Fateful flight: Pilot of Nagasaki atomic attack dies

Patriot Ledger ^ | Saturday, July 17, 2004 | CHRISTOPHER WALKER and DIANA SCHOBERG

[KangarooJacqui]

Revisionists SUCK!

As an Australian, whose forebears suffered greatly at the hands of the Japanese (Google for the "Kokoda Trail", and/or "Thai-Burma Railway", anyone who doesn't know their Australian history of WW2, and you might get some idea)...

I salute you. Revisionists can go to hell.

[KangarooJacqui]

Cheers for the ping, BTW, Aeronaut. The world has lost another great history-making aviator... and I cannot help but shed a tear. Thankyou again,

Over and out,

KaJac

[jackbill]

Sweeney is believed to be the only person to fly in both the Nagasaki bombing and its predecessor, the bombing of Hiroshima three days earlier.

Only by those who don't know their history.

I've heard Sweeney make this claim before, and he was wrong.

Lt. Jacob "Jake" Beser was on both the Enola Gay, when it dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, and Bock's Car, when it dropped the bomb on Nagasaki. He was a lot closer to both bombings than was Sweeney.

Jake was a special electronics officer, not a regular member of the crew. His job on both missions was to monitor a spectrum analyzer to make sure that the bomb frequency was clear before they armed the bombs.

I knew and worked with Jake for years. He was an engineer. And he had absolutely no regrets about participating in the bombings. Unfortunately, Jake died of cancer several years ago.

Billy Crystal played the part of Jake Beser in the TV movie "Enola Gay: The Men, the Mission, the Atomic Bomb" in about 1980.

[Law is not justice but process]

"You're dead wrong. The military forces were losing control of the war effort after MidWay.

The more rational Japanese leaders knew that the war effort was doomed. "

Hell's Bells, man, read some history! Losing control after Midway??!! Midway was June 1942. A full three years later Japanese soldiers AND citizens were fighting to the death on Iwo and Okinawa. Where were those "rational" Japanese leaders? We lost some 20,000 killed in those two campaigns. The Japanese lost 10 times as many. You might as well argue Germany was doomed after El Alamein and all battles after wards were unnecessary. If only Hitler had seen the writing on the wall hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers may have survived the war instead of dying at Anzio, on Omaha Beach, in the Bocage, in the Ardennes, in B-17s or Lancasters over Germany, etc..

If we had invaded Japan in late 1945 - as we would have had to do since Tojo and Hirohito were no more willing to compromise than Hitler and Goering - we would have lost a minimum of 50,000 killed and probably several times that. The casualty ratio would have been similar to Okinawa, so at least 500,000 Japanese would have died. Would it have been better that they died in battle?

The Japanese unleashed a war of conquest on Southern Asia. They showed no mercy in Nanking. Read "The Rape of Nanking" by Iris Chang and tell me where those "rational" Japanese leaders were during that atrocity. How many Chinese would have died in just three more months of hostilities? How many Vietnamese, Indonesians, Filipinos, Malaysians, Burmese, and Koreans would have been killed, enslaved, forced into prostitution, etc. in just three more months of war?

How many more Japanese soldiers, sailors and airmen would have died in three more months of a war you claim was over in June 1943? How many of these Japanese military personnel would have died fighting Stalin's troops, who would have joined the war whether the bombs dropped or not? How many more citizens of Japan would have died of disease and starvation, two years of which had done nothing to persuade the "rational" Japanese leaders to end their war of conquest?

If you add the number of Allied military personnel who would have died in an invasion, the number of Japanese who would have died resisting that invasion, the number of Koreans, Chinese, Thais, etc. who would have died in several more months of brutal Japanese occupation, the numbers of Soviet troops killed to gain Stalin more territory in the Far East, and the cost in lives of another year of maintaining the U.S. war machine thousands of miles from home, the number you would get would be pushing a million. Surely such a large number would have made those "rational" Japanese leaders surrender, wouldn't it?

My answer to that is that clear: it would not have made them surrender because the Japanese War of Conquest had killed several million total and well over a million Japanese just since Midway, and that had not led them to surrender.

President Truman probably never looked beyond the projected cost in American and British lives when he chose to avoid the specter of invasion by using the bombs. Perhaps if those "rational" Japanese leaders had chosen to be as niggardly with Japanese lives as Truman was with American lives the war would have ended six months before Midway on December 6, 1941.

[COEXERJ145]

Bonesmccoy, you obviously have no clue about what you speak. Anyone who has studied WWII in detail will realize that the atomic bombs were the best and only means available to end the war and saves millions of lives, both American and Japanese. Lets take a look at what else was available to President Truman.

