The Day the Pilot Who Led the Attack on Pearl Harbour Met the Pilot of the Enola Gay; & 19 Other Wise Voices About Hiroshima
Fourteen years after the end of World War II, according to Wikipedia, the pilot who commanded the attack on Pearl Harbor happened to meet with none other than the pilot of the plane which dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
In 1959, [Mitsuo Fuchida] was among a group of Japanese visiting the tour of U.S. Air Force equipment given by General Paul Tibbets, who piloted the Enola Gay that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Fuchida recognized Tibbets and had a conversation with him. Tibbets said to Fuchida that “[y]ou sure did surprise us [at Pearl Harbor]” in which he replied “what do you think you did to us [at Hiroshima]?” Fuchida further told him that:
You did the right thing. You know the Japanese attitude at that time, how fanatic they were, they’d die for the Emperor … Every man, woman, and child would have resisted that invasion with sticks and stones if necessary … Can you imagine what a slaughter it would be to invade Japan? It would have been terrible. The Japanese people know more about that than the American public will ever know.
In September 1949, incidentally, after hearing how the Western forces had treated their enemies with love and forgiveness and after subsequently reading the Bible, Mitsuo Fuchida had become a Christian.
Hiroshima og Nagasaki er begge symboler på den
ondskab og tåbelighed og ustyrlige videnskab
der findes i verden. Krigen blev startet af
Japan mod nabostaterne og USA, og det var
grådighed og kortsynet dumhed der satte krigen
i gang. For Japan var på forhånd dømt til at
tabe krigen. Men en klike i Tokyo var magtsyge
og krigsgale. Men at bruge atombombers ildkugler
mod civile var grusomt, og kunne måske være und-
gået med en demonstration af atombombens fanta-
stiske kraft ud for Tokyo. Men det forsøgte man
sig end ikke med. Eller man kunne med flyveblade
have advaret de civile i de to byer.
Nu er der gået mange år, snart hundrede år. Men
er magthavere og politikere blevet klogere siden
dengang? Slet ikke, som Ukraine krigen viser.