“Read this carefully as it may save your life or the life of a relative or friend. dropped leaflets on Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and 33 other cities warning civilians of air raids on August 1st, 1945. To his dying day, my father, a life-long Republican, thought Truman was one of the best US presidents, having made one of the toughest decisions in history, one that in effect, saved hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of lives. My father’s CO looked them in the eye and bluntly said, “Many of you guys are not coming back.” Curtis Lemay from US Army Air Force General Lauris Norstad). My father had been told to prepare all his last testimonial letters and of course his will officers were told that US casualties alone were expected to be up to “at least half a million dead” US servicement (this in a letter to Gen. IJ Navy Vice-Admiral Matome Ugaki wrote to the central Japanese command about this time: “Japan has 20 million citizens: it would be an honorable sacrifice for the Emperor if half of them were to offer their lives for the nation.” (cf.
#Which island did the enola gay take off from full#
What we now know was that the Imperial Japanese Army actually had over 30 full divisions, perhaps over 600,000 men in uniform, available for a massive fight-to-the-death, knowing that if Kyushu was catastrophically horrible, the Americans would not likely want to take on a landing on Honshu, the main island (“Operation Coronet”). However, they did not know many facts, such as that Japan also had been storing hundreds if not thousands of bomb-laden aircraft for suicide bombing assignments. Army planners thought the US would outnumber the enemy military 3-1. 6th Army was missioned the taking of the 3 invasion beaches. 14 US Army divisions were planned just for Olympic.
42 aircraft carriers, over 20 battleships, and additional Navy craft numbering well over 400 were just some of the supporting craft. Olympic was to be a massive landing operation on the southern island of Kyushu on 3 key beaches. My father, at that time a US 6th Army artillery captain, was scheduled along with his battalion for landing in Operation Olympic, which actually was scheduled for Nov. May his soul rest in peace, along with the souls of all the World War II veterans of this nation who are now leaving us so swiftly. “But if anyone has one,” he added, “I want to have one more than my enemy.” “I personally think there shouldn’t be any atomic bombs in the world - I’d like to see them all abolished. And atomic weapons don’t settle anything,” he said. “The whole World War II experience shows that wars don’t settle anything. Most of the lives saved were Japanese,” VanKirk said. “I honestly believe the use of the atomic bomb saved lives in the long run. VanKirk told the AP he thought it was necessary because it shortened the war and eliminated the need for an Allied land invasion that could have cost more lives on both sides. Whether the United States should have used the atomic bomb has been debated endlessly.
He never had any doubts about the mission he flew: He attained the rank of major in the Army Air Corps and was decorated for valor with the Silver Star, the Distinguished Flying Cross and 15 Air Medals.Īfter the war he led a happy life with his wife and kids and earned a BS and an MS in Chemical Engineering, working for many years at DuPont. Theodore Van Kirk was 24 when he served as navigator on that mission, and already a seasoned combat veteran, having flown 58 bombing missions in Europe.
Well, the last surviving member of the Enola Gay, the bomber that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima 69 years ago, has died at 93. Where was the morality in the bombing of Coventry, or the bombing of Dresden, or the Bataan death march, or the Rape of Nanking, or the bombing of Pearl Harbor? I believe that when you’re in a war, a nation must have the courage to do what it must to win the war with a minimum loss of lives. In a war, there are so many questionable things done. It’s really hard to talk about morality and war in the same sentence. We were fighting an enemy that had a reputation for never surrendering, never accepting defeat. Under the same circumstances - and the key words are ‘the same circumstances’ - yes, I would do it again.