http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071101/ap_ ... it_tibbetsPilot of plane that dropped A-bomb dies By JULIE CARR SMYTH, Associated Press Writer
Paul Tibbets, who etched his mother's name — Enola Gay — into history on the nose of the B-29 bomber he flew to drop the atomic bomb over Hiroshima, died Thursday after six decades of steadfastly defending the mission. He was 92.
Throughout his life, Tibbets seemed more troubled by other people's objections to the bomb than by having led the crew that killed tens of thousands of Japanese in a single stroke. The attack marked the beginning of the end of World War II.
Tibbets grew tired of criticism for delivering the first nuclear weapon used in wartime, telling family and friends that he wanted no funeral service or headstone because he feared a burial site would only give detractors a place to protest.
And he insisted he slept just fine, believing with certainty that using the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved more lives than they erased because they eliminated the need for a drawn-out invasion of Japan.
"He said, 'What they needed was someone who could do this and not flinch — and that was me,'" said journalist Bob Greene, who wrote the Tibbets biography, "Duty: A Father, His Son, and the Man Who Won the War."
Tibbets, 92, died at his Columbus home after a two-month decline caused by a variety of health problems, said Gerry Newhouse, a longtime friend.
"I'm not proud that I killed 80,000 people, but I'm proud that I was able to start with nothing, plan it and have it work as perfectly as it did," he said in a 1975 interview.
"You've got to take stock and assess the situation at that time. We were at war. ... You use anything at your disposal."
He added: "I sleep clearly every night."
Filmmaker Ken Burns said Tibbets' life "helps to take this incredible, gigantic event and personalize it. This is a real human being who changed the course of the world inexorably on that August morning."
Paul Warfield Tibbets Jr. was born Feb. 23, 1915, in Quincy, Ill., and spent most of his boyhood in Miami. He was a student at the University of Cincinnati's medical school when he decided to withdraw in 1937 to enlist in the Army Air Corps.
"I knew when I got the assignment it was going to be an emotional thing," Tibbets told The Columbus Dispatch for a story on the 60th anniversary of the bombing. "We had feelings, but we had to put them in the background. We knew it was going to kill people right and left. But my one driving interest was to do the best job I could so that we could end the killing as quickly as possible."
Tibbets, a 30-year-old colonel at the time, and his crew of 13 dropped the five-ton "Little Boy" bomb over Hiroshima the morning of Aug. 6, 1945. The blast killed or injured at least 140,000.
Three days later, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, killing at least 60,000 people. Tibbets did not fly in that mission. The Japanese surrendered a few days later.
"It did in fact end the war," said Morris Jeppson, the officer who armed the bomb during the Hiroshima flight. "Ending the war saved a lot of U.S. armed forces and Japanese civilians and military. History has shown there was no need to criticize him."
After the war, Tibbets said in 2005, he was dogged by rumors claiming he was in prison or had committed suicide.
"They said I was crazy, said I was a drunkard, in and out of institutions," he said. "At the time, I was running the National Crisis Center at the Pentagon."
Tibbets retired from the Air Force as a brigadier general in 1966. He moved to Columbus, where he ran an air taxi service until he retired in 1985.
In 1976, he was criticized for re-enacting the bombing during an appearance at a Harlingen, Texas, air show. As he flew a B-29 Superfortress over the show, a bomb set off on the runway below created a mushroom cloud.
He said the display "was not intended to insult anybody," but the Japanese were outraged. The U.S. government later issued a formal apology.
Tibbets again defended the bombing in 1995, when an outcry erupted over a planned 50th anniversary exhibit of the Enola Gay at the Smithsonian Institution.
The museum had planned to mount an exhibit that would have provided the context of the bombing, including the discussion within the Truman administration of whether to use the bomb, the rejection of a demonstration bombing and the selection of a target.
Veterans groups objected that it paid too much attention to Japan's suffering and too little to Japan's brutality during and before World War II, and that it underestimated the number of Americans who would have perished in an invasion. They said the bombing of Japan was an unmitigated blessing for the United States and its fighting men and the exhibit should say so.
Tibbets denounced it as "a damn big insult."
The museum changed its plan, and agreed to display the fuselage of the Enola Gay without commentary, context or analysis.
The National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton plans a photographic tribute to Tibbets, who was inducted in 1996.
