The debate still rages

Theodore "Dutch" Van Kirk, one of only three surviving members of the Enola Gay -- the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima -- said he "still often finds himself engaged in the skirmish over how history should view that horrific event":

"We killed a whole bunch of people for nothing - that's the attitude you sometimes get today," Van Kirk said Thursday. [But] Van Kirk said the attack - and a second atomic strike on Nagasaki three days later - actually saved lives. He said it spared Americans and Japanese from the carnage that would have occurred if the United States had invaded Japan.

Besides the Gay's Van Kirk, also living are Paul Tibbets, the pilot, and Morris Jeppson, the assistant weaponeer.

It seems that every year that goes by, the debate about the correctness of President Truman's decision gets questioned more and more. There seems to be the view, among the newer generations, that the morality of dropping the A-bomb was unquestionably wrong. Van Kirk concurs:

Enola Gay veterans had planned to attend anniversary events on Tinian on Aug. 6. But [Van Kirk's agent Edward] Humphreys steered them away, saying that he thought the events would turn into a "pity party" for Japanese victims without much acknowledgment of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that had brought the United States into the war - nor of Japanese atrocities in Nanjing, China, or during the Bataan Death March in the Philippines.

"I agree," Van Kirk said.

Those Americans who fought in the Pacific theatre had little doubt of the Japanese tenacity and fighting prowess. Just witness the prodigious amount of US casualties at Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and Guadalcanal, not to mention the sheer determination of the Japanese to continue battle -- and not surrender.

Unlike some of the more radical "revisionist" historian claims (such as the Japanese were on the verge of surrendering even without the A-bomb or threat thereof ... see folks like Gar Alperovitz, a noted "progressive"), the view that a demonstration of the bomb's power would have been sufficient to scare the Japanese into surrendering seems to be a more popular -- and logical -- view. Even the only historian quoted by the Philadelphia Inquirer article, Stanley Weintraub, says that

the atomic attacks and the subsequent Soviet attack on Japanese forces in Manchuria made Japanese leaders see the futility of continuing.

"The Japanese had no intention to surrender," he said Friday from his home in Delaware. "We had to shock them into surrender."

This "shock" doesn't necessarily preclude a demonstration of the bomb's power, however (although this probably isn't Weintraub's opinion). And, I believe this is a legitimate view although I don't necessarily agree with it.

An excellent fiction of "what might have been" was written by Kim Stanley Robinson in his novelette, "The Lucky Strike." Although Robinson appears to be virulently anti-Paul Tibbets (the real pilot of the Enola Gay) he nevertheless offers a fairly plausible scenario whereby the Gay was destroyed during a practice bombing run (and Tibbets thus killed), and the "secondary" bombing crew -- on the plane The Lucky Strike -- would now have to get ready to drop the A-bomb. Capt. Frank January has severe misgivings about using the bomb on populated areas, and, as the actual bombadier aboard the Strike, can do something about it.

Posted by Rhodey at July 17, 2005 09:51 AM | TrackBack