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"I have never apologized for what we did to Hiroshima and I never will."Īfter the mission, Van Kirk enrolled in college and graduate school, becoming a chemical engineer at DuPont. "Do I regret what we did that day? No sir, I do not," he told the Sunday Mirror, a British newspaper, in 2010. Van Kirk, who looked down at the city for a jarring moment and saw what he later likened to a pot of boiling tar, had just one thought at the time, he said in numerous interviews: "The war's over." But Van Kirk said he never had mixed feelings about his involvement. The bomb instantaneously killed 80,000 people radiation poisoning eventually cost many more lives. Van Kirk agreed, becoming navigator for the Enola Gay-the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, marking the beginning of the atomic age-under Tibbets' command.
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As Van Kirk later recalled, in an interview with Time: "He told me, ‘We’re going to do something that I can’t tell you about right now, but if it works, it will end or significantly shorten the war.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, yeah, buddy, I’ve heard that before.’ ”
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He had already retired from combat duty and was working as an instructor in New Orleans when Paul Tibbets, a good friend, approached him and asked if he'd be part of "a top-secret bombing mission," the LA Times continues. Van Kirk was involved in 58 World War II combat missions.
ENOLA GAY CREW THOUGHT PROFESSIONAL
Both are clearly extremely able, professional servicemen.Captain Theodore "Dutch" Van Kirk, the last surviving member of the Enola Gay crew, died Monday at an assisted living facility in Georgia, the Los Angeles Times reports. Perhaps the most interesting thing about these two interviews is the insight we get into the character of the two crewmen. Interesting or important points about the film When they did not, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing around 40,000 people and wounding 60,000. The president of the USA, Harry Truman, warned the Japanese to surrender. Many who survived the blast died later from the radiation. The heat of the blast was so intense that people at the centre of the explosion were simply vaporised. More than 70,000 people died and many more were injured.
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Normal life in the crowded Japanese city of Hiroshima came to a sudden and terrifying end when a US plane dropped an atomic device on to the city. On the morning of 6 August 1945, an atomic bomb was used in war for the first time. The next interviewee is Commander Frederick Ashworth, who was part of the crew that dropped the second atom bomb on Nagasaki. The delivery system for these bombs, the Superfortress, represented the latest. Another atomic attack on Nagasaki followed three days later. The Colonel then describes his experiences in a very calm way. On August 6, 1945, the crew of a modified Boeing B-29 Superfortress named Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb used in warfare, called Little Boy, on the city of Hiroshima, Japan. The clip opens with an interview with Colonel Paul Tebbits, the officer in charge of the bomb group that dropped the Hiroshima Bomb.