Sad Day

[Bill Greenwood]

Today, Aug. 6 is the anniversary of the first use of an atomic bomb. 67 years ago, the B-29 Enola Gay dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and killed about 140,000 people directly, with some additional who died later.
Two days later Bocks Car was sent to Nakasaki with the second bomb, with about 70,000 killed there initially.

Hard to believe that such a devastating genie was put back in the bottle and not used again all these years. And weapons now are much more powerful.

[martymayes]

Today, Aug. 6 is the anniversary of the first use of an atomic bomb. 67 years ago, the B-29 Enola Gay dropped the bomb on Hiroshima


Anniversary of Hiroshima, I walked outside this morning and a B-29 flys directly overhead about 6000 ft. Not something you see everyday, much less today.

What are the odds?

[Tom Downey]

I don't believe I would call it a sad day, when we kill 210,000 enemy which convinces our enemy to surrender, saving an estimated halve a million American military, trying to invaded the home islands of Japan.

[WLIU]

Gen Sweeney spent his retirement years living just south of Boston, a few miles from me. He flew the instrument airplane behind the Enola Gay and then flew the bomb to Nagasaki. Sweeny's airplane was the Great Artiste which carried the scientific instruments to gather blast data. He and his crew swapped to fly Bock's Car to Nagasaki. I heard Gen Sweeney speak and I have to say that he made a very good case for why those two bombs saved a lot of American lives. The planners for the invasion of Japan were expecting many more lives to be lost than the total that the two crude bombs killed. War decisions are trade-offs and if you look at how the casualty count went up as each island closer to Japan fell to the Marines and Army, you can start to get a little understanding of what the trade-off was. Sweeney pointed out that more Japanese died from one firebombing of Tokyo than were killed at Nagasaki. So which form of death and destruction is really worse?

Interestingly, Sweeney launched to bomb Kokura, and the weather gods decided that Kokura would be left alone that day. No radar bombing with that payload. The bombardier had to see the target visually or they were to bring the bomb home. With clouds obscuring Kokura, the alternate was Nagasaki. Mother nature almost spared Nagasaki but just as Sweeney was deciding to turn back to Saipan, a gap in the clouds opened and the rest is history.

The good news is that two of the nations that were the source of horror during the 1930's and 1940's were knocked down and are now much better world citizens. The soviets took longer, but that problem is mostly taken care of.

I have also heard Edward Teller, the driving force behind the hydrogen bomb, speak. He is another individual who believed that the US could be trusted with that kind of force and the totalitarian governments could not. But that is a topic for another post.

We should enjoy our freedom to fly as we please and speak american english rather than a language from another place. Many good men and women made very hard decisions to get us here. Dropping two bombs was one of them.

Thank you,

Wes
N78PS

[Bill Greenwood]

Tom, maybe your values as a human being are different than mine, but I would not and don't take joy in killing 210,000 people, most of whom were civilians and women and children, not the militarists than started the war or the soldiers that persued it.

Maybe a necessary step,( or maybe not) but still a sad one that shows the horrors of all out war, with no restrictions on weapons and targets.

And as for the Bomb saving a half million American men, that figure is as much propoganda as fact. I have seen estimates of U S losses if we invaded from as little as a few thousand to over a million. If you totaled up all the actual Allied losses in all the invasions from Normandy on it would not be anywhere close to a half million. No less than Gen Eisenhower said that Japan was finished as an offensive power and there was no need to invade at all.

Wes, as for as "totalitarian governments not being trusted with nuclear weapons" they certainly have them now, Russia and others.

[Bob Dingley]

I swing the other way. I was age 6 when the bomb dropped and had two uncles in the theater. Another finishing up in ETO. One was a SeaBee waiting aboard a ship almost in sight of Japan.

My military training (from Paris Island through Army Command & Staff) told me that those casualty estimates were lowballed. As an Army Medical Department Officer flying helicopter ambulances during the southeast Asian wargames late 60's, reinforced those beliefs. We would have lost untold more in Japan because only one helicopter medevac had ever been made during the entire war. Evac within the "Golden Hour" saves lives. BTW, the Order of Battle that I recall involved around 2 million troops. I respect your input Bill.

Bob

[WLIU]

"Wes, as for as "totalitarian governments not being trusted with nuclear weapons" they certainly have them now, Russia and others"

And Edward Teller asserted that it was very important that we, the good guys, got the baddest weapons first so that the evil guys would fear making use of theirs. You can not restrain technology, but you can get there first and counterbalance those who will misuse it. My Russian friends are happy that the Iron Curtain and the Soviet empire collapsed. We even have former communist pilots in the US who spent their military careers on alert for the evil Americans to come. They are happy to discover that their propaganda was lies and America is the land of plenty and you can fly a small airplane anywhere you want. If the Germans had built the bomb and we had not, the world would be a very different place. Did you know that Heisenberg was the head of the German nuclear program?

