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“The whole World War II experience shows that wars don’t settle anything. Most of the lives saved were Japanese,” VanKirk said. “I honestly believe the use of the atomic bomb saved lives in the long run.
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VanKirk told the AP he thought it was necessary because it shortened the war and eliminated the need for an Allied land invasion that could have cost more lives on both sides. Whether the United States should have used the atomic bomb has been debated endlessly. Six days after the Nagasaki bombing, Japan surrendered. The blast and its aftermath claimed 80,000 lives. Three days after Hiroshima, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. The blast and its aftereffects killed 140,000 in Hiroshima. It seemed a lot longer than 43 seconds,” VanKirk recalled. “I think everybody in the plane concluded it was a dud. They counted-one thousand one, one thousand two-reaching the 43 seconds they’d been told it would take for detonation and heard nothing. They didn’t know whether the bomb would actually work and, if it did, whether its shockwaves would rip their plane to shreds. As the 9,000-pound bomb nicknamed “Little Boy” fell toward the sleeping city, he and his crewmates hoped to escape with their lives. He guided the bomber through the night sky, just 15 seconds behind schedule, he said. The mission went perfectly, VanKirk told The Associated Press in a 2005 interview. He was teamed with pilot Paul Tibbets and bombardier Tom Ferebee in Tibbets’ fledgling 509th Composite Bomb Group for Special Mission No. He was 24 years old when he served as navigator on the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress that dropped the first atomic bomb deployed in wartime over the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Aug. Primary materials from the O.R.D. on Textiles, Teachers and Troops, a digital repository of Greensboro historyįor more about North Carolina’s history, arts and culture, visit Cultural Resources online. To receive these updates automatically each day, make sure you subscribe by email using the box on the right, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.VanKirk flew nearly 60 bombing missions, but it was a single mission in the Pacific that secured him a place in history.He never expressed regret about dropping the A-bomb, maintaining that it saved more lives than it took by ending the war sooner. Six days later, the Japanese government surrendered unconditionally, ending World War II.įerebee retired from the U.S. On August 9, another bomber crew dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Forty-three seconds later, the bomb detonated, instantly killing 70,000 people. The 9,000-pound bomb, nicknamed “Little Boy,” tumbled from the plane’s belly and sped six miles to its target below. Ferebee, then 26 and a veteran of 64 combat missions, was napping and initially did not hear the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets Jr., brief the crew about their top-secret mission.Īpproaching Hiroshima, Ferebee activated the plane’s automated Norden bombsight, centered its crosshairs on the Aioi Bridge and called “bomb away.” It was 8:15 a.m. from Tinian Island in the western Pacific. The 12-man crew aboard the B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, took off for Hiroshima at 2 a.m. Army Air Corps bombardier and Mocksville native, dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. On August 6, 1945, Major Thomas Wilson Ferebee, a U.S.