shocks me. It’s from Fox News, which is unsurprising, given the content. What is surprising, though, is what the content is: the son of Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay which dropped Little Boy on Hiroshima, cannot understand why the U.S. would want to honor the victims of Hiroshima. He’s specifically opposed to the Roos delegation that attended the annual ceremony today, and he’s also opposed to President Obama visiting Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Here is his reasoning, taken from the above-linked article:
“It’s an unsaid apology … 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.”
“It’s making the Japanese look like they’re the poor people, like they didn’t do anything,” he said. “They hit Pearl Harbor, they struck us. We didn’t slaughter the Japanese — we stopped the war.”
“What’s his purpose? I don’t know what it’d do,” … “History is history, the past is the past. You can’t change it and I don’t know why he’d visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“This all sounds like, ‘Oh, we did you wrong.’ That’s what it sounds like.”
Maybe Mr. Tibbets should visit Hiroshima for himself. I’ve been there. And yes, we did them wrong. You can talk about Operation Downfall all you want. You can talk about how many people died in the fire bombings elsewhere in Japan, or in Pearl Harbor, or that every Japanese citizen (man, woman, and child) was ready to kill Americans, given the chance. But I’m sorry, it’s still wrong. Use of the atomic bomb is wrong. Period. And Roos or Obama visiting isn’t apologizing for what we did…on the contrary, it’s acknowledging it. Yes, we did this. When I saw the A-Bomb Dome…fuck, man. We did this.
I don’t have words for how ignorant I find Mr. Tibbets to be. And he’s just using his dad’s celebrity to voice his opinion. Hell, would he care at all if his dad hadn’t been the pilot? Honestly, Mr. Tibbets. Go visit Hiroshima. Then you can talk about whether it’s appropriate to recognize it. Until then, fuck off.
We must stop. Non-proliferation is imperative. Disarmament is imperative. I don’t know how to put it plainly without saying “oh, you just have to go to Hiroshima to understand.” No, you don’t. People can understand without seeing it. But fuck, it makes you care a hell of a lot more.
May those who have died, rest in peace. May those who are still suffering – the hibakusha and their descendants – find peace in this lifetime.