The main alternative to the atomic bombings was invasion; code named Operation Downfall, and continued conventional air attacks. Would these options have been any less destruction and/or resulted in fewer casualties than the two atomic attacks? If course there is no way to fully answer this question but it is possible to conclude that the invasion and total conquest of Japan would not have been a pleasant and bloodless affair. Many estimates of casualties American forces would have suffered have been published with preposterous low figures of 25,000 up to a ridiculously high number of 1,000,000. While the true number probably falls between 150,000 and 250,000, this would all depend on how fanatical the Japanese defense was and on the options to deploy other “special weapons”. Excluding atomic and radiological weapons, the most likely “special weapon” would have been poison gas. President Roosevelt had prohibited the use of poison gas due to the risk of Germany retaliating with gas against the Allies in Europe. With the surrender of Germany on May 8th, 1945, that risk disappeared. The United States had been producing various stockpiles of gas for use in retaliatory strikes should the Axis use it first but now an offensive use of gas was being planned. Bringing back images of the First World War, substances with names of Phosgene, Mustard, and Cyanogen Chloride, were produced and shipped to the Pacific. The U.S. also began shipping gas masks and protective clothing from Europe to the Pacific once the risk of German gas attacks dissipated. MacArthur had the supplies of gas stored in the Pacific shipped to Luzon in preparation for use during Operation Downfall. Even the official planning for the first part of Downfall, Operation Olympic, had sections dealing with offensive and defensive gas attacks.

While the Japanese had issued orders in 1944 NOT to use gas due to fears of American retaliation, the orders for the defense of the Home Islands were calling for “any and all measures” to repel the invaders. The Japanese did have a stockpile of some chemical weapons but how likely the threat was for their use is unknown. The real question on the use of gas during invasion would be casualties. General Marshall advocated the use of gas and President Truman wanted to keep American casualties to a minimum. This set the stage for American invasion forces to eliminate the Japanese defenders with poison gas long before hitting the beaches. Had both sides employed poison gas throughout the Downfall campaign, the battle for Japan would have been eerily reminiscent of the World War I battle of Verdun and would probably surpassed Verdun’s 700,000 casualty figure. If anyone says we should have invaded Japan or just “waited them out” instead of using the atomic bomb, they should consider that another, even more destructive weapon was being prepared for use. A weapon that was available in large quantities and in many ways, far more destructive. As American commanders watched the bodies pile up and casualties mount, it would have become hard to reject the idea of poison gas attacks in order to remove the dug in defenders.

While American troops were battling with Japanese defenders, the XXI Bombing Command under Curtis LeMay’s would have continued incinerating every Japanese city. Many look at the atomic attacks differently and yet they were no more and in some cases, less destructive as a single B-29 fire bombing raid. The famous fire bomb raid on Tokyo killed at least 100,000 people but this number is uncertain and probably low due to the fact so many bodies were burned to ashes. Almost all other Japanese cities received the same treatment resulting in all but five major cities being burned to the ground and hundreds of thousands of deaths and injuries. When looking at areas of Tokyo that had been hit and those of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it is almost impossible to distinguish one city from the other. The effects of a 350 plane B-29 raid and those of an atomic attack are indistinguishable. The only real difference in atomic bombings is that once the fires of a conventional attack die down, the death and destruction are over.

We should turn this into a moral debate or to revise history. People who try to rewrite the history of the atomic bomb are attempting to apply modern morals and opinions about nuclear weapons to 1945. Until the advent of the ICBM and the ability of push button global destruction, many people, both civilian and military, simply looked on atomic bombs as another weapon in the military’s arsenal. Once the atomic bomb became a political weapon, not a military one, it developed a stigma against it that makes large numbers of people attempt to say that the United States was morally wrong for what happened in August, 1945.

President Truman was given two choices in 1945, to use or not use the atomic bomb. While not using it would likely result in the war continuing and far greater casualties on both sides, using the weapons as soon as possible could bring about a quick end to the war. For Truman the answer was very clear. Today, we look at everything as being “gray”. Perhaps if we stood back in 1945 on Okinawa, looked northward toward Japan, and contemplated what would be waiting for us when we hit the beaches. You could be a mother waiting at home wondering if your son is going to come home from the Pacific or your young child will ever see his father who is serving out there. Knowing that the United States had a way to end the war without needless suffering, it would look to you as a Godsend.

Japan herself was not an innocent victim of unnecessary American aggression or used as a demonstration to impress the Soviets. She had invaded Manchuria in 1931 and then the rest of China in 1937. Her soldiers had committed countless atrocities against the Chinese people and later the Allies. She used Allied prisoners of war in biological weapons experiments at the infamous “Unit 731” in Manchuria. Had the invasion come, the High Command had issued order for all Allied POW’s to be executed. It was well known among the POW’s that the Japanese were preparing to execute them. For them, the atomic bombs were a divine deliverance. Japan waged aggressive, bloody, and murderous war starting in 1931 and it took the power of the United States more than 3½ years to finally end it.

One must also not forget American attitude toward the Japanese. Japan, without a declaration of war, attacked the United States on December 7th, 1941. This created an attitude of resentment and hatred that guaranteed that the war in the Pacific would be a war to the death. Few Americans would have felt sorry for the Japanese if the United States had turned them into radioactive ash.

