Pilot Tibbett of Hiroshima dies at 92.

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"I wanted to kill the bastards", that's what col. Tibbett (now Brig. Gen.) said about his accomplishment: the droppin of the A bomb over Hiroshima. He died now at 92, said he always slept well and had never any afterthought about his "mission". I was a child at that time and was in charge to buy the newspapers for my family. I remember the exact place where I was when I looked at the titles of the newspaper. I was upset.

Don't be too hard on the man. I've read a lot about the Campaign in the Pacific. The Japanese never observed the Geneva Convention. They were taught that only cowards surrended. The fighting over there was not like what happened here in Europe. (As if that wasn't ghastly enough.)

Ya, im glad he lived a good, long life. He had a mission and succeeded in it, for helping to prevent the invasion of the japanese mainland I hope he was awarded a medal, hell I woulda been happy to drop it myself given the opertunity back then.

Dispassionately viewed, the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended a war that would have become even nastier as time went by. More people were killed during a firebombing of Tokyo, but the nuclear bombs were just two bombs, and they caused so much havoc.

But it also should be remembered that the Japanese were also extremely vicious in the war in the Pacific. Changi prison is one example. Many Australian veterans of WWII would probably feel ambivalent and ambiguous at best about the Japanese, and at worst, utter hatred.

i hold the view above, but some hold the view that doubts were felt then and the Japanese already ready to make peace, so the bombs should not have been dropped. I wonder what would have happenend if they had no t been?

Is it worth noting here that the Imperial army had to be ordered to surrender by the emperor even after the second bomb, because they were quite happy to continue fighting, regardless of american superweapons? (In a similar vein to the ww1 german army, which was never defeated, but ordered to surrender, much to their annoyance.) Any army that willing to fight on is going to be a nightmare to deal with in conventional terms.

Besides which, the bomb would have been used sooner or later. Perhaps better that its use was so very limited, rather than at a point when others had achieved similar technology. That a device so weak in modern standards could cause such devastation is probably the single greatest reason why no one has ever attempted to use one since. It gave the world the fear, and rightly so.

It was not my intent to open a discussion on the use of nuclear weapons. What happened in the last weeks of the war and after in Germany has never been described in its full horror, and this for the simple reason that history is written by victors. As Simone Weil points out the first genocide in its modern technical sense was committed by Caesar angainst the German tribes and after the surrender of Vercingetorix. It is described by Caesar himself with cold precision in De bello gallico.

Certainly the twentieth century has been a century of horrors: 30m dead in WW1, young boys sent to die in the trenchs with the military police shooting at their backs and executing reluctant fighters. The whole thing being the preparation of fascist and nazi regimes and then WW2. After WW2 we have witnessed the construction of atomic weaponry for MAD (mutual assured destruction). We live now with these stockpiles of nukes and a dozen of nuclear powers, one certainly (Pakistan) wholly unreliable.

As for Tibbett, he was only a little cog. His statement that he wanted "to kill those bastards", is only a proof of his total lack of sensibility. "Bomber" Harris who commanded the air fleets in Europe, under the direct supervision of Winston Churchill, was not a compassionate man either and was certainly of a different quality compared to Tibbett, who was only "the little cog".

For Macbeth: I would advise to see "Letters from Jwo Jima", Japs were not so happy to fight, and when they were it was largely fo having been imbibed of propaganda. I was a ten years child among the German troops retreating on the "Gothic Line" and they were equally unhappy to fight.
It should be said also that both for Germany and Japan the great miscalculation (if it was a miscalculation) was that of imposing the "unconditional surrender".

Good riddance to bad rubbish!

There was absolutely no need to nuke Japan, it was done to intimidate the Soviets and test the technology, nothing else, the Japanese were beaten and the firebombing of Tokyo [killed more than either of the nukes] had already broken their spirit.

Even small cogs choose whether or not to do their part.

peace j

Two of my uncles were in WWII. One was stationed in India as a radio operator. He said the Indians preferred the presence of American soldiers to Japanese because the Americans brought their own food - the Japanese took what they wanted from the locals, even if the locals went hungry. The other uncle was in a group that went from island to island in the Pacific after the surrender to tell entrenched Japanese troops they could go home. A lot of them didn't believe it. Neither would I. It cost a lot of lives to dig out some of those bunkers. Some were too well fortified, and the soldiers in them had to be killed so they wouldn't kill someone else.

People can speculate forever on what would have happened if the bombs were not dropped. Based on the information at the time, dropping the bombs seemed to be the least costly in terms of human life. It's a shame to all involved.

And I have sat and talked with one of the first Kiwi's to inspect 'ground zero' and everything he saw during the end of the war led him to the conclusion it was unnecessary!
I just love the rationalisation that because a few more SOLDIERS may have died that it was justifiable to slaughter so many women, children and old people??
If you would care to do some extensive and wide netted research of de-classified papers and NON-American discussion on the subject you may find that it was indeed merely a test of what was seen to be the future of war AND an attempt to intimidate a very powerful and ambitious USSR from attempting any further incursions into western Europe, or the propagation of Socialistic/Communistic thinking. There had already been several incidents in Germany and following their defeat many in the Allied military leadership wanted to continue into Eastern Europe and continue the war against the USSR, it was only the superiority of both the size and technology of the Soviet forces that deterred them [the USA had no comparable armour to the IS-2 or IS-3 [let alone the numbers of T-34-85's available], superior infantry numbers, an air force that was rapidly gaining in technology and numbers etc...]
Look at the culture within the USA immediately after the war, analyze the propaganda, deconstruct the lies and it all becomes clearer, remember McCarthy's witch hunts for 'un-American' behavior? remember the countless lies and propaganda campaigns against both leftist thinking but the USSR, China, Trade Unions etc...?

peace j