A couple of Japanese tourist took pictures in front of the nose (go figure). The plane is the middle of the museum, but from the catawalk (which is the only real way to view it) it seems rather quiet. She is a wife, mother, workshop leader, childbirth and gentle parenting educator, pastor, prison and police chaplain, and author of several books on Bible study and wholeness.100,000 people, but it didn’t really come across that way. We seem more embroiled in more global conflicts than at that time.Īs the old 1960s folk song lamented, “When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn?” Perhaps you can pause a moment today and reflect on those victims of so long ago. It would be nice to think that the largeness of the evil in the situation might have talked us out of engaging in war again. Perhaps, in consideration of such huge human atrocities as the atomic bomb, we need to rely on God finding some blessing out of it all. The Bible does tell us that God can bring good to all people who are called according to His purposes. We were quite able to figure all of that out by ourselves. Hatred, war, disease are not what God intended when he breathed life into humankind. It is still shocking to think of one bomb causing the deaths of 147,000 people, and the millions of persons who died later of radiation sickness, birth defects and other results of the high levels of radiation.Īnd people often ask “Where was God in all of this?” A very good question. It is very hard for us looking back at that time when one of the biggest, most deadly conflicts in the history of the world was raging on, to fairly judge the actions of those who made, delivered and dropped the bomb. However, historians remind us that at the same time, the Soviet Union had declared war on Japan, so there will always remain which issue was the determining factor to make Japan decide to end the war a few days after the bombings.Īlbert Einstein, a major researcher/developer of the bomb, was quoted as saying: “I made one great mistake in my life - when I signed that letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made but there was some justification - the danger that the Germans would make them!”
Ever since that destructive morning nearly 70 years ago, debate has continued about whether the bombs really ended the war. from a land invasion that would likely have cost many American lives. Van Kirk has said the weapon brought him “a sense of relief” because it spelled an end to the war, thus sparing the U.S. You could see some fires burning on the edge of the city.”
I describe it looking like a pot of black, boiling tar. “The entire city was covered with smoke and dust and dirt. On the 50th anniversary of the bombing, Van Kirk said: “The plane jumped and made a sound like sheet metal snapping” after the explosion, and shortly after the second wave, we turned to where we could look out and see the cloud, where the city of Hiroshima had been,” he said. For the majority of residents in Hiroshima, it would be their last day of life on this earth. He helped guide the plane over Hiroshima and dropped the 9,000-pound (4,080-kilogram) bomb on the city while many of its residents were still sleeping or just starting their day. Van Kirk was teamed with pilot Paul Tibbets and bombardier Tom Ferebee as part of the Enola Gay’s 12-man crew. 15, 1945, bringing an end to World War II. 9, 1945), a bomb tagged “Fat Man” was dropped on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 70,000 to 80,000 people. The United States has the dubious honor of being the first country in history to use an atomic bomb in combat. Some 70,000 people were killed instantly. The bomb exploded at 8:15 a.m., killing 140,000 people - around half the population of the southern Japanese port city. The weapon caused a massive loss of life, and with it came decades of debate over the use of nuclear technology.Īt the age of 24, Van Kirk was a navigator on the Enola Gay - the B29 Superfortress that dropped “Little Boy” on Hiroshima on Aug. The last surviving crewman (93-year-old Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk) from the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima has died.