Paul Tibbets was a hero who helped to bring World War II to an end. Tibbets commanded the bomber Enola Gay, which dropped the "Little Boy" atomic bomb over Hiroshima Japan. Americans should honor Paul Tibbets, because his service on August 6, 1945 likely saved a million American soldiers from maiming or death.
Tibbets also saved countless Japanese, more than a million, who would have died fighting to support a fascist government against vastly superior American and Soviet forces had an amphibious invasion been necessary. For the survivors a post-invasion Japan, like Germany and Korea, would have been divided into American and Soviet spheres of influence, hardening into separate governments, backed or ruled by foreign troops facing one another over a DMZ. The Soviet sphere would have contained a Gulag. The American sphere might have developed a democratic government like that of West Germany, or it might have been ruled by a military oligarchy as South Korea was until the 1970s. Either way, the survivors, north and south, would have faced the prospect of living on divided land with nuclear weapons pointed at them in each direction.
So we should honor and respect Paul Tibbets. His son James Tibbets, may be another story.
The son of the U.S. Air Force pilot who dropped the first atomic bomb in the history of warfare says the Obama administration's decision to send a U.S. delegation to a ceremony in Japan to mark the 65th anniversary of the attack on Hiroshima is an "unsaid apology" and appears to be an attempt to "rewrite history."
James Tibbets, son of Brig. Gen. Paul W. Tibbets, Jr., says Friday's visit to Hiroshima by U.S. Ambassador John Roos is an act of contrition that his late father would never have approved.
"It's an unsaid apology," Tibbets, 66, told FoxNews.com from his home in Georgiana, Ala. "Why wouldn't it be? Why would [Roos] go? It doesn't make any sense.
"I know it's the anniversary, but I don't know what the hell they're trying to do. It needs to be left alone. The war is over."
With respect to Mr. Tibbets, the war isn't over. Not for the people who survived the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which only happened 65 years ago. Nor for their families, who've lost parents and relatives to cancer and may carry the scars themselves, in their own genetic codes. Nor for Japan, which still carries scars from the attacks.
Were the scars deserved? Well, if we believe in collective guilt, sure. Japan, as a nation, surely asked for August 6, 1945 on December 7, 1941.
But America isn't a nation founded on notions like collective guilt and punishment. The American ideal, at least the one to which I subscribe, is an individualistic one. People are judged on their own merits. We don't punish the families of the guilty. We don't brand them as "subversive elements" or gloat when tragedy befalls them. Similarly, with a few exceptions, we don't give special privilege to the families of the powerful and successful. We are not a collective. We do not enshrine class into law.
That would be un-American.
And so, to me, it seems proper that we send a representative to Japan to mark a tragedy in living Japanese history, even if it was a tragedy of the Japanese government's making. That government is gone. Its leaders died on the gallows. Japan is not an enemy nation. 65 years after Hiroshima, Japan is a friend to America.
To memorialize a tragedy is not to apologize for wrongdoing. Another American virtue, at least in the America where I live, is that we are a forgiving people. Old enemies, such as Britain, for over a century the greatest threat to this country, become friends. As has Japan. As have almost almost a third of the American population.
If you visit the town of Gettysburg Pennsylvania, and drive a little distance into the battlefield, you will see many monuments. A number of them look like this one:
There is no doubt that soldiers who fought under the flags of North Carolina and the Confederacy posed a greater existential threat to the United States than the soldiers of imperial Japan ever did. Yet the field of battle on which they were beaten contains multiple monuments to North Carolina's war dead, as well as to those of other Confederate states. And visitors to the Gettysburg cemetery and battlefield show those dead as much respect as they do to Union dead, even when the visitors come from Wisconsin or Massachusetts.
Similarly, though Japan isn't part of the United States, we should respect the innocent who died or were ruined at Hiroshima, for innocent they were. It isn't an apology to respect the dead, and one of the ways that governments show respect is to send diplomats to memorial ceremonies.
James Tibbets is an American, and he has the right to speak his mind, but he didn't fight against Japan any more than I did. His descent from a famous man gives him no moral authority. He is not a hereditary war hero. His father's courage and service won't be lessened one bit by a diplomatic visit to a ceremony for the dead.
And while I can excuse James Tibbets for his strong feelings about Hiroshima, for Fox News to use him in the pursuit of its own political war against a President who is merely following the historic American practice of reaching out to defeated enemies, who are now friends, is shameful.
