Editor's note: Today's column is the first in series by John Waelti on the American Atomic Veterans. The second part will appear in next Friday's edition.
July 1953, an uneasy truce was signed bringing an end to fighting in Korea. It would be another decade until the president, with assent of Congress, would commit increasing numbers of American troops to combat in Vietnam.
During the intervening decade, the draft was still on. Military service was a rite of passage for the male half of American teenagers. It was a tense decade with the U.S. and the Soviet Union having nuclear weapons aimed at each other. Like matches in a gasoline dump, any spark could have set it off. It would have been a war of mutual destruction.
Bellicose hotheads on both sides, theirs and ours, spoke of the inevitability of war between the two superpowers. Fortunately for civilization as we know it, cooler heads on both sides prevailed.
Sometimes the best way to avoid war is to delay it until the reason for it goes away. Such was the case with our standoff with the Soviet Union. Such is thus far the case with Taiwan and China, the latter acting more like capitalists than communists - its financial managers arguably more foresighted than our own myopic scions of Wall Street. This could have been the case with Vietnam. The stated reason for the war was the domino theory, that if Vietnam went communist, so would all of South Asia and beyond. This rationale for war proved to be a costly fallacy promoted by powerful men. In spite of Vietnam going communist, it is now turning capitalistic on its own volition. But I digress. Past is past, but we should learn from it.
Because American troops did not see combat between 1953 and intervention in Vietnam, most of us who saw active duty during peacetime got off easy. I emphasize most, but not all - namely the Atomic Veterans. The tragic story of the Atomic Veterans is largely unknown to the vast majority of Americans.
On the north side of New Mexico's White Sands Missile Range is a place now open to visitors - the Trinity Site. July 1945 - the war with Nazi Germany was over but the war with Japan was not. The Trinity site is where the initial equations of Albert Einstein and the theoretical work of the world's most brilliant physicists came to deadly fruition with the first nuclear explosion. This cataclysmic event hastened the end of the war. It also led to the largely unknown story of the American Atomic Veterans.
To put this in some context, let's back up a bit from here.
By 1944 General MacArthur's South Pacific Command and Admiral Nimitz's Central Pacific Command were closing the noose on Japan. Some 1,200 miles directly south of Japan lay the Marianas Island chain, including Guam, Saipan, and Tinian. The Central Pacific Command needed to capture that island chain for three reasons:
n The belief that the Saipan landings would lure the Japanese fleet for a final showdown
n To give the navy a forward base for a final assault on Japan, and,
n To provide air bases from which the new heavy bombers, B-29 super fortresses, would be in range of Japanese cities.
Saipan was the first of the three islands to be assaulted. Our military planners lacked good maps and grossly underestimated Japanese strength, 10,000 troops, whereas it was actually closer to 30,000. The 2nd and 4th Marine Divisions and the Army's 27th Division landed on Saipan in June 1944. Saipan was secured a month later at the cost of 3000 men killed in action, divided roughly equally among the three divisions. Another 11,000 were wounded or missing in action.
The assault on Saipan did indeed lure the Japanese fleet, and prompted the greatest carrier battle in the history of warfare - the Battle of the Philippine Sea. The Japanese lost 330 planes and most of their remaining best flyers. This episode became known as the "Marianas Turkey Shoot," and was a disaster from which Japan's air forces would never recover.
With the battle for Saipan taking longer than anticipated, the attack on Guam was delayed until July. The 1st and 3rd Marine Divisions and the Army's 77th Division secured Guam at the cost of another 1400 dead.
Tinian was the third of the Marianas to be secured. Gen. Holland Smith believed this to have been the most flawless of amphibian operations, insofar as this most complex of military operations can be flawless. Although organized resistance on Tinian ended Aug. 1, there was scattered resistance for another five months.
Tinian - most Americans, particularly younger ones, never heard of it, and even fewer can identify its role a year hence in the first hostile use of atomic weapons.
With loss of the Marianas, Japanese moderates and liberals wanted to negotiate for peace. They forced the resignation of Japan's Navy Minister and Chief of Staff, Admiral Shimada, and Premier Hideki Tojo. But they were not influential enough to go further, and there were no concrete moves for a favorable peace.
With Tinian secured, B-29 bombers were now within range of the Japanese homeland. But not all would return. The distance was beyond the range of fighter escort, and there was no place for crippled bombers to land on the return flight.
Well actually, there was a place - in the Bonin Island chain, midway between the 1,200 miles from the Marianas to Japan, but it was held by the Japanese. It was a desolate lamb chop-shaped piece of lava rock that American forces desperately needed to effectively bomb Japan. The Japanese knew it too.
That piece of lava rock was called Iwo Jima.
