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My father was a radar operator on the B-29 named the Georgia Peach, in 58th Bomb Wing, 468th Bomb Group, 793rd Bomb Squadron. He said all his bomber crew decided to die in a plane crash rather than bail out and be captured, if their B-29 was ever damaged enough not to make it back after a mission. They knew how awful the Japanese treated captured US airmen.

My grandpa, Hank Gorder, flew the last mission of WWII as an engineer on The Boomerang. You can read about it in a book entitled “The Last Mission” by Jim B. Smith, the pilot. The History Channel even made a two hour-long documentary about it by the same title. Miss you, grandpa, and all your stories about the war.

Certainly not “forgotten”, by some of us who know a little about history, I can assure you.

My mom was a teenager in Tokyo during this time. She said her neighbors joked you could set your watch according to the arrival of B29s. A Firestorm blew towards their house but they prayed and the wind changed direction, saving only her house.

My dad was a navigator on a B29 and flew many missions to Japan. They also flew very low level flights to lay mines in Japanese harbors. They got a letter from the Navy for that effort.

What a horrific story! The thought of those airmen being executed, especially by beheading, angers me. Add to that the reality that the men directly responsible were not executed is an insult and an act of disrespect to those airmen. Regardless of the feeling this story generated in me, I believe stories like this MUST be told! Anything that will help younger generations appreciate the sacrifices our military men and women make, or knowingly might have to make, is vital. Thank you for the continued good work you are doing! I look forward to your next episode!

Referring to the Geneva Convention, it's clearly a war crime. No intention to excuse anybody about a war crime but we might consider also that if you are bombing civilians using incendiary bombs and then you bail out just over the people you were killing in a horrible way just minutes before ... don't expect too much empathy, whatever are the conventions. Just to put things in perspective, keep in mind that war is hell and everybody always uses to consider the bad actions from the ennemy as horrible and unacceptable while all what is done on our side is at worst justified. God is on "our" side, as Bob Dylan was singing ...

Another amazing video TJ, this one struck an emotional chord, though. RIP to all of those unjustly executed heroes. Stay Awesome TJ!

Dr. Mark Felton has an in depth KZfaq video lecture regarding atrocities committed by the servicemen of Imperial Japan

Those heroic and brave men would not believe what has become of this world, we have insulted the sacrifice they made.

My Dad was called back to active service in July 1950, right after the start of the Korean War, and soon flew close-air-support (CAS) missions in a P-51 Mustang around the Pusan Perimeter. These were dark and very desperate times. My Dad once asked what to expect if he was shot down and captured by the advancing North Koreans, and was simply told: "Don't". Many of my Dad's friends and comrades were lost on these missions and he was very lucky to have survived. He once told me that you never want to bail out over the people that you have just bombed, and as a Caucasian, you never want to be captured by an Asian adversary.

It was LeMay's deputy, Thomas Power who came up with the idea of low-level night time fire bombing missions.

What awful way to die , knowing that the treatment to POWs from our part was completely different. I was in the ARMY I always thought if any time I get into combat “ not Mercy to the enemy “

And you can thank Gen. Douglas MacArthur for the lenient sentences given the Japanese war criminals because of his policies the Japanese were not properly punished for war crimes against allied soldiers . MacArthur literally turned his back on the allied servicemen that died and those that survived the horrible treatment from the Japanese all for politics . And they gave him a Medal of Honor and for what , abandoning his men in the Philippines and his nickname was dugout Doug .

I saw that photo taken just prior to execution many years ago. Never forgot how it so poignantly reflects the ruthlessness of war. Even the angle at which the soldier has positioned his sword in relation to the American prisoner's head and neck . It appears that the poor guy is going to get split down the center of his skull rather than a decapitation. Very disturbing; very insightful. Thanks for another good one.

Very interesting and sad, no one wins in wartime, the people being bombed into submission on the ground or the aircrews lost, such a terrible episode in human history.

The fact that these murderers all got off is abhorrent. May they burn for eternity.

