I wonder if Gen. LeMay was ever asked if he had any regrets...

The five-ton "Little Boy" bomb was dropped on the morning of 6 August 1945, killing about 140,000 Japanese, with many more of them dying later.

I think there is a word missing from the quote...

Spkn lk tr ptrt.

no, not "more" -- 70,000 died on the day, and the remaining of the est. 140,000 did die later.

More lives were saved by quickly ending the war than were killed by the two bombs.

More lives were saved by quickly ending the war than were killed by the two bombs.

Like anything, we can never be positive that is true. I believe it, and I am thankful that there are men and women who take such risks, not knowing what the final outcome will be.

What does it matter if anyone ever asked about his regrets? I'm sure he had regrets, about many many things. If he regretted his role in the bombing, even privately, then good. He was human. If he never regretted, even for a moment, his role in the bombing then good. He was human.

I won't delude myself into believing that I know best about this event that happened 60+ years ago.

Three Enola Gay crew members were named after Tibbets' mother? Well, that sounds interesting but highly doubtful. Oh, the Enola Gay was named after Mother Tibbets! Yikes, guess that's my U.S. English comprehension failing once again.

"More lives were saved by quickly ending the war than were killed by the two bombs."

While this is a popular historical sentiment it is also a completely sick perspective on the value of human life.

These were civilians that were killed. Not soldiers. we murdered children to save the lives of combatants?

The idea behind the concept of "it shortened the war" is that we demonstrated some seriousness or power or barbarity that the japanese could not stomach. They saw how serious we were. So why not capture, rape and murder their children in front of them. Why not slaughter all prisoners as brutally as possible as soon they are taken. Why not salt the earth, etc. etc.

Historical detachment is one thing but tbbts fnlly rts whr h blngs.

#7 "tibbets finally rots where he belongs."

He deserved to die with a clear conscience and he deserves your respect. What vast moral dilemma did you wrestle with today? Organic vs FreeTrade? Tall vs Grande? Congratulations.

Sorry bagpipe_bomb, "So why not capture, rape and murder their children in front of them. Why not slaughter all prisoners as brutally as possible as soon they are taken. Why not salt the earth, etc. etc." is what the Japanese did in China to the Chinese people. So any attempt to draw any significant sympathy to the Japanese would require a complete loss of perspective. While it is highly probable that there are other reasons to and not to have dropped the atomic, I will not bother to discuss unless the issue is raised by someone that knows the facts leading to and after the event. One thing is clear though -- dropping the bomb on Nagasaki was not necessary what so ever.

to bagpipe bomb
whos lives did it save? Men and women that were CIVILIANS before they got drafted. DUH treat them like they did our people in the Phillipines... remember the Bataan Death march. The massacres on Leyte. Where they killed everything in their path. Including the nurses of the Red Cross.
War is never a good thing I've been in too many but you need to have a grasp of reality. Next you'll tell us the SS where just a bunch of good guys.
I may not agree with your belief but I have and will defend to the end of my life to believe it.
If it was'nt for men like him and the others like us you wouldnt be able to say your thoughts.
Next time you see a veteran or a person in uniform thank them they are the reason your are free.

Here's an interesting piece of info I learned some years ago:

Do you know when the last time was that the US military purchased purple hearts?

Late 1944/early 1945. They've never had to purchase more, not through Korea, or Vietnam, or the various other conflicts the US has been involved with since then.

Why? Because they expected to need an extremely large number of them in the invasion of Japan.

I often find that people who rail against nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki don't understand the historical context in which the decision to bomb the cities was made. Having only known a world where the US is a superpower they don't see that when you're locked in combat with someone you see as a peer -- and who fights under a code of ethics that sees surrender as both dishonorable and evil -- you use all of your might.

You also do that because World War I taught you an important lesson: you can't risk "just" forcing your opponent to lay down his arms. Not when your opponent is a modern, industrialized state. You seek unconditional surrender because anything less than that means you'll probably have to fight another war against the same opponent within a generation.

Getting Imperial Japan to accept unconditional surrender required making it clear that the price of not capitulating was utter ruin. As it was, it took over a week for the Japanese high command to make the decision, and they only agreed after the Emperor was guaranteed protection and immunity.

#11

The bombings were pregaming for the cold war. While a lesson could be learned from WWI about not fully disarming beaten foes, Japan and Italy were allies who only gained power, so disarming allies is an equally valid conclusion along that line of reasoning.