- John Waelti of Monroe can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net.
July 1953, an uneasy truce was signed bringing an end to fighting in Korea. It would be another decade until the president, with assent of Congress, would commit increasing numbers of American troops to combat in Vietnam.
During the intervening decade, the draft was still on. Military service was a rite of passage for the male half of American teenagers. It was a tense decade with the U.S. and the Soviet Union having nuclear weapons aimed at each other. Like matches in a gasoline dump, any spark could have set it off. It would have been a war of mutual destruction.
Bellicose hotheads on both sides, theirs and ours, spoke of the inevitability of war between the two superpowers. Fortunately for civilization as we know it, cooler heads on both sides prevailed.
Sometimes the best way to avoid war is to delay it until the reason for it goes away. Such was the case with our standoff with the Soviet Union. Such is thus far the case with Taiwan and China, the latter acting more like capitalists than communists - its financial managers arguably more foresighted than our own myopic scions of Wall Street. This could have been the case with Vietnam. The stated reason for the war was the domino theory, that if Vietnam went communist, so would all of South Asia and beyond. This rationale for war proved to be a costly fallacy promoted by powerful men. In spite of Vietnam going communist, it is now turning capitalistic on its own volition. But I digress. Past is past, but we should learn from it.
Because American troops did not see combat between 1953 and intervention in Vietnam, most of us who saw active duty during peacetime got off easy. I emphasize most, but not all - namely the Atomic Veterans. The tragic story of the Atomic Veterans is largely unknown to the vast majority of Americans.
On the north side of New Mexico's White Sands Missile Range is a place now open to visitors - the Trinity Site. July 1945 - the war with Nazi Germany was over but the war with Japan was not. The Trinity site is where the initial equations of Albert Einstein and the theoretical work of the world's most brilliant physicists came to deadly fruition with the first nuclear explosion. This cataclysmic event hastened the end of the war. It also led to the largely unknown story of the American Atomic Veterans.
To put this in some context, let's back up a bit from here.
By 1944 General MacArthur's South Pacific Command and Admiral Nimitz's Central Pacific Command were closing the noose on Japan. Some 1,200 miles directly south of Japan lay the Marianas Island chain, including Guam, Saipan, and Tinian. The Central Pacific Command needed to capture that island chain for three reasons:
n The belief that the Saipan landings would lure the Japanese fleet for a final showdown
n To give the navy a forward base for a final assault on Japan, and,
n To provide air bases from which the new heavy bombers, B-29 super fortresses, would be in range of Japanese cities.
Saipan was the first of the three islands to be assaulted. Our military planners lacked good maps and grossly underestimated Japanese strength, 10,000 troops, whereas it was actually closer to 30,000. The 2nd and 4th Marine Divisions and the Army's 27th Division landed on Saipan in June 1944. Saipan was secured a month later at the cost of 3000 men killed in action, divided roughly equally among the three divisions. Another 11,000 were wounded or missing in action.
The assault on Saipan did indeed lure the Japanese fleet, and prompted the greatest carrier battle in the history of warfare - the Battle of the Philippine Sea. The Japanese lost 330 planes and most of their remaining best flyers. This episode became known as the "Marianas Turkey Shoot," and was a disaster from which Japan's air forces would never recover.
With the battle for Saipan taking longer than anticipated, the attack on Guam was delayed until July. The 1st and 3rd Marine Divisions and the Army's 77th Division secured Guam at the cost of another 1400 dead.
Tinian was the third of the Marianas to be secured. Gen. Holland Smith believed this to have been the most flawless of amphibian operations, insofar as this most complex of military operations can be flawless. Although organized resistance on Tinian ended Aug. 1, there was scattered resistance for another five months.
Tinian - most Americans, particularly younger ones, never heard of it, and even fewer can identify its role a year hence in the first hostile use of atomic weapons.
With loss of the Marianas, Japanese moderates and liberals wanted to negotiate for peace. They forced the resignation of Japan's Navy Minister and Chief of Staff, Admiral Shimada, and Premier Hideki Tojo. But they were not influential enough to go further, and there were no concrete moves for a favorable peace.
With Tinian secured, B-29 bombers were now within range of the Japanese homeland. But not all would return. The distance was beyond the range of fighter escort, and there was no place for crippled bombers to land on the return flight.
Well actually, there was a place - in the Bonin Island chain, midway between the 1,200 miles from the Marianas to Japan, but it was held by the Japanese. It was a desolate lamb chop-shaped piece of lava rock that American forces desperately needed to effectively bomb Japan. The Japanese knew it too.
That piece of lava rock was called Iwo Jima.
- John Waelti of Monroe can be reached at jjwaelti1@tds.net.
