Interview with a crew member

interview with a crew member (11.40 mins)

Lindsay Garfield: Today only one of these twelve crew members of the live to tell the story. I am joined by that man today Theodore Van Kirk. So, if you could now, take us through the steps of that fateful day.

Theodore Van Kirk: Well that day wasn’t that the important today because the bomb was dropped by, 9.15 and 8.15 in the morning time, 9.15 Tinian time, 8.15 time. So it was all over by then. But the day before was the important day, because you have to go back and realise what happened during this period. The Bomb was developed by the Manhattan Project. There were hundreds of thousands of people working on the Manhattan Project. They built three cities in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Los Alamos, New Mexico and Hanford, Washington just to produce, to research how to make the bombs and make the materials then from which to make the bombs. So this effort had been going on a long time ever since the beginning of the war when Einstein wrote a letter to Franklin Roosevelt saying that it might be possible to make an atomic weapon. So all of this had been going on. And we had started preparing to drop the atom bomb in the fall of 1944 before we even had a bomb. If you were a poker player you would say you were betting on the call. So that’s what happened. And then they had a test of one of the first atomic bombs in Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16 of 1945. After that everything started to get hotter and everything of that type. And we knew we were having a weapon to drop and so then we had to prepare to, we had already been preparing to drop it. So if we didn’t know how to drop it by this time we never would. The day before we had a briefing in the morning and then they told you to go back and get some sleep cause you were going to take off at 2.45am, everything started at 2.45, and so then you went back to get some sleep, but nobody slept. How they expect to tell you you’re going to drop the first atomic bomb and then go get some sleep. At 8 o’clock at night they came and got us finally and then took us over and gave us the final breakfast and this sort of business, I call it final breakfast, they call it the mission breakfast and over the final briefing, where they gave you the latest metro data told you where all the air sea rescue ships were and everything of that type, any final things that you needed to know. So, then we finally finished all that we get into the airplane and took off. Very simple.

Lindsay Garfield: Once you got up in the plane, what did it feel like, how were you feeling?

Theodore Van Kirk: It was easy, because everything went exactly according to plan. There wasn’t a surprise in the whole bunch. And with what we had prepared for and had been expecting and everything of that type all this time. You could see the city of, the coast of Japan from a good 200 miles away, or maybe 100 miles away. You could see the city of Hiroshima from 50 miles away, so you just went in and turned on the bomb run and at this time it was in the bombardiers hands and you sat there and waited for the drop. And when the drop came the plane surged because you suddenly had lost 94 – 100 pounds and Tibbet’s took over manual control again and made the turn to get away from the bomb. The biggest thing that we were concerned about was is this bomb going to work. Because this was a bomb that had never been tested, this was a uranium 235 bomb that had never been tested. The one they had tested was a plutonium bomb, so was it going to work or wasn’t going to work. And it took 45 seconds from the time the bomb left the airplane until it exploded. Everybody was sitting there timing it in some way, shape or form. I had a watch so I knew what the time was. Other people were counting one thousand and one, one thousand and two, and so forth. And suddenly the bomb went off and you saw a bright flash of light in the airplane so you knew the thing had worked. And the only question then was what was it going to do to the airplane. So we were going away from it at this time, we kept putting distance between us and the bomb. We kept that up, after a very short time we got the first shock wave, which was measured at about 3 and a half Gs. You go up there with, you know, all these military people you know what a 3G and everything and that type, so it doesn’t seem like much to a fighter pilot but if you in a B29 at 30,000 feet it seems like a hell of a jolt. So, then we turned around, after we weren’t sure we weren’t going to get anymore shock waves, we turned around to look what had happened and the city of Hiroshima was completely covered with smoke and dust and you knew a tremendous amount of damage had been done underneath that cloud there and everything but you couldn’t see what it was.

RTs Lindsay Garfield: When they first tested the first atomic bomb in New Mexico, as you mentioned, Robert Oppenheimer, who was of course the mastermind behind the Manhattan Project, I read a quote from him saying few people had cried, most were silent, how did you feel when that bomb detonated?