"There are few in the history of mankind that have been called to figuratively carry as much weight on their shoulders as Paul Tibbets," director Ron Kaplan said in a news release. "Even fewer were able to do so with a sense of honor and duty to their countrymen as did Paul."
Tibbets told the Dispatch in 2005 he wanted his ashes scattered over the English Channel, where he loved to fly during the war.
He is survived by his wife, Andrea, and three sons, Paul, Gene and James, as well as a number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. A grandson named after Tibbets followed his grandfather into the military as a B-2 bomber pilot currently stationed in Belgium.
___
Associated Press writers James Hannah in Dayton and Jon Belmont in Washington contributed to this report.
___
On the Net:
Enola Gay Remembered Inc.: http://www.enolagay.org
Enola Gay Captain Paul Tibbets dies at 92
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golden hawk
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Enola Gay Captain Paul Tibbets dies at 92
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My junior high school principal was captured in the fall of Hong Kong on Christmas Day 1941. He was subsequently transported to the Japanese homeland, where he spent the rest of the war as a slave labourer. He was working in a mine near Nagasaki when the second bomb was dropped. They had been told the if the main islands were invaded, they were to be executed.
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Nagaski was the largest Christian city in the Orient. Kokura and Kyoto were the primary targets of the second and largest A bomb dropped by the B29.
General Lesly Groves was furious that Kyoto was scrubbed from the list.
Groves felt that with a population of over 1 million people it would have provided a proper test of the plutonium bombs abilities.
US Secretary of war Stinson had honey-mooned in Kyoto and thought it very beautiful. He was instrumental in getting the city removed from the target list.
Nagasaki had only a 1/4 million people and the local topography shielded many from the bombs effects. Kyoto and Kokura had no such natural protection.
Kokura (3/4 of a million souls),the primary target was clouded over the day the second and more powerful bomb was to be dropped by the B29 Bockscar. The crew proceeded to the secondary target Nagasaki. The bombadier of the B29 used a race track and the Christian cathedral to help aim the bomb although cloud cover over Nagaski required him to use a primative radar on the initial run in.
So in a way, Japan was spared even greater death and destruction because a man on the inside had honey-mooned in one of it's largest cities and the weather on the bomb run was overcast.
General Lesly Groves was furious that Kyoto was scrubbed from the list.
Groves felt that with a population of over 1 million people it would have provided a proper test of the plutonium bombs abilities.
US Secretary of war Stinson had honey-mooned in Kyoto and thought it very beautiful. He was instrumental in getting the city removed from the target list.
Nagasaki had only a 1/4 million people and the local topography shielded many from the bombs effects. Kyoto and Kokura had no such natural protection.
Kokura (3/4 of a million souls),the primary target was clouded over the day the second and more powerful bomb was to be dropped by the B29 Bockscar. The crew proceeded to the secondary target Nagasaki. The bombadier of the B29 used a race track and the Christian cathedral to help aim the bomb although cloud cover over Nagaski required him to use a primative radar on the initial run in.
So in a way, Japan was spared even greater death and destruction because a man on the inside had honey-mooned in one of it's largest cities and the weather on the bomb run was overcast.
5 Nov 2007 Login » Register » NewsAlive and safe, the brutal Japanese soldiers who butchered 20,000 Allied seamen in cold blood
By NIGEL BLUNDELL - More by this author »
Last updated at 17:53pm on 3rd November 2007
Comments (8)
The perpetrators of some of the worst atrocities of the Second World War remain alive and unpunished in Japan, according to a damning new book.
Painstaking research by British historian Mark Felton reveals that the wartime behaviour of the Japanese Navy was far worse than their counterparts in Hitler's Kriegsmarine.
According to Felton, officers of the Imperial Japanese Navy ordered the deliberately sadistic murders of more than 20,000 Allied seamen and countless civilians in cold-blooded defiance of the Geneva Convention.
Scroll down for more...
Crewmen on the submarine I-8, where Allied prisoners were slaughtered
"Many of the Japanese sailors who committed such terrible deeds are still alive today," he said.
"No one and nothing has bothered these men in six decades. There is only one documented case of a German U-boat skipper being responsible for cold-blooded murder of survivors. In the Japanese Imperial Navy, it was official orders."
Felton has compiled a chilling list of atrocities. He said: "The Japanese Navy sank Allied merchant and Red Cross vessels, then murdered survivors floating in the sea or in lifeboats.
