Enola Gay navigator tells museum crowd of WWII atomic bombing of Japan

[Jim O]

ROBINS AIR FORCE BASE - Theodore "Dutch" Van Kirk was close enough to Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, to see the flash of light and feel the shock waves from the atomic blast over the Japanese city.

He was riding a high-flying B-29 desperately fleeing the scene after dropping the gun-type, fission weapon dubbed "Little Boy" only seconds before.

Van Kirk was the navigator that day on the Enola Gay, the name Col. Paul Tibbets, the pilot, gave the aircraft in honor of his mother.

Van Kirk, a retired chemical engineer, held a near-capacity Museum of Aviation Vistascope Theater crowd in rapt attention Wednesday morning with his first-hand account of the storied event and its impact on ending World War II.

He said Japan was a defeated nation by that point in the war. "But they wanted to fight one last battle on their coast," Van Kirk said. "They had no air force or navy, but they still had a very large land army. We dropped the bomb to convince them that their scheme wouldn't work."

The air crew speculated on the war's end during the six-hour return flight to their home base on Tinian.

"We were telling each other that the war was over. We didn't see how Japan could stand up to something like that," he said. "Unfortunately, they thought we had only one bomb. So the second had to be dropped to convince them we had others."

The two bombs - the second detonated over Nagasaki three days later - killed more than 200,000 people. But Van Kirk believes the attacks forced the Japanese surrender and saved lives.

"Anybody who carefully studies what happened during that time will be convinced that we saved lives. And most of those were Japanese lives," he said. "I didn't see the estimates on how many U.S. casualties we expected if we had invaded. But I saw the hospitals they were building on Tinian and that was enough for me."

He said a similar mission would be difficult today, given the intense scrutiny from the president, Congress and senior military leaders.

"President (Harry) Truman approved the use of the bomb and that's the last we heard from him," Van Kirk pointed out. "Paul Tibbets had more authority than the current Air Force chief of staff. With the constant communications of today, nobody wants to take responsibility. The buck finally stops with the president and he makes a decision but it's usually two days late."

The Pennsylvania native believes we have retained few of the lessons learned from World War II. "We just went through an election and everybody threw in their two cents worth," Van Kirk said Wednesday. "I can imagine that people overseas don't know what we're going to do. We don't even know ourselves, for heaven's sake."

The Bucknell University graduate saw a level of commitment during World War II that he doesn't see today. "Everybody was involved back then," he said. "If you weren't in the military, you were making tanks, airplanes or doing something. We had one idea in mind and that was to win and end the war. We don't have that now."

He said he had returned to the United States in 1944 after flying 58 B-17 missions over Europe and North Africa. That's when Tibbets called to ask him to navigate the secret mission over Japan.

"I could have lived the rest of my life sitting on my butt," Van Kirk said. His response was yes, although he quibbles with Tibbets' account of the conversation.

"He said I volunteered, but when I got my orders I noticed they were dated two days before I received the phone call," Van Kirk said laughing.

Source: Macon.com