:08 OldSpook