"Allied air crew were rescued from the ocean and then tortured to death on the decks of ships.
"Naval landing parties rounded up civilians then raped and massacred them. Some were taken out to sea and fed to sharks. Others were killed by sledge-hammer, bayonet, beheading, hanging, drowning, burying alive, burning or crucifixion.
"I also unearthed details of medical experiments by naval doctors, with prisoners being dissected while still alive."
Felton's research reveals for the first time the full extent of the war crimes committed by the Imperial Japanese Navy, a force that traditionally modelled itself on the Royal Navy. Previously unknown documents suggest that at least 12,500 British sailors and a further 7,500 Australians were butchered.
Felton cites the case of the British merchantman Behar, sunk by the heavy cruiser Tone on March 9, 1944. The Tone's captain Haruo Mayuzumi picked up survivors and, after ten days of captivity below decks, had 85 of them assembled, hands bound, on his ship's stern.
Scroll down for more...
Target: the merchant ship Behar. Its surviving crew were beheaded with swords
Kicked in their stomachs and testicles by the Japanese, they were then, one by one, beheaded with swords and their bodies dumped overboard.
A solitary senior officer, Commander Junsuke Mii, risked his career by dissenting. But he gave evidence at a subsequent war crimes tribunal only under duress. Meanwhile, most of the officers who conducted the execution remained at liberty after the war.
Felton also tells the horrifying story of James Blears, a 21-year-old radio operator and one of several Britons on the Dutch-registered merchant ship Tjisalak, which was torpedoed by the submarine I-8 on March 26, 1944, while sailing from Melbourne to Ceylon with 103 passengers and crew.
Fished from the sea or ordered out of lifeboats, Blears and his fellow survivors were assembled on the sub's foredeck.
From the conning tower, Commander Shinji Uchino issued the ominous order: "Do not look back because that will be too bad for you," Blears recalled.
One by one, the prisoners were shot, decapitated with swords or simply bludgeoned with a sledge-hammer and thrown on to the churning propellers.
Scroll down for more...
Atrocity: The Japanese executing prisoners
According to Blears: "One guy, they cut off his head halfway and let him flop around on the deck. The others I saw, they just lopped them off with one slice and threw them overboard. The Japanese were laughing and one even filmed the whole thing with a cine camera."
Blears waited for his turn, then pulled his hands out of his bindings and dived overboard amid machine-gun fire.
He swam for hours until he found a lifeboat, in which he was joined by two other officers and later an Indian crewman who had escaped alone after 22 of his fellow countrymen had been tied to a rope behind the I-8 and dragged to their deaths as it dived underwater.
Uchino, who was hailed a Japanese hero, ended the war in a senior land-based role and was never brought to trial.
Felton said: "This kind of behaviour was encouraged under a navy order dated March 20, 1943, which read, 'Do not stop at the sinking of enemy ships and cargoes. At the same time carry out the complete destruction of the crews'."
In the months after that order, the submarine I-37 sank four British merchant ships and one armed vessel and, in every case, the survivors were machine-gunned in the sea.
The submarine's commander was sentenced to eight years in prison at a war crimes trial, but was freed three years later when the Japanese government ruled his actions to have been "legal acts of war".
Felton said: "Most disturbing is the Japanese amnesia about their war record and senior politicians' outrageous statements about the war and their rewriting of history.
"The Japanese murdered 30million civilians while "liberating" what it called the Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere from colonial rule. About 23million of these were ethnic Chinese.
"It's a crime that in sheer numbers is far greater than the Nazi Holocaust. In Germany, Holocaust denial is a crime. In Japan, it is government policy. But the evidence against the navy – precious little of which you will find in Japan itself – is damning."
The geographical breadth of the navy's crimes, the heinous nature of the acts themselves and the sadistic behaviour of the officers and men concerned are almost unimaginable.
For example, the execution of 312 Australian and Dutch defenders of the Laha Airfield, Java, was ordered by Rear Admiral Koichiro Hatakeyama on February 24 and 25, 1942.
The facts were squeezed out of two Japanese witnesses by Australian army interrogators as there were no Allied survivors.
One of the Japanese sailors described how the first prisoner to be killed, an Australian, was led forward to the edge of a pit, forced to his knees and beheaded with a samurai sword by a Warrant Officer Sasaki, prompting a great cry of admiration from the watching Japanese.
