What the hell's a Feed?
Stick it in your email!
My Mother the Bomb
 |
| Watcha’ cookin’ up there, Enola Gay? |
Most mothers have to make do with the usual childhood tributes that come in the form of homemade tissue boxes and inexpensive knick-knacks. Imagine how tickled Enola Gay Tibbets must’ve been when her son, Paul, named the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb after her. Paul Tibbets, commander of the mission that bombed Hiroshima into dust, died this week at the ripe old age of 92.
To the end, neither Tibbets nor his bombardier Tom Ferebee, who passed away in 2000, expressed any second thoughts about having reduced 100,000 civilians into what Tibbets once described as “a black, boiling mess.” In a 2002 [interview] with Studs Terkel for the Guardian, in which he discloses that there were plans to drop the bomb in Europe as well as Asia, Tibbets maintained that the mission saved more lives than it cost by preventing an allied invasion of Japan. Asked by Terkel if he knew in advance of the capabilities of the bomb, he acknowledges that he was told in advance that the bomb would contain the equivalent of all the conventional bombs dropped on Europe during the war. Pressed by Terkel about what he thinks when people casually advocate use of atomic weapons against enemies, including terrorists, Tibbets responds, “I’d wipe ‘em out. You’re gonna kill innocent people at the same time, but we’ve never fought a damn war anywhere in the world where they didn’t kill innocent people. If the newspapers would just cut out the shit: ‘You’ve killed so many civilians.’ That’s their tough luck for being there.”
And what did Enola Gay think of having her name attached to the mission that changed everything forever? In Tibbets’ words:
Well, I can only tell you what my dad said. My mother never changed her expression very much about anything, whether it was serious or light, but when she’d get tickled, her stomach would jiggle. My dad said to me that when the telephone in Miami rang, my mother was quiet first. Then, when it was announced on the radio, he said: “You should have seen the old gal’s belly jiggle on that one.”
Posted in Blather 11/3/07 | 
Email this | Comments (4)
Share/Save this: 
Not really a stellar example of military pride or humility, was he? My own father, a Lt. Colonel in the Air Force during Vietnam, piloted the planes that marked targets for the bombers. I always thought that must have a strange toll on your psyche, to know that you were responsible for the death of people but not directly being the one that dropped the bombs. He doesn’t say much about those experiences, either out of a private grief or a noble humility I’ll never know. I suspect a bit of both.
Comment by Aatom — November 5, 2007 @ 4:26 pm
Aatom,
You’re being kind — Tibbets sounded like a crude sonofabitch… with a well-named plane.
Your dad, on the other hand, sounds like many of the men who spend a few years doing extraordinarily brutal work and then spend many more years trying to fit into the narrative of a “normal” life. That they so often succeed is nothing short of a miracle.
Comment by Sprague D — November 5, 2007 @ 7:58 pm
During WWII, my father was an Army transportation clerk stationed in Colorado for the duration of his service. In the summer of ‘45 he was told to expect orders to ship out to the west coast in preparation for the invasion of the Japanese home islands. He fully expected that he was about to get his turn in combat. Instead, Japan surrendered following the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and my father was soon discharged back into civilian life. Sometimes I wonder if he would have survived the invasion and if my sisters and I would have even been born. I wonder how many of my friends and cousins would be here now too. Would the world be a better place had we not used the atomic bomb? From my perspective, that is a very debatable proposition.
About Col. Tibbets demeanor: he was a son-of-a-bitch because his commanding officers knew better than to assign the job to someone who might be too sensitive or emotional; it’s how they do things in the military. They chose well.
Anyway, let’s get back to the second-guessing. We’ve got the luxury of doing so now.
Comment by Paul M. — November 12, 2007 @ 8:02 pm
Paul,
You are exactly right, they chose Tibbets because he was unlikely to question the mission. That the mission itself was questionable is another matter.
It’s not just second-guessing now, from our safe vantage more than half a century away. Russia was on the verge of declaring war on Japan (and declared just days after Hiroshima). Facing invasion on two fronts, Japan was licked by the time the bomb was dropped (whether they knew it or not). The bomb missions appear to be test cases for the technology more than necessary conditions for ending the war and — if true — make them even more horrific.
Comment by Sprague D — November 15, 2007 @ 8:52 pm