Eyewitness to Hiroshima, and the Enola Gay

In this special season of World War II On Topic, The National WWII Museum will explore J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Manhattan Project, and the history and ramifications of the atomic bomb. 

The anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima was August 6. In this episode, we hear from two extraordinary people who experienced the bombing, albeit from vastly different perspectives. While much has been written and said on the subject, these are firsthand recollections, excerpted from the oral histories given by Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk and Ittsei Nakagawa.

Van Kirk was the navigator on the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress bomber that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. He was the last surviving member of the Enola Gay crew before his death in 2014.

Nakagawa was a Japanese American from California who got stuck in Japan due to the war. He was there, in Hiroshima, on that fateful day and survived to tell his experience.

These oral histories were recorded by the Museum and provide a first-person look into the lives of those who experienced these amazing and terrifying events.

To read more visit our Manhattan Project topics page: www.nationalww2museum.org/war/topics/manhattan-project