'My God What Have We Done'

Reuters ^ | Mar 28 2002

[fso301]

The Enola Gay co-pilot's log book recording the horror of having just dropped the first atomic bomb in war was the most chilling item on auction in a sale of U.S. historical documents

I always understood the co-pilots log book recording to be an expression of horror that after all their specialized training, the bomb fell off course:-)

[arly]

God Bless the crews of the Enola Gay and Bokscar ! They saved untold American Lifes!...

[2sheep]

>He believes that it did end World War II earlier, and saved lives on both sides of the fighting.

Okay.  Not arguing the merits of dropping or not dropping it, one (and that *one* may be a country) reaps what he/she/it sows...multiplied, pressed down, shaken together...and Hiroshima was a whale of a lot of sowing.

Recommendation:  All should walk humbly (versus proudly) before God less reaping come quickly.  Da 12:10.

[oprahstheantichrist]

Mine too. He's long gone now, but I remember my dad telling me that he was on some ship on his way to invade the Japanese mainland at the time. Marine Corps, Engineering Battalion and, according to him, he would have been amoung the first ashore. Not likely he would have lived.

I was born in '57, so little question I'd have ever been born.

"No such thing as an atheist in a foxhole," he used to say. Unfortunately, at the time, I was too young to truly appreciate all that he risked, and all that he faced.

Rest in peace, Dad. And Semper Fi.

[BluesDuke]

I was somewhat amazed, a few years back, when I read a biography of Curtis E. LeMay, the Army Air Force general who commanded the Pacific air operations including the atomic bomb missions. It turns out that LeMay himself had doubts that the bomb was necessary: He was convinced (and he above anyone, almost including Douglas MacArthur, was in a perfect position to surmise) that the air operations against mainland Japan were successful enough that the war was liable to end shortly enough anyway. LeMay, of course, was never the type of airman who would disobey a superior's order himself, but considering his popular and somewhat misshapen image as Mr. Big Bang - the guy who'd have loved nothing more than having a blast, and the more megatons the better (this largely due to his ghostwritten autobiography, in which his ghostwriter erroneously attributed to LeMay's pen the infamous remark about "nuking the Chinks" and "bombing North Vietnam back to the Stone Age") - that was one of the most intriguing revelations I ever had about LeMay.

Having served in Strategic Air Command, of blessed memory, from 1982-87, God only knows there was a Curtis LeMay story around every corner of Offutt Air Force Base. My personal favourite - and it is a true story - involves the day LeMay walked stone cold onto the flight line at Offutt, unannounced and half out of uniform, until a very nervous SAC Elite Guard member (who recognised LeMay immediately) stopped him cold, drew his pistol, and cocked it right in LeMay's face. "Sir, I am advised to instruct you that if you take one step further without the proper authorisation, I am within my power to blow your head off."

What did you just say?? LeMay all but screamed in the guard's face. The guard, it was said, kept his posture - and his gun in LeMay's face - while behind his uniform turning into Jell-O. Knowing full enough that it could mean a trip to Leavenworth (LeMay was alleged to have ordered a court martial for an aide who put the wrong brand of Scotch on his Air Force plane!), the shaking guard repeated his first statement word for word, pulling back the hammer on his gun. "And just where the hell did you get an order like that?" LeMay demanded. "From the commander in chief of the Strategic Air Command," replied the guard.

LeMay turned to the man who accompanied him - who turned out to have been his personal executive officer - and ordered the frightened guard promoted two grade levels post haste. That, LeMay said, doing his best to grin (LeMay was troubled for his entire adult life by Bell's palsy, giving him the fierce natural expression for which he is best remembered), is what I want on this flight line, from my flight line guards! Or something like that. That's the story, though depending on who you heard it from, the kid was said to have fainted on the spot.

[Tennessee_Bob]

While you consider Hiroshima (and Nagasaki as well?) a "whale of a sowing," I consider it to be Japan reaping what they had sown earlier.

[2sheep]

Lev. 4 is an excellent chapter to study about those who sin ignorantly.  Americans in general may have been kept in the dark for several generations about what white anglophile globalists in gov't have been doing behind the scenes...in other countries...evilly, and for which the Lord will hold the whole nation responsible.

[zoyd]

"Same as it ever was...
Same as it ever... was."

[Tennessee_Bob]

I find it rather interesting (and perhaps a little telling) that you can assign a Biblical definition (the sowing) to an act of war against Japan, but go off on "white anglophile globalists" when I point out that Japan initiated the conflict.

Like the bumper stickers here in Oak Ridge say, "If there hadn't been a Pearl Harbor, there wouldn't have been a Hiroshima."

