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MARIETTA - Making history isn't always a pleasant experience, as World War II veteran Theodore "Dutch" Van Kirk can attest.

As a crew member of the Enola Gay, the B-29 "Superfortress" bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan on Aug. 6, 1945, Vank Kirk has spent much of his life explaining his involvement in an incident that helped end the war, but also claimed the lives of thousands of people.

But the 87-year-old Stone Mountain resident is at ease with himself and his position in world history.

"Why did we drop the atomic bomb?" is the most frequent question he's asked when he travels to schools and other places to tell his story, said Van Kirk, navigator of the Enola Gay.

"The only thing the young people today remember about the atomic bomb is that it killed a lot of people. That's the only thing people and schools remember about the atomic bomb," he said. "I talk to them and say, 'you know, there was a war going on.'"

On Wednesday, about 200 military personnel and other invited guests - including several World War II veterans - crowded into the Army National Guard armory at Dobbins Air Reserve Base to listen to Van Kirk share his personal accounts of the bombing of Hiroshima.

Van Kirk joined the Air Force at 19, after his first summer in college. He met Col. Paul Tibbet, the Enola Gay pilot, after finishing navigation school in 1942. Kirk flew many missions with him before Tibbet asked Van Kirk to be his navigator, a point that both men joked about until Tibbet recently died.

"He and I argued about whether or not I volunteered," recalled Van Kirk. "I said yes, I had my orders two days before you even made a telephone call."

Van Kirk said the men, who were trained to drop atomic bombs at Wendover, Utah, knew that what they were doing was important and to be kept a secret.

"We were told that we were going to either shorten or end the war," he said.

The Enola Gay had been stripped of its turrets and other non-essential equipment to reduce its weight, he remembered.

Van Kirk recalled being caught off guard when asked by a fire official whether or not fire personnel should try and put out the fire or run the other way if the Enola Gay crashed during take off. Later, he said they both came to realize that "it didn't make a…bit of difference."

In the end, the 12-member crew of the Enola Gay was successful in their mission. Kirk said it took 43 seconds for the bomb to leave the aircraft and then explode.

Because the Enola Gay had to be at least 9 miles away by the time the atomic bomb exploded, Kirk said he and his fellow crewmembers only saw the flash of the explosion. But the bombing, he said, left Hiroshima covered in smoke, dust and debris.

Col. Brent Bracewell, president of the Georgia Chapter of the Army Aviation Association of America, which hosted Wednesday's event at Dobbins, said it's important to have World War II veterans like Kirk share their war experiences before its too late.

"Those guys are dying so quickly and we're losing much of our history," he said.

Norris Connally, 87, of Atlanta, served as a Tuskegee Airman during the war. After listening to Kirk speak, he said there were a number of things he learned about the Hiroshima bombing that he never knew about.

"It was quite interesting and this was a very rewarding trip," Connally said.

In August 1945, Marietta resident Bill Price, now 87, was being held in a Tokyo prison after his B-29 was rammed by a kamikaze pilot and crashed. He said he was only days away from being executed when the prison was liberated on Aug. 29, after the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan that led to the surrender by Japan.

After Kirk spoke, Price and fellow World War II prisoner of war, Bob Granston of Stone Mountain, stood-up and personally thanked him for saving their lives by helping to bring the war to an end.

mhoward@mdjonline.com

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