The picture at 10:22 is of Australian Special Forces radio operater Leonard Siffleet about to be beheaded by Yasuno Chikao on 24 October 1943 along with two other Australian prisoners.

Being executed would have been a more merciful fate if you could believe it. There are some reports that downed US airmen had been turned over to the notorious Unit 731 and were dissected alive without any anesthesia.

The picture is of an Australian soldier being beheaded. It is a famous photo. I guess it ios all you could find.

The Japanese cartoon movie " Graveyard of the Fireflies" is about two children in Japan during the bombings. I was surprised how they made it seem as though they were the victims and the Americans were the bad guys. Japan does not teach their children much about what they did in WW2. My father was an antiaircraft gunner on a destroyer, (sent to the Pacific since his mother was German) and they all knew what would happen to them if they were captured. He never forgave the Japanese

On one of the smaller islands held by Japan, they literally killed then "ATE" captured B29 crews,

The Japanese during WW2 talked so much about honor and duty. Yet they were the ones who threw it all away.

victors write history

I will never question the heroic acts of soldiers from any nation. But I will always questions the one's that bring us to war for their financial gain. And to keep the peoples of earth fighting amongst ourselves instead of the leaders that bring us to that point. They are the real villains and always have been.

It’s incredible how the Japanese education system doesn’t teach stuff like these and if they do talk about their involvement in WW2, they say that they were victims and that they were forced to become an Empire and do all that horrible stuff in Manchuria because of the European Great Powers. How are they gonna learn from their errors if they don’t admit that they committed them?

One of my late uncle (on dad's side) was a tail gunner of a B-29 during the Pacific Theater.

One side droped incendiary bombs especialy for killing civilian population, and other side beheaded pilots in vendetta act. Small quiz. Who did war crimes?

My dad was Commander of K-3, The Spirit of Fort Worth. 330th Bomb Group. 25 missions.

It is approximated that 200,000 men, women & children were killed when the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima & Nagasaki - alone. That figure doesn't include subsequent deaths from burns &/or radiation sickness. Neither does it include the losses from other raids on other cities of the Japanese mainland. The relatively small number of combatant aircrew, prisoners or not, killed in retaliation pails in to insignificance in comparison. The British RAF's fire bombing of German cities was another 'crime' of near equal proportion. These were servicemen that chose to be where they were, do what they did.

My father was on B-29s and then the first nuke deterrent, the B-50 which was a "fixed" B-29 before Korea. As WW-II bombers go, definitely the sexiest.

I don’t know how many of us are second gen Japanese Americans here. But it’s so eerie listening to my grandpas stories of the fire bombings as a child and now to hear the opposing perspective on KZfaq. From my grandpas (both sides) POV, the first thing you hear isn’t the air raid sirens, it’s the ominous buzzing of all those B29’s approaching Tokyo, and then you hear the sirens. They both (both grandpas) hid in the bunkers and obviously survived all the bombings or else I, nor my parents, would be here. When he came out of the bunker, the things he saw people screaming “it’s hot! It’s hot! Mamma help, It’s hot!” And they go jumping into the near by river. The river turned red… blood red -he told me. He told me that he saw charred bodies everywhere too. And screaming kids with their faces melting off…. Horrifying stuff… My grandpa, specifically my maternal side, said the him and his neighbors dug holes in their backyards to keep all their belongings, money and food. It miraculously survived the fires. (Note, this is just one of many times my grandpas and probably grandparents in general, had to deal with the fire bombings.) I have a lot to say, I will if anyone wants to read my retellings of my grandparents war stories as in their knowledge of war is important. Even if they weren’t military.

My first thought was crashing in Japan, I would rather fall to my death than land in that WW2 era Japan.

What a fascinating story. So many brave men gave their lives so that i would live a peaceful life. Thank you.

I recommend reading "The Bomber Mafia"

Firebombing of cities can be also called a "war crime"...

If you fell into Japanese hands at that time, you were pretty much as good as dead.

