An unexpected death always seems to galvanize memories like nothing else. The most recent example of that came for me last week. More than 12 years after I spent a brief time with the man, I opened the newspaper to learn that General Paul Tibbetts Jr. had passed away at age 92.
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In case you paid absolutely no attention during history class, then-Colonel Tibbetts was the commander of a B-29 named for his mother: the Enola Gay. In short, he was the man who said two simple words, “Bomb away,” over Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. With that, he changed the course of both the war and the world.
I met Gen Tibbetts in the summer of 1995. I was working at a public relations firm in Kansas City and one of our clients was the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library. Being good flacks, we’d set up a series of high-profile events commemorating the 50th anniversary of Truman’s presidency. We’d brought Abba Eban to talk about the official recognition of the State of Israel (a big deal at the time considering HST was a born-and-bred Missourian who’d never had much love for Jewish people). We also hosted Colin Powell, who gave a remarkable and moving speech about Truman’s decision to desegregate the U.S. military and create a level playing field for blacks and other minorities. The day I spent with him is another story for another time.
But, before those events, an unassuming man – then 80 years old – arrived in Kansas City to talk about his commander in chief’s decision to use an unthinkable weapon against a seemingly unconquerable enemy. Despite significant deafness, he was spry for his age and completely willing to answer the same questions for the media that he’d been answering for 50 years. I still have the notes from the press conference we held on Aug. 6, 1995:
Do you have any regrets? “Absolutely none. We saved lives by taking lives. That’s the nature of war.”
Was it right to drop the bomb on civilians? “That was a decision for President Truman and the politicians. My job was to make sure we did it perfectly.”
How can you sleep at night? “I never missed a night’s sleep. We would have lost hundreds of thousands of American and allied troops trying to take the Japanese mainland with conventional forces. It was the right thing to do.”
In short, a half-century after initiating the most controversial act of warfare in human history, Tibbetts stood firm in his convictions and did so with simple and unassailable logic.
Years before, I had also briefly met Gen. Chuck Yeager, the man who broke the sound barrier and about whom Tom Wolfe had written, “He had the right stuff.”
So did Gen. Paul Tibbetts.