'I had practically a Huckleberry Finn life type of thing,' he recalled. He helped his father by rowing flats of coal up and down the Susquehanna River. But if anyone has one, I want to have one more than my enemy.'īorn in 1921, in Northumberland, Pennsylvania, Van Kirk was the son of a coalminer. Tibbets Jr., Pilot of Enola Gay, Dies at 92, New York Times, 2 November 2007, C11 Kay Bartlett, Pilot of 1st A-Bomb Plane: Quiet Man with No Regrets, Chicago Tribune, 3 August 1975, 14. I personally think there shouldn't be any atomic bombs in the world – I'd like to see them all abolished. He did claim to have classmates who were beheaded by some Japanese practicing their swordsmanship.Richard Goldstein, Paul W. 'And atomic weapons don't settle anything. 'The whole World War II experience shows that wars don't settle anything,' he said. Most of the lives saved were Japanese'.īut his exploits also made him wary of war. and others explain, delivering a 10,000-pound bomb to southern Japan was a years-long endeavor that required patience, practice, and precision. Our mission was to end the Second World War, simple as that.' He believed the bombings were necessary because they eliminated the need for an Allied land invasion that could have cost more lives: 'I honestly believe the use of the atomic bomb saved lives in the long run. On August 6, 1945, the crew of the Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb designed at Los Alamos on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. 'I have never apologised for what we did to Hiroshima and I never will. 'Do I regret what we did that day? No, sir, I do not,' Van Kirk said in 2010.
