Standing Next to History
It was 8:15 on a warm summer morning in the industrial hub city of Hiroshima, Japan. The town’s 255 thousand residents were milling about on their way to work and running morning errands. They had no idea that, 31,000 feet above them, an American B-29 Boeing Superfortress was making its way to the center of the sprawling urban area. The aircraft was carrying an atomic bomb, which had been nicknamed “Little Boy”.
30 year-old Colonel Paul Tibbets had been flying the plane for the past six and a half hours. The veteran Illinois pilot had received orders to locate over a key military target, and release the payload. And now the time had come. His navigator, Ted “Dutch” Van Kirk, informed him the plane was in the exact position planned for the drop. All that remained was for Tibbets to give the command.
What was going through his mind at that moment? Was he focused completely on his mission? Or might he have paused to consider the gravity of what he was about to initiate? He was commanded to release a weapon that would drop for 43 seconds, and then cause a nuclear explosion two thousand feet above ground, producing a massive fireball 840 feet wide, packing a temperature greater than one million degrees Centigrade. The destruction and loss of life would be catastrophic. Yet the world was at war. Many felt freedom itself was at stake. Tibbets knew the bomb was not without controversy. Back home protestors argued the war had already been won, and the bombing was unnecessary. Did all of these issues collide in Captain Tibbets’ mind at that instant?
I pondered these thoughts because I found myself standing directly in front of history. I was part of a group tour from First Baptist Church Trussville to the Washington DC area. We had stopped at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Chantilly, Virginia. We were walking through all manner of aircraft from the very first attempts to fly, to moon probes and space shuttles. Standing amongst several other planes, and without much fanfare, there it was. The Enola Gay. THEE Enola Gay. The one I studied about in high school. The one I had seen in countless World War II documentaries. Possibly the most famous, or infamous, depending on your point of view, aircraft in American history. A chill went through me as I approached it. I stared at the cockpit. I could picture Captain Tibbets sitting in there, sitting in the plane he had named after his mother, sitting in there shouldering the responsibility of carrying out a duty that would change the world. Forever.
The record shows that, at 8:15 am on August 6, 1945, Tibbets did indeed give the order. Bombardier Major Thomas Ferebee of North Carolina released the payload, and announced “bomb away”. Little Boy cascaded 31,000 feet down and then detonated. Somewhere around 70 to 120 thousand people were killed instantly. Estimates are roughly one hundred thousand more were injured. Many died days later from burns and radiation poisoning. The blast turned two-thirds of the city center into burnt rubble and wiped out more than half the population. The world would never be the same. Mankind had now invented the means by which to destroy itself.
Three days later a second atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, and six days after that, Japan surrendered unconditionally. These were events that shaped the future of the entire planet, and there I was, standing in front of the airplane that made it happen. It was, at least for me, an emotional experience. World War II began and ended before I was born. Yet being close enough to this legendary aircraft to reach out and touch it made the war somehow feel personal. My wife Sharon took a photo of me standing next to the foot of the cockpit. Out of reflex, I tried to smile for the picture. I wasn’t at all sure that was the appropriate expression for the occasion.
To be sure, the enemy was also working furiously to develop the bomb, and would no doubt have used it on us had they completed it first. As it was, more than 405,000 Americans were killed in the conflict. More than twice as many casualties as Hiroshima.
The United States has never apologized for using nuclear weaponry against Japan. President Barack Obama came close when he visited Hiroshima in 2016, expressing “deepest condolences”, but no admission of wrongdoing or formal apology. Colonel Tibbets went on to become a brigadier general in the United States Army Air Force, and was hailed as a national hero. He insisted several times he had no regrets over the bombing. He called any suggestion the attack was morally wrong “hogwash”. Tibbets died in 2007 at the age of 92.
I saw many wondrous sites in Washington DC, including the White House, the Capitol, the memorials to Lincoln and Washington, Arlington National Cemetery, and much more. Nothing touched me quite as deeply as the Enola Gay. Every time I look at my photo, I will remember that freedom is not free. And its cost is beyond tragic.
For both sides.
