In the 1960’s I was privileged to have the acquaintance of a WWII survivor of the Bataan Death March and three years as a prisoner of the Japanese. He worked for the NM Highway Commission where I was working in the legal department as a young lawyer. He was called to mind as I listened to a NPR segment this morning about the bombing of Hiroshima. It was a pure propaganda piece about the evil of the US killing so many civilians that day and related how it was a war crime by current definitions. No historical context whatsoever or any mention of the savagery of the Japanese during the entire course of the War. A man from Mars listening would have thought there was some minor dispute with the sons of Nippon and we decided to slaughter as many as we could without any regard to the moral context of the War. The report angered me and was a vilification of so many young boys of ours who fought that terrible foe.
Seventy-five years ago Colonel Paul Tibbets and his crew set off for the fateful mission. There were three B-29s on the run; one for the bombing, one with photographic crews and one with measurement instruments. The flight was accompanied for much of the flight by P-51 mustangs. Everyone was young. In their twenty’s and a few in their 30’s. They only knew they were carrying a really big bomb. That was all they needed to know for security reasons. The bomb worked, some thought it would malfunction. Thousands of Japanese were killed but actually less than those that died a few months earlier during the fire bombing of Tokyo with incendiary explosives. It was comparable to the fire bombings of Hamburg and Dresden in Germany from a bit earlier in the War in terms of destruction and civilian deaths. A recent biographer of Tibbets related how he got interested in the Tibbets story because when he was a young boy he and his dad were walking down the street of the Ohio town where they and Tibbets lived. His dad when he saw Tibbets remarked to his son that “there is the man who saved my life”. His dad was one of millions scheduled for the invasion of Japanese homelands.
We were in a total war, winner take all. Decent civilization needed to defeat the Nazis and the Japanese. This was not a college debate. The Japanese killed literally untold millions of Chinese and Koreans. Remember the Rape of Nanking. They enslaved millions and treated them like cattle.
The man mentioned I knew told me of some of his pains and sufferings during the War at the hands of the Japanese. It is one thing to read about such events but entirely another to sit with someone who had to endure the cruelty and inhumane treatment at the hands of the Japanese. I was very cautious about how I approached the topic because I realized that remembering those events could be quite unpleasant and disturbing. I would just ask general questions about when he joined, when they shipped out to the Philippines. I let him go to the imprisonment when he wanted and how he wanted. I still wonder at how he even survived. It was as bad or worse than those scenes for the “Unbroken” book and movie. I did tell him I regretted deeply the suffering and pain he endured and greatly appreciated the sacrifice he and all the others made for us who never had to make such sacrifices. I wish I could have made my gratitude even more apparent. If the bomb had not brought and end to the War my dad would have been part of that invasion and battle for Japan. He was recovering from an injury on Enewetak island at San Diego when the bomb was dropped. But he was a trained gunner’s mate and for sure that fall would have been re-assigned to the invasion force. He was already trained and experienced. I am glad he did not have to go. All the vets I talked to or listened to including my uncles and dad’s friends were to a man thrilled we used the bomb and that they didn’t have to invade Japan. The Japanese had already formulated their defense plan for the home islands. It called for mass suicide attacks by everyone, not just the military. They had thousands of kami kaze planes still available and miniature suicide subs to attack ships. At Okinawa about 5000 sailors were killed and tens of thousands of marines and soldiers. Estimates for our casualties to invade the home islands were 250,000 dead and some estimates were higher still.
War is brutal, nasty and always to be regretted. But sometimes necessary to preserve decency, civility, and some common sense of morality. And to defeat evil. Japan was a pure evil empire.
“when a thing is done, even a fool sees it”—-Homer
olcranky
A Sage for the Ages 