From MSNBC article:
I knew when I got the assignment it was going to be an emotional thing, Tibbets told The Columbus Dispatch for a story on Aug. 6, 2005, the 60th anniversary of the bomb. We had feelings, but we had to put them in the background. We knew it was going to kill people right and left. But my one driving interest was to do the best job I could so that we could end the killing as quickly as possible.
Tibbets, then a 30-year-old colonel, never expressed regret over his 
role. He said it was his patriotic duty and the right thing to do.
Im not proud that I killed 80,000 people, but Im proud that I was able to start with nothing, plan it and have it work as perfectly as it did, he said in a 1975 interview.
Youve got to take stock and assess the situation at that time. We were at war. … You use anything at your disposal.
He added: I sleep clearly every night.
From Air Force News Service:
BRIGADIER GENERAL PAUL W. TIBBETS JR.
Retired Sep. 1, 1966. Died Nov. 1, 2007.
General Tibbets was born in Quincy, Ill., in 1915. He graduated from Western Military Academy in Alton, Ill., in 1933, and later attended the University of Florida and the University of Cincinnati where he majored in chemistry.
He entered the Army Air Corps on Feb. 25, 1937 at Fort Thomas, Ky. Immediately thereafter, he entered flying school at Randolph Field, and in February 1938 graduated from pilot school at Kelly Field, Texas. His first assignment was to Flight B, 16th Observation Squadron, Lawson Field, Fort Benning, Ga.
In April 1941, General Tibbets became group engineering officer of the 3d Attack Group, Hunter Air Force Base, Savannah, Ga. On Dec. 4, 1941, he received orders to join the 29th Bomb Group at MacDill Field; however, before reporting to MacDill he was placed on temporary duty to take 21 B-18s to Pope Field, Fort Bragg, N.C. to form an anti-submarine patrol. In February 1942, General Tibbets actually reported for duty with the 29th Bomb Group at MacDill as engineering officer. After three weeks, he was made commander of the 340th Bomb Squadron, 97th Bomb Group, which was formed from a cadre taken from the 29th Bomb Group. From February until June 1942, he was in training for an overseas movement.
In June 1942, he arrived in England and immediately went into combat operations, flying 25 combat missions in B-17s, including the first American Flying Fortress raid against occupied Europe. In October 1942, the general was given the special assignment of flying General Mark Clark to make his rendezvous with the French in preparation for the invasion of North Africa. Upon his return from this trip, he was retained to ferry General Eisenhower and his staff to Gibraltar on the night of the invasion. General Tibbets then flew General Clark to Algiers where General Clark took control of the invasion forces.
For the next 30 days, General Tibbets conducted bombardment missions in the North African area under the direct control of the British, pending build-up of the American bomber forces.
He led the first heavy bombardment mission in support of the invasion of North Africa. In November 1942, General Tibbets reverted to control of the Twelfth Air Force and, with the arrival of the remainder of the 97th Bomb Group, resumed normal combat operations in the Sahara Desert area. In January 1943, he was reassigned to the Twelfth Air Force Headquarters at Algiers as assistant operations officer in charge of bomber operations under Colonel (now General) Lauris Norstad.
In March 1943, he was returned to the United States for the purpose of participating in the B-29 program. This flight test work with the Boeing factory and Air Materiel Command continued until March 1944 at which time General Tibbets was transferred to Grand Island, Neb., as director of operations under General Frank Armstrong who started a B-29 instructor transition school. In September 1944, he was assigned to the Atomic Bomb Project as the Air Force officer in charge of developing an organization capable of employing the atomic bomb in combat operations, and mating the development of the bomb to the airplane. In this function, he was also charged with the flight test development of the atomic bomb itself. As these developments progressed, General Tibbets was further charged with the tactical training of bombardment organizations and their deployment into the combat theater of operations. He flew the first atomic bomb mission against enemy forces, dropping the bomb on Hiroshima.
With the end of the war in 1945, General Tibbets’ organization was transferred to what is now Walker Air Force Base, Roswell, N.M., and remained there until August 1946. It was during this period that the Bikini Bomb Project took place, with General Tibbets participating as technical adviser to the Air Force commander. He was then assigned to the Air Command and Staff School at Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., from which he graduated in 1947. His next assignment was to the Directorate of Requirements, Headquarters U.S. Air Force, where he subsequently served as director of the Strategic Air Division.
