Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: The Man Who Bombed Hiroshima

The Man Who Bombed Hiroshima 
November 8, 2007
Anthony Gregory
The man who flew the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima
passed away last week at the age of 92. Paul Warfield Tibbets, Jr. did not
die from war wounds or violently at the hands of other people, years
before his time. He died in hospice care, in a bed, from heart problems
and strokes.
In stark contrast, the more than 100,000 civilians who were killed at
Hiroshima 62 years ago were burnt, melted, vaporized, in an apocalyptic
act of warfare. Many died painful deaths over a period of days or weeks.
Others saw family members consumed by flames. Most were far younger than
Tibbets was when he finally died. Thousands were children.
Is now the wrong time to discuss this? Tibbets called it a “damn big
insult” when a Smithsonian exhibit commemorating Hiroshima’s fiftieth
anniversary attempted to capture some of the suffering. If he didn’t think
that was the right time for such reflection, then perhaps now is as good
as any.
Although he was offended to see the victims remembered, he had said that
he meant no insult himself when he reenacted the bombing in Texas in 1976,
complete with mushroom cloud. He said he slept fine every night. He
consistently affirmed he’d do it all over again.
People disagree on whether the nuking was a war crime. The 1946 Strategic
Bombing Survey determined it had been unnecessary to the winning of the
war. We know that Japan, demoralized from having dozens of cities
obliterated in fire bombings, was extending peace feelers. “The Japanese
were ready to surrender,” said Dwight Eisenhower, who as a general during
that war believed the atom bomb was “completely unnecessary.” Admiral
William D. Leahy, General Douglas MacArthur, and many other high officials
at the time agreed.
Japan wanted only to keep its emperor. Understandably, the nation feared
the consequences of the unconditional surrender that Truman and the Allies
demanded. They had reason to fear brutalities exceeding the very harsh
treatment of Germany under the Versailles Treaty after World War I, which
had come after a mere conditional surrender.
Some have tried to rewrite history and have said that to win the war
without nuclear weapons, the U.S. would have had to invade and suffer
intolerable losses, that the atomic bomb “saved a million lives.” But
there is no reason to doubt that Japan’s cause was lost by mid-1945—even
without an invasion. Practically every major city was destroyed. The
people were blockaded and starving. Then, perhaps as a show of strength to
Stalin, the U.S. government nuked two of Japan’s remaining cities,
introducing nuclear warfare to the world, and ultimately, allowed the
Japanese to keep their emperor anyway.
Robert McNamara, who worked with Curtis LeMay in planning the
pre-Hiroshima fire bombings of Japan, admitted in recent years that he and
LeMay were acting as “war criminals.” Does this term apply to Tibbets?
We know Tibbets did not shy away from personal responsibility. He proudly
took credit for planning the nuclear attack.
This raises uncomfortable questions: If your government orders you to
slaughter tens of thousands of defenseless men, women, and children, to
whom and to what do you owe your loyalty? If you’re willing to take credit
for your supposed acts of wartime heroism, should you also be ready to
accept blame if it turns out you committed an atrocity?
Some might say it’s insensitive to ask now whether Tibbets was a war
criminal. Indeed, there is no need to condemn this man upon his passing.
Even if he was guilty of a war crime, he is now beyond the reaches of
human justice.
But it remains crucial for us to consider the implications of what he did.
It is important to our sense of individual responsibility in a world
where, especially in times of war, people think mainly in terms of the
collective. It is this fallacy in moral reasoning that leads otherwise
decent people to commit unspeakable barbarities against their fellow man.
We must not lose track of the individual’s role, even in the chaos of war.
For whatever we think of Tibbets, it is the refusal to view people as
individuals, the branding of everyone as merely an expendable part of a
larger group, which brought about the atomic bombings and so many other
horrors of World War II.
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 slaughter tens of thousands of defenseless men, women, and children,
Hiroshima was Japan's largest military town.  Hiroshima's military
districts held tens of thousands of soldiers (giving it the highest
soldier/civilian ratio of any Japanese city).  Hiroshima Castle held
the headquarters of the Japanese Second General Army, which was in
charge of repelling any invasion in the southern half of Japan (right
where we were planning to invade).
The second bomb was intended for Kokura Arsenal, a massive (4100' x
2000') arms-production complex.  The secondary target was the
Mitsubishi Shipyards, a massive warship construction facility at
Nagasaki.  Due to technical and weather difficulties, the bomb ended
up being dropped on Urakami, an industrial zone north of Nagasaki.
There it destroyed the Mitsubishi Steel Works and the Mitsubishi
Torpedo Works.
Before Japan attacked us, Pearl Harbor had been regarded as immune to
air-dropped torpedoes because the water was so shallow the torpedoes
would hit the ocean floor and embed themselves in the mud.  This was
the only harbor in the world (outside Japan) that had such a natural
defense against air-dropped torpedoes.  In order to attack us, Japan
had to modify their torpedoes specifically for the purposes of
defeating Pearl Harbor's defenses.  The Mitsubishi Torpedo Works is
the place that carried out these modifications.