The Voice for Kitsap County’s Veterans, Active-Duty Personnel,
and their Families
Veterans Life
KitsapVeteransLife.com
July 2015
IN THIS EDITION
Chuck Moore on the war, Bob Hope and Spam
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Enola Gay after the Hiroshima mission. It is in its 6th Bombardment Group livery, with victor number 82 visible on the fuselage just forward of the tail fin. Public domain
Remembering Enola Gay The B-29 Superfortress bomber that ended World War II By JEFF VANDERFORD
Col. Paul Tibbets, pilot of the Enola Gay, waves from the plane’s cockpit.
Special to Veterans Life
Protecting from financial harm
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PTSD: Help is nearby 11
“Japan must make a choice. One alternative is prompt and utter destruction … The other alternative is the end of war.” — Potsdam Declaration
Armen Shamlian, U.S. Army Air Force / 1945
W
hen President Harry S. Truman sent that message to the vacillating Japanese Emperor Hirohito and his advisers on July 28, 1945, he wasn’t kidding. While meeting with other Allied leaders in Germany, Truman had been told of the successful test of the atom bomb in the New Mexico desert. The controversy about the use of atomic weapons to end the war continues, even today. Truman’s generals had estimated that 250,000 to a million U.S. soldiers would die in an invasion attempt of Japan’s home islands — plus many thousands of Japanese civilians — and counseled the president that the emperor had more than a million combat-ready troops and 5,000 kamikaze planes at the ready. The scientific community felt that a demonstration of the bomb’s power away from a civilian target should be enough to sway the enemy that the war was over.
Others argued against the use of this terrible weapon at all. Truman, a humane man, lis-
tened to all sides then decided. At 8:15 a.m. on Aug. 6, flying at 300 mph at an altitude of 30,000
feet, a Boeing B-29 Superfortress flown by Col. Paul Tibbets — and named Enola Gay after the pilot’s mother — dropped an atomic bomb dubbed Little Boy that exploded 1,500 feet above the city of Hiroshima. The resulting incandescent sun leveled 6,820 buildings and killed 90,000 civilians and 10,000 Japanese soldiers (plus a number of Allied POWs). Several thousand more would die in the next decade of leukemia and other radiation diseases. But it would take a Russian declaration of war and the dropping of a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki Aug. 9 to finally convince the emperor to tell his people the war was over and they must “endure the unendurable” consequences of total defeat. The formal surrender of all Japanese forces took place Sept. 2 on board the battleship USS Missouri (Truman’s home state) in Tokyo Bay. The dropping of that first atomic See ENOLA GAY, Page 2