I will try to provide a moment of levity here. My great-uncle George Witty was Chief Engineer on Three Feathers, then Lil’ Herbert (444 BG/676 Squadron). He kept a journal, which he was expressly not to do. In one entry (paraphrased from memory) he says they were prohibited from bombing the Imperial Palace. MacArthur has said he will ride Hirohito’s white horse on the streets of Tokyo after the war. If the Emperor’s horse was at the Imperial Stables tonight MacArthur won’t be riding it! By the summer of 1945 there were few known military targets remaining.

Amazing video as always!

2 nuclear bombs were the revenge for the greatest generation P.O.W’s.

The same two types of justice that we have today. Thank you for letting the innocent be punished and the guilty go free.

When First Enlisting in the Air Force, I took my Aircraft Maintenance Graduation photo with Fi-Fi as the Background.

I don't condone the actions of the Japanese, but put yourself in the shoes of any one of them, who lost his entire family in a fire bombing... I would not expect mercy either.

Hirohito should have got life in prison

So it’s illegal to kill the enemy who was literally just previously killing the people of your country? How many people died from the incendiary bombs that were dropped? As far as the entire war in the first place; like all wars; it was just a waste of many lives because of the governments of the countries that were involved. War is absurd and ridiculous.

Dang right. Drop it every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

This is not the worst fate. Eight American B-29 crew who survived from the same B-29 were experimented on in Kaikosha Hospital at Kyusha University. Only Marvin Watkins, the pilot, survived. They were injected with salt water in an experiment to see if that could be a substitute for blood plasma. While still alive and awake, on the table, they were dissected and then killed in different ways to observe how they died. After this, their livers were served in the cafeteria. This is all documented in Case 420 and the trial notes of 1948. The entire story can be found in The Fallen by Marc Landas. All those convicted of murder, torture and cannibalism were eventually released with the coming of the Korean War and the story went quiet like many others such as Unit 731 (the Japanese had a company in 1980 called Green Cross that used the experimental research from Unit 731and when this was realized in 1981 the company name disappeared from the market). My father’s cousin was a B-25 pilot, one of Kenney’s Kids, and committed suicide within the first year of repatriation back to the States. He had been tortured fairly heavily and regularly and was apparently a physical and phycological wreck. As an added note, one calculation used after the US experiences on Saipan and Okinawa had the casualty rate for the final invasion at 10 million through the winter of ’45-’46, many due to starvation. One million American and 9 million Japanese. The Japanese concurred after the war with that figure. All Purple hearts awarded to this day were manufactured in 1945 in anticipation of high casualties. Also, the Japanese were preparing to kill all Allied prisoners on August 22, 1945 and had actually practiced marching them to kill areas and back so they wouldn’t rise up, and they actually herded a large group of Americans into a field erected bomb shelter, under the guise of an air raid, and then poured gasoline in and burned them all. One witness amazingly survived to tell the story. The Allied POW death rate under the rising sun was 47% by best calculations.

Great video!

Why was Fredrick Allen Stearns singled out as if he were the most important one of the heroes ?

…Two Nukes weren’t enough!

You gotta do a video about Jesse Leroy brown and other black aviators it’s super intresting, jesse’s story is so inspiring Nvm: just found it, awesome!!

Dr. Stenger's figures list 93,941 U.S. military personnel captured and interned by Germany, of whom 1,121 died (a little over a 1% death rate), and 27,465 U.S. military personnel captured and interned by Japan, of whom 11,107 died (more than a 40% death rate).

And then you see the Grave of the Fireflies

some downed bomber crews were dissected alive, that seems worse to me

People can become animals, or, worse, if we let ourselves become what we fear.

Obviously, one war crime does not justify another, but.... Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court Article 8 War Crimes Other serious violations of the laws and customs applicable in international armed conflict, within the established framework of international law, namely, any of the following acts: 2.b.i. Intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities. 2.b.iv. Intentionally launching an attack in the knowledge that such attack will cause incidental loss of life or injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects or widespread, long-term and severe damage to the natural environment which would be clearly excessive in relation to the concrete and direct overall military advantage anticipated.

Hey, do u remember me TJ? Is this the only comment 8 mins in? Or am I lagging

War. Is hell.