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Very well said Patrick.
I can only agree…as a retired U.S. Air Force member, I've been to Hiroshima myself…my recognition of a tragic wartime act and those that died during it didn't mean I was apologizing, as I have several older family members who I might never have known if the ground invasion had been necessary…
Well said.
Grace is a sign of strength, not a sign of weakness.
Movingly put.
"Paul Tibbets was a hero who helped to bring World War II to an end. Tibbets commanded the bomber Enola Gay, which dropped the “Little Boy” atomic bomb over Hiroshima Japan. Americans should honor Paul Tibbets, because his service on August 6, 1945 likely saved a million American soldiers from maiming or death.
Tibbets also saved countless Japanese, more than a million, who would have died fighting to support a fascist government against vastly superior American and Soviet forces had an amphibious invasion been necessary."
How does any of this square with the fact that Truman knew well before the dropping of the bomb that the Japanese were seeking peace terms?
Honestly, look into the research that's been done on this stuff. The projected numbers on invasion casualties were post hoc justifications for an entirely pointless destruction of life. Read Gar Alperovitz's book on the subject, or even just read the quotes in it from the senior military officers of that period.
I have no problem with the rest of your post.
I've read similar items Paul, and, respectfully, I'm not convinced that Truman used the atom bomb as a needless science experiment.
OK, given the nearly unanimous statements of the commanders at that time that there was NO military justification for the use of atomic weapons (the targets were not military installations, the ability to destroy cities by bombing already having been conclusively established, etc.) why do you think the bombing was, as you say, heroic?
The intentional killing of civilians is usually described in rather different terms.
"…when we didn't need to do it, and we knew we didn't need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn't need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs." Brigadier General Carter Clarke
"Even without the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it seemed highly unlikely, given what we found to have been the mood of the Japanese government, that a U.S. invasion of the islands [scheduled for November 1, 1945] would have been necessary." Paul Nitze, Vice-Chairman, US Strategic Bombing Survey
"It seemed to me that such a weapon was not necessary to bring the war to a successful conclusion, that once used it would find its way into the armaments of the world…" Lewis Strauss, special assistant to the Secretary of the Navy
"…it definitely seemed to me that the Japanese were becoming weaker and weaker. They were surrounded by the Navy. They couldn't get any imports and they couldn't export anything. Naturally, as time went on and the war developed in our favor it was quite logical to hope and expect that with the proper kind of a warning the Japanese would then be in a position to make peace, which would have made it unnecessary for us to drop the bomb and have had to bring Russia in…".
"I think that the Japanese were ready for peace, and they already had approached the Russians and, I think, the Swiss. And that suggestion of [giving] a warning [of the atomic bomb] was a face-saving proposition for them, and one that they could have readily accepted." Ralph Bard, Under Secretary of the Navy
"I believe we missed the opportunity of effecting a Japanese surrender, completely satisfactory to us, without the necessity of dropping the bombs." John McCloy, Assistant Secretary of War
"When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor." Norman Cousins in Pathologies of Power
"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.
"The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children." Admiral William Leahy
"Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. …the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.
"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude…" President Dwight David Eisenhower
Be very careful about citing Gar Alperovitz as your only source Paul. I won't compare him to Michael Bellesiles, but it's fair to say that his work has received blistering criticism from a number of prominent historians, for sins ranging from inappropriate … ellipses … of … quotations … to … change … meaning to misrepresenting translated testimony of Japanese leaders.
See here for a short critique of Alperovitz's work, in the context of a larger article about Alperovitz's admirer Howard Zinn:
http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/33000.html
And that's about all I'll say on the matter. While I generally don't mind deviating from topic in the comment discussion of a post, I'm not inclined to take this discussion down that particular rabbit hole.
I agree, Patrick. Well stated.
This is a great post, Patrick. Personally I wish we had dropped the first one offshore after telling the Japanese they should pay attention because the next one would be dropped on a city, to see if that would get any results, but it is easy to say that now in an entirely different context. We had already destroyed most of their cities with firebombs anyway without a surrender. I think your main point about Tibbets is right on target. No pun intended.
When I started reading this post I made a note to make a post myself about it, but by the end had scrapped the idea because you'd already said everything I would have and better.
