- "Enola Gay Crew"
Gross. Wiping out one hundred thousand human lives with a press of a button isn't something to make trophy memorabilia out of.
Gross. Wiping out one hundred thousand human lives with a press of a button isn't something to make trophy memorabilia out of.
Surely you don’t mean that no one is responsible for anything that has happened?
This is the same excuse many Germans that took part in the concentration camps used. Turns out, still doesn't make genocide okay.
They started massive wars of conquest across Asia (the likes of which are impossible to relate to for today's generations), butchered countless millions of people in the process, allied with Nazi Germany (!), committed even worse atrocities than the Nazis, and still refused to surrender even after being nuked once (with a large political & military contingent holding out even after the second nuke).
It required total war to stop them, and that obviously includes decimating their infrastructure, manufacturing, and the citizens that were responsible for manufacturing weapons (which had commonly been shifted out of large factories and dispersed into neighborhoods at smaller scale).
Yes. We live in a perverted world. There are harmful activities such as murder which most of us condone. It is a tragedy that there are enough of us that would disavow the manufacture of munitions.
I think leoh's point is wrong. But if you're going to disagree, at least start with recognizing what the actual point is.
The situation is far too complicated and nuanced to be a black and white call of "gross".
it's morally indefensible in all cases
this is where you should search for nuance and complexity, whereas dropping a-bombs on civilians is a clear cut case of an immoral act no matter how many lives it supposedly saves
His war memorabilia which I have from him are among the most valuable possessions I own.
It's not because of all the horrific things they could represent. It's because of the beautiful things they represent. The triumph over evil.
It was awful, a truly awful thing to do (Hirshima and Nagasaki).
But let's not forget the greater context. The US actively tried to stay out of the war, deliberately, for as long as possible and had their hand forced.
I say it every December 7th, but now I'm saying it on Sept. 18th.
Remember Pearl Harbor.
Remember my Grandfather.
This book is similar. It's not for all the negative things that we remember it. It's for the positive things we've done since, despite it.
I also think it's a bit strange to single out the crew. They are not any more responsible (and arguably less responsible) than the physicists and bureaucrats represented here who designed and built the bomb explicitly for the purpose of dropping it on Japan.
I also feel the same, owning a book with Oppenheimer's and Einstein's signatures in it would be cool, but the Enola Gay bombers? No thanks.
I suppose it's the distance, the same girl above, if she was associated with the ruler that ordered the execution instead of the actual executioner, would probably not be that ashamed of the last name.
The money is for the historical significance, not glorification of the act.
Then, would you approve of someone auctioning Hitler signatures to private collectors, like we're seeing here? That would be a serious crime in many countries. The context matters here, and I'm not impressed that the context of this auction is a respectful and sober one—that they can hide behind "for historical purposes".
E.g.
- "among these are 14 scientists awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics or Chemistry for their monumental achievements, as well as pioneering nuclear researchers, military personnel, and Manhattan Project organizers."
- "This remarkable compendium of autographs of the scientists and military men that played a role in the development of the bomb is an absolutely one-of-a-kind piece—an irreplaceable relic of the most momentous development of the 20th century."
This plainly glorifies the nuclear bombings. I don't agree with your comparing this auction to Holocaust museum exhibits. They don't look similar.
Had the bombs not been used, it was estimated that there would have been a million soldiers wounded, and who knows how many civilians. Based on the information available to them, the crew of the Enola Gay had no reason to believe their orders unlawful.
"During World War II, 1,506,000 Purple Heart medals were manufactured, many in anticipation of the estimated casualties resulting from the planned Allied invasion of Japan. By the end of the war, even accounting for medals lost, stolen, or wasted, nearly 500,000 remained." [3]
[1] https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/topics/nuremberg-trial...
[2] https://www.c-span.org/video/?400657-1/nazi-concentration-pr...
Of course, those kinds of decisions are way above the pay-grade of a bomber crew. So again, I certainly don't fault them. But it also feels kind of weird to treat them like celebrities.
https://time.com/4142857/wwii-leaflets-japan/ https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/key-documents/warning-leaf...
The fire bombing of Tokyo, which was the deadliest of the entire war (including Europe) and happened in March, didn't convince the Japanese government to give up. The Atomic bombs dropped in August and there was plenty of bombing in between.
I think most historians agree it was really the Soviet Union entering the war which finally created a good enough consensus for Japan to surrender. Even then there were plenty that wanted to keep going.
Even in hindsight it's very hard to say what the right answer was, which is why it's still debated even today. Probably there was no right answer.
Also consider. The USSR declared on Aug 7 because they wanted to get their bite out of Japan before it was too late. So in some sense the bomb hastened their entry, which hastened the end of the war...
All I can say is, I'm glad I'm not the one who had to make these decisions in real time.
Keep in mind that we had already conducted firebombing raids on Tokyo and Dresden that did a comparable amount of damage, inflicted comparable loss of life, and carried comparable moral and ethical implications. At the time, the only thing special or unusual about the atomic bomb was that it required only one airplane to deliver. It wasn't yet an item of totemic significance.
Not saying I agree, but you'd probably have a different attitude if the war personally affected you.
The attack on Pearl Harbor killed 2335 American military personnel and 68 civilians. The Little Boy bomb dropped by the Enola Gay crew on Hiroshima killed 90-140,000 Japanese, mostly civilians. The whole Asia Pacific war consumed nearly 25 million people. Or consider the ratio resulting from the terrorist attacks 22 years and 7 days ago. Those planes killed 2,977 American victims (plus 19 hijackers), then the US went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq and caused 4.5-4.7 million deaths [1].
"You attack me, I attack you" works as foreign policy (or is at least justifiable) when your most devastating weapon is your own fists and teeth, or even as sophisticated as a stick with a rock tied to the end. To swing that stick again and again and again, for days, ending one thousand, two thousand, ten thousand times as many lives as were lost in the initial strike... That will not bring back a father, a brother, or an uncle. You might understand how a broken man might want to do that, but that can't be called justice. When your weapon is as small as Little Boy, or today as big as a network of ICBMs, and instead of standing face to face with your enemy and watching that human suffer you're pulling a bomb release from 30,000 feet or clicking a button from the other side of the world, that gut feeling of a desire for revenge, an attitude of "I want to cause pain" is not reliable.
[1]: https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/papers/2023/IndirectDeat...