The fact is that 2,000 atom bombs would NOT have paid those vicious people back for the horrors they inflicted on those that fell into their hands. Even today, the populous have NO idea what their people did in that war.

Those killers should of served full sentences and not sent free. FUBAR.

Top notch channel here

1943 After the first landing in Europe - Husky operation - some U.S. soldiers took prisoners some Italian and German soldiers. Then they put them to dig trenches, but at the end they machine gunned all the prisoners. A wounded Italian, unseen, escape and told the police all the crime. The bodies were discovered and Patton was fired. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biscari_massacre

Amazing video

Great video

Those Servicemen gave the Ultimate price and so did the families having to grieve all those years . I don’t take that lightly . Maybe Macgarther should have been Court marshal over it.

😭 God save those brave American B29 aircrews, SALUTE !

I think shima was a war crime too .

Another sad 😭 story

All sides committed atrocities; you think nuking civilians wasn't a war crime? Or burning them alive? Of course it was; there are no 'good guys' and 'bad buys' in war, just bad guys. And one lot wins by making a few less mistakes than the other.

good morning from the rocky mountains hanks for your work lovin it and i remember when you started doing all this im glad its gone so well and i really enjoy it more than just gaming aloha.

Horriffic treatment by the Japanese of their Allied prisoners in Ww2. No less horrific that was done to their own countrymen who refused to be as barbaric. No worse than the chinese, nor the Nazi's. Fairly sure the rest of us came a close 2nd. We all bombed the citizens of all countries......the us topped that with the atomic bomb. Funny how we call bombing civillians in 2022/2023 a war crime. I hope in another 70yrs any action will be considered a war crime!!? 🤬

It's a horrible story but I doubt most people would do much different if their cities and people were being firebombed into oblivion...

A ggod friend of the family piloted B-29's first out of China and then from the Mariania Islands. He flew on many of the firebomb raids over various cities, including the one that darn near burned Tokyo to the ground on the night of March 9-10th, 1945. After thw war he came back and lived with his sister for a while, the sister being my mom's friend and thus our family connection to him. His sister told my mom that he used to get bad nightmares about the fire raids, it was the smell of burning flesh that he said were the worst parts of the dreams. He did however rejoin the by then US Air Force and flew missions during the Korean War. He retired a "Bird" Colonel, and I used to have all his medals and badges of rank and whatnot in a glass frame. I'm so grateful that the US did not have to invade Japan.

I been there the museum is nice

Brilliant, you released them, failed your men, and disgraced your comrades... good move

Japan had soilders in China Vietnam Manchuria etc.

after dropping the atomic bombs i have some understanding about these reaction. this must be a complete shock for everyone....but not for general bad treatment

Yes because fire bombing civilians is the war crime that should be ignored here.

I just saw those two bombers (at the 02:00 videomark) outside of Memphis a few weeks ago. The B-29 and B-24 crews were very accommodating and even gave us an interior tour of the B-24 which is the only flying one left in the world.

- bombs japanese cities with incendiaries - gets beheaded "How could this happen to me?" Karma dude. Say thanks that they didn't burn you alive so you could feel like folks in Tokyo in 1945

Poor guys, the youth of today don’t even know about this stuff.

War is unfortunately horrendous and barbaric. Honor, chivalry and ethics soon give way to barbarism when your buddies and family are killed, maimed, blinded and your homes are destroyed. As they say everything becomes fair in love and war.

Shocking.

" horrendous war crime" Thats funny how you describe what they went through but dropping an atomic bomb on civilians is an "earth-changing event" "History is Written by Victors" I guess Cool video anyways

Using war thunder for the plane footage is based as fuck

Its called revenge We all have it in us Just need the perfect triger To unleash it And then fuckn run if you Are in my sights😳👋✌👍🙏🇨🇦

Bombing the of civilians is war crime!! ...... Those poor valiant American pilots...... they get shot down over the enemy they are trying to kill, what do they expect when captured! Bacon/eggs for breakfast! LOL

11.32 No, sir. The holocaust perpetrated by Japanese did not start in June 1945. It started in April 15, 1919 with Jeamni massacre continuing on with LOTS of other psychopathic mass murders of Koreans, Chinese (for example Nanking massacre), Allied prisoners of war etc etc etc until General Douglas MacArthur stepped on the Japanese soil to put those monsters in order. Japanese who lived 80 to 100 years ago were monsters.

