An interesting piece of history…

An interesting email from one of my readers who knows I like history…

Neither of us knows the ‘history’ of this email, but I believe this was taken/done in 2008 when some of the veterans of the 504th visited Saipan and Tinian.

I do know from talking to some of the folks that flew off Saipan and Tinian with the 6th Bomb Group (500th, 504th, 509th Wings) that very few of them actually ‘knew’ what the 509th and Col Tibbets were actually doing.

 It’s a small island, less than 40 square miles, a flat green dot in the vastness of Pacific blue. 

Saipan 1

Fly over it and you notice a slash across its north end of uninhabited bush, a long thin line that looks like an overgrown dirt runway. If you didn’t know what it was, you wouldn’t give it a second glance out your airplane window. 

Saipan 2

On the ground, you see the runway isn’t dirt but tarmac and crushed limestone, abandoned with weeds sticking out of it. Yet this is arguably the most historical airstrip on earth. This is where World War II was won. This is Runway Able:

Saipan 3

On July 24, 1944 30,000 US Marines landed on the beaches of Tinian.  Eight days later, over 8000 of the 8800 Japanese soldiers on the island were dead (vs. 328 Marines), and four months later the Seabees had built the busiest airfield of WWII- Dubbed North Field- enabling B-29 Superfortresses to launch air attacks on the Philipines, Okinawa, and mainland Japan.

Late in the afternoon of August 5, 1945, a B-29 was maneuvered over a bomb loading pit, then after lengthy preparations, taxied to the east end of North Field’s main runway, Runway Able, and at 2:45am in the early morning darkness of August 6, took off.

The B-29 was piloted by Col. Paul Tibbets of the US Army Air Force, who had named the plane after his mother, Enola Gay. The crew named the bomb they were carrying Little Boy. 6- hours later at 8:15am Japan time, the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima .

Three days later, in the pre-dawn hours of August 9, a B-29 named Bockscar (a pun on “boxcar” after its flight commander Capt. Fred Bock), piloted by Major Charles Sweeney took off from Runway Able. Finding its primary target of Kokura obscured by clouds, Sweeney proceeded to the secondary target of Nagasaki, over which, at 11:01am, bombardier Kermit Beahan released the atomic bomb dubbed Fat Man.

Here is “Atomic Bomb Pit #1” where Little Boy was loaded onto Enola Gay:

Saipan 4

There are pictures displayed in the pit, now glass-enclosed. This one shows Little Boy being hoisted into Enola Gay’s bomb bay.

 Saipan 5

And here on the other side of the ramp is “Atomic Bomb Pit #2” where Fat Man was loaded onto Bockscar.

 Saipan 6saipan 7

The commemorative plaque records that 16 hours after the nuking of Nagasaki , “On August 10, 1945 at 0300, the Japanese Emperor without his cabinet’s consent decided to end the Pacific War.”

Take a good look at these pictures, folks. This is where World War II ended with total victory of America over Japan . I was there all alone. There were no other visitors and no one lives anywhere near for miles. Visiting the Bomb Pits, walking along deserted Runway Able in solitude, was a moment of extraordinarily powerful solemnity.

It was a moment of deep reflection. Most people, when they think of Hiroshima and Nagasaki , reflect on the numbers of lives killed in the nuclear blasts – at least 70,000 and 50,000 respectively. Being here caused me to reflect on the number of lives saved – how many more Japanese and Americans would have died in a continuation of the war had the nukes not been dropped.

Yet that was not all. It’s not just that the nukes obviated the US invasion of Japan , Operation Downfall, that would have caused upwards of a million American and Japanese deaths or more. It’s that nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki were of extraordinary humanitarian benefit to the nation and people of Japan .

Let’s go to this cliff on the nearby island of Saipan to learn why:

Saipan 8

Saipan is less than a mile north of Tinian …. The month before the Marines took Tinian, on June 15, 1944, 71,000 Marines landed on Saipan …. They faced 31,000 Japanese soldiers determined not to surrender.

Japan had colonized Saipan after World War I and turned the island into a giant sugar cane plantation. By the time of the Marine invasion, in addition to the 31,000 entrenched soldiers, some 25,000 Japanese settlers were living on Saipan, plus thousands more Okinawans, Koreans, and native islanders brutalized as slaves to cut the sugar cane.

There were also one or two thousand Korean “comfort women” (kanji in Japanese), abducted young women from Japan ‘s colony of Korea to service the Japanese soldiers as sex slaves. (See The Comfort Women: Japan ‘s Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War, by George Hicks.)

