The Victim And The Pilot
Mitchell, Greg
The Victim and the Pilot A HIROSHIMA REUNION BY GREG MITCHELL PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROBERT DEL TREDICI I have no intention of telling you about my grudges, now that so many years have passed," Akihiro...
...How many people died at Pearl Harbor...
...The Air Force League rejected the demands, saying it had only reproduced a historical event and had no intention of apologizing for history...
...Like Takahashi, Paul Tibbets couldn't escape the shadow of the bomb...
...America attacked residential areas...
...On August 6 this year, in Hiroshima, Takahashi will take part in some of the many peace ceremonies that commemorate the atomic attack...
...I cherish the encounter," Takahashi says today...
...In this sense, then, Takahashi and Tibbets had met long before their odd encounter in Washington, D.C...
...Maybe," Takahashi comments, "he is just not the sort of person who would ever say that he is sorry...
...A shock wave rocked the aircraft, and then another as the first shock rebounded off the ground...
...skin hung in sheets from his right arm...
...He is a stocky man, with dark shiny hair that pierces his forehead in a sharp V. He looks older than his fifty-eight years, perhaps because he has a severe liver ailment that he says may have been caused by the atomic bomb...
...I'm sorry for Takahashi and the others who got burned up down there at Hiroshima," Tibbets says, "but I feel sorry for those who died at Pearl Harbor, too...
...I feel that today he would not drop the bomb in an air show...
...Their school building was flattened...
...When reports and photographs of the event were published in Japan, survivors of the atomic bombing were outraged...
...Takahashi replied that ever since that fine day the survivors of the atomic bombing had been appealing for a ban on nuclear weapons, and now this was more important than ever, since "the end of the world can begin with the push of one button...
...Suddenly, a bright white light filled the plane...
...In a return letter, Tibbets acknowledged receiving the book but, according to Takahashi, he has never said whether he read it...
...Tibbets asked whether this was the result of the atomic bomb he had dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945...
...Caron answered...
...He points out that he was in favor of President Reagan's nuclear build-up and wholeheartedly supports the Star Wars concept...
...Tibbets tasted lead on his tongue—evidence of the ionization caused by nuclear fission...
...When he came to, five or ten minutes later, he discovered that he and his classmates had been blasted about thirty feet from where they had been standing...
...Tibbets has warm feelings for Takahashi, but he remembers their meeting somewhat differently...
...Tibbets told him that if war was to break out today he would probably do the same thing he had done on August 6,1945...
...In October 1976, Tibbets stirred controversy when he recreated the attack on Hiroshima at an air show in Texas...
...Takahashi told the reporter that he was willing to meet with anyone to further the cause of peace...
...We don't exactly see eye-to-eye on things," Tibbets says...
...And Tibbets gives the impression that he replies to Ta-kahashi's letters purely to be polite...
...Inside are letters from Tibbets...
...Greg Mitchell is the executive director of the Center on Violence and Human Survival in New York City and the former editor of Nuclear Times...
...He says he shed no tears during or after their conversation...
...He seemed to be a dignified, gentle old man," Takahashi recalls...
...A single airplane appeared in the cloudless sky over the city...
...He pulled on his goggles, found he could not see through them, and tossed them to the floor...
...Every two or three years the nail falls off and he donates it to the Peace Museum, where a collection of Takahashi's black fingernails is displayed in a glass case...
...I did have resistance going to the country that dropped the Bomb...
...People get mad when I say this," Tibbets says, sitting behind his desk in his Columbus office, "but the bombing was as impersonal as can be...
...When the two men shook hands, Tib-bets noticed that Takahashi's right wrist was bent, the fingers slightly twisted, his right arm scarred...
...The former pilot, now president of Executive Jet Aviation, pointed out that this day was as sunny and calm as that fateful August 6 morning long ago...
...At 8:15 a.m...
...Before going," he says, sitting in the small living room of his comfortable home in Kusattsu, a suburb of Hiroshima, "I really had to calm down my emotions...
...It's probably impossible to erase hatred completely as long as I live," he told Tibbets, "but we must overcome hatred with our rational side...
...Survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima frequently refer to August 6 as the day they "met the bomb...
...He got a C for content and a B for format...
...This is his fifth annual piece for The Progressive marking the atomic bombings...
...Takahashi told Tibbets right away that he still held a grudge against President Truman, who ordered that the bomb be used, and the leaders of Japan who started the Pacific war...
...When we overcome hatred we will find true peace...
...It was the first time Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay, had met a Japanese victim of the bombing...
...I felt no responsibility for the weapon...
...I would like to meet him again...
...He joined the Strategic Air Command and was promoted to brigadier general...
...And so, on a sunny afternoon in June 1980, Akihiro Takahashi, accompanied by a journalist and an interpreter, met Paul Tibbets...
...Takahashi nodded...
...How many died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki...
