“I believe this weapon prevented the United States and allied forces from invading Japan. And because of the prevention of such an invasion, I’m sure that we’ve saved many, many lives. I couldn’t hazard a guess to how many, but I think it brought a quick end to the war.” — Colonel Paul Tibbets, mission commander of the B-29 strike force against Hiroshima
Colonel Paul Tibbets did not want a memorial service or a headstone.
He always feared his service would be interrupted and/or his marker would be desecrated.
Was Tibbets (1915-2007) prescient about how American history would be treated in the 21st Century by those with no sense of decency?
Instead, the B-29 mission commander asked for his ashes to be spread over the English Channel, ensuring his eternal peace. The geographic choice reflects the countless bombing sorties he and his crew mates made against Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany before being transferred to the Pacific.
Almost DailyBrett recognizes we are now exactly one month to the date of the 75th anniversary — Thursday, August 6 (Japan time) — of the dropping of the atomic bomb, ending World War II with a brilliant-and-horrific flash of light, heat and radiation.
Longtime Fox News correspondent Chris Wallace and AP investigative journalist Mitch Weiss co-wrote, “Countdown 1945, The Extraordinary Story Of The Atomic Bomb And The 116 Days That Changed The World.”
The crux of the book, which reads similar to a page-turning novel, is the Mother of All Decisions made by a newly minted American president, Harry S. Truman. After the passing of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) on April 12, 1945, Truman was inaugurated as America’s 33rd president. He quickly found out he had been deliberately kept in the dark about America’s greatest secret, the “Manhattan Project,” to produce a World War II game-changer: The atomic bomb.
All of the arguments and counter-arguments at the time and the present-day second-guessing are fully presented in Countdown 1945. For example, bomb use opponent Allied Supreme Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower argued: Japan was already defeated, America would be known as the country that dropped the uranium bomb, and inviting the USSR to enter into the war against Japan was a colossal mistake.
Stating that America would be stigmatized as the nation that dropped the bomb was/is self-evident. The invitation to Stalin to invade Manchuria led directly to present day headaches North Korea, Communist China and Vietnam. The notion that Japan was defeated in early 1945 is debatable today as it was then.
Truman knew that an invasion of Japan beginning with Operation Olympic (invasion of Kyushu) in November, 1945 and the following Operation Coronet (invasion of Honshu) would last approximately 18 months with a projected loss of 250,000 American lives/500,000 wounded and 1 million Japanese killed or wounded.
Was there another option to the prospect of at least 18 more months of war and a quarter-of-million American casualties or heaven forbid, even more?
The alternative was the bomb, first at Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and Nagasaki three days later. VJ Day, celebrating the surrender of Japan, was proclaimed nine days later on August 15. The choice turned out to be nine more days vs. 18 months. Truman made the call. His approval rating at the end of World War II stood at 87 percent.
Even to this day, the majority of Americans — no lower than 53 percent at any time since 1945 — approve Truman’s decision to drop the bomb on military-industrial sites to end the war — but the collateral damage to innocent civilians was still horrific. Dropping the bomb was both a difficult decision (e.g., thousands of civilian deaths) for Truman and an easy call (e.g., saving American lives, early end of World War II) all wrapped in one.
Any Remorse?
“I have often been asked if I had any remorse for what we did in 1945. I assure you that I have no remorse whatsoever and I will never apologize for what we did to end World War II. Humane warfare is an oxymoron. War by definition is barbaric. To try and distinguish between an acceptable method of killing and an unacceptable method is ludicrous.” — The only crew member (radar specialist) to fly both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki missions, Jacob Beser
There is zero doubt the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan ushered in the nuclear age, and with it the specter of nuclear annihilation on a savage global scale. According to the Arms Control Association (ACA), there were an estimated 14,000 nuclear warheads on the planet at the end of 2019, the majority held by Russia (6,490) and the United States (6,185). The concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) has kept these warheads in their silos, even when relations between the Americans and Russians became downright frosty.
Allied intelligence knew that Hitler was working on an atomic bomb (confirmed by armaments minister Albert Speer in his two books about the war). The Wallace/Weiss Countdown 1945 states that industrial espionage about the Manhattan Project was provided to Stalin by theoretical physicist and Soviet spy, Klaus Fuchs.
At some point in time other nations were going to inevitably discover the secrets of the atomic bomb, and potentially use them. The United States has that single distinction of twice employing nuclear weapons.
The intense debate over the use of the atomic bomb will undoubtedly resurrect itself with the coming 75th anniversary of Hiroshima. In this super politically charged environment, the strife over Hiroshima and Nagasaki has the potential to further divide us … if that is even possible.
Almost DailyBrett acknowledges that upwards to 226,000 were killed in the two atomic bomb attacks. Your author also knows that a quarter of million of Americans would have succumbed if the war continued for another 18 months (or longer) with the two planned invasions of Japan’s home islands.
We should also keep in mind that without Pearl Harbor, the names Hiroshima and Nagasaki would not be etched in history.
https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Nuclearweaponswhohaswhat
https://almostdailybrett.wordpress.com/2020/06/28/mob-rules-misogyny-reigns/
