News-Info-Alerts

Re: A POW in Nagasaki

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: August 11, 2002

"Veteran recalls time in Nagasaki, end of war

John Ingle, , Times Record News

Clyde Fillmore sat in a train car 57 years ago waiting for the 40-mile march to another Prisoner of War camp in Southeast Asia.

   With armed guards at both ends of the car Aug. 17, 1945, an Australian colonel, who was in charge of the World War II POWs, was taken from the train. Fillmore assumed it was in preparation for the march.

   "Crowded together in the low-sided car, wet and hungry, we awaited orders to get off the train," he recalled in his book Prisoner of War: History of the Lost Battalion.

   A few minutes later, the men in Fillmore's car heard random shouts from other cars ahead of them. Then the Australian colonel returned with news the prisoners had been waiting for - the war was over.

   It wasn't until Aug. 18, 1945, the men would learn that atomic bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

   The initial atomic bomb on Aug. 6, 1945, has overshadowed the one dropped from a B-29 flown by Maj. Chuck Sweeney on Nagasaki Aug. 9.

   His 43 months and nine days of brutal imprisonment had ended.

   "Tears came to my eyes," Fillmore said. "We clasped one another's hands, hugged each other (and) thought of home more earnestly than we had for many months."

   Regardless of whether or not it was right or wrong to drop atomic weapons on Japan, one Wichita Falls veteran said people today don't understand the consequences if they weren't dropped.

   "I am convinced in my own mind, that that event, coupled with some of the other events that took place at that time, saved the lives of countless people," WWII P-51 pilot Bill English said.

   After flying a mission near Tokyo, he was recuperating when the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

   The bombings were necessary to prevent further loss of life on both sides, English said. The U.S. military was planning a massive invasion, called Operation Olympic, to take place Nov. 1, 1945.

   It's also necessary for Americans to remember those two days 57 years ago.
   "It's my feeling that every reference or reminder of what was involved in ending the war, that prevented the necessity of an invasion of Japan, is worthwhile," English said. "There is an element of people who feel we were wrong in dropping the bomb."

   To recall that reality is the release of never-before-seen photographs that can now be seen on the online edition of The Sun in Bremerton, Wash.

   A U.S. Navy sailor took the photographs five weeks after the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. They tell the story of the aftermath of the lethal weapons.

   France Vancil, an Army officer in the Philippines during WWII, remembered two Japanese lieutenants, under a white flag of peace, listening to Emperor Hirohito's message on the radio.

   "They came in and listened to the newscast with the emperor saying they surrendered on the radio," he said. "They were out of communication with any news from their homeland."

   Vancil agreed with English in regards to the necessity of the atomic bombs at that time during the war.

   "We would have lost several million more people if we invaded Japan," he said. "There's no telling what would happen if we actually had to invade."
   As many as 160,000 Japanese citizens died in the bombings on Aug. 6 and 9, although the exact toll may never be known.

   Regional and military reporter John Ingle can be contacted at (940) 763-7532, (800) 627-1646 Ext. 532 or by e-mail at inglej@wtr.com.

Times Record News
Wichita Falls, Texas"