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Shumard, assistant engineer and SSgt Wyatt Duzenbury, flight engineer. Jacob Beser, radar countermeasure officer. Paul Tibbets, pilot and commander of 509th Group Capt. John Porter, ground maintenance officer Capt. Until this time, Tibbets' own plane had been simply number 82, when he decided to name it Enola Gay, after his confidence-building and loving mother. Possible target cities included Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata, and Nagasaki. Bombing would be visual, rather than by radar. Seven Boeing Superfortresses would take part, including the primary, a standby, a photo plane, one with scientific instruments to measure the blast, and three others that would scout ahead. Four days after departing Tinian, Indianapolis was sunk by a Japanese submarine.īy early August, 1945, plans for the first atomic mission were set.
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Though intelligence reports assured Captain Charles McVay that the route from Guam to Leyte was safe, there were Japanese submarines active in the area. Having delivered its load without incident, Indianapolis moved on toward the Philippines. Inside was the atomic bomb, complete except for a second slug of uranium that a B-29 later delivered.
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On July 26th, the cruiser Indianapolis dropped anchor off Tinian and unloaded a 15-foot wooden crate. Tinian Island, showing its four 8,500 ft. He flew back and forth to the States three times between May and July, but missed the first atomic test at Alamogordo because he had to return to Tinian to persuade General Curtis LeMay not to switch the atomic mission to another outfit. Tibbets ran into various confrontations, on issues from maintenance to training, stemming in part from the secrecy of the operations. Tibbets' group bivouacked in the "Columbia University district." Tinian was ideal its 8,500 foot runways were among the longest in the world at the time. As it was shaped something like the island of Manhattan, the Army engineers named the base facilities with names like Broadway and Forty-second Street. We shall never repeat our mistake.By May, 1945, Tibbets and the 509th had moved out to the Pacific, to the island of Tinian in the Marianas. Lewis died in 1983, but Kondo says every year when she goes to a park that honors the dead of Hiroshima she always remembers the man who dropped the bomb on her city. She decided she wanted to fight for peace and the end of nuclear weapons. That meeting changed the course of Kondo's life. "I just wanted to touch his hand because I thought, that's my way of showing I'm sorry I hated you, but it's not you who I should hate. She came up close to him and held his hand. I should hate the war itself, which we human beings caused." "So I was staring at his eyes, 'you're the bad one, I'm the good one.' "īut then she saw Lewis crying and thought, "He's the same human being as me. "I was so shocked because I wanted to meet those people who own the airplane so I can revenge," Kondo told NPR. He told the story of the day he dropped the bomb and said he entered into his log, "My God, what have we done." Lewis was a co-pilot on the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the bomb over Hiroshima. Kondo, then just 10 years old, was on the stage when they brought on Capt. It looked like a procession of ghosts," Tanimoto, her father, told the show.
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"I saw the whole city on fire and many people running away from the city in silence, their skin peeling off, hanging from face, from arms. "So I said, someday when I'm grown up, I am going to revenge."Ī decade later, her father was invited onto an American talk show, This Is Your Life, to talk about the day the bomb dropped. "As a child, I thought if they never dropped the bomb, many children didn't have to become orphans," she said. Once Kondo realized the lasting effects that had been wrought by the American attack, she vowed revenge. In the days and weeks following, many more became sick from radiation poisoning. In total, hundreds of thousands of people were killed and more were injured upon impact. Shortly after the bombs were dropped, Japan's Emperor Hirohito surrendered, ending World War II. "With this bomb we have now added a new and revolutionary increase in destruction to supplement the growing power of our armed forces," President Harry Truman said as he addressed the nation after the first attack on Hiroshima. 9, 1945, the United States dropped a bomb on Nagasaki. Three days after dropping a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, on Aug. She said when she was out from the house, the environment was completely different. "She moved little by little and she made a little hole," Kondo told NPR's Weekend Edition of her mother's attempts to escape. She was trapped beneath the rubble with her mother. "Suddenly, the whole house crashed," Kondo recounts. Kiyoshi Tanimoto, had left earlier that morning. Koko Kondo was 8 months old and with her mother when the first atomic bomb hit her home city of Hiroshima on Aug.