Jack Spangler

The Rising Sun Sets Jack Spangler

By the late summer of 1945 the war in Europe was over and Germany had surrendered. The war in the Pacific had been going on for almost four years and the world wanted to get it over with as soon as possible. Despite heavy losses on the ground and the destruction of their homeland cities by the relentless fire bombing, the Japanese steadfastly refused to surrender. Events of the months before August 1945 confirmed to allied leaders that the Japanese would defend their homeland just as vigorously as they had defended Saipan, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Casualties on both sides were expected to be in the hundreds of thousands if not in the millions. Men and material were being assembled in preparation for a November invasion. The situation changed abruptly on August 6th when a single B-29 bomber dropped the first atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. The explosive power of this bomb was greater than that of 2,000 B-29s flying with their maximum bomb loads. Still the Japanese refused to surrender even though they knew an invasion of their homeland was coming. They were hoping to get better terms if they could inflict heavy casualties on the Americans when the invasion occurred. Three days later a second and more powerful bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. Faced with continued atomic bombing and the total destruction of their homeland, they surrendered nine days later. What had started as a day of unspeakable terror at Pearl Harbor ended with one blinding flash of light at Nagasaki! Jacob Beser was the only man to fly as a crewmember on the strike aircraft for both missions. Jacob outlined this book in 1990 but because of illness he was unable to complete this endeavor. He passed away in 1993. In 2004 his family discovered his archive of documents when the family home was sold. His son Jerome inspired by what he found and with close support of a family friend Jack Spangler completed the book utilizing his father's outline and unpublished information from his archive. The Hiroshima mission was perfect in all respects. However the Nagasaki mission was jinxed from the very start and nearly ended in disaster. Jacob Beser witnessed first hand what happened on both missions. This book is not a simple rerun of the many stories that have been told for more than a half century. It is his eyewitness account of what really happened, especially on the Nagasaki mission. It is very easy to sit back in an easy chair with a limited understanding of the conditions in 1945 and argue about what should have been done to end the war. But when you see it from the perspective of someone who was there and participated, you have a much better understanding of what and why it took place. This is what Jacob Beser intended to do. If you are looking for an apology for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, you will not find it here. Jacob Beser had absolutely no intent of ever apologizing for what he and the others did to bring the war to a close. While he was against war in general and atomic warfare in particular. He was proud of his role in the missions that ended World War II.