Whirlwind - Barrett Tillman [131]
Others fared less well. In 1954 physicist Robert Oppenheimer of the Manhattan Project was suspected for earlier Communist affiliations and lost his security clearance. Paul Tibbets was excoriated by leftists and pacifists for destroying Hiroshima. Harry Truman was second-guessed by two generations of historians and pundits who insist that he only permitted use of the bomb to impress the Soviets.
Some Japanese disagree. They recognize that the war cabinet was determined to go down fighting, and that an Allied invasion would have resulted in millions of Japanese deaths. Despite Hirohito’s involvement in conducting the war, he did the right thing by overriding his most fanatical samurai.
In the end, the theories presented by Douhet, Mitchell, and others were alternately proven and refuted. Belief in the power of strategic bombardment to end a war quickly was clearly optimistic. So was the contention that heavy civilian casualties would force a capitulation: it was no more true in democratic Britain than in authoritarian Japan, though the scale of destruction was far different.
However, airpower’s effect upon the enemy’s ability to wage war outstripped its psychological influence. In early 1945 Japan was starving for food and fuel. The first major fire raid in March left sixteen square miles of Tokyo in ruins, with no prospect for preventing additional destruction. But five more months of even heavier bombing were required before Japan’s leaders finally had enough.
Though the war ended in 1945, in a real sense it continues today. The decades-long atomic bombing debate peaked in 1993–95 when the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum sparked enormous controversy over a fiftieth anniversary display built around the Enola Gay. The proposed script’s treatment of bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki largely ignored the rising toll of American casualties as the war had continued, and chose to cast the atomic bombs as revenge for Pearl Harbor. The lack of context outraged many Americans—whose taxes fund the museum—for the perception of moral equivalency in the wartime actions of the United States and Japan. Veterans and military historians were angered by the text’s self-righteous tone and the reluctance of the curators responsible for the exhibit to include such objections. With increasing involvement by veterans’ groups and the Air Force Association, the U.S. Senate reviewed the text and declared it “revisionist and offensive to many World War II veterans.” The result was the forced resignation of the director of the National Air and Space Museum (an astronomer rather than historian) and reduction of the proposed exhibit. Though only part of the Enola Gay was displayed, it drew 4 million visitors in three years. Today the famous bomber is fully assembled at the museum’s Dulles, Virginia, facility, testament to an air campaign unlike anything before, and never to be seen again.
Appendix A
THE UNKNOWN WAR
After the Doolittle Raid in April 1942 Japan was immune to air attack for fifteen months. When American aircraft reappeared they operated in a remote area, from an even remoter source.
The Kuril Islands comprised the northernmost portion of Japan, nearly 1,500 miles from Tokyo and therefore not considered part of the homeland. Well beyond Hokkaido, bisected by the 50th parallel, the isles were typically cold, fogbound, and of only marginal interest to American strategists. But the Kurils possessed one invaluable asset: they were within range of bombers in the Aleutians. Even then it was a long stretch—more than 700 miles across the North Pacific.
In July 1943 the Alaska-based 11th Air Force launched its first attack on the Kurils, striking Paramushiru Island. The early efforts were literally hit-and-miss affairs, as attackers necessarily dropped bombs through solid cloud layers. A large mission involved nine B-24s.
The Japanese were the least of the Aleutian airmen’s problems. The