Posted on 08/14/2018 3:58:59 AM PDT by P.O.E.
On Aug. 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. It was the first time a nuclear weapon had been used in warfare.
There were three strike planes that flew over Hiroshima that day: the Enola Gay, which carried the bomb, and two observation planes, the Great Artiste and the Necessary Evil.
Russell Gackenbach was a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Corps and a navigator on the mission. Today, the 95-year-old is the only surviving crew member of those three planes.
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
They tracked these guys down every year. The answer never changes.
Do they think there was going to be some revelation in the ensuing year?
Yes, Tokyo was a lot worse.
There were military targets in Hiroshima, and getting them with one plane instead of 300 made a lot of sense. The subsequent effects of the weapon were not anticipated or understood.
Killing women and children BECAUSE the were women and children, to influence policymakers beyond the reach of the firestorm, was and remains problematic.
Not only that, but the option of blockade would have taken years and literally cost tens of millions of Japanese civilians.
The Japanese war crimes were such that a negotiated peace was never an option (yet in the end, the surrender had conditions.). Had China not gone red, the Japanese would have been held similar disdain as the Nazis.
The complete turnaround of our positions with Germany and Japan simply reinforces the Smedley Butler proposition that it was all a racket. A racket gone horribly bad, but it remains a racket today.
"...Waves of Helldivers, Dauntless dive bombers, Avengers, Corsairs, and Hellcats from 66 aircraft carriers ..."
66 carriers!
Here’s a description of the fleet supporting the Okinawa invasion:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa#Order_of_battle
I have a friend of mine coming in next week end who was part of the invasion force of about 500,000 troupes that were ready to invade Japan until the Bomb was dropped.
Orly? Do tell...
That man looks pretty damned good for 95.
Thank you for your service, sir!
Just remember, a Democrat used nuclear weapons. A Democrat.
They want to use them on Russia now too.
Democrats. Nuclear weapons.
I once heard this bizarre story about a troop train from the East Coast taking troops who had returned from Europe to the West Coast to assemble for the Invasion of Japan.
Apparently the train stopped for no apparent reason in a field in the middle of Nebraska. It sat there for 3 days. They had local townspeople bring in food, and the guys played pick-up baseball games on the Nebraska prairie to pass the time.
On Day 3 they brought radios in and let them all hear President Truman’s announcement and that the war was over.
Harry Truman may have been the last sane Democrat.
The last one with any common sense anyhow.
So are you saying that given the same set of circumstances a Republican president would not have used the atomic bomb on Hiroshima or Nagasaki?
56 Chinese POWs..
Weaponized Bubonic Plague. Twice tested in China and they were working on a delivery system to hit Hawaii, Australia and the West Coast of the US.
Let's not even bring up their cannibalism of POWs. As that was not official policy.
The only regret was that it did not happen sooner. The Empire of Japan was worse then Nazi Germany. And they had had a longer time to do what they did having started in 1895 with the murder of Queen Min of Korea.
Japan is a civilized country now. But it will take at least another hundred years for their neighbors to begin to regard them with anything but horror and anger.
Their reasons are just.
“So are you saying that given the same set of circumstances a Republican president would not have used the atomic bomb on Hiroshima or Nagasaki?”
I don’t play ‘If’. ‘If’ is for children.
The facts are the only political party to use nuclear weapons have been the Democrats. So when those nutbags claim Republican are war mongers, just remember who started the wars in our history and who used nuclear weapons.
“reportedly tested a nuke in North Korea several months before we tested ours “
Never heard this before? But it may have been considered in Truman’s decision although I have not read that it was.
According to Wikipedia:
“The Japanese program to develop nuclear weapons was conducted during World War II. Like the German nuclear weapons program, it suffered from an array of problems, and was ultimately unable to progress beyond the laboratory stage before the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Japanese surrender in August 1945. “
“Early on in the war Commander Kitagawa, head of the Navy Research Institute’s Chemical Section, had requested Arakatsu to carry out work on the separation of Uranium-235. The work went slowly, but shortly before the end of the war he had designed an ultracentrifuge (to spin at 60,000 rpm) which he was hopeful would achieve the required results. Only the design of the machinery was completed before the Japanese surrender.[11][16] “
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_nuclear_weapon_program
The bombs saved a million or more Japanese lives and 500,000 American killed and wounded. It was the best option that was available. We would have bombed Japan day and night for months leading up to a invasion. Millions of Japanese civilians would have defended their homeland using pitchforks and other tools. They would have died by the tens of thousands.
Japanese civilians would have died by tens of MILLIONS in the event of an invasion.
“...just remember who started the wars in our history and who used nuclear weapons.” [CodeToad, post 56]
Leaves out the historical context and the strategic situation. US leaders of 1914-17 and 1931-41 were guilty of many things, but it’s a fool’s errand to believe they started the World Wars.
It’s likewise dishonest to convey the impression that the decision to use the atomic bombs in combat was some sort of departure from orthodox military doctrine agreed upon by all parties inside the US government and military establishment.
Nobody was that sure what would happen, nor if the bombs would even function (no operational test of the proximity fuzing system was successful until the first bomb detonated some 1900 ft above Hiroshima). Aftereffects like fallout were not anticipated.
The decision was made under very stressful conditions, in an acutely urgent situation, using sparse information (the only information then available). Large risks were taken and much was at stake.
Our self-appointed moral arbiters have never been happy about all of it. 73 years on, they have convinced a big share of the public that opposing the decision after the fact is proof of their moral superiority (and, by association, the moral superiority of all who agree with them).
They were wrong in 1945, and they are still wrong, factually and objectively. Set against those mistakes, the moral question is of no moment. Worse, their attitude of superiority is odious.
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