"The greatest generation" made some tough choices. There was and is no joy in any of it. And trying to assume some sort of guilt at this distance is pointless. The Japanese people did some very evil things. Read up on the Bataan Death March some time. I understand that the markers where men died are still on the road to Balanga. The Americans who made the decision to launch the raid that burned 16 square miles of Tokyo and killed 100,000 people took no joy in that result. They did it because the road home went through Tokyo and they wanted to end the war as quickly as possible. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were enough to get the job done. No more. No joy.

Gen Sweeney took no joy in leveling Nagasaki. He wanted to end the war and go home. He, and a lot of other good guys, including my father, got to do that.

Thanks,

Wes
N78PS

[Ernie]

It is interesting that the countries we fought to a surrender are better off today than the countries we tried to perform "nation building" in. Making hard decisions is... hard. So far the new politically correct way of waging "war" seems pretty inefficient in comparison to waging "real" war.

[Tom Downey]

Tom, maybe your values as a human being are different than mine,

I do not believe our values are that much different, I take no joy in war, but I see no sadness in victory.

those two bombs were nothing but a means to the end.

[Mayhemxpc]

I believe that without the examples of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the United States and the Soviet Union would most certainly have gone to war with each other, with the destruction of much of the rest of civilization through "conventional" means -- even if the atomic bomb had never been developed. The balance of terror did, after all, provide a tenuous peace that enabled the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union without going to war. Without the visible example of what that could mean, with the destruction being purely theoretical, the likelihood of using going to war and using those weapons would have been much higher.

Aside from that, the available information from Japan was that they were hoping for a land invasion. They felt that the casualties inflicted on the allied force would have been so severe that we would have been forced into a negotiated peace. The Japanese -- and not just the leadership -- were driven by Bushido ethics. These are completely alien to Western thought about war -- even Clausewitz's concept of "Total War" (which he believed to be only a theoretical model and not to be even attempted.) Thankfully, and due to an unprecedented act by their Emperor, this did not come to be and Japan has truly transformed. This transformation is so complete that the situation of Japan in the period before 1945 seems unbelievable today.

Having been in two wars and having seen the aftermath in two "peacekeeping" operations, I can say from personal experience that war is truly horrible and the death of others should not be celebrated. That act, however, of overwhelming force ended the world war, kept untold more from dying over a longer period of time, and perhaps precluded a third world war. For these reasons, it should be appreciated.

[Jf1450]

I just feel sorry for the poor guy who, after the Hiroshima drop got up, shook off the dirt and said "Screw this, I'm moving to Nagisaki."

[Bill Greenwood]

I read about a lady who was from Nagasaki and was visiting in Hiroshima. She survived the first bomb, went home and survived the 2nd even.

[Tom Downey]

I read about a lady who was from Nagasaki and was visiting in Hiroshima. She survived the first bomb, went home and survived the 2nd even.

But did she glow in the dark?

[WLIU]

For what its worth, my understanding is that American POW's imprisoned at the Fukuoka 14 Prison Camp doing slave labor witnessed the Nagasaki bomb delivery. They felt the heat and experienced some of the blast wave. The bomb signaled that their daily beatings and random executions would end within days. A couple of years ago, one POW survivor published the book "Nagasaki Saved My Life: How One POW Survived Burma's Death Railway, Japanese Hell Ships, And The Atom Bomb". Look it up.

Wes
N78PS

[Bill Greenwood]

There were some American POWs in Hiroshima who were killed by the bomb, I think. I don't have the book with me right now, but I think it is in the Enola Gay book, which is a good one to read.

[rwanttaja]

It is interesting that the countries we fought to a surrender are better off today than the countries we tried to perform "nation building" in.
Keep the time difference in mind. Japan and Germany have had 67 years to recover. How much better off was Japan ten years after THAT war ended?

I do not believe either Japan or Germany had significant guerrilla activity after they were occupied, either. A better example might be the Philippines after the Spanish-American war.

Ron Wanttaja

[David Darnell]

While I'm not going to claim to be happy about Hiroshima and Nagasaki (for that matter the Tokyo firebombing), I do feel that Truman made the right decision.
If there is any doubt in your mind about it- read Flyboys by James Brady - it will give you some idea of the monsters in charge of Japan at that time.
Or look up Leonard Siffleet...
You can't judge the actions of 67 years ago on the standards of today

One thing to think over- if you look on the back of a Purple Heart- you can find the year it was made. It is my understanding that over 95% of the Purple Hearts awarded since WW2 were minted in 1945 - in preparation for the invasion of Japan.

