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August 6, 1945...
We pushed the world into the nuclear age.  Aug 06 14 03:22 am Link AND, it was my father's 21st BDay, he was on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific . . . not sure the two events are related . . .  SOS Aug 06 14 06:30 am Link  Dutch Van Kirk, navigator on the Enola Gay, passed away July 28, at age 93. He was the last surviving crew member. Aug 06 14 08:05 am Link Why was the atomic bomb the only way to end the war? Aug 06 14 09:46 am Link AdelaideJohn1967 wrote: Not the only way. It was the only way without a full scale invasion on Japan. Aug 06 14 09:50 am Link One of our interns did a college paper on the positive effects of dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ending the war with Japan. The part I found interesting was she did a calculation based on the number of US soldiers, Japanese soldiers and Japanese civilians that could have been killed if the US had invaded Japan...and then carried that forward to the number of children and grandchildren that would have never been born due to the lives lost in the invasion. She concluded the chances were 1/X (I forget the number) that you may not have been born if the invasion had taken place and even greater odds that an individual Japanese citizen would not have been born as a result of the invasion. The reason she thought of this is because her Grandfather was a US soldier in the Pacific. He would have most likely been involved in an invasion of Japan had if been necessary. So there was a chance he could have been killed, resulting in her Dad never being born, cancelling out the existence her and her siblings. I'm not trying to start a debate about the bomb being right or wrong...just pointing out a different and interesting perspective. Aug 06 14 09:55 am Link The madness that had afflicted the Japanese people at the time would have resulted in more Japanese people being killed, and committing suicide, during the conquest of Japan, than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even with the number of people who died from radiation poisoning, which wasn't fully appreciated at the time. And it has to be said that the Bomb would probably have been dropped somewhere at some time, and the scale of the devastation in Japan probably stopped the USA or the USSR from using it anywhere else. Aug 06 14 10:06 am Link ernst tischler wrote: This is interesting. In January 1945, my dad was assigned to the 328 BG as a flight engineer. The 328 was one of the B-24 groups that flew against the Ploesti oil fields in 1943. When my dad was assigned to the 328, the group was transition training on the B-29. If the war had not ended when it did, my dad surely would have gone to the Pacific, probably during the winter of 1945/1946. The result of my father being overseas instead of here with my mother means that I would not have been born in June 1946, or maybe not born at all. I am not a proponent of maintaining a huge nuclear arsenal, like the U.S. and Soviets did, but for better or worse, I am glad that President Truman gave the order to use the weapon(s) when he did. Aug 06 14 01:42 pm Link AdelaideJohn1967 wrote: You do know that the Japanese bombed Darwin in February 1942... Aug 06 14 01:49 pm Link I got to meet the pilot of the Enola Gay ( Paul Tibbets ) at a static air show in the late 90's. He was autographing copies of his book, which was an interesting read. Aug 06 14 02:32 pm Link My father was a Naval Officer and would have been in the invasion fleet had it gone forward. The invasion fleet if it went off on schedule would have been hit by a major hurricane just like the Russian fleet was with massive loss of life and a very different end to the war and a much longer war would have resulted and I might not be here to make this post. I remember reading about a college girl going on about how wrong the bomb was over a family dinner and when she was done her grandfather just said that his unit was to be in the first wave of the invasion and what the casualty rate was expected to be. Remember it took TWO to get the military to give up and even then they planned a coup to take over and keep on fighting and it almost succeeded. Frank , thanks for reminding us with all the things going on now we need to remember our history Aug 06 14 05:30 pm Link My Grandfather was an engineer and worked on the Manhattan project. He died before it was all declassified, so he never talked about what he actually worked on during the war. My biggest hope is that we remember how devastating it was, even with such a small yield by today's standards, was to a civilian population. Unfortunately, my cynical side