[2Trievers]

Legendary cigar toting LeMay devolped the Strategic Air Command and the Soviet Union could not ignore its power ... love that cold war hawk!

[freeman_of_mx]

Capt. Robert Lewis should have written...

what have I done

[TPartyType]

Does anybody here subscribe to the chivalraic code of war? Has anybody read Richard M. Weaver's essay, "A Dialectic on Total War?"

Weaver argues there, more or less, that true conservatives subscribe to the chivalraic code of war precisely because it protects the innocent. Atomic warfare wipes out everything within a certain radius, indiscriminately.

Can't we admit that killing so many non-combatants was an unspeakable horror? Many of the responses on this thread strike me as rather jingoistic, and I would think a true conservative would acknowledge the horrors of atomic annhilation. Yes, we saved lives, but we unleashed an unspeakable evil in the process.

IMO, any true conservative should be able to recognize the "downside" of the bomb. God forbid we, or anybody else, ever do that again.

[BluesDuke]

He was indeed the man who turned the fledgling command into a powerhouse. How he began is still bespoken with a combination of amusement and awe: His suspicion that training in the command had fallen so lax was so profound that he staged a mock bombing mission over Ohio, his home state. He got what he wanted out of it, and went from there to begin planning and executing a complete overhaul of SAC training and preparedness methodology. He also got something of a reputation as a lunatic - because he inadvertently forgot to apprise the Ohio authorities of what he had in mind, and his mock bombing runs are said to have scared the living nightlights out of the natives. (Well, in fairness, I don't think I'd be too thrilled to look out from my patio and see a couple of big four-engined galoots taking a dive in my general direction, either!)

LeMay was also an inveterate tinkerer, so much so that he decided to build a place on Offutt Air Force Base where he and any of his officers and enlisted men alike could come and work on whatever they liked to work on; LeMay's particular passions were hot cars, television sets, and ham radios. This was the first of the "hobby shops" and the idea caught such raves that they became standard around the entire Air Force within a few years. LeMay's thing for hot cars went far enough that he'd never say no if even a lowly two-stripe airman let it be known he was looking for a place and a race - said airman's own supreme commander would gladly join him out on the flight line for a little drag race or three! His sole greater mechanical passion, though, was ham radioing; to the day he died, LeMay was an inveterate ham radio operator, going by the simple handle "Curt".

[theDentist]

"A fella can have a pretty good time with this stuff!"

[SMEDLEYBUTLER]

Thanks, gentlemen, for a job well done.

[back row (L-R) ] Major Ferebee, Captain Van Kirk, Colonel Tibbets, Captain Lewis
Staff Sergeant Caron, Sergeant Stiborik, Staff Sergeant Duzenbury, Private First Class Nelson, Sergeant Shumard

[TPartyType]

After reading your #31 I see I should've addressed my post to you. I doubt God's too impressed with our A-Bombs. You have a peculiar conception of how to make friends and influence people.

[theDentist]

As you said, no one wants to kill innocents, but in war it happens. I'd rather 100,00 of theirs than 1,000, 00 our ours.

[SMEDLEYBUTLER]

Having served in Strategic Air Command, of blessed memory, from 1982-87, God only knows there was a Curtis LeMay story around every corner of Offutt Air Force Base. My personal favourite - and it is a true story - involves the day LeMay walked stone cold onto the flight line at Offutt, unannounced and half out of uniform, until a very nervous SAC Elite Guard member (who recognised LeMay immediately) stopped him cold, drew his pistol, and cocked it right in LeMay's face. "Sir, I am advised to instruct you that if you take one step further without the proper authorisation, I am within my power to blow your head off."

What did you just say?? LeMay all but screamed in the guard's face. The guard, it was said, kept his posture - and his gun in LeMay's face - while behind his uniform turning into Jell-O. Knowing full enough that it could mean a trip to Leavenworth (LeMay was alleged to have ordered a court martial for an aide who put the wrong brand of Scotch on his Air Force plane!), the shaking guard repeated his first statement word for word, pulling back the hammer on his gun. "And just where the hell did you get an order like that?" LeMay demanded. "From the commander in chief of the Strategic Air Command," replied the guard.

LeMay turned to the man who accompanied him - who turned out to have been his personal executive officer - and ordered the frightened guard promoted two grade levels post haste. That, LeMay said, doing his best to grin (LeMay was troubled for his entire adult life by Bell's palsy, giving him the fierce natural expression for which he is best remembered), is what I want on this flight line, from my flight line guards! Or something like that. That's the story, though depending on who you heard it from, the kid was said to have fainted on the spot.

The pistol was already cocked, no need to do it again.

[2sheep]

Get back to me after you have read Lev. 4.