Finally, while Truman and his advisors were primarily concerned with American casualties, the atomic bombs also prevented an even larger number of casualties among the Japanese themselves. With millions of Japanese on the Home Islands, there can be no doubt that the Japanese would have suffered an almost unimaginable number of dead and wounded. Continual firebomb raids, naval bombardment, and the possible use of chemical weapons all could have pushed the number of Japanese casualties into the millions. It was for more merciful to drop two atomic bombs and kill between 150,000 and 250,000 than to kill millions. If these cities had not been atomic targets, they would have been burned to the ground by LeMay’s Superfortresses probably killing just as many people if not more.

Today many people like looking back on history and trying to second guess and criticize the people. However, I take a conservative approach to history. It is impossible to look at events and decisions through the eyes of those who lived them. None of us can know the fear of American soldiers who were preparing to invade Japan or of the leaders who were preparing to send tens of thousands to their deaths. The Generals and politicians looked on the atomic bombs as simply another weapon with which to win the war. A quote by President Truman on August 10th, 1945 sums up how many people felt in 1945 and in my opinion; we should not question their judgment. “Having found the bomb we have used it. We used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretext of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans.” Winston Churchill said of the atomic bomb, "To avert a vast, indefinite butchery, by a few explosions seemed, after all our perils and toils, a miracle of deliverance."

[COEXERJ145]

Sorry everyone for going on so long. This area of WWII has been an area of study for me throughout my college education. So one can probably understand it causes me to get a little passionate. It was the topic of my senior thesis (35 pages) and what I posted was bits of my oral presentation in the same class.

[COEXERJ145]

And least I forget...

Rest in Peace, General Sweeney

[Law is not justice but process]

"To avert a vast, indefinite butchery, by a few explosions seemed, after all our perils and toils, a miracle of deliverance."

Leave it to Churchill to summarize the argument so eloquently and succinctly.

I will add one more caveat: had we not used the bomb against the aggressors of The Japanese War of Conquest and thereby seen how terrible were its effects, I daresay the temptation to use it during the Cold War would have been much greater for both sides. How many more would have died if the first atomic warfare had been an exchange of H-bombs between the Soviet Union and the United States in 1963?

[Darnright]

Bump

[bonesmccoy]

The fighting on Iwo Jima is NOT related to the plight of Japanese civilians on Kyushu.

Kyushu's civilians were being starved.

But, don't let my FACTS change your pathetically long-winded and ill-informed propaganda.

[bonesmccoy]

When you get over your long-winded anti Japanese propaganda long enough to actually READ my comment, you'll see that NONE of my comments pertain to the Japanese forces on distant islands in the Pacific.

I'm talking about the Japanese civilians at Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

In addition, your lying bull is as ignorant of fact as it is reflective of the racist stories that pervaded the entire conflict.

It is so wonderful to know that Buck toothed, slant-eyed bugs bunny cartoons are so mouldy in the bias and lies that have soaked your pathetic brain.

Go back to Hiroshima and Nagasaki and take a look at the victims before you go comparing 250,000 dead women and children to the kamikaze pilots who were dying for their country just like our uncles were dying for ours.

GET A GAD DARN CLUE.

NO nation should be using Nukes.

[pt17]

Next time try going to the Japanese American community and learning some facts

You didn't take my advice about not going around wearing a stupid sign, did you?

The facts are/were with those who were actually there (on both sides) and the documents of the wartime Japanese government. The Japanese/American community at that time was isolated in internment camps and probably had the least knowledge of what was going on.

[bonesmccoy]

Your long-winded crap ignores the FACTS in my posting...none of which you respond to.

[COEXERJ145]

You need to clam down before you stroke out.

[AndrewC]

The fact of the matter is that the 250,000 dead were not enemies of our nation. They were civilians.

You are absolutely insane. Do you know what war is and means?

[AndrewC]

Your long-winded crap ignores the FACTS in my posting...none of which you respond to.

What "FACTS"? Other than that Japan was collapsing because of our onslaught, your opinion is worthless. Nagasaki was an alternate target, the primary was obscured.

[dfwgator]

Agree 100%. Fatman and Little Boy in the end saved a lot of Japanese lives, as well as American lives.

[Dark Knight]

Anti Japanese propaganda...none of your comments pertain to Japanese forces...you only want to talk about civilians...racist...Great arguments, wonderfully full and developed.

Did you even read COEXERJ145's post? Did you read any of mine? So far, all your rebuttals are absolute sophistry. If you have a point, cite some authorities, and no, you don't count.

If I were advising you as a friend, I'd say stop posting, and proving you're a moron. It's better to have people wonder if you're idiot, rather than open your mouth and prove it.

DK

As a hint, discourse is usually done by one party making statements, and the other party responding to those statements, and making their own. Logical fallicies and silliness are easily seen and well defined.

You might want to study them.

[DoctorMichael]

Bttt