Sasaki dispatched four more prisoners, and then the ordinary sailors came forward one by one to commit murder.
They laughed and joked with each other even when the executions were terribly botched, the victims pushed into the pit with their heads half attached, jerking feebly and moaning.
Hatakeyama was arraigned by the Australians, but died before his trial could begin. Four senior officers were hanged, but a lack of Allied witnesses made prosecuting others very difficult.
Felton said that the Americans were the most assiduous of the Allied powers in collecting evidence of crimes against their servicemen, including those of Surgeon Commander Chisato Ueno and eight staff who were tried and hanged for dissecting an American prisoner while he was alive in the Philippines in 1945.
However, the British authorities lacked the staff, money and resources of the Americans, and the British Labour government was not fully committed to pursuing Japanese war criminals into the Fifties.
• Slaughter At Sea: The Story Of Japan's Naval War Crimes by Mark Felton is published by Pen & Sword on November 20 at £19.99.
Share this article:What is this?Digg it | Del.icio.us | Reddit | Newsvine | Nowpublic
Add your comment | View all Comments (8)
8 people have commented on this story so far. Tell us what you think below.
Here's a sample of the latest comments published. You can click view all to read all comments that readers have sent in.
The Japanese culture is very different to our own, based on honour and shame. One may certainly seek assurances that no such thing would be ordered again, but asking them to issue an official statement of repentance is somewhat unrealistic.
- Liz Ward, Huddersfield UK
You read this and then go out and buy a Japanese car. The destruction by two atom bombs was a small price to pay for that nations crimes.
- J. Birch, Exeter, England
This should be told to all the bleeding hearts that bleat about Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
- Colin Hawken, Southampton,England
By NIGEL BLUNDELL - More by this author »
Last updated at 17:53pm on 3rd November 2007
Comments (8)
The perpetrators of some of the worst atrocities of the Second World War remain alive and unpunished in Japan, according to a damning new book.
Painstaking research by British historian Mark Felton reveals that the wartime behaviour of the Japanese Navy was far worse than their counterparts in Hitler's Kriegsmarine.
According to Felton, officers of the Imperial Japanese Navy ordered the deliberately sadistic murders of more than 20,000 Allied seamen and countless civilians in cold-blooded defiance of the Geneva Convention.
Scroll down for more...
Crewmen on the submarine I-8, where Allied prisoners were slaughtered
"Many of the Japanese sailors who committed such terrible deeds are still alive today," he said.
"No one and nothing has bothered these men in six decades. There is only one documented case of a German U-boat skipper being responsible for cold-blooded murder of survivors. In the Japanese Imperial Navy, it was official orders."
Felton has compiled a chilling list of atrocities. He said: "The Japanese Navy sank Allied merchant and Red Cross vessels, then murdered survivors floating in the sea or in lifeboats.
"Allied air crew were rescued from the ocean and then tortured to death on the decks of ships.
"Naval landing parties rounded up civilians then raped and massacred them. Some were taken out to sea and fed to sharks. Others were killed by sledge-hammer, bayonet, beheading, hanging, drowning, burying alive, burning or crucifixion.
"I also unearthed details of medical experiments by naval doctors, with prisoners being dissected while still alive."
Felton's research reveals for the first time the full extent of the war crimes committed by the Imperial Japanese Navy, a force that traditionally modelled itself on the Royal Navy. Previously unknown documents suggest that at least 12,500 British sailors and a further 7,500 Australians were butchered.
Felton cites the case of the British merchantman Behar, sunk by the heavy cruiser Tone on March 9, 1944. The Tone's captain Haruo Mayuzumi picked up survivors and, after ten days of captivity below decks, had 85 of them assembled, hands bound, on his ship's stern.
Scroll down for more...
Target: the merchant ship Behar. Its surviving crew were beheaded with swords
Kicked in their stomachs and testicles by the Japanese, they were then, one by one, beheaded with swords and their bodies dumped overboard.
A solitary senior officer, Commander Junsuke Mii, risked his career by dissenting. But he gave evidence at a subsequent war crimes tribunal only under duress. Meanwhile, most of the officers who conducted the execution remained at liberty after the war.
Felton also tells the horrifying story of James Blears, a 21-year-old radio operator and one of several Britons on the Dutch-registered merchant ship Tjisalak, which was torpedoed by the submarine I-8 on March 26, 1944, while sailing from Melbourne to Ceylon with 103 passengers and crew.
