Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The eve of destruction

Today finds us on the eve of the 78th anniversary of the most famous exclamation of the entire 20th century.



It was from Senchiki Awaya --- “What The F*** Was THAT--?!?!?!?!?



Senchiki was mayor of Hiroshima.



Also notable is the fact that had Enola Gay been unable to fly on August 6, the firecracker would have been dropped by the back-up ---- Big Stink ---- you could not make something like that up.

👍👍👍

That bomb and the other just like it prob’ly saved my father’s life (6th Marines), his and lots of others including prob’ly a few million Japanese.

My Dad was a B-29 pilot on Tinian. His crew was to fly a mission that morning but sometime in the wee hours they were awakened and told to stand down. Later they found out why.


RS

Had “Give em hell Harry” not agreed to drop those two bombs, many of us probably would not be here. The men who would become our dads would have been killed in the invasion of Japan.
I’m very glad those bombs were dropped and that they ended the war against Japan.

My dad was in China when they were dropped and was part of the Japan occupation at the wars end.

My Dad was in the Navy, somewhere in the Pacific, and the fleet was steaming toward Japan. He always said the dropping of the atomic bombs saved his life.

Yeah, my dad was in the Philippines and would have been mobilized for an invasion of Japan. At the same time he had a brother on a shot up destroyer in the South Pacific and another in a German POW camp.

Imagine back to an era, when our nation's leader had the will to actually win a war decisively. The term 'limited engagement' and 'rules of engagement' hadn't been invented. Now we have an endless stream of munitions going out...and an endless stream of casualties coming in...for years. Brilliant politics.

Just fur you DD

Could have been in a fleet with my grandfather.

If you are a history buff you might like this. Harold "Skinny" Spats flew one of the missions. Our local VFW is named for him in tiny Lebo, Ks. Captured, tortured and beheaded if my memory serves.

Friend of the family was a civilian contractor on Wake Island. Spent the entire war in a prison camp. Was glad that it didn't last any longer.

Glidden, Iowa, near us, was the home of Merle Hay, the first Iowan killed in the First World War.
Also the home of the pilot of the Enola Gay, named after his mother.

I remember discussing the decision to drop the bomb with my friend Gus. He told me he was an ensign at the time. He had been pulled from his job in the radio room of a cruiser, given a landing craft with a two man crew, and told to prepare his little command for the invasion of the home islands of Japan. Gas said he wasn't sorry the Japanese got nuked and neither was his mother.

Nobody with two cents worth of brains is sorry that we nuked Japan, including the Japanese.


Even though the Japanese people were on starvation rations, and their manufacturing capacity had been reduced to zero. The people had arms and supplies stashed for the coming invasion. We even found some warplanes, though they would not have survived long in combat.

Without Hirohito's order to surrender, the taking of Japan would have been Okinawa amplified 1000 times. Millions would have been added to the death tallies of WW II.

And most importantly, Russia would have gotten there to help divide up the spoils.

As it was, we were running Japanese war assets out to sea and scuttling them before the Russians could get there to see them. It was bad enough that the Russians already had the B-29 to dissect and duplicate.

My dad was on an ammunition ship off the coast of Japan. He said they were about ten miles from the main fleet. Had been sitting there for several days wondering what was about to happen. He believed the bombs saved his life and that of many others.

The only one to survive Vietnam---

FA-FO.




GR