About there Experience
Johnie and Dale Gano — Dec 4, 1996
"We're here to answer questions from the students regarding our experiences on Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked. We were both 25 years old and had been married 4 months. We were not really uneasy about the world situation. We were still in bed at 8:00 on Sunday morning and were trying to decide if we should go to church in Honolulu. The decision was suddenly made for us by loud explosions. Johnie thought a plane had crashed near the house. We rushed outside to find our neighbor, a navy doctor, looking at aircraft through a pair of binoculars. He suggested that I look at them because I knew more about airplanes than he did. I said "I don't need your glasses Doc, look at the Rising Sun on the side of the airplane. They are Japanese!" I could see tracer shells being fired at them.
What a way for Sunday to start! "
Johnie and Dale Gano
This press release by Stimson was released to show the incredible advancement in science and technology that the U.S. made by creating and dropping the atomic bomb. "The recent use of the atomic bomb over Japan, which was today made known by the President, is the cumulation of years of herculean effort on the part of science and industry working in cooperation with the military authorities. this development which was carried forward by the many thousand participants with the utmost energy and the very highest sense of national duty, with the greatest secrecy and the most imperative of time schedules, probably represents the greatest achievement of the combined efforts of science, industry, labor, and the military in all history."
Press Release by the White House, August 6, 1945. Subject File, Ayers Papers.
This document was sent out the day the atomic bomb was dropped. It explains the justification of why it was necessary to drop the bomb on Japan. "It was to spare the Japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of July 26 was issued at Potsdam. Their leaders promptly rejected that ultimatum. If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth. Behind this air attack will follow sea and land forces in such numbers and power as they have not yet seen and with the fighting skill of which they are already well aware."
Draft Statement on the Dropping of the Bomb, July 30, 1945; President Secretary's File, Truman Papers
In these papers, on pages 2-3, it explains the reasons why Churchill and Roosevelt agreed that it was necessary to use the bomb. " "The United States had available the large number of scientists of disctinction in the many needed areas of knowledge. It had the tremendous industrial and financial resources necessary for the project and they could be devoted to it without undue inpairment of other vital war work. In the United States the laboratory work and the production plants, on which a substantial start had already been made, would be out of reach of enemy bombing, while at that time Britain was exposed to constant air attack and was still threatened with the possibility of invasion."
Pilot of Plane That Bombed Hiroshima Dies
Paul Tibbets, who piloted the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, says he has no regrets of dropping the bomb. Paul said in a 1975 interview, “I’m not proud that I killed 80,000 people, but I’m proud that I was able to start with nothing, plan it and have it work as perfectly as it did”.
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