The issue will be hard to duck on 6 August when Keijiro Matsushima, 76, a survivor of the Hiroshima bomb, visits Tinian Island, the US base in the Pacific, to commemorate the Enola Gay's flight 60 years before. Whether they would have done the same as Tibbets in his position is a question some cannot, or will not, answer. Yet many acknowledge that in 1945 they were ready to fight to the death with bamboo spears, and dreamt of joining Japan's military machine, perhaps as Zero fighter pilots, kamikaze suicide bombers. As might be expected, nearly all of them condemn the use of the A-bomb as unethical.
Many of the Japanese children who felt the wrath of the bomb, Little Boy, when it exploded are still alive, too. The Enola Gay's mission over Hiroshima was so secret that Tibbets was given cyanide pills, one for each of the crew, so they could commit suicide if they fell into Japanese hands. General Paul Tibbets, who commanded the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress he named after his mother, is now 90 and living in Columbus, Ohio.