The atomic bomb was the field test that showed the soviet union the power the US had, and the destruction that war against the US would leave in its wake. With the bombings as such an excessive act of force at a wars end against a nation that was already militarily crippled (hence no remaining military targets), the bombs were all about the Cold War and had very, very little to do with an invasion of Japan.

I knew the comments here would focus on the horrors of civilian casualties in Japan. It was horrific and it is horrific and it's the main reason why nuclear proliferation is looked down upon in the post-World War II world.

Like it or not—as #11 said above—World War II truly was a war in which none of us can judge what was done to end it. If D-Day would have never happened, it's quite easy to see a Nazi controlled Europe. And if Hiroshima and Nagasaki never happened, it's pretty clear the Japanese would not have stopped fighting in any way.

Like it or not Hirohito was seen as an emperor and the structure of Japanese society did see him as an ruler above all others. Heck, he's known as Hirohito outside of Japan partially as a way of "humanizing" him since referring to an emperor by a personal name is seen as an insult in Japan. And at that time, even with the war looking bleak for Japan, it was very clear they were not going out without a fight.

Something as destructive and powerful as the atomic bomb was needed to just end things once and for all. What was the alternative people wring their hands over? A prolonged ground assault? A protracted war that drains us more?

Heck, I think the fire bombing of Tokyo was immoral because when it was done there was no good reason and the war wasn't going that bad at that point. Ditto with the internment of Japanese Americans; incredibly stupid.

And that said, as each year/decade goes on there are different stories as to what the real reason for Japan's surrender was. Was it the fire bombings? Was it the atomic attacks? Was it Russia declaring war on Japan? I'm sickened we live in such a militarized world nowadays the bombing of Hiroshima/Nagasaki is fodder for odd arguments. Not because there aren't arguments to be made, but too many of them are predictable and insipid.

These men were directly responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people and "they had no regrets"??!!

They flew the mission then opened the hatch and dropped the bomb...and they had "no regrets"??!!

Allison

@ #14, Allison, I recommend you read this full interview with Paul Tibbets done by Studs Terkel for the Guardian. It gives you a much better picture of what was happening and the logic behind it. He's definitely a wee bit "gung ho" about this, but this quote illuminates a lot:
On the way to the target I was thinking: I can't think of any mistakes I've made. Maybe I did make a mistake: maybe I was too damned assured. At 29 years of age I was so shot in the ass with confidence I didn't think there was anything I couldn't do. Of course, that applied to airplanes and people. So, no, I had no problem with it. I knew we did the right thing because when I knew we'd be doing that I thought, yes, we're going to kill a lot of people, but by God we're going to save a lot of lives. We won't have to invade [Japan].

It's not like the U.S. woke up one day and decided "Let's kill random people!" There was a logic to it.

And for anyone who doesn't know about it, I'd recommend reading up on the history of World War II. Specifically the state of the military prior to the war and afterwards. Before the war, the U.S. barely had a military in the scale of what it had after the war. After the war the U.S. basically had this whole military infrastructure with nothing better to do than go to Korea, Vietnam and other places.

The real horrific legacy of World War II is how we ultimately defeated some of the worst enemies this world has ever seen. But it opened a militaristic Pandora's box that doesn't seem to want to ever get closed.

@@bagpipe_bomb:

Don't forget that civilians are not, the Japanese army was forcing its members to kill their families and themselves and the government was telling the civilians to kill themselves. It could be, perhaps, that many more soldiers AND civilians would have died had the war gone on. It's perhaps an unanswerable question, if more would have died or not, and it serves as a prime example of why we should not go to war so recklessly.

The argument that the bomb saved lives assumes two things:

That the Japanese were capable of waging war against the U.S. by August, 1945. This is not true.

That dropping the bomb destroyed the enemy, or at least a military target. Also not true.

Tibbets has been quoted as saying he had no regrets. But you have to wonder if he would have followed his orders, had he known about the destructive power and misery the dropping of the bomb would have caused. No one knew, only some scientists in New Mexico.

The only positive thing about Hiroshima and Nagasaki is that the horrific images may have helped prevent future nuclear conflict...maybe.

Robert M Blevins

Here, more primary sources on the development of the bomb, the planning of the missions, the bombings, and the aftermath than you can shake a stick at.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/index.htm

Lt's ll gt thr nd spt n hs grv.