Fished from the sea or ordered out of lifeboats, Blears and his fellow survivors were assembled on the sub's foredeck.
From the conning tower, Commander Shinji Uchino issued the ominous order: "Do not look back because that will be too bad for you," Blears recalled.
One by one, the prisoners were shot, decapitated with swords or simply bludgeoned with a sledge-hammer and thrown on to the churning propellers.
Scroll down for more...
Atrocity: The Japanese executing prisoners
According to Blears: "One guy, they cut off his head halfway and let him flop around on the deck. The others I saw, they just lopped them off with one slice and threw them overboard. The Japanese were laughing and one even filmed the whole thing with a cine camera."
Blears waited for his turn, then pulled his hands out of his bindings and dived overboard amid machine-gun fire.
He swam for hours until he found a lifeboat, in which he was joined by two other officers and later an Indian crewman who had escaped alone after 22 of his fellow countrymen had been tied to a rope behind the I-8 and dragged to their deaths as it dived underwater.
Uchino, who was hailed a Japanese hero, ended the war in a senior land-based role and was never brought to trial.
Felton said: "This kind of behaviour was encouraged under a navy order dated March 20, 1943, which read, 'Do not stop at the sinking of enemy ships and cargoes. At the same time carry out the complete destruction of the crews'."
In the months after that order, the submarine I-37 sank four British merchant ships and one armed vessel and, in every case, the survivors were machine-gunned in the sea.
The submarine's commander was sentenced to eight years in prison at a war crimes trial, but was freed three years later when the Japanese government ruled his actions to have been "legal acts of war".
Felton said: "Most disturbing is the Japanese amnesia about their war record and senior politicians' outrageous statements about the war and their rewriting of history.
"The Japanese murdered 30million civilians while "liberating" what it called the Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere from colonial rule. About 23million of these were ethnic Chinese.
"It's a crime that in sheer numbers is far greater than the Nazi Holocaust. In Germany, Holocaust denial is a crime. In Japan, it is government policy. But the evidence against the navy – precious little of which you will find in Japan itself – is damning."
The geographical breadth of the navy's crimes, the heinous nature of the acts themselves and the sadistic behaviour of the officers and men concerned are almost unimaginable.
For example, the execution of 312 Australian and Dutch defenders of the Laha Airfield, Java, was ordered by Rear Admiral Koichiro Hatakeyama on February 24 and 25, 1942.
The facts were squeezed out of two Japanese witnesses by Australian army interrogators as there were no Allied survivors.
One of the Japanese sailors described how the first prisoner to be killed, an Australian, was led forward to the edge of a pit, forced to his knees and beheaded with a samurai sword by a Warrant Officer Sasaki, prompting a great cry of admiration from the watching Japanese.
Sasaki dispatched four more prisoners, and then the ordinary sailors came forward one by one to commit murder.
They laughed and joked with each other even when the executions were terribly botched, the victims pushed into the pit with their heads half attached, jerking feebly and moaning.
Hatakeyama was arraigned by the Australians, but died before his trial could begin. Four senior officers were hanged, but a lack of Allied witnesses made prosecuting others very difficult.
Felton said that the Americans were the most assiduous of the Allied powers in collecting evidence of crimes against their servicemen, including those of Surgeon Commander Chisato Ueno and eight staff who were tried and hanged for dissecting an American prisoner while he was alive in the Philippines in 1945.
However, the British authorities lacked the staff, money and resources of the Americans, and the British Labour government was not fully committed to pursuing Japanese war criminals into the Fifties.
• Slaughter At Sea: The Story Of Japan's Naval War Crimes by Mark Felton is published by Pen & Sword on November 20 at £19.99.
Share this article:What is this?Digg it | Del.icio.us | Reddit | Newsvine | Nowpublic
Add your comment | View all Comments (8)
8 people have commented on this story so far. Tell us what you think below.
Here's a sample of the latest comments published. You can click view all to read all comments that readers have sent in.
The Japanese culture is very different to our own, based on honour and shame. One may certainly seek assurances that no such thing would be ordered again, but asking them to issue an official statement of repentance is somewhat unrealistic.
- Liz Ward, Huddersfield UK
You read this and then go out and buy a Japanese car. The destruction by two atom bombs was a small price to pay for that nations crimes.