[Bill Greenwood]

David, there is little doubt that "monsters" were in charge of Japan. But we did not drop the Bombs on these monsters, or soldiers for the most part. We dropped it on old men, women, and children in cities and if we had lost the war it might have been a war crime. We avoided Emperor Hirohitos palace, and agreed to let him live and not even be prosecuted for war crimes. We did prosecute some others for war crimes.
Given the responsibility that he had at that time, which was to our troops and our people, Truman may have made a decision that many would have made.

The whole subject is fascinating to learn about, but if we only consider the questions in a narrow way, the answer is dictated by one side's propaganda.
For instance, "Pres. Truman, we have developed a new and vicious Bomb. Shall we drop it on Japan, and or shall we invade without using the Bomb and loose 500,000 men?"

Now try this question. "Pres Truman, We cannot find the one big, decisive, military target for the Bomb, like maybe Tokyo harbor, and we have only got 2 Bombs currently. Shall we drop it on civilian cities where it may kill 200,000 people? It won't have a major impact on any military capability of Japan, but may scare the emperor into peace negotiations."

Or this one, "Pres. Truman, while we have a new Bomb, of awesome power, there is really no urgency to use it right away or to invade Japan either. Japan has lost virtually all of its surface navy, most of its air force, is down to barely trained new pilots, and really has little in the way of offensive capability to attack our forces. We have virtually complete control of the skies over Japan with our B-29s and long range fighter escort.We can destroy any city in a few weeks and its people are already starving. Ike agrees with this point as does, Gen Bradly ( I think it was).
We have also been in touch with sources within Japan about peace negotiations through contacts in Sweden.
We can also read much of Japans code messages and find that the only major sticking point to a peace treaty is that the emperor be allowed to live. Gen Mccarthur even agrees with that concession.
Shall we make a real effort to negotiate for a period time before we use the Bombs?"

There is one other big factor not often talked about, that of the Russians who seemed paused to invade Japanese held Manchuria. I suspect the use of the Bomb was also in part to impress the Russians who were our Allies and soon to become our enemy.

[Ernie]

War is sad, and there is no good that comes of it. But I hope the CiC learns to make decisions simply. Is this justified? Can we win? HOW CAN I MINIMIZE THE LOSS OF AMERICAN LIFE?

Sorry, if we had worried about "collateral damage" in Europe, we would have lost. Since we started worrying about all the politically correct edges of war we have: Korea, Vietnam, Iraq (II), Afghanistan, ... The results of none of those justify the young men and women that didn't get to come home.

[RV8505]

And what does all of this have to do with experimental aircraft and or Oshkosh? Nothing!

[Bill Greenwood]

RV 8505, if you were at Oshkosh this year you may have noticed the CAF B-29 FIFI flying overhead multiple days, Do you think a B-29 and its most notable mission fits into the category of warbirds? And do you think the B-29 is in the experimental exhibition category?
Do you think, period? Or just object to topics by others that involve thinking?

You are not alone, in wanting to cut off discussion on many topics. Kind of like the govt Japan was ruled under back then.

[Hal Bryan]

Guys, please - this thread has generated 20 replies about what is arguably one of the most controversial historical topics in the 20th century, and it's been doing fine until now. Debate the war, debate Truman's thinking, debate the presence of a B-29 at Oshkosh, debate the very existence of this thread - but NO PERSONAL ATTACKS.

[rwanttaja]

One must remember that the atomic-bomb missions were NOT the most devastating air attacks of WWII. Operating Meetinghouse hit Tokyo with incendiaries five months earlier. This single raid killed more people than died at Hiroshima or Nagasaki, and destroyed more square miles of city (25% of the entire city of Tokyo!). About 300 B-29s were used, and 14 were lost. Argue about the morality of destroying entire cities if you will, but we'd already demonstrated the capability WITHOUT resorting to nuclear power.

The big difference? The Japanese didn't surrender after the 300-plane raid that composed Meetinghouse. They didn't surrender after another 300-plane raid a month later, or the 500-plane raid in late May, or the 450-plane raid two days later... and these are only the raids on Tokyo. However, they DID offer to surrender a week or so after Nagasaki was hit.

Wars are bad, and they're worse when non-combatants are hurt. However, keep in mind that Japanese industry was so badly damaged by bombing that they were farming out work to small shops, and even individual families. Is a mother assembling machine guns in her home a legitmate wartime target? Decry area bombing if you will, but nukes merely made it easier. They certainly didn't enable it.

