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

[A.A. Cunningham]

I'll defer to Tibbetts and others recollections:

In an August 2002 interview with Studs Terkel published in the British Guardian newspaper, Paul Tibbetts recalled something similar: "Unknown to anybody else--I knew it, but nobody else knew--there was a third one. See, the first bomb went off and they didn't hear anything out of the Japanese for two or three days. The second bomb was dropped and again they were silent for another couple of days. Then I got a phone call from General Curtis LeMay. He said, 'You got another one of those damn things?' I said, 'Yessir.' He said, 'Where is it?' I said, 'Over in Utah.' He said, 'Get it out here. You and your crew are going to fly it.' I said, 'Yessir.' I sent word back and the crew loaded it on an airplane and we headed back to bring it right on out to Trinian and when they got it to California debarkation point, the war was over."

[bill1952]

Thats interesting. You would have thought that Harry was right in the loop on dropping those babies, but I guess he wasn't.

[bill1952]

Flyboy Robert Bill Connell, the last man off Chichi Jima alive weighed 100 pounds. - 6 feet tall.

Flyboy Robert Goldsworthy: I had beriberi, my ankles were swollen.
I had amoebic dysentery, had yellow jaundice, and I weighed 85 pounds.
I was lifted onto the deck by two sailors and I stumbled over to the railing and looked at Omori prison camp and shook my fist and yelled.

"You bastards, I beat you."

After 14 years of war the Japanese also released all of it's Chinese prisoners.

There were 56.

- Flyboys. pg 301

[patriciaruth]

The Raid just released in limited theatres with Benjamin Bratt (not bad), and Joseph Finnes (good as always)
is true story about a rescue mission to save 500 American POW's in the Philippines.
The Japanese had scheduled to execute them (by pouring kerosene on them while in an air raid shelter and burning them alive) because of the successful landing of McArthur and the imminent loss of the parts of the Philippines that the Japanese still controlled.

I think we all should support The Raid by going to see it in a theatre. We drove 40 miles to see it and it was definitely worth the time and money.

Forced by bankruptcy to put out this movie, which has been on their shelves for 2-3 years, Miramax and Hollywood need to know that we will support pro-American movies and not go to all the anti-American trash that is scheduled to be released this year.

[rudy45]

From the Internet Movie Database site:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0326905/

[patriciaruth]

Thanks! Looks like the movie is called The Great Raid. (I was buying popcorn when the title first started.)

[Last Dakotan]

According to eyewitness accounts, the Japanese brought a captured US flyer to Hiroshima, chained him to a pole, and brutally stoned him to death after the bombing.

[bill1952]

I don't have any account of that, but I believe it totally.

"As revenge for B-29 attacks in May and June, Professor Fujuiro Ishiyama, director of external medicine at Kyushi Imperial University, had strapped eight captured American flyboys to operating table.
The professor didn't administer an anesthetic.
He began to cut.

He sliced out one flyboy's lung and placed it in a surgical pan.
The patient was alive. Then he slit his lung artery and watched the boy gurgle to death in his own blood.
Another boy had his stomach cut out - while conscious.
He then cut five of the boy's ribs, slit an artery, and watched to see how long his heart would pump before he died.
He bored a hole in another boy's skull, inserted a knife and twisted it around in his brain.
He wanted to see what parts of the boy's body jumped and jerked with each turn."

Japan's last war. - Ienaga, pg 189