...Takahashi believes he saw the glitter of a tear in one of Tibbets' eyes as they parted...
...on August 6,1945, Akihiro Takahashi was standing at roll call with sixty other junior-high-school students in a school yard about a mile from Ground Zero in Hiroshima...
...He radioed his commanding officer on the island of Tinian, the Enola Gay*s home base...
...Ever since the atomic bombing, the nail on Takahashi's right index finger has turned black—as black as the sky over Hiroshima after the bomb hit, as black as the rain that fell in the following days...
...The sky blackened and he felt himself being blown away by a ferocious gust...
...For several years he served as director of the Peace Memorial Museum, and gave guided tours to Pope John Paul II and other dignitaries...
...I consider him a friend...
...Tibbets, who now runs a jet-leasing company in Columbus, Ohio, says that for him August 6 is "just another day...
...This," Tibbets said, "is the logic of war...
...I felt that it was good that I met him," Takahashi says...
...He visited the Soviet Union and spoke before a United Nations assembly in Geneva...
...Piloting a B-29, he dropped a mock A-bomb, which faithfully reproduced a miniature mushroom cloud, while thousands cheered...
...Takahashi has written to the former pilot several times...
...This is why we must never wage war...
...One of his classmates cried out, "Look, it's a B-29...
...Thirty thousand feet above the school yard, Paul Tibbets, the twenty-nine-year-old pilot, was making a furious right turn at 285 miles per hour, and attempting to halt a steep climb caused by the sudden release of his 10,000-pound payload...
...A piece of glass was embedded in Takahashi's right hand...
...Target visually bombed with good results," Tibbets reported...
...But he minces no words in letting it be known that he has no second thoughts about the original bombing mission...
...No, sir...
...And I'm sure you were just following orders...
...But he soon became best known in Hiroshima for his black fingernail...
...Yet the two men continue to correspond with each other, across a gulf of pain and a bridge of hope...
...One of the reporters heard that Paul Tibbets was in town, and proposed arranging a first-ever meeting between the pilot of the Enola Gay and one of the bomb victims...
...In 1945, Hatfield was among the first American GIs to land in Hiroshima...
...Takahashi made his way home and found that it had collapsed, but his family had survived...
...I just dropped the damned thing...
...The mayor of Hiroshima sent a telegram of protest to the U.S...
...After recovering from his injuries, Takahashi went to work for the city of Hiroshima...
...Often, when August 6 rolls around, Tibbets has to be reminded what day it is, he says...
...He lapsed into unconsciousness for three weeks and spent the next year-and-a-half in bed...
...When their meeting ended, Takahashi, following Japanese custom, produced his business card...
...Government and the sponsors of the air show, the Air Force League, asking that future recreations be canceled...
...Whether he would or wouldn't, Tibbets isn't saying...
...he asked his tailgunner, Bob Caron, over the intercom...
...At this point, Takahashi gets up from the couch and leaves the room...
...When he got back to the States, Paul Tibbets attended War College, where he wrote a paper on the deployment of atomic weapons...
...The disparate, yet profoundly linked, lives of Takahashi and Tibbets converged again in 1980, when Senator Mark Hatfield organized an exhibit of photographs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the Russell Senate Office Building...
...When he returns he has in his hand three envelopes marked with the Executive Jet Aviation letterhead...
...Everyone stared and pointed excitedly at the plane...
...Japanese television and newspaper reporters accompanied Takahashi to Washington...
...Down in the school yard, Akihiro Ta-kahashi heard a great roar...
...On one occasion, Takahashi sent along a copy of the definitive English-language account of the effects of the bombing, Basic Books's Hiroshima and Nagasaki...
...I just want you Americans to remember Hiroshima as well as Pearl Harbor—just as we Japanese must remember Pearl Harbor as well as Hiroshima...
...Tibbets, surprised, fumbled in his briefcase for his own card, and handed it to Takahashi, smiling, "as if relieved," Takahashi recalls...
...But Japan only attacked military facilities, and the fleet," he observes...
...High above Hiroshima, Paul Tibbets was circling the mushroom cloud, and recording his impressions for posterity...
...See anything yet, Bob...
...But," he continues, slipping back in the couch and grinning, "if I talk more like this it will sound like I give in to my grudges, which I do not...
...The back of his head and his legs were burned...
...I didn't invent it or order its use...
...The Victim and the Pilot A HIROSHIMA REUNION BY GREG MITCHELL PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROBERT DEL TREDICI I have no intention of telling you about my grudges, now that so many years have passed," Akihiro Takahashi told Paul Tibbets when they met one afternoon outside a beautiful park in Washington, D.C...
...Takahashi readily acknowledges the evil of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor...
...Takahashi was invited to attend the opening of the show...
...Peace must be promoted by each individual's heart," Taka-haski explains...
Vol. 53 • August 1989 • No. 8
