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YES, I'D DROP THE BOMB AGAIN
Express U.K. ^ | Tuesday May 25,2010 | Ed Pilkington

Posted on 05/25/2010 3:52:48 PM PDT by Repeal The 17th

Theodore Van Kirk is sitting at his desk in a detached bungalow in the gated community outside Atlanta, Georgia, where he lives. The room is cluttered with boxes, trinkets, shelves full of books on wartime history and photographs of planes on the walls...

(Excerpt) Read more at express.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: atombomb; bockscar; enolagay; hiroshima; japan; nagasaki; paultibbets; theodorevankirk; ww2
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...over the last 65 years they have fallen one by one. First was William Parsons, a military engineer who died in 1953, followed by Robert Shumard, another engineer, 14 years later. Others died through the eighties and Nineties. Paul Tibbets, the commander of the plane, died in 2007. Less than two months ago Morris Jeppson, a bomb expert, became the penultimate member of the crew to pass away, dying in a hospital in Las Vegas aged 87. Which leaves Van Kirk, now 89, as the only living crew member of the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that set out from Tinian on August 6, 1945...
1 posted on 05/25/2010 3:52:48 PM PDT by Repeal The 17th
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To: Repeal The 17th

God bless those men, and many thanks for their service.


2 posted on 05/25/2010 3:57:34 PM PDT by GenXteacher (He that hath no stomach for this fight, let him depart!)
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To: Repeal The 17th
YES, I'D DROP THE BOMB AGAIN

yeah....so would zer0bambam....on Israel, South Korea...and quite possibly the state house of Arizona.

3 posted on 05/25/2010 3:58:35 PM PDT by Vaquero (BHO....'The Pretenda from Kenya')
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To: Repeal The 17th

The problem we have is that we HAVEN’T used the bomb
again. Had we used it in Korea our resolve would not
be in question.


4 posted on 05/25/2010 3:58:53 PM PDT by tet68 ( " We would not die in that man's company, that fears his fellowship to die with us...." Henry V.)
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To: Repeal The 17th

I had a fascinating chat last week with an old sailor. He entered the Navy in ‘43 and served abord a landing ship that participated in the last of the Pacific island-hopping.

When they dropped the bomb, he was engaged in training exercises for the invasion of Japan.

The crew of the Enola Gay very well might have saved his life — and countless hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of other lives — Japanese as well as Americans.

God bless Mr. Van Kirk. And thanks for the post.


5 posted on 05/25/2010 4:02:29 PM PDT by Nervous Tick (Eat more spinach! Make Green Jobs for America!)
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To: Repeal The 17th
Amazing to see the devotion and dedication from all Americans during WWII. If it were for them to run that war the same as politicians are forcing the military to run the current wars, we'd all be speaking German by now, for sure.

I had the honor (just not the pleasure) to personally meet Dr Edward Teller, the hydrogen bomb inventor. Sadly, he was receiving chemotherapy and hyperbaric oxygen chamber treatments but less alone, it was quite an amazing experience. While it was an honor to meet someone with such historical significance, it was hard to forget his envy over Oppy. Teller was definitely a brilliant man but no match to Oppy's genius.
6 posted on 05/25/2010 4:03:08 PM PDT by MollyKuehl (Contribute to FR: $10 $20 $50 $100 REMEMBER, LURKING IS A FORM OF ENTITLEMENT!!!)
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To: Repeal The 17th

Van Kirk is back row, second from left, next to Tibbets.

7 posted on 05/25/2010 4:04:43 PM PDT by colorado tanker
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To: Repeal The 17th

8 posted on 05/25/2010 4:06:10 PM PDT by colorado tanker
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To: tet68

IMHO we should have used them on the Soviets at the end of WW2.

Hindsight is a bitch.


9 posted on 05/25/2010 4:06:14 PM PDT by SirLurkedalot ( Restore our Constitution in 2010/2012!!!)
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To: Repeal The 17th

Great article, thanks for posting it.

BTW, I find myself wondering how many of the crew that flew Bockscar (i.e. the plane that carried out the Nagasaki bomb mission) are still with us?

Brave men, all.


