[BITList] HISTORY NOT taught in High School! Tinian Island, Pacific Ocean

[franka]

    It's a small island, less than 40 square miles, a flat green
    Dot in the vastness of Pacific blue.

    Fly over it and you notice a slash across its north end of
    uninhabited bush, a long thin line that looks like an overgrown dirt
    runway.  If you didn't know what it was, you wouldn't give it a
    second glance out your aeroplane window.


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    mailbox:///C|/Users/Sara/AppData/Roaming/Thunderbird/Profiles/n






    On the ground, you see the runway isn't dirt but tarmac and crushed
    limestone, abandoned with weeds sticking out of it. Yet this is
    arguably the most historical airstrip on earth. This is where World
    War II was won. This is Runway Able:




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    On July 24, 1944, 30,000 US Marines landed on the beaches of
    Tinian....  Eight days later, over 8,000 of the 8,800 Japanese
    soldiers on the island were dead (vs. 328 Marines), and four months
    later the Seabees had built the busiest airfield of WWII - dubbed
    North Field -  enabling B-29 Superfortresses to launch air attacks
    on the Philippines, Okinawa, and mainland Japan.

    Late in the afternoon of August 5, 1945, a B-29 was manoeuvred over
    a bomb loading pit, then after lengthy preparations, taxied to the
    east end of North Field's main runway, Runway Able, and at 2:45am in
    the early morning darkness of August 6, took off.

    The B-29 was piloted by Col. Paul Tibbets of the US Army Air Force,
    who had named the plane after his mother, Enola Gay. The crew named
    the bomb they were carrying Little Boy. 6 hours later at 8:15am,
    Japan time, the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

    Three days later, in the pre-dawn hours of August 9, a B-29 named
    Bockscar (a pun on "boxcar" after its flight commander Capt. Fred
    Bock), piloted by Major Charles Sweeney took off from Runway Able.
    Finding its primary target of Kokura obscured by clouds, Sweeney
    proceeded to the secondary target of Nagasaki, over which, at
    11:01am, bombardier Kermit Beahan released the atomic bomb dubbed
    Fat Man.


    Here is "Atomic Bomb Pit #1" where Little Boy was loaded onto Enola Gay:

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    There are pictures displayed in the pit, now glass-enclosed. This
    one shows Little Boy being hoisted into Enola Gay's bomb bay.

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    And here on the other side of ramp is "Atomic Bomb Pit #2" where Fat
    Man was loaded onto Bockscar.




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    The commemorative plaque records that 16 hours after the nuking of
    Nagasaki, "On August 10, 1945 at 0300, the Japanese Emperor, without
    his cabinet's consent, decided to end the Pacific War."

    Take a good look at these pictures. This is where World War II ended
    with total victory of America over Japan. I was there all alone.
    There were no other visitors and no one lives anywhere near for
    miles.  Visiting the Bomb Pits, walking along deserted Runway Able
    in solitude, was a moment of extraordinarily powerful solemnity.

    It was a moment of deep reflection. Most people, when they think of
    Hiroshima and Nagasaki, reflect on the numbers of lives killed in
    the nuclear blasts - at least 70,000 and 50,000 respectively. Being
    here caused me to reflect on the number of lives saved - how many
    more Japanese and Americans would have died in a continuation of the
    war had the nukes not been dropped.

    Yet that was not all.  It's not just that the nukes obviated the US
    invasion of Japan, Operation Downfall, that would have caused
    upwards of a million American and Japanese deaths or more. It's that
    nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki were of extraordinary humanitarian
    benefit to the nation and people of Japan.

    Let's go to this cliff on the nearby island of Saipan to learn why:

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    Saipan is less than a mile north of Tinian.... The month before the
    Marines took Tinian, on June 15, 1944, 71,000 Marines landed on
    Saipan....  They faced 31,000 Japanese soldiers determined not to
    surrender.

    Japan had colonized Saipan after World War I and turned the island
    into a giant sugar cane plantation. By the time of the Marine
    invasion, in addition to the 31,000 entrenched soldiers, some 25,000
    Japanese settlers were living on Saipan, plus thousands more
    Okinawans, Koreans, and native islanders brutalized as slaves to cut
    the sugar cane.

    There were also one or two thousand Korean "comfort women" (kanji in
    Japanese), abducted young women from Japan's colony of Korea to
    service the Japanese soldiers as sex slaves. (See The Comfort Women:
    Japan's Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World
    War, by George Hicks.)

    Within a week of their landing, the Marines set up a civilian
    prisoner encampment that quickly attracted a couple thousand
    Japanese and others wanting US food and protection. When word of
    this reached Emperor Hirohito - who contrary to the myth was in full
    charge of the war- he became alarmed that radio interviews of the
    well-treated prisoners broadcast to Japan would subvert his people's
    will to fight.

    As meticulously documented by historian Herbert Bix in "Hirohito and
    the Making of Modern Japan", the Emperor issued an order for all
    Japanese civilians on Saipan to commit suicide. The order included
    the promise that, although the civilians were of low caste, their
    suicide would grant them a status in heaven equal to those honored
    soldiers who died in combat for their Emperor.

    And that is why the precipice in the picture above is known as
    Suicide Cliff, off which over 20,000 Japanese civilians jumped to
    their deaths to comply with their fascist emperor's desire - mothers
    flinging their babies off the cliff first or in their arms as they
    jumped.

    Anyone reluctant or refused, such as the Okinawan or Korean slaves,
    were shoved off at gunpoint by the Jap soldiers. Then the soldiers
    themselves proceeded to hurl themselves into the ocean to drown off
    a sea cliff afterwards called Banzai Cliff. Of the 31,000 Japanese
    soldiers on Saipan, the Marines killed 25,000, 5,000 jumped off
    Banzai Cliff, and only the remaining thousand were taken prisoner.

    The extent of this demented fanaticism is very hard for any
    civilized mind to fathom- especially when it is devoted not to
    anything noble but barbarian evil instead. The vast brutalities
    inflicted by the Japanese on their conquered and colonized peoples
    of China, Korea, the Philippines, and throughout their "Greater East
    Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" was a hideously depraved horror.

    And they were willing to fight to the death to defend it. So they
    had to be nuked.  The only way to put an end to the Japanese
    barbarian horror was unimaginably colossal destruction against which
    they had no defense whatever. Nuking Japan was not a matter of
    justice, revenge, or it getting what it deserved. It was the only
    way to end the Japanese dementia.

    And it worked - for the Japanese. They stopped being barbarians and
    started being civilized. They achieved more prosperity- and peace-
    than they ever knew, or could have achieved had they continued
    fighting and not been nuked. The shock of their getting nuked is
    responsible.

    We achieved this because we were determined to achieve victory.
    Victory without apologies. Despite perennial liberal demands we do
    so, America and its government has never apologized for nuking
    Japan...Hopefully, America never will.

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    Oh, yes...Guinness lists Saipan as having the best, most equitable,
    weather in the world. And the beaches? Well, take a look:







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    I find e-mails such as this one just plain fascinating. Although we
    do not forget, history fades into the shadows of our mind and we
    seldom think about it. But, we should remember and we should be
    constantly reminded of our history, where we came from and how we
    got here. Kind of interesting. Anyway, I think so...........




    -- 

    	

    	

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