I have a rather personal connection to the "Enola Gay." My father (now deceased) was a Marine in the Pacific theatre during WWII. He was in the third wave at Tarawa, went through most of the Marshall Islands and Saipan and Tinian Islands. He was in the Air side of the Marines and was a smart guy. He was in charge of putting the "new radar" developed by the Brits on the "new" Corsairs being deployed to the jarheads in the Pacific. While on-board Tinian Island, a rumor started among the "flyboys" that the U.S. had developed some "new bomb" that was going to end the war. The air Marines thought this rumor was silly because the U.S. had been "carpet bombing" Japan for some six months and the "Japs" were fighting as hard as ever. My father shared some of the stories of how the Japanese soldiers and civilians absolutely would not surrender when the Marines took the various Islands choosing instead to throw themselves off the cliffs. So any talk about one bomb stopping the Japanese was a joke to the Marines.
In early July of 1946, my father noticed that there was a lot of activity around the end of the air strip on Tinian where their unit was located. The Navy Seabees started building a new taxi-way and an isolated parking pad. When they were done, they put up a high fence with razor wire on the top with signs saying "keep out!" all around the area. According to my dad, the Marines just sat around and watched all the "swabbies" doing all this work and laughing because the Marines had been in total control of the island for over a month. There were no more Japanese anywhere!
So the new compound was finished and an Order was issued to "shoot on sight" anyone attempting to gain access to this area saying "No exceptions!!" This Order was given to my dad's unit. This really stoked the rumor mill. One morning very early, my dad and his buddies awoke hearing a loud roar off in the air close to the end of the strip. Then a brand new shinny B-29 "Superfortress" slowed on its approach and landed on the air strip. It taxied over to the newly constructed fenced-in parking pad and taxi-way. For several days, my dad's unit walked the fence line guarding that plane with no further information other than "shoot to kill" anyone attempting to climb the fence. He said there was a lot of activity around the plane late into the night with all kind of people running around and search lights.
Then in the early hours of Aug 6, my dad said that there was a lot of activity around the plane and it came out of the fenced-in area to the air strip and then took off. That was the last they all saw of the plane. A couple of days after the plane left the "scuttle-butt" around the base was that the plane had dropped some kind of deadly new bomb on Japan and that the war was going to end. None of the Marines believed these rumors. Then a week later, it was openly reported at the base that a second U.S. B-29 had dropped a second "Atomic Bomb" on a second Japanese city and that the "Japs had surrendered!"
My dad recalled how excited all the Marines were about this news. His unit and all the Marines in the Pacific were going to be at the "point of the sword" for the invasion of Japan and everyone had heard the estimates of at least a million U.S. casualties. I have no doubt that my father would have been killed had the U.S. invaded the mainland of Japan - and I and my two brothers and their six kids would have never been born. I believe in my heart that the U.S. bombing of Japan saved millions and millions of American and Japanese lives - and allowed me to be born and live a happy life. Yes, the Japanese casualties from the two A-bombs were terrible. But the entire WWII was mass insanity of "good vers evil" and while the bombs killed over 200k Japanese, they "saved" lives. As a final point, we today in 2014 cannot in any way understand the atmosphere and reality of the world in 1946. The Japanese would have NEVER given up and they WOULD have fought to the last citizen. That was their emotional and nationalistic view at the time. No matter how you may feel about the "morality" of the U.S. dropping two atomic bombs on Japan - and the obvious nuclear arms race the ensued in the decades afterwards - the U.S. DID THE RIGHT THING in dropping those bombs. I pray that such a terrible decision never again presents itself to our government. But I neither make nor offer any apology either for that decision in 1946.