In June 1950, General Tibbets was assigned to Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., and from July 1950 until February 1952, was B-47 project officer at the Boeing Airplane Company, Wichita, Kan., where the service test of the B-47 to determine its operational suitability took place. From February 1952 until August 1954, he was commander of the Proof Test Division at Eglin Air Force Base. The general then received orders assigning him to the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base, from which he graduated in June 1955. His next assignment was director of war plans, Allied Air Forces in Central Europe at Fontainebleau, France. In February 1956, he returned to the United States as commander, 308th Bomb Wing, Hunter Air Force Base, Ga.
In January 1958, General Tibbets was reassigned to MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., where he assumed command of the 6th Air Division. He is a rated command pilot.
In February 1961, General Tibbets was assigned to Headquarters U.S. Air Force as director of management analysis (redesignated as Directorate of Status Analysis effective March 27, 1961).
In July 1962, General Tibbets was assigned to the Joint Staff, Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as deputy director for operations, J-3. In June 1963, with reorganization of the Operations Directorate, Joint Staff, General Tibbets became deputy director for the National Military Command System.
{ 64 comments… read them below or add one }
No quavering, no equivocation Paul Tibbets performed his duty to the best of his ability and in doing so served his country honorably. We will not likely see another of his like for a long time. Rest in peace while the nation you served mourns your passing.
Your six is clear, Sir. The wild blue yonder awaits.
Rest in Peace knowing that you served your country to the best of your ability. Ill see in the wild blue yonder.
Why hasn’t he been charged with crimes against humanity?
@Why
This is not the place for that comment, this was a thread honoring a great American Flyboy who served his country. Tippets is one of the greatest American to ever live, and I rank him up there with Audie Murphy, and SGT York.
Thank you
There are lines, limits not just even in war, but specially in war.
Innocent casualities may happen as accidents, but should never be directly pursued for whatever reason.
I do not know the man or his technical expertise, but I do know that he murdered more than 80.000 innocents, and not as the result of an accident, but of a voluntarly action whose only goal was to kill innocents on pourpose.
That is what I called a war criminal.
For example, I respect AF flyboys in Iraq when their bombs resulted in civilian casualities, because I know they didn’t want that, it must have been an accident, technical, human, inteligence, some error.
But these is completely different, targeting civilians for the sake of killing civilians is an evil act, a crime.
When anyone thinks it’s their duty to kill 80,000 innocent people, then we’re all in trouble – whether that duty is patriotic, religious or anything else.
Obviously, some of our bleeding hearts who probably never served have infiltarted this site. Tibbett’s ia and was a hero, period. It was originally (1945)estimated that the invasion of Japan by the US would cost 1 million KIA/WIA and God only knows how many civilian/Japanese dead. In 1947, after examining the Japanese invasion defense preparation, that number was conservatively upgraded to 1.5 million US KIA/WIA. Japan was warned several times prior to the bombing, but their military organization refused to listen, just as they refused to listen after the 1st bomb drop. It required two A-bombs to break their will to fight- which is exactly what war is all about!. To break the German will, numerous fire bombing were conducted , burning down portions of German cities around manufactoring areas. We did not prosecute the German officers who fire bombed London nor Coventry because it was not an illegal act! Gen. Tibbets was a fine upstanding American Officer in a war determining our very survival as a free country. He was given an enormous task and accomplised it to the best of hius ability. His actions whiling possibile killing 80,000 people ( in a war where over 6.5 million died) saved the lives of millions. I salute his memory and actions. Hooyah!
Rip, Sir, yours was a heavy burden and you bore it with honor.
The man was a greater American than any of us. He was given a tough responsibility in a tougher time. God Bless these Men and Women that do the same thing everyday. God bless Gen. Tibbets. God bless America
“Why” – Who’s to say that the people who died at Hiroshima are innocent? WW2 was fought as total war. The outcome was as much a match of industrial output as it was a clash between armed forces, and those civilians were running the factories and farms that supplied the Japanese forces. You can and should recoil at the industrialized horror of total war, and swear never again. However, the US didn’t start WW2, and the atomic bombings certainly led to the end of it.
Charging Paul Tibbets with war crimes would have been stupid and senseless. Next you’d have to go after every crew member of every bomber in WW2, plus the crews of the submarines that sank merchants ships, and then why not the scientists who built the atomic bombs? Personally, I think it would be more fitting if moral revisionists such as yourself were forced to live with the consequences of not having made the hard decisions made by the people you criticize.
