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Not all of the top military officials were in agreement with Tibbets on this. I'm proud that I was able to start with nothing, plan it and have it work as perfectly as it did . While some interviews with the man indicate some degree of remorse, it appears that Tibbets truly believed in the cause of what he was doing. Still, Tibbets went back and forth in regards to the subject for the remainder of his life (he died in 2007). Mine were, basically, 'this is a tremendous thing. Everybody was thinking, there's no question in my mind about that. When it struck, the bomb immediately took the lives of 80,000 Japanese citizens - when the radiation-related deaths were factored in, the number grew to an estimated 150,000 or more.Īfterwards, I guess you'd call it a quiet and melancholy group going back. Tibbets was the pilot in charge of dropping the first-ever atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. had seen combat he'd seen a war-devastated Germany and his brothers in arms die in front of him-but what he hadn't foreseen was the effect that an atomic bomb could have on an entire country of people. But when I looked at it-when I saw what had taken place, and I saw the city covered, and what appeared to be going on-I knew that I just hadn't even come close to imagining what the effect was.Ĭolonel Paul Warfield Tibbets Jr.