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The mission went perfectly, VanKirk told the AP. VanKirk was teamed with pilot Paul Tibbets and bombardier Tom Ferebee in Tibbets’ fledgling 509th Composite Bomb Group for Special Mission No. “But if anyone has one,” he added, “I want to have one more than my enemy.”Įnola Gay crew members are shown 17 August, 1945, from left to right, front row: 1st Lt. “I personally think there shouldn’t be any atomic bombs in the world - I’d like to see them all abolished. “And atomic weapons don’t settle anything,” he said.
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Most of the lives saved were Japanese.”īut VanKirk said the experience of World War II also showed him “that wars don’t settle anything.” “I honestly believe the use of the atomic bomb saved lives in the long run,” VanKirk told The Associated Press in a 2005 interview. Whether the United States should have used the atomic bomb has been debated endlessly.
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Six days after the Nagasaki bombing, Japan surrendered. That blast and its aftermath claimed 80,000 lives. Three days after Hiroshima, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. The blast and its aftereffects killed 140,000 in Hiroshima. The bombing hastened the end of World War II. 6, 1945.Ī man looks over the expanse of ruins left the explosion of the atomic bomb on Augin Hiroshima. Theodore VanKirk flew as navigator on the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress that dropped the first atomic bomb deployed in wartime over the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Aug. VanKirk died Monday at the retirement home where he lived in Stone Mountain, Georgia, his son Tom VanKirk said. THE LAST SURVIVING member of the crew that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima once said he thought the bombing was necessary because it shortened the war and eliminated the need for an Allied land invasion that could have cost more lives on both sides.īut Theodore “Dutch” VanKirk also said it made him wary of war – and that he would like to see all of the world’s atomic bombs abolished. 5, 1945, one month after the atomic bomb was dropped. It is a fine adaptation of the book and the preparation of the mission and the top secret nature of the job given to those young men is an important story that sheds light on why the bomb was dropped on human beings.The landscape of Hiroshima, Japan, shows widespread rubble and debris in an aerial view Sept. The actors in this mini-series do a fine job in trying to express the attitudes of WWII flyers and ground crew. It was common practice for bomber crews in all the theaters of operation in World War II to name their aircraft after sweet hearts, wives or mothers. It has become urban legend that he went insane because of remorse following Hiroshima.Įnola Gay was the name of Colonel Tibbets’ mother. One of the crew members had a depressive personality and suffered an un-related nervous breakdown later in life. How the numbers were arrived at is anybody’s guess. Presidential advisers estimated the cost of invading the Japanese islands in human lives (American lives) would be in the hundreds of thousands. American diplomats were un-aware of these attempts. The Japanese were using back door channels to find a way of surrendering with honor, or at least to surrender and preserve their Emperor. What was the attitude of the flight crews who dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Where does the name Enola Gay come from? Is it true that one of the crew spent years in an insane asylum after committing this unspeakable act? Was the action justified? The book this is based on answers many of these questions. Enola Gay Hard to believe there are only two comments on this very interesting subject.