believes that some day, we will forget the lesson of 1945 and someone will again unleash that destruction on the world. Aug 06 14 05:48 pm Link AdelaideJohn1967 wrote: In 1945 the Japanese had lost Iwo Jima which meant the American Air War would proceed unchecked. Aug 06 14 05:48 pm Link i'll bet if you went into most public high schools in the us and said the words 'enola gay', you get nothing but weird looks, or smirks. america is a very young country. it's too bad that our children aren't taught more of its history; either the good, the bad or the ugly. you can argue the philosophical decisions made to use the weapons at hiroshima and nagasaki, but you can't argue with the results. rarely do the best laid military plans ever work even close to how they were conceived (even d-day as an example), but the bombs effectively ended wwII (with ve day ending the european earlier that may). i feel for the guys who actually flew the missions. one can only imagine what they had to live with for the rest of their lives. Aug 06 14 05:57 pm Link The sad truth is that most of the public, on either side, accepts casualties in the military. It is expected. Wars end when there are sufficient civilian casualties to cause the people or politicians to give up. The atomic bomb ended the war because of the civilian casualties it caused. Aug 06 14 06:04 pm Link Stephen Fletcher wrote: I think this is very close to the truth (not just the version of history written by those on the winning side of the war). I have read biographies of most of the presidents from the present back to Truman. In Truman's biography it was said that the creation of the atomic bomb was so top secret that Truman was unaware of it until after Roosevelt died shortly into his fourth term. Aug 06 14 07:29 pm Link GK photo wrote: Thru a twist of fate, I had lunch with Paul Tibbets....I think it was 2000 or 2001. Aug 06 14 08:32 pm Link It was a terrible choice and probably wouldn't be made today. I do accept that fewer people died (both American/Allied & Japanese) than would have if not for the atomic bomb. Aug 06 14 09:02 pm Link Frank Lewis Photography wrote: Yes I do......... Aug 07 14 03:21 am Link The bombings were always a confusing topic for me. I've always seen it quite differently from american history books. My grandfathers and family taught me differently about the war. But us Filipinos always bear quite big grudges towards people. So my views might be a little biased towards the Philippines. We were the second most devastated country in WWII only next to Poland. So my grand parents hatred towards the Japanese grow very deep. However even they thought what the Americans did was murder. I strongly believe that the bombings in a civilian gross city was nothing short of horrible. Yeah it effectively ended the war and avoided a mainland invasion but it was at the cost of the citizens. Imagine if your country went to war right now, and they had a choice of either being invaded by a military force or to be bombed by a dirty bomb in a populated city. I bet you every country would choose to go to war. Aug 07 14 05:50 am Link We should not forget that Japan also had a nuclear program, two in fact as the Army and Navy had separate ones. The Army one was destroyed in the firebombing of Tokyo and the Navy is reported to have tested one in what is now N Korea. The Navy one was designed to be used at sea against an invasion fleet. Aug 07 14 06:12 am Link AdelaideJohn1967 wrote: Robert Winn Photography wrote: This. Aug 07 14 06:12 am Link Allen Carbon wrote: You choice analogy doesn't work. The USA decided that we would take the fight to the enemies rather than let them invade us for a fight here. When the refused to surrender, we ended the war with a bomb. Aug 07 14 06:24 am Link AdelaideJohn1967 wrote: Robert Winn Photography wrote: Probably true... and with the 'invasion tactics' used by the US Military in that era, God knows we couldn't suffer the heavy troop loses of another 'D-Day Omaha Beach'... where 1000's of our troops died in one day... Aug 07 14 06:30 am Link P O T T S wrote: Some people think that they avoided a war in Japan, some people thought they avoided a war in mainland America. Aug 07 14 07:38 am Link Select Models wrote: Read up on your D-Day history a little bit more. Aug 07 14 08:12 am Link  I highly recommend this book about the last B-29 mission of the war, August 15, 1945, six days after the B-29 Bockscar, bombed Nagasaki. Even after the second bomb was dropped, the Japanese military was not ready to surrender. The military reasoned that if the war could be extended for another year, then Japan could sue for peace on better terms than unconditional, as stated in the