“War is hell” stop using a tread meant to honor a great American, to disgrace him. Id love to debate the issue but not here. Tibbets did his job and he did it with honor. How would you like it for the day you die people started coming out of the woodwork to dishonor your name. This man did something I dont think many Americans today would, and that is follow orders to the best of his ability. Do the arguing somewhere else.
I found that his grandson is a B-2 pilot, ill bet grandpa was proud. It is a shame that he asked not to have a funeral or a gravesite because it would create a place for people to protest America. This guy tried to protect himself and his family after, and ill help him with that finally mission.
I cant say enough how I look up to this man, he is everything America is about. A true hero, who died, and in death still was looking out for America.
George, you are the moral revisionist.
Everyone knows that killing innocents is bad.
You try to change that fact, you are the revisionist.
They were innocent and they were burned alive.
They could have launched the bomb at the imperial palace, or they could have nuked every military facility, but they nuked a civilian city with no miliray importance!
And do not try to change history, it was the EEUU that went to World War, they were not attacked.
Have you heard the word ‘aislacionist’?
Can you imagine that the amount of money spended in Afganistan & Irak could have instead been redirected to a war fund? to have the resources and money to be able to defende the country in case of attack? To air defense systems? To civilian bunker and emergency responses teams?
The same with WW(I&II), the US could be a much safer and richer place now.
Just reverse the question.
Imagine that at that time Japan were the democracy and we were the imperial goverment, the bad guys, because we had the bad luck of having and suffering bad and dictatorial politicians.
Would you support nuking Pasadena and killing 80.000 americans innocent civilians?
PLEASE go to a chat room or something.
RIP Paul Tibbets. You did something no one including yourself wanted to do. Knowing you saved thousands of American lives should give you comfort for all eternity. May God Bless Paul Tibbets a true American Hero.
Why,
I almost NEVER agree with 22lr, but today I am in full agreement, you are out of line here.
YOU Sir, are the one playing at moral revisionism. If Imperial Japan had an Atomic Weapon available for Pearl, they most certainly would have used it. As for the inhabitants of Hiroshima being “innocents”, well you are wrong there too. Hiroshima had been a key arms production facility for the Japanese since the Russo-Japanese war, a key port and rail hub. Additionally, Second Army Chugoku Regional Army were headquartered in Hiroshima, and the Army Marine Headquarters was located at Ujina. It was a more than acceptable MILITARY target. My Mother’s brother was a gunner on an LST and my Father’s youngest brother was a Marine. I knew them both because of Tibbets and the Enola Gay.
The varied posts on this subject prove without a doubt that Gen Tibbets and the millions of other WWII service men and women did the right thing in giving us the right to say the words we do today.
Quite simply, he was a Hero,….I wish there were more like him,…..a large proportion of our citizens are whiny, weak, lazy, and stupid these days,…loud mouthed, no-action punks.
God , ( Yes, I said GOD ) Bless the General and his family!
Here’s a link to his interview with Studs Terkel:
http://www.avweb.com/news/profiles/PaulTibbets_StudsTerkel_EnolaGayInterview_2002_196499-1.html
Here is a man who got a mission assigned to him which he carried out to perfection only to be chastised by some bleeding hearts out
in space. He is truly a hero RIP we have your six covered.
Gen.Tibbets was a full blooded american sworn to defend his country. He was just doing his job no no less.
Gen.Tibbets was a full blooded american sworn to defend his country. He was just doing his job no more no less.
Paul Tibbets was a great man, great pilot,and a great American hero. He will be deeply missed. Hopefully my class will make him our exemplar in his honor.
Thank-You General. Watch and Guide us. May we be Brave as you. RIP.
I have a request for “why”, read some history pal. Look at what the Japanese Empire did both prior to and during WW II and then make your judgement. Does Nanking mean anything to you? How about Bataan? What do you think about the attack on Pearl Harbor? Does any of this make an impression on you? American fighting men such as Paul Tibbetts are the embodiment of this great Republic and ensure that misinformed people such as yourself have a country that allow views such as yours the light of day. I for one am proud to be able to call myself a countryman of Paul T ibbetts, BGEN USAF RET.
Clark Castle STG1(SW) USN RET
I have a request for “why”, read some history pal. Look at what the Japanese Empire did both prior to and during WW II and then make your judgement. Does Nanking mean anything to you? How about Bataan? What do you think about the attack on Pearl Harbor? Does any of this make an impression on you? American fighting men such as Paul Tibbetts are the embodiment of this great Republic and ensure that misinformed people such as yourself have a country that allow views such as yours the light of day. I for one am proud to be able to call myself a countryman of Paul T ibbetts, BGEN USAF RET.
