(17 Mar 2000) English/Nat
The bombardier who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima that ended the World War Two has died in Florida.
Thomas Wilson Ferebee was part of the crew of the B-29 bomber that carried the first nuclear weapon ever deployed.
Ferebee, who said he never felt guilty for his actions, retired from the Air Force as a colonel in 1970.
The bombardier who dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, in World War Two has died in Florida.
Thomas Wilson Ferebee was 81.
Ferebee was a 26-year-old major, and a veteran of 64 Missions, when he took off in the B-29 "Enola Gay" on August 6, 1945, to bomb Hiroshima with the first nuclear weapon ever deployed.
Ferebee, who retired from the Air Force as a colonel in 1970, said he never felt guilty, but was sorry the bomb killed so many.
In 1995, on the 50th anniversary of the bombing, he said he hated to think something like that had to happen to end the war.
Ferebee's death leaves only four surviving members of the Enola Gay's crew, including the pilot, retired Brigadier General Paul Tibbets.
One woman who cannot forget the devastation of the atomic bomb is Hideko Tamura.
She was just a child of ten when the bomb was dropped on her city of Hiroshima.
Tamura recalls the earth shattering power of the bomb.
August 6th became known as the day of the two suns, for the bright fireball that engulfed the city.
Hideko Tamura's mother was killed in the blast.
The loss nearly drove Hideko to the brink of suicide - as she described in August 1995.
SOUNDBITE: (English)
"There were many, many moments when I felt so confused, so grieved that I at one point lost interest to continue living in that fashion"
SUPER CAPTION: Hideko Tamura, Hiroshima Survivor
Instead, Tamura eventually ended up here, at the University of Chicago.
Ironically, this is the home of the Manhattan Project, which developed the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.
A plaque commemorates the science that led to the bomb that destroyed her city.
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