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Brigadier General Paul Tibbets, RIP
On Nov 2, 11:23?pm, Hiroshima Facts wrote:
On Nov 2, 1:59 pm, Chuck Gould wrote: On Nov 1, 7:38?pm, Tim wrote: On Nov 1, 3:59 pm, Short Wave Sportfishing wrote: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php...article=1&catn... "...Tibbets, then a 30-year-old colonel.." WOAH! I think he has the right idea over secrecy in his burial, though. Knowing what I know now, I don't know if I could have done his job or not. Even though it was probablyt he right thing to do, I don't think it would be a prideful act. But I wasn't there either. mixed emotions We had reduced Japanese naval power to the point where an effective blockade of the island nation would probably have inspired its surrender within a matter of weeks...likely without an invasion. Perhaps, but that wasn't guaranteed. And it wasn't a reason to delay the A-bombs. Truman felt it was neccessary to demonstrate the effectiveness of both the uranium bomb (Hiroshima) and the plutonium bomb (Nagasaki) to convince the Russians that we had the will and capability to react to any threat "with extreme prejudice". Perhaps to some extent, but Truman's main concern was convincing Japan to surrender. There was no desire to demonstrate different types of bombs. The only reason two bombs were used is because Japan surrendered between the second and third bombs. Had Japan surrendered between the third and fourth bombs, they'd have been nuked three times. I was also strategically critical to end the Japanese war before our Russian "allies" marched in during the mop up with possible plans for occupying some of the islands and thereby establishing effective Naval bases in the Pacfic. True. We definitely preferred keeping the Soviets out of Japan. But on the other hand, the Soviets were coming in because we had invited them. We didn't want to invade Japan without the Soviets attacking Manchuria. Japanese people continued to die from radiation poisoning for many years after the explosions, with more than 500,000 civilian deaths by 1951. Nope. The death rate returned to normal a few months after the A- bombs. There have only been a few thousand deaths attributed to A- bomb radiation since 1945. Many military leaders of the day disagreed with Truman's decision to use the atomic bomb. Maybe long after the war had ended. But there wasn't any great groundswell of military disagreement during the war. Dwight Eisenhower said that when he was infromed of Truman's decision to use nuclear bombs, "I voiced my misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unneccesary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon who employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of face." Yes, Ike was the one military leader who thought during the war that the A-bombs were unnecessary. But he never made much of a fuss about it. It's unlikely that Truman even knew Ike had objected until Ike mentioned it in his post- presidential memoirs. Admiral William Leahy, Chief of Saff to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, said in his autobiography "It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons." Hindsight. All Leahy said about the A-bombs *during the war* was "I'm an expert in explosives and I say these things will never work". General MacArthur apparently did not voice any official support for or opposition to the bombing in 1945, but his consultant Norman Cousins wrote in 1987 that MacArthur's oft-stated private opinion was "The war might have ended weeks earlier if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor." One thing MacArthur said just after Hiroshima was that he thought Japan was nowhere near surrendering and we'd probably still have to invade before they gave up. Authors Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell, ("Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denmial" published by Grossett/ Putnam in 1995), claim to have documentation that official US estimates for the number of military deaths that would result from an invasion of Japan would be between 20,000 and 63,000. They seem to have missed the projections of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which pointed to 1,200,000 American casualties (including 267,000 dead) from Operation Downfall. And how about the study the War Department had done that estimated that invading Japan would cost 1,700,000 to 4,000,000 American casualties (including 400,000 to 800,000 dead)?- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - http://www.unm.edu/~abqteach/atomica...rica_cover.htm |
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