government later issued a formal apology. He said the display "was not intended to insult anybody," but the Japanese were outraged. As he flew a B-29 Superfortress over the show, a bomb set off on the runway below created a mushroom cloud. In 1976, he was criticized for re-enacting the bombing during an appearance at a Harlingen, Texas, air show. "At the time, I was running the National Crisis Center at the Pentagon." "They said I was crazy, said I was a drunkard, in and out of institutions," he said. Tibbets said in 2005 that after the war he was dogged by rumors claiming he was in prison or had committed suicide. He moved to Columbus, where he ran an air taxi service until he retired in 1985. Tibbets retired from the Air Force as a brigadier general in 1966.
"What's important now is that we move toward a world free of nuclear weapons." "Nevertheless, I would like to express my condolences to his family, and pray for his soul," he said. "His actions led to the indiscriminate killing of so many, from the elderly to young children. Tibbits did should never be forgiven," said Takashi Mukai, whose mother, a nurse, suffered lifelong effects of radiation as she treated bombing victims. The head of the Japan Congress Against A- and H-Bombs rejected the idea that the bombing saved lives. "It's a horrible weapon, but war is pretty horrible, too." It was a presidential decision, and he was an officer that carried out his duty," Glenn said. John Glenn, a former Marine fighter pilot, said people who criticized Tibbets for piloting the plane that dropped the bomb failed to recognize that an allied invasion of Japan, which the bomb helped avert, would have resulted in the deaths of several million people. History has shown there was no need to criticize him."įormer U.S. armed forces and Japanese civilians and military. "It did in fact end the war," said Morris Jeppson, the officer who armed the bomb during the Hiroshima flight. The Japanese surrendered a few days later. Three days later, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, killing at least 60,000 people. The blast killed or injured at least 140,000. Tibbets, a 30-year-old colonel at the time, and his crew of 13 dropped the five-ton "Little Boy" bomb over Hiroshima the morning of Aug.
But my one driving interest was to do the best job I could so that we could end the killing as quickly as possible." We knew it was going to kill people right and left. "We had feelings, but we had to put them in the background. "I knew when I got the assignment it was going to be an emotional thing," Tibbets told The Columbus Dispatch for a story on the 60th anniversary of the bombing. He was a student at the University of Cincinnati's medical school when he decided to withdraw in 1937 to enlist in the Army Air Corps. 23, 1915, in Quincy, Ill., and spent most of his boyhood in Miami.