Posted on 08/06/2012 6:08:40 AM PDT by BO Stinkss
On this day in 1945, at 8:16 a.m. Japanese time, an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, drops the world's first atom bomb, over the city of Hiroshima. Approximately 80,000 people are killed as a direct result of the blast, and another 35,000 are injured. At least another 60,000 would be dead by the end of the year from the effects of the fallout.
U.S. President Harry S. Truman, discouraged by the Japanese response to the Potsdam Conference's demand for unconditional surrender, made the decision to use the atom bomb to end the war in order to prevent what he predicted would be a much greater loss of life were the United States to invade the Japanese mainland. And so on August 5, while a "conventional" bombing of Japan was underway, "Little Boy," (the nickname for one of two atom bombs available for use against Japan), was loaded onto Lt. Col. Paul W. Tibbets' plane on Tinian Island in the Marianas. Tibbets' B-29, named the Enola Gay after his mother, left the island at 2:45 a.m. on August 6. Five and a half hours later, "Little Boy" was dropped, exploding 1,900 feet over a hospital and unleashing the equivalent of 12,500 tons of TNT. The bomb had several inscriptions scribbled on its shell, one of which read "Greetings to the Emperor from the men of the Indianapolis" (the ship that transported the bomb to the Marianas).
There were 90,000 buildings in Hiroshima before the bomb was dropped; only 28,000 remained after the bombing. Of the city's 200 doctors before the explosion; only 20 were left alive or capable of working. There were 1,780 nurses before-only 150 remained who were able to tend to the sick and dying.
According to John Hersey's classic work Hiroshima, the Hiroshima city government had put hundreds of schoolgirls to work clearing fire lanes in the event of incendiary bomb attacks. They were out in the open when the Enola Gay dropped its load.
There were so many spontaneous fires set as a result of the bomb that a crewman of the Enola Gay stopped trying to count them. Another crewman remarked, "It's pretty terrific. What a relief it worked."
Just out of curiosity,has your Dad visited the WWII Memorial in DC yet? If not,does he have both the desire and the physical stamina to make the trip? I’ve been there and it’s a *very* moving experience.
It was absoultely the right thing to do. If you haven’t read “Unbroken”, about Louie Zamperini and what he endured and how close they came to dying, you will certainly come away with the resolution that it was absoultely the only war t end the war and save countless men and women.
Just out of curiosity,has your Dad visited the WWII Memorial in DC yet?
Yes. My younger sister took him the dedication ceremony back in 2004, I believe.
At the event, they had a computer set up to do searches for friends and comrades. Nothing came up, except him, for his unit.
Today, he has no desire to travel anywhere. He is also a colon cancer survivor. Each morning, he just gets up early, puts his U.S. flag on the pole, salutes it, then drives to the end of his road to get his daily newspaper to do the crossword and drink his coffee. He lives on a beautiful fresh water lake in eastern Maine. His opinion of the country, world and politics today? Don’t even go there...LOL.
For the whiners...
They started it, we ended it. End of story.
Thank you for the posts, excellent information and insight. Too bad we can not have quality people with quality writing skills simply tell the truth with all the facts without trying to rewrite history.
God Bless him.
Tell your Dad that he is not forgotten, nor are his sacrifices in vain.
He won’t agree, but he is a great man.
I hope while he still can remember, he will tell you of other great men who gave all, and give to them life they no longer have, by making sure their stories don’t fade into history undocumented.
67 years can pass, but the memory is still there, waiting to be tapped at a moment’s notice.
My uncle was in both of those battles and training for the invasion of the home islands when the bombs were dropped.
He says: "They were glad the war was over, it would have been a blood bath on the islands of Japan for both sides".
One-sided free trade has served Japan very well.
I may well owe my esistence to Paul Tibbets. It is a tragedy that he requested to be buried in an unannounced location. Today he will be villifed by the liberals and apologists.
I want his family to know that my brothers and I are eternally grateful to him, He gave us a wonderful father.
“we didn’t have another bomb”?
