War prisoner believes atomic bomb saved his life (Just another 60-year-old V-J day war story)

Philly Burbs .com ^ | 8/13/05 | DAVID LEVINSKY

[Libloather]

Anyone near this Pemberton Township man may want to find him and thank him...

[ncountylee]

Thanks Harry!

[DoughtyOne]

The POWs is one consideration I had not thought of when considering if the nukes should have been used. I've always focused on the forces it would have taken to conquer the mainland. That alone was staggering to me. Now it's obvious to me that we save many POW lives by droping the nukes. Most Excellent.

[Mears]

I knew a man who just finished up in Europe and was being shippied to the Pacific when the bomb fell----he was very grateful too.

[George W. Bush]

Calderone was among hundreds of American soldiers who had been captured in the spring of 1942 on the island of Corregidor in the Philippines. For the next 31/2 years, he and other POWs lived and labored in a camp known as Nagoya No. 6., where they were given one meal of 500 grams of food each evening. If prisoners were unable to work, their daily ration was cut in half, Calderone said.

Few of us can even imagine this, let alone how they must have felt when the war ended and they had survived it unexpectedly.

[SiliconValleyGuy]

The POWs is one consideration I had not thought of when considering if the nukes should have been used. I've always focused on the forces it would have taken to conquer the mainland. That alone was staggering to me. Now it's obvious to me that we save many POW lives by droping the nukes.

I confess to the same mistaken assumption. This is a great story that increases our understanding.

[Dog]

I can't imagine the hell the Americans would have faced as they stormed ashore...1 million dead...is a staggering number.

Harry made the right decision..

[Hebrews 11:6]

The atomic bombs permitted my life. My Dad was in the 20th Armored Division, just back from Europe on a thirty-day furlough before shipping out to the Pacific. The 20th was scheduled to be in the first wave to hit the beaches in the March 1946 invasion of Japan. Planners expected casualties in the first wave to be 100%.

[Hebrews 11:6]

See my post #8.

[Dog]

wow.

[Libloather]

Monster ping...

[Mears]

Thanks! I was probably slowly typing away when you posted.

Those guys were somethin'.weren't they?

[DoughtyOne]

Yes, I agree about the understanding.

[DoughtyOne]

I believe so too.

[lentulusgracchus]

I knew a man who just finished up in Europe and was being shippied to the Pacific when the bomb fell----he was very grateful too.

Just like my uncle in the Big Red One. Their number had been called for OLYMPIC. He'd survived dragging an M-1 through the entire ETO from TORCH to Tunisia to Sicily to Normandy (they arrived on D-Day +2, I think), Aachen and the Huertgen Forest, and he told my dad later he didn't like his odds in an invasion of the Home Islands of Japan. Harry Truman bailed him out bigtime.

[SuziQ]

I saw a TV show the other night on the Discovery Channel which dramatized the decision making of the Japanese High Command. The accounts were taken from the diaries of some of those involved. The Commander of the Japanese Army was determined to fight to the death of every single Japanese soldier and as many civilians as was needed to defeat the Americans. His attitude was that the American people would not be able to stomach the numbers of American deaths that would be inflicted by the Japanese and would put pressure on the government to come to terms with the Japanese government. He had absolutely NO intention of surrendering. In fact, he committed suicide shortly after the Emperor made the decision to surrender and he knew he'd be held for war crimes.

My late father in law was grateful for the bombs; he was due to take part in the invasion of Japan in the fall of 1945.

[sneakers]

bump!

[NoControllingLegalAuthority]

I'd like to add the Japanese have never apologized for their inhuman torture and murder of untold numbers of American prisoners of war.

My own father's Pacific bomber group had hundreds of aircrew bail out and survive, only to be tortured and murdered by the Japanese.

The WWII Japanese were barbarians, making the Nazi's look like gentlemen by comparison.

America was more than merciful to limit the atomic bombs to just two cities of Japan.

We had every right to lay waste to the entire country.

[sine_nomine]

I know of a Navy man, now deceased, who was slated for part of the invasion. It saved his life too. I know all his grandchildren and children, and his widow. He married after the war, as I recall. The children were all born after the war.

Some think we could have ended the war without the bomb. But no one can say for sure. The bomb certainly showed the Japanese where the power was. It was the right decision.

[SuziQ]

A friend of my parents was a survivor of the Bataan Death March. The man had a couple of mental breakdowns in the years that followed, usually during times of extreme stress. The one I remember mostly followed the death of their 3 yr. old daughter. She was hit by a drunk driver as she ran across the street in front of our house.