Tom Henshaw: Sleep well, my hero

A war hero died with little fanfare last week and I don't want to let him to go quietly.

He was a particular hero of mine and several hundred thousand others who don't have the opportunity to put words on paper for all to see.

Paul Tibbetts was a general when he died but to me he'll always be Col. Tibbetts, the pilot of the B-29 called the Enola Gay that dropped the first atom bomb on Hiroshima, killing at least 70,000 people, but saving hundreds of thousands more.

There's a better than 50-50 chance that I was one of them.

I was a radio-gunner on a PBJ Mitchell medium bomber attached to Marine squadron VMB 423 in a place called Malabang on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines at the time, preparing for the invasion of the Japanese homeland.

We didn't know when it was coming or what our role was to be because the Marines had a disquieting habit of raiding their Air Wing to find warm bodies for the FMF after a particularly bloody battle and this was right after Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

FMF stood for Fleet Marine Force, the guys who jumped out of the LCIs and ran up the beach. It was not a pleasant prospect to one who had spent the previous months dropping bombs on stranded Japanese in remote places like Rabaul and Kavieng.

The scuttlebutt was that there would be upwards of 800,000, maybe a million, casualties in the invasion of Japan, not counting the Japanese themselves, the same people who had fought to the death across the Pacific, even to the point of suicide.

The beginning of the end of all that came on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, when Col. Tibbetts flew the Enola Gay over Hiroshima. Eight days and another A-bomb later, Japan surrendered and World War II was over.

In the 62 years that have passed since the bloodiest war of them all ended and the horrors of nuclear warfare have become apparent, attempts have been made to paint Col. Tibbetts as a villain who needlessly killed thousands of innocent women and children.

Those who are wont to rewrite history reported at various times that he was in prison or a hopeless alcoholic or driven insane by guilt over what he had done. Actually, he had done very well, rising to the rank of brigadier general in the Air Force, retiring in 1966 to take over an air taxi service and retiring from that in 1985.

"I'm not proud that I killed 800,000 people," he said. "We were at war. You use anything at your disposal."

The second sentence of his obit said: "He was 92 and insisted for six decades after the war that he had no regrets about the mission and slept just fine at night."

For the thousands of us who lived long and productive lives, I say, "Thanks and continue to sleep well, Col. Tibbetts."