Huh?
The third bomb, which would have been dropped on/near Tokyo, was approved for late August. The US was going to produce 3-4 bombs per month starting in September and running into early 1946.
However, had the Japanese still held out after the third bomb my guess would be that world opinion would have prevented bathing more of the country in nuclear fire. Instead there would have been the blockade and mass starvation.
The Doolittle Raiders were explicitly prohibited from going after the Imperial Palace based on the British public’s response to Buckingham Palace being hit during the Blitz.
It’s a lesson the IRA failed to learn until AFTER they blew up Lord Mountbatten some 35 years later.
Thanks for bringing that to my attention. I have some of those songs on 78 and 45 rpm records.
My late father-in-law “Jack’’, served in the 4th. Marine Div.(Saipan, Tinian and Iwo Jima) He got the ‘’million dollar wound on Iwo, a leg wound that got him the hell out of there. While he was recovering, the bombs were dropped. He came home, married my mother-in-law and had a bunch of daughters, one of whom is today my wife. So Hell yeah, I’d say the bombs worked.
God bless your Dad and thank him for my freedom.
“...67 years can pass, but the memory is still there, waiting to be tapped at a moment’s notice....”
Your message, along with the thanks from other posters, have been passed to him. He didn’t say much, he’s just sat there staring out at the lake enjoying the cool breeze off the water today. He has suffered for years from nightmares while no one could really get him to talk about it. We always thought his time on Okinawa was the cause. These past few years in his later life, he’ll sometimes just open up out of the blue and casually start talking about some of this stuff like if it was yesterday. His memory is sharp a tack, but I gotta tell ya, the stories are so surreal to the point of being almost unbelievable. At his age, this man has no reason to exaggerate. I know him well...he’s telling it like it was. The killing was merciless. He was telling me about one suicide attack, where their water-cooled .50 cal got so hot that it was cherry red, the bullets were actually coming out of the barrel skewed due to the wear from overheating. They just kept shooting till it wouldn’t shoot anymore. The Japs would rather die to the last man than surrender. When it was over, there was just a handful of them left alive, but the attack was repelled. It’s no wonder they were dreading the Japanese homeland invasion. Those bombs were the right decision and NO ONE will ever convince me that they weren’t.
Yeah, without a doubt: they were, and are, The Greatest Generation. God Bless every single one em.
Thank you for sharing our well wishes with him, and for relating the combat story.
I stopped awhile and reflected on that story, then realized that he has been carrying the reality of that day with him for decades. Who could he share it with? How could whomever he told possibly understand the sheer terror and the dirty business of killing in order to live that he faced, day after day?
He is so like the others of his generation. They will never see themselves as heroes, because they will say the real heroes never came back.
I know that when he speaks of these things, you will stop to listen.
He has a story to tell of what he experienced in a dark time when he was called out of his world in America and placed into Hell, fighting an enemy of banshee demons. It is like a dream now, but it really happened.
Let him look upon the lake, for as long as he wants. He has earned the right to whatever peace he can find. Thank God that millions of men like your Dad were able to put all those horrible experiences in a little box in their minds, and go back to the business of living, to marry, to raise children, and to build the most prosperous nation on Earth.
May we be found worthy of their accomplishments.
I love the photo of your dad. He has a resemblance to me as I sit at my computer recounting that period in my life when I was not quite 19 years old and standing in line on Leyte to get new battle gear for the invasion of Japan. I have told people that there was a lot of trepidation about the coming invasion which we were warned would be a bloody one. However, my one and only older brother had been killed on Okinawa and I had plenty of anger so my feelings were ‘if it has to be done let’s get it on. I’ve always thought that many of the G.I.s on that day on Leyte felt the same way and I was pleased to hear your dad had much the same feeling
My Dad was also a young Marine who was being readied for the invasion of Japan. When the bombs were dropped and Japan surrendered, he was sent to Northern China to repatriate the Japanese troops stationed there. He always told me that the bombs made his survival, and my existence, possible.
God bless our Dads.
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