- J. Birch, Exeter, England
This should be told to all the bleeding hearts that bleat about Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
- Colin Hawken, Southampton,England
It's hard in today's politically correct mindset to understand the simple fact, that these people were, for a very large part, no better than animals. Scratch that, an animal would never commit the kinds of atrocities these ghouls preformed during WWII! It's a wonder the world ever forgave the Japanese. They are a different society today. I hope. But, I've know a couple of families who had loved ones involved in the war against Japan. I've heard some horrific accounts first hand. From soldiers who were involved. In my mind, it's a crying shame the bomb wasn't a hell of a lot larger!
But, times have changed......
Thanks for the post 2R, it should be required reading for anyone who starts crying the blues over the bomb.
But, times have changed......
Thanks for the post 2R, it should be required reading for anyone who starts crying the blues over the bomb.
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Siddley Hawker
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The Kriegsmarine was for the most part fairly well behaved in WW2 as far as atrocities and war crimes go.2R wrote: Painstaking research by British historian Mark Felton reveals that the wartime behaviour of the Japanese Navy was far worse than their counterparts in Hitler's Kriegsmarine.
Shogun solution!!!
My Dad was in WW2 European theatre and I remember when he read the book "Shogun" was it by James Clavell?
He was reading it and said this would have been a good solution for the Germans. I asked what and was told to read the book. I did.
Remember when the Shogun got pissed at you and killed all your family every one from your parents to your second cousin thrice removed. your whole family tree wiped out,
Maybe if he was in the Pacific theater he would have thought the same for the Japanese race.
My Dad was in WW2 European theatre and I remember when he read the book "Shogun" was it by James Clavell?
He was reading it and said this would have been a good solution for the Germans. I asked what and was told to read the book. I did.
Remember when the Shogun got pissed at you and killed all your family every one from your parents to your second cousin thrice removed. your whole family tree wiped out,
Maybe if he was in the Pacific theater he would have thought the same for the Japanese race.
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niss
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You realise that by the same logic we should all be held accountable for the acts of our soldiers? We should have personally been attacked because of the actions of Clayton Matchee and Kyle Brown?Doc wrote:I've heard some horrific accounts first hand. From soldiers who were involved. In my mind, it's a crying shame the bomb wasn't a hell of a lot larger!
I understand that drastic measures were required to end the war, and I understand that they didnt have the luxury to pick and choose their precise targets due to the technology at the time. But the reality on the ground is that the majority of those people didnt deserve to die.
She’s built like a Steakhouse, but she handles like a Bistro.
Let's kick the tires, and light the fires.... SHIT! FIRE! EMERGENCY CHECKLIST!
Let's kick the tires, and light the fires.... SHIT! FIRE! EMERGENCY CHECKLIST!
Please go and read about the large scale attrocities from Nanking and Manchuria to what the Japanese Imperial Forces done before making such a silly comment.As a memeber of the IAF i would have thought your knowledge of the history of the original axis of evil would have been better.Ask some friends why it took until last year to get another synagogue open in Shanghai or what happened to the Jews under Japanese occupation in Honk Kong ,Shanghai ,Macau,Singapore .
"Lest we forget" does not apply if it is never taught as the horror of it is beyond most human understanding .
"Lest we forget" does not apply if it is never taught as the horror of it is beyond most human understanding .
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niss
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2R the same mentality justifies bombings against innocents in Israel and Iraq.
I am not ignoring the atrocoties, all I am saying is that there are many there who shouldnt have had to pay for it.
I am not ignoring the atrocoties, all I am saying is that there are many there who shouldnt have had to pay for it.
She’s built like a Steakhouse, but she handles like a Bistro.
Let's kick the tires, and light the fires.... SHIT! FIRE! EMERGENCY CHECKLIST!
Let's kick the tires, and light the fires.... SHIT! FIRE! EMERGENCY CHECKLIST!
Whats your point then, There were millions of people that paid with their lives in WW2 all across the globe. Many didnt deserve it, but unfortunitly war is not fair.niss wrote: I am not ignoring the atrocoties, all I am saying is that there are many there who shouldnt have had to pay for it.
So should they have dropped the bomb? Damn right they should have!
I am glad that they did not destroy all of Japan as they do make some good Beers Sapporo is a nice one if you can get it . 
