Legion Magazine | History Over Hiroshima

From the August 2005 American Legion magazine, from an article called "History Over Hiroshima" by James V. Carroll, about Enola Gay pilot Col. Paul Tibbets:

Most historians agree that dropping the uranium and plutonium bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki shortened World War II, thereby avoiding an inevitable Allied invasion of Japan and its predicted carnage to both sides. There are historians and ethicists who hold a dissenting opinion, but Japanese aviator Mitsuo Fuchida is not among them.

Fuchida, Tibbets says, approached him at a military reception sometime after the war and said, “I’m Fuchida. Shall we talk about it?”

Apparently recognizing that the American aviator did not understand what he was talking about, Fuchida told Tibbets that he had led the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.

“You sure did surprise us,” Tibbets recalls saying.

“What the hell do you think you did to us?” Fuchida replied.

The two war-hardened aviators and survivors chatted a few minutes when Fuchida confided to Tibbets, “You did the right thing to drop the bombs. Japan would have resisted an invasion using every man, woman and child, using sticks and stones if necessary.”

“That would have been a slaughter,” Tibbets says. “I believed at the time, and I believe now, that President Truman made the right call.”

Full article