This week, 65 years ago, was a very important one in history. For the first time in warfare a terrible weapon, the atomic bomb, was used. It was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945.
It destroyed 60 percent of the city and killed 80,000 people either outright or from subsequent radiation poisoning. The lingering deaths took many months, even years, to occur. But the Japanese, whose leaders knew the war was lost, did not surrender.
So three days later a second bomb, of more lethality, was dropped on Nagasaki, killing another estimated 40,000 people. That finally got the attention of the country’s military and political leaders, and Japan agreed to surrender terms.
To this day controversy exists about President Harry Truman’s decision to drop the bomb on Japan. One side says it was a racial decision. I find that hard to swallow as Germany had already surrendered in May before the bomb was fully tested and ready for use. But I’m not one to argue with revisionist historians and will just relate the facts as I read them from history books.
The aircraft that bombed Hiroshima was from the 509th Composite Group of the Twentieth Air Force. It was piloted by Col. Paul Tibbets and named the Enola Gay after his mother. My references did not mention the size of the crew, but Tibbets died several years ago and to my knowledge the only surviving crewmember is “Dutch” Van Kirk, the navigator.
I met him several years ago at a military show in Kansas City and he said he was a CGSC graduate. He gladly posed for a photo and signed a mat that is on display at the annual Air Force Ball in September.
Several years ago CGSC leaders wanted Tibbets to come speak to the class. I coordinated the speaker program then and called him. His schedule would not allow him to come when CGSC wanted him, so he never came.
Several years later his grandson was a lieutenant colonel stationed at Whitman Air Force Base in Missouri, but I was no longer working with the speaker program and either CGSC leaders were not aware of the grandson connection or didn’t care, as Tibbets never spoke at CGSC.
To me that’s a pity as members of the Greatest Generation of WW II are dying at a rate of 1,600 a day and I found in my years coordinating the speaker program that CGSC students appreciate having a person connected with a major military event speak to them and answer questions.
While CGSC missed Tibbets, Van Kirk is still alive and as far as I know still traveling. I suspect students would appreciate some first-hand memories of one of the most momentous events in the history of warfare.
As a bit of hindsight to the Hiroshima bomb and a swipe at the apologists, that bomb was not the most devastating raid over Japan. In March 1945 more of the city was destroyed and more people killed by fire bombs that devastated Tokyo than from the atomic bomb.
It was war, and people die and cities are destroyed in wars. I don’t have space left for the estimates of American lives saved by an invasion of the Japanese home islands that did not have to take place due to the use of two atomic bombs.
The bombs broke the previously unbreakable will of the Japanese leaders to end the war, and to end a terrible war is a good thing. It really doesn’t seem to matter what apologists say today. Truman said drop the bomb, it was dropped, twice, and the war ended.
And it all happened 65 years ago.
John Reichley is a retired Army officer and retired Department of the Army civilian employee.