Never liked that saki though it takes your legs away after a few and you think you are all right until you try to walk away and a rubberman appears
Anyone that can make such a good beer as Sapporo has to have some goodness in them
Never liked that saki though it takes your legs away after a few and you think you are all right until you try to walk away and a rubberman appears
Anyone that can make such a good beer as Sapporo has to have some goodness in them
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the_professor
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Then they should have done something to prevent their own government from walking down the path it chose.niss wrote:But the reality on the ground is that the majority of those people didnt deserve to die.
Dropping the bomb was a muted response compared to what that country deserved. They're lucky the Allies stopped after only two cities. No tears here.
That's not necessarily true!clunckdriver wrote:Had the bomb not been used the Japanese would have caried out their well documented plan to murder all the POW and civilian prisoners they held, ......
Many political & war experts argue that the A-bomb was not the reason why Japan called the quits...
Surrender of the Japanese was mostly due to the fact that Russians began to turn their forces against them in 1945.
Around that time, the Russians were very proficient fighters & wiped out almost a million Japanese mal-equipped soldiers in northern China.
Bombing campaigns alone never work.... History has proven that. That is what air force generals just don't understand. It needs to be combined with ground forces.
Name me one bombing campaign that ever worked?
Asking a pilot about what he thinks of Transport Canada, is like asking a fire hydrant what does he think about dogs.
Would they have dropped the WMD onto people with white skin? I noticed that we never use WMD on them.
p.s. in war every side is equally as brutal. If your civillian city is wiped out any time soon, don't complain. Using the logic seen here it is a worthy wartime target. History has shown it, no? The history books are written by the victors. don;t forget that.
p.s. in war every side is equally as brutal. If your civillian city is wiped out any time soon, don't complain. Using the logic seen here it is a worthy wartime target. History has shown it, no? The history books are written by the victors. don;t forget that.
That'll buff right out 
just wanted to add it's kind of funny/scarey to see people breathlessly repeating the old war propaganda that we were fed. 1st casualty of war is...truth.
But his life as an aviator should stand alone from what he was ordered to do in the war. For that I do not judge him. just following orders
But his life as an aviator should stand alone from what he was ordered to do in the war. For that I do not judge him. just following orders
That'll buff right out
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niss
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Exactly, I am just saying that the mentality that the bomb should have been bigger and destroyed Japan is wrong. Killing all those people wasn't right but it was a neccisary evil given the technology and the desperation to end the war at the time.Floats wrote:Many didnt deserve it, but unfortunitly war is not fair.niss wrote: I am not ignoring the atrocoties, all I am saying is that there are many there who shouldnt have had to pay for it.
So should they have dropped the bomb? Damn right they should have!
Do you wish to be held responsible for the actions of your government and your military?The Professor wrote:Then they should have done something to prevent their own government from walking down the path it chose.
Dropping the bomb was a muted response compared to what that country deserved. They're lucky the Allies stopped after only two cities. No tears here.
To some extent the people are responsible but not this far. (Ie. They used the german citizens to clean up the concentration camps after liberation, but they were not tried for war crimes).
She’s built like a Steakhouse, but she handles like a Bistro.
Let's kick the tires, and light the fires.... SHIT! FIRE! EMERGENCY CHECKLIST!
Let's kick the tires, and light the fires.... SHIT! FIRE! EMERGENCY CHECKLIST!
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niss
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I agree, he was a military aviator, his job one way or another was to kill people. Im sure he joined to fly, not neccisarily to end peoples lives.Dash-Ate wrote: But his life as an aviator should stand alone from what he was ordered to do in the war. For that I do not judge him. just following orders
She’s built like a Steakhouse, but she handles like a Bistro.
Let's kick the tires, and light the fires.... SHIT! FIRE! EMERGENCY CHECKLIST!
Let's kick the tires, and light the fires.... SHIT! FIRE! EMERGENCY CHECKLIST!
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Driving Rain
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He was a student at the University of Cincinnati's medical school when he decided to withdraw to enlist in the Army Air Corps.niss wrote:
I agree, he was a military aviator, his job one way or another was to kill people. Im sure he joined to fly, not neccisarily to end peoples lives.
That little gem from his bio and it says a lot about his charcter.
He told an NPR interviewer that when he saw the aftermath he felt like he had lead in his mouth and it was devastating to look at the destruction he witnessed. Who wouldn't be?
I'm glad they dropped those two bombs because when you think about it no one since has lost their lives to any and there is no shortage of them in stock piles around the globe.
