Interviewing VanKirk for the book, she said, “was like sitting with your father at the kitchen table listening to him tell stories”.Ī funeral service was scheduled for VanKirk on 5 August in his hometown of Northumberland, Pennsylvania. VanKirk was energetic, very bright and had a terrific sense of humor, Dietz recalled on Tuesday. VanKirk’s military career was chronicled in a 2012 book, My True Course, by Suzanne Dietz. “I didn’t even find out that he was on that mission until I was 10 years old and read some old news clippings in my grandmother’s attic,” Tom VanKirk said. Like many second world war veterans VanKirk didn’t talk much about his service until much later in his life when he spoke to school groups, his son said. He later moved from California to the Atlanta area to be near his daughter. Then he went to school, earned degrees in chemical engineering and signed on with DuPont, where he stayed until he retired in 1985. VanKirk stayed on with the military for a year after the war ended. “But if anyone has one,” he added, “I want to have one more than my enemy.” In a 2005 interview with the AP, VanKirk said his second world war experience showed that wars and atomic bombs don’t settle anything and he’d like to see the weapons abolished. “I know he was recognized as a war hero but we just knew him as a great father,” he said in a telephone interview with the Associated Press on Tuesday. Van Kirk was the navigator of the Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress. Tom Van Kirk said he and his siblings were very fortunate to have had such a wonderful father who remained active until the end of his life. The last member of the American crew that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima during the second world war died in Georgia. This story first appeared as an interview from PRI's The Takeaway, a public radio program that invites you to join the American conversation.Van Kirk was the navigator of the Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress aircraft that dropped “Little Boy” – the world’s first atomic bomb – over the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. Caron and others in the 11-member crew of the B-29 Superfortress still weren't quite sure what it was that had. "It gave him empathy for who he looked at as the enemy." The crew of the B-29 called the Enola Gay had no regrets about dropping. "It made him think: What if he were to come home and find his home in that kind of condition?" Dietz says. Hear two surviving Enola Gay crew members of the planes that dropped the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs in Japan. While he was there, he met a Japanese soldier who, upon returning from war, was devastated to find his home destroyed. He was a father, a contributor to society, working for DuPont for over 30 years. I don't think it was a focus of his life, but it was obviously part of who he was."Īfter Japan surrendered, Van Kirk returned to the country to meet with scientists and survey the damage. overall, a mounted photo of the Enola Gay signed by pilot PAUL W. "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.