And then the two concussion waves hit the ship. We turned fast to get away from the deadly radiation and bomb effects. Captain Lewis said, “At 8:15 promptly, the bomb was dropped. His voice was shaky, as if he were trying to complete the mission of retelling history without breaking down in tears. Koko Kondo began to walk towards him, intending to confront him for all the pain that he had caused. Lewis of the Enola Gay crew that dropped “Little Boy” on Hiroshima.Ĭaptain Lewis now entered the stage to retell his recollection of the day of the Hiroshima bombing. Koko Kondo glared at Captain Lewis with intense hatred. She asked her mother, “who is that man?” Her mother told her that he was the captain on the B-29 bomber that was responsible for the Hiroshima blast. The 10 year old Koko Kondo was also waiting backstage when she saw Captain Lewis. Tanimoto’s wife and children to America to surprise him on live TV. Lewis, the co-pilot of the Enola Gay, who then waited backstage while Edwards began the next segment. Desination: Hiroshima.” It was the voice of Captain Robert A. “At zero six hundred, on the morning of August the 6 th, 1945, I was in a B-29 flying over the Pacific. In the background, the eerie sound of an air raid siren goes off, followed by the voice of a mystery man behind a privacy screen. Tanimoto to share his story of surviving the atomic bomb and about his work helping the Hiroshima Maidens, the women who were disfigured from the bomb blast.
Captain and crew of the enola gay tv#
Tanimoto was the special guest on the American TV show “This is Your Life”. Minister, he devoted his life to peacemaking and establishing the Hiroshima Peace Center. Included her siblings and her father, Rev. Miraculously, her whole family survived the atomic bomb, Kondo’s house was leveled by the blast, but somehow she and her mother both survived. The bomb, nicknamed “Littleīoy”, delivered an explosion equivalent to 12-15,000 tons of dynamite. Gay had just detonated the first atomic bomb ever used in combat over the city "In a B-29 at 30,000 feet it seems like a hell of a jolt," he told the Witness to War Foundation.Koko Kondo (nea Tanimoto) was 8 months old when she wasīuried in rubble, trapped in her mother’s arms. Two shockwaves, measured at 3 Gs each, caught up with the plane, Van Kirk recalled. The bomb detonated 43 seconds after it was dropped from the Enola Gay, as the pilot turned the plane away from the blast.
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Van Kirk, who also saw action in a B-17 in Europe and North Africa, described the Hiroshima mission as an easy one because the plane faced no enemy opposition and was flying in perfect weather. The first nuclear weapon used in warfare, Little Boy weighed 9,000 pounds and detonated 1,800 feet over Hiroshima with an explosive force that equaled 20,000 tons of TNT, according to the National Museum of the U.S.
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![captain and crew of the enola gay captain and crew of the enola gay](https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50012914861_3f5a379f6d_o.jpg)
The plane carried Little Boy, the nickname for the first of two atomic bombs dropped over Japan - actions which forced Japan's surrender. "How they expected to tell you you were going out and dropping the first atomic bomb and it might blow up the airplane and go get some sleep, is absolutely beyond me," Van Kirk said in a video interview with the Witness to War Foundation. When their superiors advised them to get some rest after one of their last briefings, Van Kirk played poker with his crew mates instead. He had a lot on his mind the day before the mission.