Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire August 6 1945 Hiroshima?

74 years ago today. Thoughts?

Intrigued by the story of the traveling salesman from Nagasaki who was on the scene for both bombs. Simultaneously the unluckiest and luckiest mofo of the twentieth century.

BOOM!

We should do it again, just to keep the cretins in order.

Pault Tibbets had some interesting thoughts on the subject:

Dad’s fav was Aug 9, his birthday & Nagasaki. He was in boot camp at MCRD San Diego. Said it was his most favorite birthday ever!!!!

My father was in Austria at the time, but had been reassigned from the 103rd Infantry Division to the 5th, headed to the Pacific for the invasion of Japan.

After talking 50% casualties on the Siegfried Line, the dropping of the One Big One was welcome news.

At the time the Japanese philosophy towards war and those they were at war with precluded any sympathy for civilians or anyone in their way. They considered their citizens warriors and subjects of the Emperor. We were looking at loosing more than One Million in casualties if we had to invade the mainland. Obama was wrong about the whole affair.
What we did may have been brutal but it was a necessity and ended the war with less casualties on both sides. In Japan like Germany the war effort was largely housed in civilian neighborhoods for smaller items so those cities were just as viable military targets as anywhere else.

Just as an aside during the battle of Midway the Japanese pilots strafed our pilots that were shot down and the ones they picked up at sea were interrogated and then weighted down and thrown overboard to drown if they weren't beheaded. The Japanese were brutal to all the Asian citizens in countries they overran so there isn't much moral conflict for me in the whole affair.

Another thing to remember is that the firebombing of Tokyo killed more than the bomb did. Lemay pretty much proved the effectiveness of napalm in a war.

My dad was home from Europe waiting orders.
Those orders were going to be a liberty ship to the pacific.
The bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war.
Thank you Harry S. Truman.

dave

I think if we hadn’t used the bomb then it would have been used on us later by someone.

Let the reality sink in.. The Soviet Union knew we could/would attack then back. Mutual assured destruction left everyone honest up to today at least.

They dropped the bombs while Dad was on a troopship headed for Okinawa. If the bombs had not been dropped successfully, Dad and the rest of his pack artillery unit was going to stage at Okinawa for the planned invasion of the mainland, due in November. At some point he heard a name, "Landau" referenced for the beach. He would have been a muleskinner trying to get mule-borne 75mm artillery up onto the high ground to shell the Japs.

In 1972, my 8th grade English teacher had us read Hiroshima, and tried to get us to understand how wrong it was to bomb the Japanese. I brought it up at dinner, and Dad got really dark. He reminded me that without those bombs, I probably wouldn't have existed. I brought that up the next day in class. It must have been a common thought, because the class quickly turned, and a good number of kids in the room had about the same story. Our fathers were mostly late-war inductees that had missed the ETO, and gone to the Pacific. That long-haired hippie teacher had a hard time selling his ideas after that.

Grandpa Whitey knew Curtis LeMay. They'd gone through OSU together in Electrical Engineering. They were frat brother. They stayed in touch through the years. I'm here to tell you: Those bombs were the best thing that ever happened to Japan. They saved those islands from General LeMay. Both Grandpa and LeMay were real Old Testament kind of guys-- big on Wrath of God and that sort of thing. LeMay, on a good night, could deliver more TNT equivalent on mainland Japan than those two bombs. We're talking 60% obliteration of the top 60% of Japanese cities. For the US, it would be like every city bigger than Omaha wiped out-- this was before the A-Bombs. LeMay was just getting started, too. If the bombs had been duds, he was still ratcheting up his bombing campaign using conventional munitions. By November, there would have nothing left but rubble. They talk about the A-Bombs being inhumane-- piffle! Hiroshima and Nagasaki could have had much worse, if they'd gotten a conventional firebombing like Tokyo.

We should have waited til we has 20 or 30 of them and nuked them into the stone age! Later, North Korea too.

Grid bombing would have been way worse than a couple big ones.

In one of the WW2 books I've read that's essentially what one of the AAF Generals said after those two bombs were dropped.

I ran across this 15 minute video last week. It explores what might have come about had we invaded Japan as was planned before we dropped the bomb.
7mm

It was my first day on the job working at the johns manville asbestos dust factory. I lied about my age to get a job so we could buy a color tv.

Celebrate by letting a few fly in Afghanheadistan and Syria

What did a color TV set cost in 1945?

A color TV in 1945. Hmm musta been something to watch. Was it a wind up type?