The Right Thing to Do?

You may not be familiar with who Paul Tibbets is but you may familiar with his work. The then Col. Tibbets piloted the first aircraft to drop the atomic bomb. On August 6, 1945, Tibbets flew the Enola Gay from Tinian Island in the Marianas at 2:45 a.m. for Hiroshima, Japan. Codenamed Little Boy, the atomic bomb was dropped over Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m., killing about 140,000 Japanese, with many more dying later.

Tibbets died earlier today at the age of 92. For the past few years he had been suffering from small strokes and heart failure. In his will, Tibbets stated that he did not want a funeral nor did he want a headstone- for he feared that his grave would attract protesters against the dropping of the atomic bomb.

In 1976, Tibbets re-enacted the bombing at an air show in Texas. After criticism from the Japanese, Tibbets stated how it was not meant to be an insult, but the U.S. government went on to formally apologize to Japan. On the 50th anniversary of the bombing in 1995, Tibbets called an anniversary exhibition of the Enola Gay at the Smithsonian Institution a "damn big insult", due to the suffering the bombing caused.

Tibbets never regretted his actions on the decision to drop the bomb. He stated that it was his patriotic duty and that he never lost sleep over it. Tibbets retired from the Air Force a Brigadier General in 1966. In March 2005, he stated “If you give me the same circumstances, hell yeah, I'd do it again.” Paul Tibbets went on to claim that he was never proud about taking so many lives, but he stated that the country was at war and it was the right thing to do.

War is such a complicated thing. So many are for it and so many are against it. We can ask ourselves what we would do and analyze our thoughts for hours. But in the sinful world we live in, it’s sometimes hard to figure out the right thing to do.