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The head of the Japan Congress Against A- and H-Bombs rejected the idea that the bombing saved lives. History has shown there was no need to criticize him." armed forces and Japanese civilians and military. "It did in fact end the war," said Morris Jeppson, the officer who armed the bomb during the Hiroshima flight. But my one driving interest was to do the best job I could so that we could end the killing as quickly as possible."
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We knew it was going to kill people right and left. "We had feelings, but we had to put them in the background. "I knew when I got the assignment it was going to be an emotional thing," Tibbets told The Columbus Dispatch for a story on the 60th anniversary of the bombing. Nuclear fission was discovered the following year, and the massive Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb began a few years later. He was a student at the University of Cincinnati's medical school when he decided to withdraw in 1937 to enlist in the Army Air Corps.
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23, 1915, in Quincy, Ill., and spent most of his boyhood in Miami. Instead, his family plans to scatter his ashes over the English Channel, where he loved to fly. Tibbets told friends and family he wanted neither a funeral nor a grave marker when he died, picturing that it would provide a place for his detractors to stage protests. "It's hard for people today to think about the atomic bombings without feeling they were just out and out atrocities, but people at the time had a very different sense of what they needed to do," Rhodes said. He was a man who took great pride in what he did during the war, including the atomic bombing," said Rhodes, who wrote "The Making of the Atomic Bomb." "He was so characteristic of that generation. Tibbets knew he would forever be linked to the dropping of the bomb, and spent a lifetime defending the mission.Īuthor Richard Rhodes said Tibbets' feelings about the bombing he helped plan embodied public opinion at the time. "They asked him to serve his country and he did." He didn't have the option to say he didn't care for something he was asked to do," Kia Tibbets said. Tibbets simply did his duty, his granddaughter said. "It's a horrible weapon, but war is pretty horrible, too." It was a presidential decision, and he was an officer that carried out his duty," Glenn said. John Glenn, a former Marine fighter pilot, said people who criticized Tibbets for piloting the plane that dropped the bomb failed to recognize that an allied invasion of Japan, which the bomb helped avert, would have resulted in the deaths of several million people. "He said, 'What they needed was someone who could do this and not flinch - and that was me,"' said journalist Bob Greene, who wrote the Tibbets biography, "Duty: A Father, His Son, and the Man Who Won the War."įormer U.S. The Japanese surrendered a few days later, ending the war. Three days later, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, killing at least 60,000 people. Tibbets and his crew of 13, flying a bomber named for his mother, dropped the five-ton "Little Boy" bomb over Hiroshima on Aug. What did they did for their country," said Flynn. "It's important to know they sacrificed for this country. As a kid, it always seemed a whole lot bigger," said Flynn.įor the Flynns, the death of Tibbetts and their dear friend have signified the final chapter in an era. "It was a real kick to see the small quarters he was in. Flynn even had a chance to go through the Enola Gay when it was partially rebuilt and on display in the Smithsonian Museum. Tibbets (center) and ground crew of the B-29 'Enola Gay' which dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, at the end of World War II, 6 August 1945.Walter Flynn said that, ever since the war, he has had a fascination with the Enola Gay and planes like it. Description WORLD WAR II: ENOLA GAY Colonel Paul W.