# 13

"Like it or not—as #11 said above—World War II truly was a war in which none of us can judge what was done to end it. If D-Day would have never happened, it's quite easy to see a Nazi controlled Europe. And if Hiroshima and Nagasaki never happened, it's pretty clear the Japanese would not have stopped fighting in any way."

The trick is people have to judge what was done to end WWII. Certainly, as we get further removed from the time we don't have the facts laid out, and some answers may well have never been given. But that doesn't mean the whole thing should be accepted as is, and that other theories have no validity.

There were rumors that Japan was already working on a surrender, that the emperor had been able to regain some control from the military elite, that the public was worn out from war but that the military, and what remained of it, would still fight.

Say the bomb had missed, hit Kyoto. Rather than hasten the surrender, it would have destroyed on the most religiously significant (if not the most) cities in Japan, and mobilized the population to such a degree that the bombings would have done very little to remove from power those in Japan who had led the nation to war.

As for costly invasions, the Allies had been perfectly willing to hand Berlin over to Russia to spare lives, and with Russia's new involvement, Japan could fall while few, if any, American lives would be lost in the invasion. A Soviet Japan may have resulted, but that's trivial relative to the lives saved, right?

There is plenty of room for theory and speculation here. I'm putting forth the the bombings were used, with the perhaps-justified rationale of saving American lives, to keep Russia out of Japan and to show Russia that the United States had military power unlike anything the world had ever seen. This was containment, day one, sending a very strong "stay back" warning to Russia.

I am always shocked by the incredible ignorance of some of the folks who make assertions about this type of subject. There is no doubt whatsoever in the minds of anyone familiar with the nature of Japanese warfare/militarism that there would be FAR more deaths resultant from an invasion of Japan than the deaths from the two a-bombs. The experiences of the battles on the Pacific islands showed that the Japanese soldier would fight to the last death. There were no other honorable possibilites in their well-indoctrinated minds. The Kamikase attacks that occurred were only a foretaste of what was being prepared for any invasion fleet that dared near the Japanese coast. Thousands of aircraft and boats of many kinds prepared as suicide attack craft were found after the war ended. The civilian populations were being trained and drilled in resistance/suicide techniques. The regime of the time was as totalitarian as any on earth in history and only very reluctantly surrended even though their country had been brought to ruin around them. Persons knowledgeable about the realities of the monstrous Japanese mindset of that time have no doubts that the bombs saved far more lives than they took, not just those of soldiers and sailors but of the civilians of all ages in Japan. Only the ignorant make assertions about things they really don't know about.

The idea that "More lives were saved by quickly ending the war than were killed by the two bombs" is a wonderful security blanket to clutch at night when we go to bed. Perhaps it's true, certainly I think so, but the implied moral superiority of the victors of WW2 is something I struggle with. The allies carpet bombed German cities when precise bombing of factories proved too costly, more bombs were dropped in the last few months of the war than in the previous year, and allied commanders only stopped when they realized they had run out of targets. More people died in the firebombing of Tokyo than in the A-bomb blasts. I struggle with the morals of rounding up a portion of your own citizenry because they are of a particular heritage, in the case of the US it was Japanese-Americans.

I guess my conclusion is that there are no morals in war, despite our attempts to convince ourselves otherwise; we are essentially choosing the lesser of two evils, and calling it "good." When someone asks me if I "support our troops" I ask, "well, if I support them now, implementing martial law in some other country, does that mean I have to support them if they implement martial law in the US someday?" It was a couple soldiers that drove in the nails on Christ's cross, and I'm sure they were just following orders.

Sanity (5), Jack (13), good comments. Bagpipe_Bomb (7), read up on the Battle of Okinawa.

Kinda surprised nobody's mentioned that Japan was going to surrender w/in 6months.Had Japan told us that, things might've prevented. Also, japanese civilians were technically soldeir status. I'm sure if America was invaded it'd be the same. Basically every type of action is a necessary "evil", military's no exception.

@#24
"Kinda surprised nobody's mentioned that Japan was going to surrender w/in 6months."

Japan: "Hey Allies! We're not going to surrender now, but if you promise to lay off for like, five, no six months then we'll surrender. August, August just doesn't work for us: it's a feng shui thing. February is a much better time to surrender. We're not going to use that six months to rebuild our infrastructure or anything. Honest. Seriously this is for reals, yo'."

Somehow I don't think we would've believed them.

If Japan was going to surrender in six months, then why did it take two atomic bombings (and years of the Pacific campaign, the firebombing of Tokyo, the invasion of Okinawa, etc...) for the leadership in Japan to surrender?