10 posted on 05/25/2010 4:06:27 PM PDT by DemforBush (There's another old saying, Senator: Don't p*** down my back and tell me it's raining.)
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To: DemforBush

You are spot on, the Bockscar’s crew got less attention than Enola Gay’s.


11 posted on 05/25/2010 4:07:52 PM PDT by MollyKuehl (Contribute to FR: $10 $20 $50 $100 REMEMBER, LURKING IS A FORM OF ENTITLEMENT!!!)
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To: Nervous Tick

Yep. After Normandy, my dad and his boat were on the way to the Pacific to prepare for the invasion of Japan, when the war ended.


12 posted on 05/25/2010 4:08:26 PM PDT by real saxophonist (The fact that you play tuba doesn't make you any less lethal. -USMC bandsman in Iraq)
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To: Repeal The 17th

Even looking back at the casualties, dropping ‘the bomb’ was a no brainer. Us dropping those bombs SAVED LIVES. It probably saved more Japanese lives than American.

We were preparing to invade main land Japan with a force numbering in the millions, and there would have been hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dead on both sides.

Those nuclear bombs brought a swift end to the war. Not to mention how they were truly remarkable feats of technology for the time. It’s still scary to imagine what would have happened had Germany or the Japanese would have gotten the bomb before us. The Germans were still working on it as we defeated them. Luckily, many of their best scientists were Jewish, and fled to America to escape the Nazis. I believe Japan much less so.


13 posted on 05/25/2010 4:08:54 PM PDT by KoRn (Department of Homeland Security, Certified - "Right Wing Extremist" - I Hate Mexico)
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To: DemforBush; tet68; SirLurkedalot; colorado tanker; MollyKuehl; Nervous Tick; Vaquero; ...

I am often puzzled why newspapers in the U.K run more interesting stories about things going on in the U.S.
than our own newspapers do.


14 posted on 05/25/2010 4:11:21 PM PDT by Repeal The 17th (Don't blame me. I voted for Jefferson Davis.)
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To: tet68

How ya’ doin’?


15 posted on 05/25/2010 4:11:55 PM PDT by Repeal The 17th (Don't blame me. I voted for Jefferson Davis.)
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To: Repeal The 17th

Doing good. Glad to see your project turned out ok.


16 posted on 05/25/2010 4:15:01 PM PDT by tet68 ( " We would not die in that man's company, that fears his fellowship to die with us...." Henry V.)
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To: Nervous Tick

“Pacific island-hopping.”

My Uncle was there, and feels the same way.


17 posted on 05/25/2010 4:15:22 PM PDT by Dr. Bogus Pachysandra ( Ya can't pick up a turd by the clean end!)
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To: Repeal The 17th

What a great story!

Van Kirk had it exactly right when he said: “I’ve never found a way to fight a war without killing people. If you ever find that out let me know.”

He’s right. In Afghanistan right now our strategy is based on the opposite, implausible premise: Fight and WIN a war without killing people. That’s not possible. Civilians will die.

Van Kirk’s story makes me wish I could have been around people like General Curtis LeMay. Instead of LeMay we get Stanley McChrystal and Obama, who are more concerned with protecting Afghans than with winning the war.

theconservativebeacon.net


18 posted on 05/25/2010 4:16:38 PM PDT by jprice28
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To: Nervous Tick

The bombs possibly saved all the POWs in the Far East. It is said that Japan knew that it was losing the war and that they planned to make their last stand in Japan. They were willing to pull their troops back from the countries they occupied, but before doing so they were planning to execute all their POWs first.


19 posted on 05/25/2010 4:18:30 PM PDT by 353FMG (ISLAM -- America's road to destruction.)
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To: Repeal The 17th
The UK still brings along real journalists into the business.

About the time of Watergate it seems the journalism schools in the US filled up with kids who wanted to change the world (which of course means nailing Republicans and doing Democrat propaganda). They are poorly educated, incurious people who in many cases never learned their craft. Most don't know how to tell a story so as to hold the reader's attention. Sometimes I read a story and actually can't figure out what happened, as if the writer never learned the five "W's."

20 posted on 05/25/2010 4:21:05 PM PDT by colorado tanker
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