Truth of the crew of the enola gay
![truth of the crew of the enola gay truth of the crew of the enola gay](https://www.sltrib.com/resizer/nbw5j-f4SKCGrrt4uqiTjaXpk1g=/1024x650/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-sltrib.s3.amazonaws.com/public/U7A3KVDLYRECTAMXJL32ILZHFI.jpg)
He then began to tell me the story about the night before the bomb was dropped was the happiest night of his life, and he had been that night with a lover called Rayka(ph), who he had met three or four months previously. It was obviously highly embarrassing, but he said, `No, no, I want to tell you something I've never told anybody before in my life since that day 60 years ago' or 59 years ago as it was then. I didn't want the man to start crying in front of me. And I felt awful, and I kind of wanted to back away, really. You could see he was very badly burned still from the effects of the bomb, and this guy-he sat opposite me in a little sort of living room in his home in Hiroshima, and he was beginning to talk a little bit about the day itself, and I just sort of asked him what he was doing the night before the bomb was dropped.Īnd there was a sort of pause, and then-I kid you not this is exactly how it happened-he just burst into tears. And my researcher, Japanese researcher, took me to an old man in his 80s. But my journey took me really across the world, and at one point, obviously, I was in Hiroshima itself.
![truth of the crew of the enola gay truth of the crew of the enola gay](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/650/0*q9i8Y-12QQnMh_J3.jpg)
I had no idea how I was going to start this book when I started researching it. WALKER: Well, that was an extraordinary story, and it was a story that was completely unexpected. STEPHEN WALKER (BBC Author, "Shockwave: Countdown to Hiroshima"): Nice to be here.ĬONAN: You start your book off with the story of two lovers meeting in a park in Hiroshima the evening before the bomb dropped. He's a producer for the BBC and the author of "Shockwave," and it's nice to have you on TALK OF THE NATION. And the e-mail address is Stephen Walker is now here with us in Studio 3A. Our number here in Washington is (800) 989-8255. If you or your family has a connection to the Manhattan Project, with Hiroshima or any of the military units involved, give us a call. And a bit later, we'll talk with two men who were aboard the Enola Gay that day.
![truth of the crew of the enola gay truth of the crew of the enola gay](https://th-thumbnailer.cdn-si-edu.com/meqDM0rPy4tPKg2hlyhmCMFce4o=/fit-in/1600x0/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer/1e/a6/1ea69408-2764-42ca-ba22-fd929a4de939/crew.jpg)
In a new book, "Shockwave: Countdown to Hiroshima," BBC producer Stephen Walker focuses on the three weeks that led up to the attack and on the stories of individuals, policy-makers, diplomats, physicists, soldiers, airmen and residents of Hiroshima. If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the air the like of which have never been seen on this Earth.' Their leaders promptly rejected that ultimatum. And President Truman solemnly warned, `It was to spare the Japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of July 26th was issued at Potsdam. The secretary of War will release the story as soon as accurate details of the results of the bombing become available.'īut in a statement vividly describing the results of the first test of the atomic bomb in New Mexico, the War Department told how an immense steel tower had been vaporized by the tremendous explosion, how a 40,000-foot cloud rushed into the sky, and two observers were knocked down at a point 10,000 yards away. The War Department said it, as yet, was unable to make an accurate report because an impenetrable cloud of dust and smoke masked the target area from reconnaissance planes. What happened at Hiroshima is not yet known. `At 10:45 o'clock this morning, a statement by the White House that 16 hours earlier, about the time that citizens on the Eastern seaboard were sitting down to their Sunday suppers, an American plane had dropped the single atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, an important army center. Here's an excerpt from the front page of The New York Times of August 7th. What details were available arrived the following day. On that day in 1945, very few Americans knew what had taken place across the Pacific. This Saturday, August 6th, marks 60 years since the bombing of Hiroshima.