{"id":72576,"date":"2025-06-22T20:00:37","date_gmt":"2025-06-22T11:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/jun\/22\/atomic-bomb-hiroshima-nagasaki-author-stephen-walker"},"modified":"2025-06-22T20:00:37","modified_gmt":"2025-06-22T11:00:37","slug":"you-dont-brag-about-wiping-out-60%e2%80%9170000-people-the-men-who-dropped-the-atomic-bombs-on-hiroshima-and-nagasaki","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=72576","title":{"rendered":"\u2018You don\u2019t brag about wiping out 60\u201170,000 people\u2019: the men who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki"},"content":{"rendered":"

This summer will mark 80 years since the attacks stunned the world. Today, every one of the crew members who carried out the bombings is dead. Here, one of the last writers to interview them reopens his files<\/p>\n

\u2018It was a beautiful morning. The sun was shining on the buildings. Everything down there was bright \u2013 very, very bright. You could see the city from 50 miles away, the rivers bisecting it, the aiming point. It was clear as a bell. It was perfect. The perfect mission.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sitting in a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco opposite the navigator of the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. The year is 2004, and Theodore \u201cDutch\u201d Van Kirk, aged 83, has agreed to be interviewed for a book I\u2019m writing for the 60th anniversary of that fateful mission. Van Kirk informs me, with the trace of a smile, that this will probably be the last interview in his life.<\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This summer will mark 80 years since the attacks stunned the world. Today, every one of the crew members who carried out the bombings is dead. Here, one of the last writers to interview them reopens his files\u2018It was a beautiful morning. The sun was shi…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4821,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,511,71,752,88,441,299,220,473,1051],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-books","category-culture","category-history-books","category-japan","category-nuclear-weapons","category-science","category-second-world-war","category-us-military","category-weapons-technology"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4821"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72576"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72577,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72576\/revisions\/72577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}