The Deification of Some Guy The Deification of Some Guy Humanity and all its achievements no matter how great or how minute can be reduced to simple terms; somebody does something which causes something else to happen. This relationship is seen again and again in everything we do. I pull out my keys and start my car. I press a button on the remote control and the television comes on. You wad up this zine and toss it into the trash. We do things which can cause other things happen.
So I was pressing buttons and opening cans of beer while watching WRAL-TV 5's local newscast. It was another uneventful news evening full of people doing things and other things happening. Somebody broke into somebody's house and stole something. Another person failed to put on their brakes and flipped their car. And another person pulled the trigger of a handgun and killed someone.
I opened another can of beer as I watched a special news segment. David
Crabtree, the head anchorman, had interviewed a soldier from World War II. This
was no ordinary soldier, though. This was Thomas Ferebee the bombadier for the
Enola Gay. The news segment was called "The Day He Dropped the Bomb." Thomas
Ferebee did something that let an atomic bomb drop on Hiroshima. I put my beer
down as I watched the interview.
Who is this guy, I pondered. I had never heard of him before. I knew of the pilot, Paul Tibbets, but I had never actually thought about there being a bombardier on that plane. I would occasionally pause and ponder whenever Ferebee would say something. He spoke of patriotism and of no regret. He said that he would drop it again tomorrow if the circumstances were the same. Damn, I thought, that's kind of a cold thing to say. There was no doubt in my mind that this man knew what he had done, but I figured a person would have to have such an attitude of duty and honor to combat any feelings of regret and guilt. He had to think something after he killed all those people. I stopped...
All those people. That guy did something that killed all those people. How many people did he kill? The news segment said around 140,000 people had died in Hiroshima. An official count from Hiroshima in 1946 said that 78,150 were killed, 13,983 were missing 9,428 were seriously wounded, and 27,997 were slightly injured. Some estimates say that more than 100,000 were killed (Guinness Book of Records reports 155,200 that figures includes deaths from radiation). Regardless of that exact number, Thomas Ferebee, aged twenty four, did something that no other soldier had done before. In fact, he did something that no other human being in history of mankind had done before and has not done since!! He demonstrated a power previously reserved for the gods. Because of something he did, more than 70,000 people died in a very short period of time.
It's very easy to fall into the moral arguments of the Hiroshima bombing. History allows us the benefit of hindsight. Many argue the bombing was necessary to end the war and save both American and Japanese lives. Others are disgusted by our country's unleashing of an inhumane weapon on a predominantly civilian target. Why was Hiroshima such a big deal? There were other bombings that resulted in more fatalities. The fire bombings of Tokyo and Dresden had many more civilian casualities. And what about Nagasaki, the other city that was bombed?
Hiroshima and Thomas Ferebee stuck in my mind, because it was the first time that the atomic bomb was used as a weapon and it only took one guy to unleash it. It took many bombadiers to inflict the devastation seen in Dresden and Tokyo. Nagasaki's bombing also involved one guy dropping a bomb, but the official total of 45,000 deaths ranks that bombadier's godlike power second to Ferebee's.
Why such a fascination with Ferebee? If we look at human achievementsboth famous and infamouswe celebrate and villify those involved. Hitler is probably the late 20th century's biggest villian, but how many people did he actually kill? "Six million plus," some might say, but did Hitler actually do just one thing that killed all those people so quickly? Ferebee killed about 70,000 people in a couple of minutes.
Now you may argue (as many have before), that Ferebee wasn't solely responsible for the bombing. What about the other people in the plane? What about the two other planes? What about the entire Manhattan Project that created the bomb in the first place? And what about the President who okayed it all? Didn't they have their hands in this too? Shouldn't they share the blame/credit? Well, it took a lot of people to engineer and create the bomb. Also, Ferebee didn't carry the bomb on his shoulders all the way to Hiroshima. What stuck in my mind was that the terrifying power of the atomic bomb, which took months of intense research and two billion dollars to create, was being funneled through one person. One person would press a button and then ...boom! Even firing squads use some fake bullets with real ammunition allowing a squad member to think that he or she didn't fire the killing shot. All that is done just for one person. Ferebee had to drop a bomb that killed so many more. What was the government thinking? Or were they even thinking?
Another point haunted me as well. After the newscast I tried to find out all the information I could about Thomas Ferebee. Very few books mentioned him. In fact, he was barely a footnote in the whole war. Certainly, he did something that was important not just in the history of World War II, but in the history of human achievement. If we compare the media attention that a certain ex-football player is getting for murders he is just suspected of committing, Ferebee is a non-entity in latter 20th century mindthink.
On August 6th, 1995, many will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. Many will also apologize and philosophize. But how many will actually look back at that day and say, "Oh yeah, that was the day that the U.S. Government gave a godlike power to some soldier for a couple of minutes."
I went to the refrigerator and got another beer. I was 28 years old. Would I ever be able to wield such a power? It's doubtful anybody will.
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SOME NUMBERS
155,200 Hiroshima atomic bombing fatalities including radiation deaths (Guinness Book of Records)
140,000 Conventional bombing of Tokyo in World War II (Guinness Book of Records)
136,612 Population of Durham (as of 1990 Census)
133,821 Estimated Confederate deaths and wounded in Civil War (U.S. Dept. of Defense)
122,058 Total deaths in 1992 and 1993 in North Carolina (Natl. Ctr. for Health Statistics)
116,708 Total U.S. fatalities in World War I (U.S. Dept. of Defense)
92,112 Total U.S. fatalities in Korean Conflict, Vietnam War and Persian Gulf War combined (U.S. Dept of Defense)
931 Total established number of people strangled by Behram, an Indian Thugee cult member, between 1790 and 1840. He is considered to be the most successful murderer. (Guinness Book of Records)