What a lot of the commentators don't seem to realize is that before the Potsdam Declaration, and the end of Russia's neutrality towards Japan, the Japanese had been seeking Soviet mediation in ending the war. The allies responded with Potsdam, which was unacceptable to the Japanese mainly as it would not allow the Emperor to retain his position.
It should also be noted that the Japanese always knew they could not defeat and invade the US, they sought instead to gain quick military victories so they could seek an end to the war under terms favourable to Japan (i.e. which would let her hold on to her new SE Asian territories). This would also be unacceptable to the US as she sought to acquire more influence in resource-rich SE Asia also.
In short, I think the only reason for rejecting Japanese approaches for an end to the war, presenting them with unconditional surrender terms which they would not accept, was an attempt to justify the use of atomic weapons as a demonstration to the Soviets. Much as one of the objectives in destroying Dresden had been to show the advancing Russians the might of allied airpower.
In both cases killing thousands of non-combatants.
Don't get me wrong, the behaviour of both the Japanese and the Nazis in the war was absolutely abhorrent, but that does not justify the INTENTIONAL killing of civilians. In my view the justification that it saved more lives than it cost is absolute nonsense- the allies could have ended the war under terms more favourable to the Japanese. Even if they couldn't, and an invasion was necessary, we are still talking about purposely slaughtering non-combatants now, aren't we?
My two cents.

We're all glad that Japan surrendered, there's no argument about that. It's just very hard to celebrate the murder of so many civilians. Killing women and children sucks, period.

"If we had lost, we would have been tried as war criminals," - Robert McNamara

sweep - great points

All these history 'experts' here and yet no one mentions Gen. Curtis LeMay's responsibility in the firebombing of Germany and Japan in which many more people died than in the atomic blasts? Was the bombing of Dresden at all necessary militarily?

As for possible posturing by the US in using the atomic bomb, I'm sure there's some truth to that. But to say that was the main reason is specious at best.

@#28-THE_BOY
That quote is attributed to LeMay, not McNamara.

@ #3-EDT:
All these history 'experts' here and yet no one mentions Gen. Curtis LeMay's responsibility in the firebombing of Germany and Japan in which many more people died than in the atomic blasts?

Actually EDT, I mentioned the firebombing of Tokyo in comment #13:
Heck, I think the fire bombing of Tokyo was immoral because when it was done there was no good reason and the war wasn't going that bad at that point.

And in comment #26, Sweep mentions Dresden as well:
Much as one of the objectives in destroying Dresden had been to show the advancing Russians the might of allied airpower.

@#31-JACK:
Hi Jack. In an effort to remain as on-topic as possible, I was specifically referring to Mr. LeMay's personal and direct responsibility for loss of life in the firebombing, not the fact that the firebombing took place at all. So, _no_, no one had mentioned it. :-)

My point in this matter being that I just find it curious that people attack Mr. Tibbets whenever this topic winds its way back to the forefront, but pay no heed to Mr. LeMay, who was certainly more complicit in the deaths of civilians if blame is to be laid. BUT, I really don't think it's our place to second guess soldiers about their duties, sixty plus years after the fact.

I *did* miss Sweep's mention of Dresden though. My bad. My only excuse is that his conclusions made me subconsciously forget most of his post.

But civilians are always killed intentionally in wars - whether it be Bomber Harris in Hamburg (and the Queen gave him a medal for it) or someone else burning down Dresden. Or any other war anyone cares to mention.

What I really, really don't get is how the one who is himself personally responsible for dropping the bomb on Hiroshima (don't get me on "Me? I was just following orders") could sleep well all the nights in his life. I can't believe this. He is guilty of murdering thousands of people. People still die today of the long-time consequences because of what he did.
Whatever his faith was, I truly hope he gets what he deserves.

To Sanity,

First off, if you knew so much about this, you'd know he was forced to say he had "no regrets".
Any man today, any soldier in today's society of dropping a bomb that kills thousands of woman, children, and men, would be expected to regret.
This crew had no idea what they were doing on that morning, that is why both planes were sent out at the same time.
It was their mission, to drop here, and leave.
They didn't know what they had on the flight, I'm almost positive if they knew, they would of miscalculated and dropped it into the ocean before they reached the inland of Japan.

So think outside the box, this man had to say that because he was being interviewed and expected of saying that quote.

Do your research. Cheers