I've never doubted the necessity, but we dropped a fucking atomic bomb on them and they're now a friendly ally. Regretting a necessary evil isn't the same thing as apologizing for the action.
I'm only sad that I won't be within easy driving distance of Oak Ridge tomorrow. :(
Well said, Patrick.
I don't know if we could have forced the Japanese to surrender easily without dropping the bomb, but it would have been nice. However, as Kevin points out, we were already bombing the crap out of Japanese civilization. The firebombing raids on Tokyo were horrendous — think 9/11 with 300 planes — and the casualties were comparable to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
At the time, atom bombs didn't seem like the doomsday weapons we see them as now. To military planners, the atom bomb was part of the huge bombing campaign that had already started to soften up Japan prior to the invasion of the mainland. Since one atom bomb was estimated to do as much damage as a week of conventional bombing, and since they expected be able to produce two atom bombs per week once full production began, using atom bombs was expected to triple the tempo of the bombing campaign. Many people hoped that Japan would realize this and surrender before too many bombs had to be dropped, but if not, the plan was to drop 50-100 more before the invasion.
A very intelligent post, Patrick. My dad was a POW in Germany. After being liberated and nursed back to health after near starvation, he was ready for redeployment to the Pacific when the A-bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. He's as liberal and anti-war as they come, and he knows to this day that Truman did the right thing, that he shortened the war and saved lives. Not an easy thing, by any means. The right thing.
And you really should write things like this under your own name. :)
Thank you Peter.
Comparing the War of Northern Agression to WWII is not a valid comparison. All the Confederate States of America wanted was to be left alone. What Japan wanted was to exterminate us from the face of the planet.
Oh, you're right. You've invalidated my entire argument. I'll just take the post down now.
RE: Paratrooper JJ
I'm sorry, but technically the Japanese didn't want to destroy/conquer us, they just wanted us to let them conquer most of the Pacific/Asian region…i.e. Just Leave Them alone…
Kevin, sorry, but no. We're in the position, now, of knowing that the hypothetical "warning shot" wouldn't have worked, because Hiroshima didn't cause the Japanese surrender; it took Nagasaki. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a tragedy for the Japanese people, in the classic sense of fate administering excessive punishment for relatively small sins, or none at all. (The sin of the Japanese people, collectively, 1941 was in permitting that gang of thugs, including the Imperial one, to take a shot at world domination; obviously, that wasn't the fault at all of the Japanese who were only children at that time or were born later, but that's how tragedy goes — the punishment is always disproportionate, and always visited at least a little on people who didn't deserve at all.)
And, yeah, regretting the necessity is not the same as apologizing.
Oh, and Patrick — my applause for the post, as well.
You're right. Tibbets is wrong. Attendance does not mean apology. The Japanese have been a real success story for capitalism and democracy since the end of war. Both countries should regret that we ever fought each other.
That said, use of the atomic bombs saved thousands of American and Japanese lives. Wikipedia (I know) says 500,000 Purple Hearts were ordered prior to the planned invasion of the home islands. We're giving those medals away today in Iraq and Afganistan. Yes, the Japanese had peace feelers out. Yes, they were very worried about a Soviet occupation. Yes, the air and sub attacks on their merchant fleet were leading to serious food and material shortages. But, after Nagasaki, they called up the Swiss (if I remember correctly) and said "We give up." Maybe in a month, they'd have done it anyway. Maybe six months, after the Army and Marines had drawn down our Purple Heart stock by 100K or so.
When I hear "The War of Northern Agression" I want to punch someone in the face. Just for old time's sake.
Let me tell you a story from the war's greatest popular historian, Shelby Foote:
At the battle of Shiloh, a rebel soldier was separated from his platoon and captured behind Union lines. As he was led off one of his captors asked why he was fighting. He owned no slaves. He was a poor mountaineer from Tennessee, with no stake in the rebellion.
"I'm fighting because you're here."
I confess to a sentimental weakness for the Lost Cause, though I'm glad it's lost. But more than Yankees, I hate modern Americans who want to refight the Civil War on the internet.
Sooooo…when the South invaded Gettysburg, PENNSYLVANIA (a NORTHERN state), that just meant they wanted to be left alone?
I'm not going to refight the war Emily, but I think even Sherman would concede that the Confederate invasion of Pennsylvania was a response to two years of Union invasions of Virginia.