The Era of the B-29 to the Era of the F-15
The Boeing B-29 Superfortress was one of key players in WWII and the Korean War.
This bomber is famous for its mission to carry out the Atomic Bomb (nuclear bomb) attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
It is said that about 4,000 B-29s were built in total.
Imperial Japan shot down about 500 B-29s during WWII.
North Korea and China shot down about 40 B-29s in the Korean War which happened five years after the end of WWII.
Theses statistics are said to have been taken seriously into strategic and defense considerations by the U.S. defense officials in those days.
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There is even a legendry of super antiaircraft artilleries set up in a plot of Tokyo, which became a serious threat to B-29 air squadrons. After the surrender of Imperial Japan, the U.S. military dispatched an investigating team to the plot to check how the artilleries worked for precisely tracking and shooting a B-29 flying high over the plot at an altitude of 30,000 feet.
Though Japanese fighter planes then lacked performance needed to fight freely at an altitude of 30,000 feet, they developed special tactics, including a Kamikaze attack to a B-29 flying high in the air.
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Now, Beirut is being bombed by F-15s and other types of air fighters and bombers of the Israeli Defense Force.
As with the case in Iraq and Afghanistan, when you have no capability to shoot down any of invading military planes of your enemy, it doesn't look like a war but a one-sided campaign by your enemy.
Otherwise, it looks like the war has been over, but they are still being engaged in some dubious business instead of starting a reconstruction effort.
For parties concerned to start a reconstruction effort after a war, they need at least a minimal level of mutual respect based on a respectable warrior spirit they exercised and acknowledged in the war.
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Yesterday, in Hiroshima, Japan, people prayed for peace.
At the ceremony held on the same day when the tragedy occurred 61 years ago, Japanese Prime Minister and other participants, including foreigners from some 35 countries, fell silent in honor of victims.
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Another news is about a son of a man who died sometime ago after having passed to his son a self-imposed duty of taking care of a hand-made stone memorial (in a Japanese gravestone style about three feet high) the man had built in order to appease the spirits of U.S. air soldiers who had been shot down and killed with their B-29 in Chiba Prefecture, near Tokyo, during WWII.
The existence of the humble memorial was kept secret for a long time since its building just after the incident in the war. The man's son has kept the service for the memorial as he was told.
But, now its existence is widely known through an accidental discovery of the memorial by herb collectors; this year, a U.S. colonel from the U.S. Embassy visited the site in a natural forest and paid his respects at the memorial to U.S. air force's veterans who never returned home.
In WWII, if a citizen of Imperial Japan had been found to have built a memorial for dead U.S. soldiers, he should have been arrested for an act which served the interests of the enemy.
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There are more such hidden stories in terms of relationships between Japanese and Americans in WWII, which seem to have worked as a seed of friendly relationships between the two countries after WWII over the tragedy of the atomic bomb attacks.
I hope that there are any such hidden stories in terms of relationships between Israelites and Muslims in the current armed clash, which would work as a seed of friendly relationships between the two religious groups over any tragedy.
"Each Time He Comes To You Saying 'I Repent,' You Must Forgive Him"