Within a week of their landing, the Marines set up a civilian prisoner encampment that quickly attracted a couple thousand Japanese and others wanting US food and protection. When word of this reached Emperor Hirohito – who contrary to the myth was in full charge of the war – he became alarmed that radio interviews of the well-treated prisoners broadcast to Japan would subvert his people’s will to fight.

As meticulously documented by historian Herbert Bix in Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, the Emperor issued an order for all Japanese civilians on Saipan to commit suicide. The order included the promise that, although the civilians were of low caste, their suicide would grant them a status in heaven equal to those honored soldiers who died in combat for their Emperor.

And that is why the precipice in the picture above is known as Suicide Cliff, off which over 20,000 Japanese civilians jumped to their deaths to comply with their fascist emperor’s desire – mothers flinging their babies off the cliff first or in their arms as they jumped.

Anyone reluctant or refused, such as the Okinawan or Korean slaves, were shoved off at gunpoint by the Jap soldiers. Then the soldiers themselves proceeded to hurl themselves into the ocean to drown off a sea cliff afterwards called Banzai Cliff. Of the 31,000 Japanese soldiers on Saipan , the Marines killed 25,000, 5,000 jumped off Banzai Cliff, and only the remaining thousand were taken prisoner.

The extent of this demented fanaticism is very hard for any civilized mind to fathom – especially when it is devoted not to anything noble but barbarian evil instead. The vast brutalities inflicted by the Japanese on their conquered and colonized peoples of China , Korea , the Philippines , and throughout their “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” was a hideously depraved horror.

And they were willing to fight to the death to defend it. So they had to be nuked. The only way to put an end to the Japanese barbarian horror was unimaginably colossal destruction against which they had no defense whatever. Nuking Japan was not a matter of justice, revenge, or it getting what it deserved. It was the only way to end the Japanese dementia.

And it worked – for the Japanese. They stopped being barbarians and started being civilized. They achieved more prosperity – and peace – than they ever knew, or could have achieved had they continued fighting and not been nuked. The shock of getting nuked is responsible.

We achieved this because we were determined to achieve victory. Victory without apologies. Despite perennial liberal demands we do so, America and its government has never apologized for nuking Japan … Hopefully, America never will.

But sadly much of this is no longer taught in school, nor is it even known by most of the younger generations…

You can go HERE, and read Col Tibbets’ obituary in the NY Times, it does give a pretty straightforward bio of him and his accomplishments.

Comments

An interesting piece of history… — 25 Comments

  1. Fascinating. I remember reading this as a young man. The pacific theater of battle was terrible because of the enemy.

    Will the middle east need to be nuked to civilize the muslims or is it too late?

  2. Having studied this Topic in detail to get my History degree, and reading how the Hippie Revisionists are always trying their Damnedest to Vilify the Atomic Bomb Droppings, I still have no regret whatsoever for my Job as part of the “Nuclear Triad” during the Cold War.

    Best way I could say it is what I told all the Anti-Nuke Professors and Students when they argued that the Bombings were “Unnecessary, War Crimes,” etc.

    “If a person has Gangrene, do you amputate the Infected Limb to save their Life, or do you just let them linger facing a slow, painful death?”

    And that’s how I see the Bombings.

    A Necessary Amputation.

  3. +1 to “Necessary Amputation”. We did what was necessary to save 1,000,000+ lives – on both sides. To insist otherwise is a slap in the face to all the men, women and families who sacrificed to win.

  4. A great post. And thanks to the PC Police, today’s kids will never know exactly how ruthless and demonic the Jap’s were (can can be again) during WWII. The deserve what they got for all the reason you want to give… Save Lives, Revenge, etc. The sure don’t teach their kids about the brutality their military imposed on the world. The story need to be told as much as that of the Alamo… which may suffer the same fate if the wetbacks get their way.

  5. ADM- Too much PCism today… Any reaction will be too little too late.

    Les/Rev/WSF- Concur, regardless of what the revisionists want to say…

    Murph- Thanks!

    CP- You are SO right… sigh

  6. Excellent history post. Amazing that 328 marines took that island from 8800 Japanese.

    I’m old enough to remember reading books about WWII in jr. High school; Guadalcanal Diary, and some others. Lately, I keep finding things – like this – that teach me more than I ever knew.

