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You could see some fires burning on the edge of the city.” I describe it looking like a pot of black, boiling tar.
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“The entire city was covered with smoke and dust and dirt.
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On the 50th anniversary of the bombing, Van Kirk said: “The plane jumped and made a sound like sheet metal snapping” after the explosion, and shortly after the second wave, we turned to where we could look out and see the cloud, where the city of Hiroshima had been,” he said. For the majority of residents in Hiroshima, it would be their last day of life on this earth. He helped guide the plane over Hiroshima and dropped the 9,000-pound (4,080-kilogram) bomb on the city while many of its residents were still sleeping or just starting their day. Van Kirk was teamed with pilot Paul Tibbets and bombardier Tom Ferebee as part of the Enola Gay’s 12-man crew. 15, 1945, bringing an end to World War II. 9, 1945), a bomb tagged “Fat Man” was dropped on Nagasaki, killing an estimated 70,000 to 80,000 people. The United States has the dubious honor of being the first country in history to use an atomic bomb in combat. Some 70,000 people were killed instantly. The bomb exploded at 8:15 a.m., killing 140,000 people - around half the population of the southern Japanese port city. The weapon caused a massive loss of life, and with it came decades of debate over the use of nuclear technology.Īt the age of 24, Van Kirk was a navigator on the Enola Gay - the B29 Superfortress that dropped “Little Boy” on Hiroshima on Aug. The last surviving crewman (93-year-old Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk) from the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima has died.