Clark Castle STG1(SW) USN RET
my dad chaplin james carlin
gave communion to the crew of the enola gay
the morning it took off from tinnian
thank God
RIP Gen. Tibbets – He can only be compared to Sgt. York and Audie Murphy. There is still oil dribbling out of the hulk of the USS Missouri at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. One drop every 30 seconds, I think. The last thing the 1200 or so guys still down there saw on December 7th was a Japanese bomb heading straight for them. It was all ‘A Job Well Done’, Colonel Tibbets, we’re flying in formation with you.
Who is this nut “WHY”, some snevilig little brat that is not man enough to stand up for his country, yet condems others for doing what he wasn’t man enough to do?
Gen. Paul Tibets is the reason you have the freedom to run your mouth – sure glad we don’t have to depend on you for our freedom.
RIP General – from a VET – The WOlf
I am in full agreement with “FlyboyPhil” – great comments – Thenak you for standing up for him, and others like him.
The Wolf
A message to
Wish we had HEROES like him NOW!! R.I.P. General Tibbets.
A great American who could stand as a symbol of the universal warfighter. He saved a great many American lives, but not without personal recrimination. He will always remind us of the awfullness of war and how careful we should be before ever considering it as an option. We were very fortunate to have him when we needed him. Too bad he did not go into politics.
Semper fi
I can not believe what I am seeing!!! Why should of couse be allowed to have his opinion, but this is neither the time nor the place for such comments. Col. Paul Tibbets was a great man in any country, that is or has ever been suppressed by a aggresive invader, like the imperial Japan or Nazi Germany. I am not an American, but what he did for all of us back then, can not be praised enough. May you RIP General!!!!
ive got a comment for all those who think killing 80,000 civilians makes a war criminal,if i make guns and bullets for a government i support am i not involved in the war as much as the front line soldier. wars are ended by killing as many of the enemy as you can– not by chosing who and what,when the bodies pile up people come to saner conclusions and say whoa a guy can get hurt doing this— tibbets whom i had the good fortune to meet knew this and did his job, there are a million jar heads and grunts alive today because he did that makes him a great man nad a hero
william russell
gmt1 usn
The General did great, War is war and there are casualties. However if you pick on me, you best make sure that you take me down copletely, because if you don’t I will get up and take you down all the way. Japan was the bully that picked on the the kid. The kid came back and took the bully down completely. NO APOLOGIES! General rest in peace, you completed you mission!
From a vietnam Vet.
Paul Tibits also was the extraordinary man who took two Woman’s Airforce Service Pilots and trained them to fly the B-29 when the male pilots were absolutely afraid to fly the plane. These two women toured the country showing male pilots that flying the aircraft was “so easy a woman could do it”.
The man is a true American hero and made a huge difference in the world… all by accepting his assignment and doing his duty. May he rest in peace.
I thought that old myth about the bomb ‘saving American lives’ had been debunked a long time ago.
But maybe some people would rather stick with an easy belief than read history. It can be tough finding out that things are not quite so black and white as you would like.
Minor correction FlyBoyPhil, it’s Arizona on the bottom at Pearl. Mighty Mo sits nearby, symbol of our victory.
Flyboy Phil: It’s the Arizona leaking oil; she still has 1109 crewmembers aboard that died in the sneak attack by Imperial Japan.
Why: Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both picked because of two reasons: a. they were both of high military value – both were arms manufacturing centers, and both had major military command headquarters. Both were (and are) major seaports. The only difference between the atomic attacks and the conventional fire bombings was the number of planes required to do the job. The cities were marked as targets early in the war – got to the point where the citizens could tell raids from overflights of B29s. By the by, if you want to look at casualties, look at the number of innocent civilians murdered, AS A MATTER OF POLICY, by the Japanese military in Nanking, Shanghai, Singapore, the Phillipines, and numerous other areas. The Japanese military newspaper in Nanking even ran an article praising a soldier for the number of beheadings he committed in a single day!
Add to this the fact that the Japanese were stockpiling weapons and supplies for the invasion, training civilians to use farming implements in suicide attacks agains invasion troops, and using Allied POWs as shields in major installations against air raids, and you can get an idea of what kind of enemy we were fighting.
The atomic bomb attacks, conservatively, saved about 6 lives for every one lost in the raid.
Try learning about an issue before giving your condescending and ignorant opinion.
