“Rest in Peace, Colonel Tibbets.
Your actions saved a million American lives..”
Amen, rest in peace. You helped get my Dad home.
He saved a lot more Japanese lives than he did American. Your million for the Americans sounds a little high. While estimates covered a wide range, the likely number would have been up to a million casualties on the allied side, with probably around 100,000 to 250,000 of those being deaths. Total war related military deaths to that point had been just over 400,000 for the Americans.
Mine as well—my father was a noncom mechanic working in a motor pool on Leyte and wasn’t a combat infantryman, but had already been told that when the balloon went up for an invasion, he’d be going ashore as a grunt.
Japan still had a million or more men under arms, and they had THIRTY MILLION civilians supposedly ready to resist an invasion, with nothing but bamboo spears and stones if need be. The killing would have made Stalingrad look like a bar fight.
}:-)4