Ron Wanttaja

[WeaverJ3Cub]

A very sad day indeed. Today as well.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/08/09/nagasaki-marks-anniversary-nagasaki-bomb-attack/

Regardless of where you fall on the issue, I think we can agree on that.

—Samuel

[Zack Baughman]

I just feel sorry for the poor guy who, after the Hiroshima drop got up, shook off the dirt and said "Screw this, I'm moving to Nagisaki."

Here is THAT story!

http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2012/jul/16/double-blasted/

[Christopher Ingram]

When we lived in North Carolina we lived in the hometown of Mr. Thomas Ferebee, The bombardier from the Enola Gay. His family owned a farm on the outside of town and he had a bridge named for him right in front of the home. I didn't cross that bridge often but when I did I always stopped and took a minute to acknowledge what he did for us all. He was after all the man who actually dropped the bomb.
My thought is this, the Japanese would have taken every conceivable chance to kill as many American's as possible during the invasion of their homeland(as I would expect of any country being invaded) and if these bombs saved even a single American life then it was well worth it.

[Bill Greenwood]

Ron, I don't get the point that you and others have made about many civilians or even more being killed by the fire bombing of Tokyo than the atomic bomb. So what? That seems to me from a moral standpoint like saying that waterboarding is ok since others have done worse torture.
By the way, the govt had a commitee to find a military target in Japan, they could not come up with a good one, and that is why the Bomb was used on civilian cities. This is clearly discussed in books on the whole atomic bomb story if you care to do some research. I do believe that the moral problem was considered by our govt, there was even the idea of a "demo" Bomb like just off shore or on an island. The problem was we did not have any to waste, and it might not have swayed the Japanese enough and would alert their defenses against B-29s even more though there was little they could do about it. The idea that some little old lady in a small shop was really the military target is silly.

Mr. Ingram, if you control the question you control the answer, and if the only question you ask is to invade with or without the Bombs, that ignores the other question, of neither invading or using the Bomb, at least not right away. Ike said neither was necessary, Japan was pretty much finished.
By the way, I knew the tail gunner of the Enola Gay, Bob Caron, I had a small financial part in helping him write his book.
And if you say that even a single American life is worth several hundred thousand civilian Japanese lives, that is a pretty major statement from a moral standpoint; but there are probably many who would agree with you.

And to give Pres. Truman the benefit to having to make the decision to use the Bomb, his primaryduty at the time was to protect the American troops, not really to protect the civilians of Japan. There was no easy and perfect answer, if Truman had waited even a few months to really try to find a negotiated peace, a few dozen or even hundred U S soldiers would die of the inevitable accidents or disease in the ocuupied islands. If B-29 raids were continued to bring the peace talks nearer, we may have lost some more air crews.
I am glad it was not me who had to make such a decision.

And Ron, you are right that Japan did not surrender after the fire Bomb raids. The sticking point to peace talks was, as I previously wrote, was letting the Emperor live and he was the only one who could make peace for Japan.

In the end, we did agree to let him live, as I wrote above, and he made the peace. Japan did not immediatley surrender after the first Bomb, and we lauched the 2nd one in 48 hours without really giving the peace process much chance.

Japan was such a closed society then, that the people did not even know they were losing the war for sure. Read Saburo Saki'a s book. When he came home to visit near the end of the war, he was explicitly told not to say a word about Japan's defeat at Iwo Jima, even when his girlfriend asked.

[Bill Greenwood]

Hal, If you comment about personal attacks is meant for me? I try not to make such attacks. but when someone asks what a new type of bomber which drops a radically new and totally experimental Bomb has to do with experimental airplanes; he is not really asking a question , he is just trying to shut off discussion.

It is human nature, that so many people spend so much effort to avoid any idea that does not agree with the idea the already hold.

At least in the U S, to some extent, unlike wartime Japan, we can hear info on other ideas if we care to listen.

[Hal Bryan]

Hal, If you comment about personal attacks is meant for me?

Hi Bill - the thing I specifically objected to in your post was this:


Do you think, period?

I think it's safe to assume that anyone participating here...thinks. At the very least, I'd suggest that fellow EAA members (or past or potential members for that matter) deserve the benefit of the doubt.

Just FYI, there was another post by another forum user between yours and mine that was deleted (by the poster, to their credit, not by us) almost immediately that was only going to make things worse, hence the call for the course correction.


At least in the U S, to some extent, unlike wartime Japan, we can hear info on other ideas if we care to listen.

Amen to that.

