Today is a day to celebrate victory over the last of the Axis powers, honor the millions who served, and reflect on the awful cost of war.
Throughout freshman year at the Air Force Academy, my classmates and I were compelled to carry something that proved to be as ubiquitous as smartphones in the hands of today’s college students: a 192-page blue book entitled Contrails. This iPhone-size book of military history, Air Force traditions, aircraft capabilities, and inspiring quotations remained in my right hand or back pocket, ready to be retrieved for study and memorization, or to be presented upon the request of an upper-class cadet. Contrails quotations inspired and convicted, and as we mark the 80th anniversary of the Allied forces’ victory over Japan in World War II, three passages in particular strike me as apropos to those who lived through that wrenching global conflict and provide a touchstone for assessing the dropping of atomic bombs on Japanese cities that August. The first is this:
If I do my full duty, the rest will take care of itself.
—General George S. Patton Jr.
The Greatest Generation (born 1901–27) lived out a sense of duty unlike any generation has since. This is not to say that honor rolls of subsequent generations have been thin in their list of heroes, saints, or men and women of distinction. Rather, it is to say that, as a generation, their collective sacrifice and sense of duty remains unsurpassed. Over 16 million Americans served in the military during World War II, which amounted to about 12% of the entire U.S. population. Break that number down further and another percentage is even more striking: roughly half of all men between the ages of 18 and 45 served in the military during World War II. Meanwhile, men and women of all ages mobilized at home, keeping industry alive, families composed, and resources deployed with the chief aim of defeating the Axis powers. Everyone sacrificed something. That generation lived the concept of duty.
The second passage in Contrails that comes to mind is the third stanza of the Air Force song, which airmen sing sotto voce when toasting compatriots killed in action:
Here’s a toast to the host
Of those who love the vastness of the sky,
To a friend we send a message of the brave who serve on high.*
We drink to those who gave their all of old,
Then down we roar to score the rainbow’s pot of gold.
A toast to the host of those we boast, the U.S. Air Force!
The phrase “who gave their all of old” elicits sober reflection. While the entire generation carried out their duty throughout the war—both at home and abroad—over one million who donned a uniform were killed or wounded. To put that in comparative terms, the number of U.S. military killed in World War II amounted to the population of the entire city of Indianapolis and the number wounded to the population of Pittsburgh at that time.
VJ Day cannot be separated from its inherent controversy: President Harry S. Truman’s agonizing decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in lieu of a land invasion. This brings to mind a third passage in Contrailsthat teaches cadets that “A solid ‘duty concept’ not only requires the ability to decide the right course of action but also the will to follow it. … In short, doing your duty involves personal choices for which you’ll be held accountable by your commander or your conscience—probably by both.” Here we see the intersection of duty and ethical reflection. President Truman gave the order to drop the bomb and the crew of the Enola Gay carried it out, instantaneously killing tens of thousands of people in the process (n.b., the fire bombings of Tokyo, which get much less attention, killed similar numbers of people). While the debate centers on President Truman’s decision, as an Air Force veteran my mind instinctively turns to the pilot of the Enola Gay, Paul W. Tibbets Jr., whose grandson happened to be a squadron-mate of mine at the Academy.
Just what was Colonel Tibbets’s duty? While just war principles provide guidance, their application requires prudent judgment. The principles of military necessity, probability of success, proportionality, and minimizing collateral damage are clear, but their application is not always so. In this case, it seems to me that Colonel Tibbets’s duty was to follow the order insofar as it wasn’t self-evidently unlawful or in obvious violation of just war principles. This requires some degree of moral reflection. It was not his duty to ruminate excessively on the application of those principles, which just war philosophers have debated ever since. In this case, Colonel Tibbets’s own testimony is mixed: He fulfilled his duty to follow an order issued by lawful authority (and of debatable application), but not his full duty. He was too dismissive about his obligation to reflect on just war principles. Contrary to Tibbets, a military professional must not “leave the moral issue out of it.”
War is a terrible thing. Yet in a world where greater evil might otherwise prevail, war is at times necessary, and if after all other attempts to avoid it fail, a just war summons people to perform their duty. The vast majority of individuals who made up the Greatest Generation are not memorialized in history books, museum displays, or public monuments. From the woman toiling long hours on the B-25 assembly line to the P-38 Lightning pilot escorting those very same bombers, each quietly responded to the call of duty. Many “gave their all of old” so that subsequent generations might prosper in peace. Among those servicemen who survived, it is estimated that fewer than one-half of 1% remain with us today. For those veterans and Greatest Generation civilians who supported their efforts: Thank you for striving to do your full duty. May each generation imitate your example, sense of purpose, and fight for peace. And may each military professional today strive to choose and follow the right course of action.
* In 2020, the Air Force changed this phrase of the third verse from the original “his brother men who fly” to “the brave who serve on high.”
