Brigadier General Paul Tibbets Jr., the commander and pilot of the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, died this week at the age of 92. He was celebrated as a national hero, and he never publicly expressed regret for his role in killing an estimated 75,000 civilians. Indeed, he was fond of telling reporters that he "slept like a baby at night", convinced that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki "saved millions of lives". And that is the accepted narrative in the United States today: the killing of 150,000 Japanese non-combatants saved millions of lives and hastened the end of "The Good War". It is interesting to note that not all of the main actors of the time agreed with that assessment: General Eisenhower, in his autobiography, recounted:
"I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act.(the dropping of A-bomb on Hiroshima -DV)... The Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent. During the recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression, and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment, I thought no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face.'"
But Eisenhower's words are forgotten, as the nation celebrates the "heroism" of Paul Tibbets and the others who flew the atomic bomb missions over Japan. Forgotten as well is a member of the team who - unlike Tibbets - could not "sleep like a baby" and was haunted by what he had done for the rest of his life. Claude 
Eatherly flew the Straight Flush - the plane that flew in advance of the Enola Gay to check weather conditions and give the green light for dropping the bomb. Eatherly latter expressed his horror at what he had done, and tried to atone for his actions by speaking out for peace and sending his paychecks to the families of Hiroshima victims. He fell into a deep depression and was confined for a time in a mental institution (after all, only an "insane" man would feel remorse for such an act of heroism). It was then that Eatherly struck up a correspondence with the philospher and pacifist Günther Anders , remembered today as the first husband of Hannah Arendt, but he was an important thinker and the father of the anti-nuclear movement (a precursor to Randall Forsberg). Anders published his correspondence with Eatherly in a book - Hiroshima ist überall - (American version: Burning Conscience: The Case of the Hiroshima Pilot, Claude Eatherly, Told in his Letters to Gunther Anders with a Postscript to American Readers by Anders.) The American edition is out of print. Anders and Eatherly are forgotten, as are the tens of thousands of Japanese civilians who perished on those two horrible days. Tibbets is mourned as a national hero.
Comments