Fat Man and Little Boy decimated a huge portion of Japan and killed thousands. It was a tragedy for many... but how did those who actually dropped the bombs feel about it?
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00:00On the morning of August 6, 1945, the crew of the Enola Gay, a stripped-down B-29 Super
00:05Fortress, and six other bombers left the island of Tinian. The planes headed towards Hiroshima,
00:10Japan, home to about 350,000 people. At 8.15 a.m., the Enola Gay dropped its payload,
00:17nicknamed Little Boy, and 43 seconds later, Little Boy exploded over Hiroshima. An estimated
00:2280,000 people died instantly, with thousands more dying from their wounds and from radiation
00:27sickness. Three days later, another U.S. bomber, Boxcar, dropped a second atomic bomb dubbed Fat
00:33Man on Nagasaki. This Japanese city suffered a similar fate to Hiroshima. What we often forget
00:38is that real-life human beings took part in the bombing, and they had emotions. Let's take a look
00:42at a few critical members of the flight crews to see what they thought of their actions.
00:46Overall, and to cut to the chase, none of the bomber crews expressed remorse for what they'd
00:51done, believing it was necessary to end the war. They certainly aren't wrong. The day after the
00:55bombing of Nagasaki, Japan offered to surrender. General Paul Tibbets piloted the Enola Gay and
01:01named the B-29 after his mother. Just after the bombing, Tibbets put the Enola Gay on autopilot
01:06and took a nap. It wouldn't be the last time he slept peacefully, with the full knowledge of what
01:10he'd done. In a 1989 interview, he said,
01:13"...the morality of dropping that bomb was not my business. I was instructed to perform a military
01:18mission to drop the bomb, and that was the thing I was going to do to the best of my ability."
01:22"...and I can assure you I've never lost a night's sleep on the deal."
01:25The Enola Gay's navigator, Captain Theodore Dutch Van Kirk, is the man who dropped the bomb.
01:30He also had no regrets about his role in the bombing. Van Kirk felt the bombings not only
01:34saved American soldiers from dying if a planned invasion of Japan had gone forward, but also
01:39prevented many more potential Japanese casualties, which had been estimated at as many as 10 million.
01:45He told the Associated Press,
01:46"...I honestly believe the use of the atomic bomb saved lives in the long run.
01:50There were a lot of lives saved. Most of the lives saved were Japanese."
01:54Still, he said in a 2005 interview,
01:56"...I pray no man will have to witness that sight again. Such a terrible waste. Such a loss of life."
02:02Similarly, the Enola Gay's flight engineer, Staff Sergeant Wyatt Dusenberry, had no regrets about
02:07his participation in the bombing, but told the Atlanta Journal in 1985,
02:11"...I don't think anyone can be glad when they take 100,000 lives."
02:15And Captain Robert Lewis, the Enola Gay's co-pilot, had a poignant reaction in his private journal.
02:20"...I wrote down later, my God, what have we done?"
02:24At 11.02 a.m. on August 9, 1945, the B-29 Superfortress Boxcar arrived over Nagasaki,
02:31a Japanese port city of around 263,000 inhabitants. The plane released Fat Man,
02:37a plutonium fusion bomb. At least 40,000 people died instantly.
02:41Major General Charles Sweeney, who piloted Boxcar on his first combat mission,
02:45believed that dropping an atomic bomb was also necessary, writing in his 2018 book
02:50War's End, an eyewitness account of America's last atomic mission,
02:54"...we had a job to do, a war to end. I never questioned President Truman's decision to use
02:58every weapon at his disposal to end the bloody conflict, nor do I now."
03:03Sweeney's co-pilot on the mission, Lieutenant Colonel Fred O'Leary,
03:06also felt the bombing was necessary, but regretted the deaths it caused.
03:09He told the Chicago Tribune,
03:11"...I took no pleasure in killing civilians."
03:13Earlier, we said none of the bomber crews expressed remorse,
03:17but there were other crews involved in the missions.
03:19Captain Claude Eatherly piloted the Straight Flush. They were tasked with determining if
03:23the weather was suitable for the Hiroshima bombing, but he didn't know the Enola Gay
03:27had an atomic bomb. He later reached out to the victims of Hiroshima asking for forgiveness,
03:31later telling a Veterans Administration doctor,
03:34"...I feel I killed all those people in Hiroshima."
03:36After the war, Eatherly spent time in several psychiatric wards and was arrested for a series
03:41of crimes ranging from writing bad checks to postal break-ins. He was also involved in a
03:451947 plot to overthrow the Cuban government via a series of air raids. He eventually became a
03:51vocal advocate for the anti-nuclear movement, writing,
03:54"...someone will be impressive enough to give a message that will influence the
03:57world toward a reconciliation and peace."