[garjog]

“the American Air Force”

You ask if this is true. I remember that we didn’t have an “air force” at that time I think. Didn’t they just call it the army? That could be a details that challenges the credibility of the document.

Some of you out there must know if I am right.

[Prokopton]

You ask if this is true. I remember that we didn’t have an “air force” at that time I think.

At that time it was called the U.S. Army Air Forces.

[Tennessee Nana]

It was called the Army Air Force until 1947

[xero]

The United States Army Air Corps

[Nathan _in_Arkansas]

Also known as Army Air Corps

[ansel12]

The United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) was the predecessor of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) from 1926 to 1941, which in turn was the forerunner of today’s United States Air Force (USAF). Although abolished as an organization in 1941, it existed as a branch subordinate to the USAAF from 1941 to 1947.

[KrisKrinkle]

We had the Army Air Corps, which about 1941 became the Army Air Force which in 1947 was broken out of the Army to become the US Air Force.

[Celtman]

I remember that we didn’t have an “air force” at that time I think. Didn’t they just call it the army?

Officially, it was the Army Air Corp before 1947.

[RS]

“That could be a details that challenges the credibility of the document.”

Since this is a translation to English of the original Japanese on the card, I would expect that the term Air Force ( or perhaps Air Power ) would be a better translation then the somewhat strange term “ corps “

[Dan Cooper]

Wouldn’t this have translated from Japanese? Maybe the current translators just used the current name for whatever Japanese term that was used.

[tophat9000]

You ask if this is true. I remember that we didn’t have an “air force” at that time I think.

The average Japanese civilian at the time wound not care about the formal title we use for our forces but just know them by the genric "American Army, Navy, Air Force"....

This is no different then us in not using the formal title for there forces

[Mike Darancette]

FWIW: Until 1947 it was called the “United States Army Air Force”.

[caveat emptor]

Sorry for hi-jacking this post, but....

The purpose of the bombs was not to "punish" people but to stop the war. To intensify the shame Gray insists we feel, he seems willing to fiddle the facts. The Hiroshima bomb, he says, was dropped "without any warning." But actually, two days before, 720,000 leaflets were dropped on the city urging everyone to get out and indicating that the place was going to be (as the Potsdam Declaration has promised) obliterated.
...snip...

The invasion was definitely on, as I know because I was to be in it. When the atom bomb ended the war, I was in the Forty-fifth Infantry Division, which had been through the European war so thoroughly that it had needed to be reconstituted two or three times. We were in a staging area near Rheims, ready to be shipped back across the United States for refresher training at Fort Lewis, Washington, and then sent on for final preparation in the Philippines. My division, like most of the ones transferred from Europe, was to take part in the invasion of Honshu.

From an article THANK GOD FOR THE ATOM BOMB, by Paul Fussell, author of a book by the same name.

[mware]

I too believe it was called the US Army Air Force. Obviously their were Navy and Marine fighter planes too.