The most frequently asked question Paul Tibbets heard in his life was: “Did you have any regrets about dropping the Atomic Bomb?” The answer was always the same: “No.”
He passed away on November 1, 2007 at the age of 92. He piloted the Enola Gay over Hiroshima in 1945, following strict orders as a good soldier does, knowing full well that his payload was going to make history, for better or for worse.
I suppose his death will renew a very tired discussion about morality, whether or not he should have disobeyed orders, and whether inflicting such a tremendous loss of life on Japanese civilians was noble or just callous.
I leave that argument alone for now, and make this observation: I worked on a video crew that interviewed Tibbets, got to meet him, listened to his story, and read subsequent interviews. Mike Harden of the Columbus Dispatch conducted the best one, because Harden understood that military men of that time - and any time- don’t dissect morality the way civilians do. They do understand mortality, though, and can understand better than any revisionist that war is an ugly, ugly thing, with few happy outcomes.
Tibbets struck me as stoic, hardened, and cold when I met him. It was only in Harden’s interview that I began to understand that he’s been asked THAT QUESTION for so long by so many people who didn’t live through that time that he grew a sort of shell. On the other hand, when asked about the friends he knew who were killed in combat, Tibbets welled up. He understood all too well how necessary war is, and what a great tragedy it is to fight in one.
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