Information on this tragic incident is needed!

[GT]

Update

[FLYBOYJ]

Originally Posted by GT

And few realize the U.S. killed more Japanese civilians than Japanese soldiers and sailors. This was war at its most disturbing intensity.

It was a time of obscene casualties, a time when grandparents burned to death in cities aflame, and kamikaze sons swooped out of the sky to immolate themselves against American ships. It was the time of the worst battle in the history of the United States Marine Corps, the most decorated month in U.S. history, a valorous and brutish time of all-out slaughter.

And while America cheered its flyer's as its best and brightest, the Japanese had a very different view of those who wreaked havoc from the skies. To them, airmen who dropped napalm on defenseless civilians living in paper houses were the nonhuman devils. GT

Interesting, but my personal view is the Japanese already showed what savages they could be by their little adventures in China several years prior, needless to say the treatment of US POWs at the beginning of the war, way before this period. When their navy was nearly destroyed and the Japanese saw allied forces closing in, they could of stopped fighting any time, thousands of Japanese civilians would of been spared, but they continued on their blind road to self-destruction.

Japanese grandparents burned to death? - tell that to some Chinese who had their grandparents eaten by Japanese soldiers after they were brutally raped and murdered many years prior.

Like to old saying goes "Paybacks' a bitch."

But to answer why this was kept secret for so long? Because of they way these Flyboys died.

[Smokey]

All sides behave horrifically in war. Savage acts do not respect something as superficial as nationality. Among the most horrific are the bomber crews, dropping bombs on civilians.

[Erich]

I guess you could also mention the incidents in the ETO. British and especially US fighter/bomber crews hung and or shot on the spot or later carted trhough villages being pummeled by stones and then taken out in a field and killed with farm implements

Terrorflieger was the tag put on these men.

Yes I had relatives go through the day/night bombings......they don't say much even to this day

[Glider]

Small point GT apart from saying that I am with the others. It wasn't just the Americans or British who lauded their pilots.
All sides considered their pilots to be amongst the best, because they were. You knew your chances of making it, were at best slim. The chances of dying a painful death, often by fire, very high and they went into it with their eyes wide open. By definition they were also amongst the best and brightest of each nation, you had to be, to simply fly.
No pilot of any nation could be described as dumb unthinking cannon fodder.

[trackend]

I'm only going to pass a couple of comments and may well upset some but anyway this is how I feel. Who instigated the conflict and mass civilian bombing, the UK the US,China, Australia,Canada etc etc no Japan, Italy and Germany. Would any of the allied country's have fire bombed Tokyo,Dresden etc had the Axis powers not invaded numerous country's and Blitzed London, Shanghai, Warsaw etc no it was a situation instigated by the Axis powers that dragged the world into total uncompromising and revolting war with no quarter given or taken, hindsight is easy 60 years on, old fashioned revenge 60 years ago more than understandable.
Humans are not as civilised as we would like to think.
I have no records of civilians in the UK lynching downed bomber pilots but perhaps you guys know better as for other places around the world I dont know at all.

[FLYBOYJ]

Well said Track!

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Originally Posted by Smokey

All sides behave horrifically in war. Savage acts do not respect something as superficial as nationality. Among the most horrific are the bomber crews, dropping bombs on civilians.

Explain to me how bomber crews dropping bombs on a city is more horrific than a Japanese soldier raping a chinese woman right after he killed her husband for no reason at all. Or how about interning 100,000's of woman and using them as sex slaves for your soldiers and officers and then they just disappear.

Wow let me think about this one. Yeah the allies dropping bombs was far more horrific! Yeah right, give me a break!

[Ledarious]

I dont think there is such a thing as a "clean" war.Remember that it is the civilian population that builds a nation's war machine.Oh,wasn't beheading considered an honorable death as far as the Japanese were concerned?

[Aggie08]

Remember, the victors write the history books...

[FLYBOYJ]

Originally Posted by Aggie08

Remember, the victors write the history books...

Tell that to some Japanese who today want to deny their Chinese atrocities!

[Nonskimmer]

Originally Posted by trackend

I'm only going to pass a couple of comments and may well upset some but anyway this is how I feel. Who instigated the conflict and mass civilian bombing, the UK the US,China, Australia,Canada etc etc no Japan, Italy and Germany. Would any of the allied country's have fire bombed Tokyo,Dresden etc had the Axis powers not invaded numerous country's and Blitzed London, Shanghai, Warsaw etc no it was a situation instigated by the Axis powers that dragged the world into total uncompromising and revolting war with no quarter given or taken, hindsight is easy 60 years on, old fashioned revenge 60 years ago more than understandable.

Well said.

[R Leonard]

Well, if you want to read up on goings on at Chichi-jima you could always read a book by James Bradley, oddly enough, entitled "Flyboys". Three things though:

one, IMO, Bradley kind of goes off the deep end on this 'moral equivilency' business;

two, in WW2 US naval aviation circles, the appelation 'flyboys' was considered to be somewhat derogatory, if not insulting. Makes one wonder why he chose it for a title;

three, though Bradley appears to want to make it seem as though he's breaking new ground, this episode was not unknown. Though I couldn't begin to point to a ready source without going through a couple oh hundred books on naval aviation, I know I've known about it at least since high school (some 35 years) . . . could be a function of the company I keep.

Rich

[plan_D]

I think everyone must remember that it's not the job of the soldier to question the morality of the war. You can't be a politician and a soldier at the same time. I'm sure many a man wondered why he was there or what he was doing but while doing so they all had a job to do, and they knew it.

World War 2 was total war, everything goes. You can't attack one nation for doing anything wrong without looking at the others. As track correctly said the Axis instigated total war and the Allied powers gladly played their part in total war.

Now I don't care about the 'atrocities' because it was war. I hate to read about them but I have to accept them and not judge the people who did them. No military is whiter than white because all soldiers are still human, they seek revenge, they seek sexual pleasure, they hate ect. People who sit there and judge these people should try and understand the positions of these people. If you were a B-29 bombadier over Tokyo, would you refuse to press the button to drop your load? I know I wouldn't.

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

I agree to an extent war is never pretty and things happens and unfortunatly civilians die. However I dont see how one can make a big deal about US "terror bombing" Tokyo when the Germans bombed London, Warsaw, and Stalingrad.....etc. Some people seem to make it seem like the allies were the aggressors and did the wrong doing. What about the Hollocaust and the Japanese slave camps or the Battan Death March.

Damn give it up already! (not meant toward you plan_D )

As a German/American I dont condemn the allies for the Dresden Bombings, it was war and the allies did not start it.