Potsdam Declaration. On the night of this bombing mission, the Japanese military staged a coup d'etat in an attempt to take the emperor prisoner and to keep him from broadcasting Japan's surrender to the Japanese people. The stream of B-29s passing over Tokyo that night caused the city to be blacked out and as a result the coup failed. Aug 08 14 05:37 am Link Select Models wrote: AdelaideJohn1967 wrote: Probably true... and with the 'invasion tactics' used by the US Military in that era, God knows we couldn't suffer the heavy troop loses of another 'D-Day Omaha Beach'... where 1000's of our troops died in one day... Actually we lost over 7,000 in a training practice. Back then our concept of acceptable losses was a lot different. That incident was classified for close to 50 years, today we would call it a cover up. Aug 08 14 05:50 am Link Allen Carbon wrote: You cannot compare the number of civilians killed and wounded by the dropping the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to ZERO. An accurate comparison would be between civilians killed and wounded by the bombs VS the number of civilians that would have been killed and wounded if the US had invaded Japan. Allen Carbon wrote: You have the choice mixed up. The US had the choice of dropping the bombs or invading...the decision was based on what our losses could be in each of the two options. Aug 08 14 12:46 pm Link ernst tischler wrote: Anyone here grow up in Japan? I've always wondered how Japanese history books, say for teenaged or college-aged students, describe the reasons for invading Pearl Harbor? Aug 08 14 12:59 pm Link Toto Photo wrote: Oil embargo was the final catalyst. Aug 08 14 01:44 pm Link To centre on the A-bomb is a bit short of understanding the amount of damage conventional bombing was causing to Japan and it's war time economy and output. The Operation Meetinghouse firebombing of Tokyo on the night of 9/10 March 1945 was the single deadliest air raid of World War II; greater than Dresden, Hiroshima, or Nagasaki as single events. Estimated casualties from that single conventional bombing raid in that 24 hour period were in excess of 97,000 killed and 125,000 wounded. Some estimates are 20 - 25% higher. --- There is an interesting, and very revealing, side story to that raid, and others like it. The Tokyo Fire Department had trainees in-house, referred to as Cadets. One of the Cadet's duties was to present on the fire ground a banner representing his fire fighting unit. He was to position himself such that the members of his unit were to know that the fire was to be permitted to advance to that point, where the Cadet stood, and no further. In these big raids, it was known, some Cadets burned alive where they stood rather than retreat from the flames. It was a matter of honour, both personal and of their unit. No one should ever underestimate the bravery shown by the Japanese in the circumstances they found themselves in. That was the kind of determination, projected forward to a potential invasion of Japan, that made bringing the war to an end as quickly as possible, by any means possible, a necessity. Studio36 Aug 08 14 03:39 pm Link Jay Edwards wrote: AdelaideJohn1967 wrote: This. Kinda like 9/11 being an answer to the USA's actions in Iraq? Aug 08 14 04:30 pm Link We're forgetting these days over the years. No mention of it in any of the Seattle t.v news broadcasts. Aug 08 14 05:08 pm Link Cherrystone wrote: That's true. But assets in the pacific were going to be attacked. It was just a matter of time. The United States was not going to sit world war II out. I remember doing a report on the attack and the events leading up to that fateful day. Aug 08 14 06:53 pm Link Today the "Fat Man" bomb was delivered...  Aug 09 14 03:51 am Link The disgusting truth about WWII is that the USA repeatedly targeted civilians like no other nation had. The bombing of Tokyo deliberately going for civilian targets with close to 100,000 victims. Hiroshima followed. Even more disgusting and unnecessary was the bombing of Nagasaki. This was all about shock and awe. It was not instrumental to ending the war. The scientist behind the nuke called for a demonstration to the Japanese, but this was not what Truman desired. Part of the absurdity of the whole history is that Kyoto was spared because an influential US General had his honeymoon there. Aug 10 14 06:26 pm Link Fred Greissing wrote: Killing civilians is how wars are won. Attacking only military targets is how a peace is lost. Aug 10 14 07:17 pm Link Risen Phoenix Photo wrote: If this is said or done by the Russians, it's tyranny and injustice. Aug 10 14 07:32 pm Link Allen Carbon wrote: Word...... Aug 11 14 02:13 am Link |