[rwanttaja]

Ron, I don't get the point that you and others have made about many civilians or even more being killed by the fire bombing of Tokyo than the atomic bomb. So what? That seems to me from a moral standpoint like saying that waterboarding is ok since others have done worse torture.

Please re-examine my postings on this subject: I have never made a statement saying it was OK "since others have done worse." My comparison was between two US attacks, with decisions made by the same political leaders, carried out by the same Air Force.

So please answer: Why is killing 100,000 Japanese in one raid with an atomic bomb more immoral than killing 100,000 Japanese in one raid with conventional bombs? Why is August 6th a "Sad Day," and March 11th is not? Why isn't February 15 (the destruction of Dresden) a sad day, as well?


By the way, the govt had a commitee to find a military target in Japan, they could not come up with a good one, and that is why the Bomb was used on civilian cities. This is clearly discussed in books on the whole atomic bomb story if you care to do some research. I do believe that the moral problem was considered by our govt, there was even the idea of a "demo" Bomb like just off shore or on an island. The problem was we did not have any to waste, and it might not have swayed the Japanese enough and would alert their defenses against B-29s even more though there was little they could do about it. The idea that some little old lady in a small shop was really the military target is silly.

Actually, I have done a bit of reading on this topic, though nothing recent. My opinions might be colored by a more-recent reading of Martin Caiden's "A Torch to The Enemy", about the Tokyo bombings.

The little old lady gunmakers weren't the specified target, of course, but making war goods eliminates whatever protection they might expect. Wikipedia describes Hiroshima as 'a city of both industrial and military significance' and was the headquarters for the military defense of southern Japan.

I don't know what to make of the casualty estimates of Operation Olympic; I don't know if the A-bomb attacks saved 10,000 American lives, 100,000, or one million.

However, I *strongly* suspect they saved more Japanese civilian lives than they took. Invasions are costly to civilian population. House-to-house fighting in Hiroshima probably wouldn't have killed 80,000 people, but multiply that by hundreds of Japanese cities.

And, do not forget the example of Saipan. 25,000 Japanese civilians lived on the island at the time of the US invasion. 2,000 survived. Many committed suicide rather than submit to the US occupation. I doubt the mainland would have been much better.

Ron Wanttaja

[Flyfalcons]

And what does all of this have to do with experimental aircraft and or Oshkosh? Nothing!

Good thing it was posted in the Warbird forum and not the Homebuilt or AirVenture forums then, right?

[Bill Greenwood]

Ron, I never said those other days like Dresden or Hamburg or the day Pearl Harbor was attacked and the Arizona sunk with loss of many young men, were not sad days. If you want to have a topic to recognize them or others it is fine with me.

I saw the news piece about the Atomic Bombing and that is why I posted it.

As for the next point, if it took 300 or more bombers with conventional weapons to destroy most (not nearly all) of a city and kill 100,000 people; and it the Enola Gay did it in one flight, one day, with one Bomb, then it makes my point that this is a huge escalation of warfare to a whole new and awful level of killing and it is not just another bombing raid as before.

[WLIU]

What this has to do with the annual warbird gathering at Oshkosh is that we honor the men and women who made the sacrifices in the 1940's to knock down the some of the greatest evils that have arisen in the last couple of hundred years. The combination of two cultures of evil values and the technology of transportation and equipment that could have allowed another dark age to spread across our globe were stopped and done away with by the flying machines we admire and the people who took them to war. If you look at what the state of the art was in 1945, and you think about flying those airplanes for 8 hour missions, you can appreciate what a serious business it was and the courage of the pilots and crews.

I think that Von Clausewitz would have offered the view that the armies and governments of Japan and Germany in 1942 were a direct product of the values of the cultures and the populations of those nations. He might argue that to effect the radical change of those cultures to purge the population of those evil values once and for all required the destruction applied to those nations, up to and including those first atomic bombs.

So my belief is that what you see at OSH is multidimensional. I admire the sleek lines of the P-38. I also admire my aged P-38 recce pilot friend who's pictures are now declassified and show interesting european locales decorated with the black puffs of anti-aircraft artillery bursts as the Germans did their best to keep him from bringing his photos back to base.

Looking at Hiroshima and Nagasaki today, I am not sad on the anniversary. They are vital busy cities full of productive citizens trying to make their part of the planet a better place. That it took an atomic bomb to make that possible is something for sober reflection, but not regret on our part.

And getting back to aviation, you might be surprised to find out where Japanese pilots go to train today. A friend works at a flight school in California where they have models of Japanese airplanes on the shelves and pictures of Japanese pilots on the wall. Its a changed world.

Best,

Wes
N78PS