'It was something that he did as part of serving in World War II. 'It was not only saving American lives, but it saved Japanese lives,' Dietz argues. 'He believed it was the right thing to do - he had no regrets,' says Dietz. 'He believed it helped to shorten the war and it helped to save lives.'Īccording to Dietz, the US military had ordered 470,000 body bags for the planned land invasion of the Japanese home islands, which was known to be fraught with danger. Suzanne Dietz, Van Kirk's biographer who chronicled his military life in the book, 'My True Course,' says Van Kirk saw the mission as simply part of his service in World War II. The bomb killed 140,000 people, and history tells us that the decision to drop the bomb was a game changer, ending the war and starting a big debate about the future use of nuclear bombs.
Theodore Van Kirk was 93 years old.Īt 24, Van Kirk was the navigator of the Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress that dropped the world’s first atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. crew that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima during World War II died earlier this week.
