SubscribeLeMay said if we lost the war that we would have all been prosecuted as war criminals. And I think he's right. He...and I'd say I...were behaving as war criminals...LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side has lost...But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?
One of those was that they be allowed to keep their emperor.
You think of the lives which would have been lost in an invasion of Japan's home islands--a staggering number of Americans but millions more of Japanese-0and you Thank God for the Atom Bomb.
"He said the display "was not intended to insult anybody," but the Japanese were outraged. The U.S. government later issued a formal apology."In the early mission planning, the point of the U.S. building two bombs was clear: there were to have been simultaneous drops in Europe and Japan, as this 2002 interview between Tibbets and Studs Terkel makes clear.
"Paul Tibbets: My edict was as clear as could be. Drop simultaneously in Europe and the Pacific because of the secrecy problem - you couldn't drop it in one part of the world without dropping it in the other. And so he said, "I don't know what to tell you, but I know you happen to have B-29's to start with. I've got a squadron in training in Nebraska - they have the best record so far of anybody we've got. I want you to go visit them, look at them, talk to them, do whatever you want. If they don't suit you, we'll get you some more." He said: "There's nobody could tell you what you have to do because nobody knows. If we can do anything to help you, ask me." I said thank you very much. He said, "Paul, be careful how you treat this responsibility, because if you're successful you'll probably be called a hero. And if you're unsuccessful, you might wind up in prison."It's clear that Tibbets and the U.S. command, up to President Truman, expected fanatical Japanese resistance to any invasion of Honchu and the home islands. Perhaps they hoped that the "shock and awe" value of dropping atomic bombs would be enough to avoid the expected hand to hand fighting against a Japanese enemy that considered anything but death in combat "dishonorable," and which the Americans had already seen, at Peleliu, Saipan, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. And in light of the increasingly savage tactics employed by the Japanese in those campaigns, American fears about a final invasion of the Japanese home islands certainly seemed well founded, at the time. The availability of multiple atomic bombs in August, 1945 gave Truman the ability to not just demonstrate that the U.S. possessed atomic technology, but that, indeed, America had already built an atomic arsenal, the depth of which the Japanese could not know, but which the public statements of the U.S. government, immediately after August 8, indicated might be great.
« Older Politifact... | So, apparently some of those S... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by psmealey at 10:19 AM on November 1, 2007