Unless our school-aged youngsters are taught their heritage, and that of their parents, scholars who have never heard a shot fired will sit in their ivory towers and revise everything until the truth will be a lost art. Given the controversial fashion in which the Smithsonian Institution treated the subject of the Hiroshima bombing, how do you think historians will deal with the subject during the next 50 years?Ī. My father was scheduled to be in the invading force for the Japanese invasion.' In other words, their thesis was 'who but an insane person would do such a thing, drop such a devastating weapon on innocent women and children?' From the early '70s until now, I frequently get 'thank you' letters stating: 'I would not be here except for what you did at that time. From the '60s and '70s, Communist propaganda, which many accepted, depicted me as being insane. From the mid '40s to the mid '50s, I was often referred to as a hero. It's depending on who's giving me the treatment. How would you say history has treated you?Ī. With the 50th anniversary of the bombing this summer, the 79-year-old Tibbets _ who served from 1958 through 1961 as 6th Air Division commander at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa _ agreed to answer written questions.
Paul Tibbets Jr., the pilot of the Enola Gay, has refrained from publicly getting involved in the debate over the airplane, named after his mother. Since the controversy began about a year ago, retired Brig.