This is a tragic story of our proud hero’s. Although the letter was accurate and sincere I am sure it was of little comfort to the parents of these men believe me I know but hat it is like to lose a child. We are it built to bury our children no matter what the cause

GEICO? 🦎 Confederate AF!👍 Jman

How many B-29's were shot down in total during the war?

The real tragedy of WW2 was that they were all fighting for the same people all along War is a racket and nobody wins bit money

What did Curtis LeMay saiy about warcrimes?

We should’ve dropped a third bomb

Be better off to go down with the aircraft.

This video does a service to these pilots but not to modern Americans. Here is why: There are many more and bigger Japanese war crimes than this scenario -- the Rape of Nanking, Bataan Death March, the sex slaves of Korea ("Comfort women"), their treatment and slaughter of prisoners throughout the war, and disgusting human experiments of a grizzly and pointless nature, just to name a few. The Japanese need to come to grips with that in their history classes (the way the Germans have). Ignorance of their past makes the Japanese less than ideal allies today - it makes it easier for fascistic types to get elected to their government. But Americans also, apparently, still need to come to grips with how bad war is and the slaughter that we perpetrated in trying to win that one. To put the behavior of a few officers and soldiers in this specific incident at the end of the war in perspective, the firebombing of Tokyo killed over 100,000 people, while Hiroshima and Nagasaki together killed 140,000 people. Other population centers were decimated in the same way. How many of those soldiers had found out their relatives or friends were being burned to death, perhaps by those same airmen? War had become a such a nightmare that no civilian outside the United States was safe - on any side. But I take particular issue with the video's claims that are backhanded excuses for the wholesale slaughter of cities. 1st, what parts for aircraft or ships were made in the cottage industry that they describe - the leather straps and uniforms? Planes require precision parts, and those parts are mostly metal and have to be machined. You cannot do any of that in a house or even a mansion. 2nd, the bombing of Japanese cities and their civilian populations in 1945 was done for the exact same reason that Hitler had earlier switched to bombing England's cities, and Nixon turned to bombing North Vietnamese cities - to demoralize the enemy so that they sue for peace ASAP. That is it -- demoralization by rapid carnage. Necessary at the time? Maybe. Perceived as necessary? Yes. Successful in its objective? Mostly not. Let's not sugar coat it by claiming firebombing civilians was the only way to stop Japanese industry that was scattered in cottages throughout Japan. What a crock! Our ancestors bombed them to save potentially hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives by taking hundreds of thousands of lives? Duh, no! The demoralization/depopulation of Japan was to save *American* lives. A worthy cause under the circumstances, but not a well-meaning, generous act by the US Military. Give me a break. Maybe if America had experienced real modern war on its home soil (not just our colony at Pearl Harbor), I would hear less BS warmongering today from my fellow Americans over every foe they perceive out there. Maybe if those people had been around to experience the Civil War (on home soil), they might not talk so much about starting a civil war today. But history (along with civics) is taught very poorly in America; it is not a STEM subject.

VERY SAD, MURDER IS MURDER.

Should of dropped a 3rd...

I find it disengious that we accused Germany and Japan of war crimes while allied war crimes were on a scale the axis could only dream about. Dresden for example, fire bombing civilians in Germany and Japan. Least we forget the Soviets did before and after the war. Killing civilians as defined by the allies constitute a war crime. This applies today as well. The only reason I bring this up is the victors determines these things. Dosent matter if it is the hight of hipocrscy. Simply put we took revenge. We needed to do this to shorten the war and save American lives, which was worth it. What happened after the war with the Marshal Plan and MacArthur ruling Japan does represent America at it's best. What other country would have done the same? I include the Berlin airlift here as wrll.