Rest in Peace, General. You were a man of honor and distiction and you were one of my heroes as I grew up. I watched you proudly defend the honor of your men at the Smithsonian long after your service to the country in uniform had ended, your service to our country has never ended. You are still my inspiration, sir. God Bless you, and your family in your passing. American Hero! Salute!
General Tibetts it was great to have met you and with talked to you many times at the Ohio Valley Military Society Show in Kentucty. Two years ago
I sat with your lovely wife at breakfast in Kentucty and that was a Honor. You will be missed for being a true American and a preserver of the American way of life. God Bless America and our Military past and present for makeing us the land of the free and the home of the brave.
“Why” is a very clueless individual. He judges with emotion, not logic, the same as our looney left does. Please stop encouraging people like him by responding to their silly thinking.
Col. Tibbets: Thanks for a job well done. Rest in peace.
My father was in the Underwayer Demolition Teams in WWII, training to clear the invasion beaches of Honshu, when Col. Tibbets dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. That act not only ended the war, saving thousands of lives, but it saved my father’s life. Without the bomb, I would not have been born, some ten years later. Most Americans alive today have at least one ancestor whose life was saved by the Enola Gay and Col. Paul Tibbets. We should all remember that we owe him our very existence. Colonel Tibbets: Job Well Done! Rest in peace in the Lord’s arms.
Many people were involved with the nuclear bombs dropped on the Japanese cities, but the pilot of the first plane to drop the bomb seemed to be the target of most of the press, remembering of course that the pilot doesn
Paul Tibbits has long been a hero of mine. We are a greater nation because he walked amongst us – and flew above us.
Were it not for the nuclear task force that he put together and trained and executed, I am one who might never have been born.
He can teach us all about duty and honor. He was a great patriot. I second the recommendation on the Bob Greeene book DUTY – great read.
Farewell, Sir…
and Walk with God
We should all ignore the revisionists, they are a sad symptom of our “modern” education system. General Tibbets was a great and strong man to have dealt with them so well over the past few decades. Its easy for those who can’t even point out Saipan and Okinawa on a map to forget the battles fought for those islands. Its easy for them to forget the Japanese treatment of POW’s (I am Canadian, the words “Hong Kong” give me goosebumps just as “Cabanatuan” must have the same effect on an American). Its easy for them to forget the complete disdain for life found in every corner of the Japanese military of the day. The only people who can come close to understanding are those who were there. General Tibbets was there, he understood, and he did what he had to do to get ALL the boys home. Godspeed General and thank you for the last 60+ years; without you we couldn’t have lived them the way we have. Rest in peace knowing you did your duty not only for your country, but for all history.
Genuine hero, terrific pilot, fantastic administrator. Consider the enormity of the mission that he headed; he was about 28 years old at the time. New aircraft, new top-secret weapon of unknown performance, and untested unit. Also impeding success were the enormous egos of other top brass who actively labored to sabotage the effort.
There was published a few years ago a book titled, “The End of the War” written by a pilot who flew on both missions; flying “Bock’s Car” to Nagasaki for the second drop–Major Charles Sweeney. He tells the tale first person and he thought the world of his boss as do so many (of us) veterans and serious students of history.
If you want to revisit the wartime events, I highly recommend it. Sweeney’s epilogue defense of those missions, presented to Congress during the 90′s when he’d attained Generalship, is alone worth the price of the book’s purchase. General Sweeney left us several years ago, a late member of that select band of brothers. Godspeed, General Tibbets!!
Because of this mans mission I was born, my father was in the Royal Air Force in the Far East and would not have been home if this war had not finished.
To accuse this of war crimes is a disgrace, the people who have accussed him must remember without people like him the Germans and Japanse would have won the war. In war you must go all out to win or you loss, somthing modern times seems to have forgot.
May you rest in peace, I hope you meet my dad up there, he will want to thank you for getting him home sooner, thats if he had survided the war.
“Why is a very clueless individual. He judges with emotion, not logic”
I use logic.
BTW, I haven’t served because as a mathematician I consider myself more usefull doing research.
Axiom: Non-agression principle
No one should start the use of force against people or properties.
If started, legitimate defense is the response.
Contracts as an interchange of properties should be enforced if not it would be considered a theft.
So, if the 80.000 innocents nuked hadn’t done anything to you, and you attacked them, you would be the one started the use of force.
No emotions here.
Now I want to know your logic.
I want to know when it is ok to deliberately kill innocents. Please explain it to me with logic no emotions.
