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Children of the Manhattan Project |
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| Newsweek Magazine; July 24, 1995 |
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'A bright light filled the plane,' wrote
Lt. Col. Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped
the first atomic bomb. "We turned back to look at
Hiroshima. The city was hidden by that awful cloud...boiling up,
mushrooming." For a moment, no one spoke. Then everyone
was talking at once. "Look at that! Look at that! Look at
that!" exclaimed the co-pilot, Robert Lewis, pounding on Tibbet's
shoulder. Lewis said he could taste the atomic fission: it tasted
like lead. Then he turned away to write in his journal.
"My God," he asked himself, "what have we done?"
Fifty-six years later, Capt. Lewis' second thoughts are shared by many Americans today. Many Americans, and certainly most Japanese, look at the decision to drop the bomb only in moral terms, and ask the question if it was right to flatten two entire cities. However, to the men who made that decision in the summer of 1945, morality was only one factor, and not the most important factor at that! Please read on... |