    • I think you misread that – it referred to only 328 Marine *casualties*

  7. The unrestricted firebombing killed more people than the two atomic bombs did. But the Japs deserved it. It wasn’t about saving lives. It was about retribution. And the left wing pussies live comfortably in this nation and bitch endlessly but others paid with blood for their legacy. They elected a Post-American President and wish to pull down that which built the place in the beginning.

  8. Admiral….my Dad was in the Pacific during WWII as a SeaBee, and the stories are all true.
    I had to ‘catch him’ in just the right mood to talk about it, but he had storied that made the hair on your neck stand up.

    LL….you’re 100% right about the firebombing LeMay instituted. 20~30 square miles of their cities burnt to the ground, and still they continued to fight.

    Different cultures breed different attitudes and warriors, and most of them are alien to our Western values.

  9. “Victory without apologies” … if only that were the case today.

    Thanks for the story !

  10. Thank-You for sharing this story.
    We home school our daughters so they will know history.
    Not the PC crap in schools.

  11. SIG- That was the death rates between the two forces… And yes, a lot of stuff is coming out (of closets, trunks, etc) now…

    LL- Concur with all!

    drjim- Good point!

    Johnnyreb- You’re welcome!

    Fuzzy- that’s GREAT!

  12. I worked with a former u-boat captain who had been stationed in Japan and had married a Japanese girl.
    They both fully agreed with the atomic bombing, that it had saved many lives on both sides because an invasion in which soldiers would have fought women and old men was avoided.

  13. I have autographed photos of Col. Tibbets, his navigator “Dutch” Van Kirk, and Michael Kuryle, a coxswain from USS Indianapolis in the entrance foyer of our home. I honor their memories.
    Were it not for their efforts my Uncle Robert, Uncle Jack, Uncle John, and Father-in-law Joe would have been scheduled to invade Japan. Given the projected losses I may have never met my uncles. My cousins and THEIR children wouldn’t have been. And my wife, her brother and his son may not have been.
    And that’s just the possible outcome of two families. Yes, the bombings were a Godsend.

    Of course when I try to explain that to Liberals their eyes glaze over. They quickly forget everything I tell them and go back to their blissful state of ignorance.

    • Yes, and when you start mentioning things like the Bataan Death March, the Japanese action in the Philippines, and other little “inconvenient” historical facts, they usually plug their ears and start going “nanananananana” to block out further facts you’re overwhelming them with!

  14. I remember a picture of Japanese civilians in the home islands that were practicing with bamboo spears to impale the invaders as they landed and moved inland. I also saw and read the horrific casualties we got taking Iwo Jima and Okinawa from the Japanese. We almost had to eradicate them to win. Multiply this by 1000 and that would be an idea of the casualties that would be inflicted. My son had asked me about the atomic bomb drops and I told him that it was used to end the war sooner, due to the casualties we had gotten from Iwo and Okinawa,we knew we would have had to eradicate them as a culture to win. Leaving the Japanese with an armistice after Pearl Harbor and the other atrocities committed would be a nonstarter. Under the martial culture they had, this would have been perceived as weakness and there would have been another war when the Japanese recovered.. We also saw the results of an armistice with Germany after WWI and 20 years later there was another war on the continent and it was worse. So we had to win, either invade or drop the bomb and hope that would force the Japanese to surrender. If the bombs didn’t work, we would have still invaded. There was no other way to win.

  15. all true, including the comments. i was still a child back then, but as i grew up my elders were the veterans of that war, and when they talked among themselves, not realising young ears were listening, they thanked god for the atomic bombs.later, as a young marine many of my officers and senior n.c.o.s wre ww2 and korean war veterans, and they passed stories down to us as the new generation of marines. stories that most civilians have never heard, and now as those old men pass on they never will.

    • Gunner- Sad but true, and I know what you mean. That is one reason I’m STRONGLY in favor of getting oral histories from the vets before they pass… Some truly interesting perspectives have come from the ‘grunts’ who were on the line, as opposed to the officers who were directing the fights!

  16. My Dad was a gunner on a B29 that flew off Tinian, The only thing he talks about is how happy he was when the Marines took Iwo. He still buys a beer for any Marine he meets.

  17. Our friend, Dinah (who occasionally posts on my blog), just returned from a visit to Saipan with her father. He flew B-29s from there to Japan in the last months of WW2. He’s 92 now but still spry and alert. There were accompanied by a Marine who fought on Saipan at the same time. All three were feted by the local press and politicians.

  18. Pingback: An interesting piece of history… | Give Me Liberty