Sixty years on, Americans support Hiroshima bombing

Reuters via Yahoo! News ^ | Paul Eckert

[Michael Goldsberry]

CHANTILLY, Va. and a loaded weight of 140,000 pounds (63,500 kilograms) dominates a hangar filled with historic military and civil aircraft, ranging from a Japanese kamikaze plane to the first passenger jet to the supersonic Concorde.

Air Force veteran Greg Culpepper, 55, a tourist from North Carolina, said he had no doubt that President Harry Truman did the right thing 60 years ago.

"If it hadn't been for Truman dropping that bomb, just think of how many Americans would have been killed if we had had to invade," he said.

"We're a peace-loving people and we don't want war, but if push comes to shove, you gotta do what you gotta do," said Culpepper, who served in Thailand during the Vietnam War.

The Enola Gay's 10,000-pound (4,500 kg) uranium 235 bomb instantly killed about 78,000 people and the bombing had claimed about 140,000 lives by the end of 1945.

Florida dentist Robert Gleiber, an amateur World War II historian and collector of Enola Gay memorabilia, said Japan's civilian losses were regrettable but had to be weighed against the alternative of a bloody invasion of that country.

"Truman was responsible for saving hundreds of thousands or even millions of lives both Japanese and American," he said. "The Japanese were fanatics and they were going to fight to the last man."

The views of randomly chosen visitors to Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Virginia squared with a Gallup Poll of 1,010 adults released this week.

The telephone poll showed that 57 percent approved of the use of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while 38 percent said they disapproved. Gallup said the new poll numbers changed only slightly from 1995, when 59 percent said they approved and 38 percent voiced disapproval.

San Francisco high school student Chelsea Gelbart, 14, on a guided tour with her family, broke ranks with her American elders on the wisdom of using atomic bombs against Japan.

"Even though it was a war, it was a disaster and not something to be proud of with the death toll so high," she said. Gelbart said the United States should have demonstrated the bomb over the ocean to convince Japan to surrender.

The Smithsonian began restoring what was a rotting Enola Gay in the 1980s and planned to feature it an exhibition in 1995 to mark the 50th anniversary of the war's end.

But the display was canceled after a firestorm of criticism from veterans and members of Congress, who argued that Smithsonian historians had revised history to portray Japan as the victim and U.S. soldiers in a negative light.

[4.1O dana super trac pak]

Anyone with even a slight knowledge of the Pacific campaign would support the A-Bomb.

[rimmont]

"Even though it was a war, it was a disaster and not something to be proud of with the death toll so high," she said. Gelbart said the United States should have demonstrated the bomb over the ocean to convince Japan to surrender.

We demonstrated one on a Japanese city and they still didn't surrender! This is yet another example of why teenaged girls are the stupidest form of life on this planet.

[Conservative Firster]

Paul Warfield Tibbets, Jr. (born February 23, 1915 in Quincy, Illinois) was the pilot of the first aircraft to drop an atomic bomb.

Tibbets is the son of Paul Warfield Tibbets and Enola Gay Tibbets (née Hazard). On February 25, 1937, Paul enlisted as a flying cadet in the Army Air Corps at Fort Thomas, Kentucky. On August 5, 1945 Colonel Paul Tibbets formally named the B-29 Aircraft 44-86292 Enola Gay after his mother (she was named after the heroine, Enola Gay, of a novel her father had liked). On August 6, 1945 the Enola Gay departed with Tibbets at the controls at 2:45 a.m. for Hiroshima, Japan. The atomic bomb was dropped over Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m. local time.

In the '60s he was posted as military attache in India but this posting was rescinded after all political parties in India protested his presence.

In 1959, Col. Tibbets was promoted to Brigadier General. He retired from the U.S. Air Force on August 31, 1966.

Tibbets' grandson, Lt. Col. Paul Tibbets, IV, as of 2005 is a pilot in the U.S. Air Force, flying a B-2 Spirit for the 509th Bomb Wing, the same unit his grandfather served.

[Oatka]

Not only lives of American troops and Japanese civilians were saved. Check out the WWII POW sites, where they claim 1,000 allied prisoners a day were dying of malnutrition, disease, and just plain brutality. Who wants to tell those people and their survivors that we should have given the Japs more time?

Then there's this little nugget, excerpted from Banzai You Bastards!": "No. It was the atomic bomb what saved us. The Japanese had plans for disposal of all the prisoners, with discretion given to the camp commander whether to bury, drown or shoot them. It was planned for the eighteenth of August 1945, but news of the surrender came through on the sixteenth, two days short of being disposed of. I have copies of those documents if you'd like to see them."

Years ago, some newspaper reporter did a story on the Hiroshima anniversary and asked the Thais, Chinese, Malays and all the others who suffered Jap occupation if we should have dropped the bomb. The general consensus was, "Why did you drop only two?"

[Generic_Login_1787]

Watchman, Rimmont -- thank you. Nagasaki settles the argument (which may be why it's not mentioned half as much as Hiroshima today).

There's nothing wrong with saying it was wrenching, or even that you wished there was some other way. But my own mind was settled by my grandfather years ago. He was 42 in 1945 and remembered it clearly.

"It was the only way," he told me.

"You think so?" I asked, good high schooler that I was.

"I know so. There's no way for you to understand how they kept coming and they weren't afraid to die. Only when they knew we could erase them -- and would -- did they stop."

[Taft in '52]

What is not so well known is that Hiroshima's public transportation system as well as most of its industry was back in action within 48 hours of the bomb being dropped. You can read about it in The Evolution of US Army Tactical Nuclear Doctrine 1945-1980 by John P. Rose (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1980). Rose was an Army captain--and a classmate of mine at the USC School of International Relations--at the time he wrote the book.

[Taft in '52]

When the Atom Bomb Fell

Oh, it went up so loud, it divided up the clouds,
And the houses did vanish away.
And a big ball of light filled the Japanese with fright.
They must have thought it was their judgment day.
Smoke and fire, it did flow through the land of Tokyo;
There was brimstone and dust everywhere.
When it all cleared away, there the cruel Japs did lay.
The answer to our fighting boys' prayers, yes, Lord,
The answer to our fighting boys' prayers.

There was no atheist in the foxholes,
And men who never prayed before
Lifted tired and bloodshot eyes to heaven
And begged the Lord to end that awful war.
They told him of their homes and loved ones.
They told him that they'd like to be there.
I believe the bomb that struck Hiroshima
Was the answer to a fighting boy's prayer.

Oh, it went up so loud, it divided up the clouds,
And the houses did vanish away.
And a big ball of light filled the Japanese with fright.
They must have thought it was their judgment day.
Smoke and fire, it did flow through the land of Tokyo;
There was brimstone and dust everywhere.
When it all cleared away, there the cruel Japs did lay.
The answer to our fighting boys' prayers, yes, Lord,
The answer to our fighting boys' prayers.

Karl & Harty, Columbia Records #36892, 1945

[Coleus]

US bishops mark anniversary of atomic bombings, condemn ‘total war’

[Mia T]

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