Theodore Van Kirk: I was happy it worked. That’s number one. You know, we had been in a long war. We had been attacked by the Japanese. The Japanese people were not nice people in those days. My next door neighbour was a prisoner of war all the time has more stories about this to tell than I can tell. But we had the Bataan death march, all the casualties we took down to the Solomon’s and this sort of thing. The policy of the United States government at that time was to subdue the nation of Japan and I willing to do anything I could do to help that out and that was my policy also was to, the country was trying to subdue Japan and I was trying to also subdue Japan. Let me make one comment here. The Japanese you know today are not the Japanese we fought during World War II. The Japanese of today are nice people, and everything of that type. We’ve had Japanese students living with us in our homes out in California for many many years. And I couldn’t ask for better. But the Japanese during World War II are not that nice a people and that’s all I’ll say about them.

Lindsay Garfield: Do you think that the Japanese people will ever be able to forgive the Americans after all this destruction in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Theodore Van Kirk: I don’t know if they will or not. If I had been living in Hiroshima or Nagasaki at that particular time I probably wouldn’t forgive them either because those people suffered an awful lot but whether they will accept it or not, dropping the atomic bomb saved their lives and our lives, Japanese lives. If we had had to invade Japan, the Japanese casualties would have been much, much, much, much higher. And our casualties would have been terrific. Do you know they are still giving out purple hearts that were made to give out in the invasion of Japan? We still haven’t used the purple hearts that were manufactured at that time. It was not a nice war. 50 million people got killed during World War II and they all had bad stories to tell about it.

Lindsay Garfield: In hindsight do you think there was any way to avoid using the atomic weapon, any other options that would have achieved the same goal.

Theodore Van Kirk: Three main objects. One was to put a blockade around Japan and starve the people to death. How do you starve people to death that are already living on 1000 calories? You can’t do it. The other two options were to drop the atomic weapons or put a full scale invasion into Japan. The atomic weapons will have, could result in less casualties overall than if the invasion of Japan would have done. And if you ask any GI or ask anybody that was in the service over in the Pacific, they love the atomic bomb. My next door neighbor came over here when he found out what I did dropping the atomic bomb, and he came over here at 6 o’clock one morning pounding on my door. He says ‘I just found out what you did , you saved my life’. And I said if you pound on my door at 6am again I won’t save it, that’s all I can say. But everybody that was in the Pacific at the time says, or come up to me says you saved my life.

Lindsay Garfield: Do you regret being on that mission that dropped the first ever atomic bomb?

Theodore Van Kirk: I regret we ever had that mission, I regret every mission I had over in Europe and everything and that type. I dropped a lot of bombs over there that killed people and probably killed several civilians. But do I regret the atomic mission? I regret we had to do it. There was a fellow here the other day and what was it he was saying? – that the Japanese should apologise to us for making us drop the atomic bomb. That was a new twist on things I haven’t had heard before. But I regret that we had to do it but I think we had to do it in order to end the war with a minimum loss of life.

Lindsay Garfield: So, you know of course the issue of nuclear warfare is still very relevant today as the threat of nuclear war still lingers. Is there anything you would like to say to the politicians today that are in control of the world’s nuclear stockpiles?

Theodore Van Kirk: Can I say to any politician, any diplomat, anybody in any area of authority today, I would like never to see another atomic weapon used but I’m afraid we are going to. We will not see it by Russia or we will not see it by the major powers or anything else. I dread the day when the terrorists are going to get nuclear weapons because they are not near as thoughtful of the consequences of nuclear bombings as we are, as major powers are, and they will toss them around like match sticks I’m afraid.

Lindsay Garfield: My last question for you. If World War III broke out today, God forbid, and you were given the same order. If you were, if they said go drop an atomic bomb on whatever city, would you do it again?

Theodore Van Kirk: If everything was exactly the same as it was then. That’s the point. I know it’s not possible to really duplicate things precisely but if the same situation existed again, exactly as it had back in 1945, yes I would go on it. I would volunteer for it as a matter of fact. I would want to go on it.