“War is Hell” that is why, now please take your debate to a chat room or something. A great American died and all you can do is debate on how bad you think his mission was, dang dude you need to get out more.
Innocents? What is an innocent in Total War? Would the 30,000 workers building warships in Mobile, AL be innocents or the thousands of workers building heavy bombers in Detroit, MI.?
Strategically, they are ever bit as important to the war effort as a Bomber Wing or an Army Corp.
The “innocents” of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, unfortunately, had the same strategic value to the Japanese as our American “inncents”!
I really don’t know what a hero is, however, I am leaning toward men that willingly gives their lives to save others. Tibbets was a classic American. He was called upon to do a job, he did it without complaining, and came home when the job was done.
I hope for our future’s sake that America will continue to produce such men.
RIP General Tibbits
“If you’re a mathematician, I suspect you’re not a very good one. In your hypothesis, you’ve already produced a trivial result by applying incorrect initial and boundary conditions to the problem. You talk about “innocents”, yet numerous people have pointed out that you’ve misapplied the term. You talk about non-aggression, but ignore the broader context of WW2 and the history of Japanese aggression”
You do not get it.
When is it ok to nuke a city full of civilians?
Should the occupied france had been nuked because there were some nazi tank divisiones stationed there? And so all the towns and cities in Europe?
If there is a killer in a building, would you support nuking the city, so the killer would not escape the police and kill again?
If there is a kidnapper in a schoold? would you bomb it so the kidnapper won’t be able to escape and kill in the future?
If the answer is no, why?
Maybe because there are innocent people?
So, the police in these cases try to save the innocents, while trying to catch the bad guys and its ok, but in the military case, you killed the innocents, so the bad guys do not escape, although you came all the way there to stop them killing innocents, and you achieve that killing innocents? That’s ilogical.
The same way you could have nuked half Europe because there were panzer divisions stationed there.
Oh, you are going to say that you do numbers and stadistics and then you decide.
Tell us the magic number, how many innocent civilians is ok to incinerated to save the live of a U.S soldier? What’s the rate? When is it ok and when to much?
The same question is critical to law, how many innocents are you ready to send to jail so that a criminal does not get away? I’m for 0. You find another way. There are thing that should not be done, like torture, like bombing civilians.
And you should know that.
@WHY
Read what Tibbets himself said
Ignore “Why” and he’ll go away. He is like a shark, you feed him he multiplies. Stop feeding him, he’s too stupid to learn and too young to be educated. He just loves to be the Devil.
in war you do what you have to
the General is an american hero
in war you do what you have to
the General is an american hero
I don’t understand how the bombing of Hiroshima could be regarded as anything other than a necessary, and regrettable, evil. But those were ugly times, with a different mindset, which I pray we do not see again. Paul Tibbets did what he had to do, in a calm, professional and dignified manner which he retained to the end of his life. For that he does deserve the highest praise.
In response to: (Posted by: why at November 2, 2007 04:52 PM)you asked the very important question “Tell us the magic number, how many innocent civilians is ok to incinerated to save the live of a U.S soldier? What’s the rate? When is it ok and when too much?” Well the “Magic Number” is HOWEVER MANY IT TAKES…all lives are precious but American Lives are even more precious – you fail to understand your history in that the Japanese people were committed to their war effort. The estimated 1 million American servicemen who would have perished in the Japanese mainland invasion would likely have killed my grandfather and yours, thus eliminating our current debate. The attacks using nuclear devices were warranted because it saved countless American soldiers, and other Japanese civilian lives that would have been destroyed in the impending invasion of Japan. War is harsh, so don’t start them…but when they are started WIN THEM, at all costs!
General Tibbets had in his life heard the critics, we’ve always had them. But if he would have been torn in anyway about his duty, his job that had to be done then it would not have been successful. Who would have the Japanese attacked next? America. Our mainland American soil has never been attacked after the civil war. Because America has always had a strong defense and arms so destructive no nation dared to attempt it. But America is changing. Why? Because we have members of Congress listening to anti-Americans, anti-war activist and they’ve forgotten their history. General Tibbets is a hero because he did his duty. Just like our young men and women in Afghanistan and Iraq. May g0d bless them all.
Honor to whom honor is due. Paul Tibbets was a great American soldier who did his duty to God and Country. On this Veterans Day, Nov.11, 2007 may this great man be remembered for his great feat during WWII. General Douglas MacArthur said, “Victory then Peace” and all the people said Amen.
For God & Country
Ruth Ann Wilson
i like pie