6, 1945 ,when he and fellow crewmembers lifted off from Tinian and headed to Japan, carrying their deadly cargo beneath them. I lived every moment with him - from the pre-dawn of Aug. I don’t remember what had brought Van Kirk to the hospital, but he was well enough at that moment to welcome me into his room and agree that - after he had returned home - I could interview him.įor more than two hours I was transfixed by his story. “No, no,” she persisted, “This man dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.” I probably sniffed a bit because people are always pushing reporters to write about someone they know - someone who grows enormous zucchini or square-dances nonstop for six hours at a time. I was visiting my sister at Marin General Hospital and a nurse who knew I wrote for the IJ, said, “You should interview the man in the bed across the hall.” He had been living a low-profile life in Novato, working as a chemical engineer for DuPont when I met him. He was a player in one of the most significant - and much debated - moments in U.S.
Van Kirk, who died last month at age 93, was the navigator on the Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Of the hundreds of interviews I did as a reporter for the IJ, the one I remember most is the one with Theodore (“Dutch”) Van Kirk.
