But if he gave you his word, you’ll hear from him sooner or later.’ For days I waited and no one came. I knew another pilot full of problems it wasn’t at all easy to arrange to meet him. One of the pilots in the formation which flew over Hiroshima that day was unable to participate in the victory celebrations he took his life three days before the official ceremony. On TV, serene under his white locks, he was unrepentant: ‘I did my duty I would do it again.’ Tibbets is the only one to have passed these years without so much as a shiver. All except one: Colonel Paul Tibbets, pilot of the Enola Gay, the plane that carried the atom bomb.
Even those people only remotely connected with the event have had difficult lives. The protagonists of Hiroshima have no nostalgia.
