Dark Star: Hiroshima Reconsidered in the Life of Eatherly

Hardcover

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On the morning of August 6, 1945, at about 7.15 Japanese time, Captain Eatherly radioed from reconnaissance plane to the atom bomb plane an hour’s flying time behind him that weather conditions over the primary target, Hiroshima, were satisfactory for bombing. This decision, says the official history of the U.S. Air Force, “sealed the city’s doom”. But what the decision Eatherly’s? Or was it Tibbets? – the pilot of the plane which actually dropped the bomb. Or was it Truman’s? – the President who gave the final order to drop it. Or was it Fermi’s? – the scientist who first started a continuous chain reaction and proved that man could manipulate nuclear energy. Or are we are implicated, all in some degree responsible for the world we have made? That is the fundamental question posed by this absorbing – and vitally important – biographical study of Claude Eatherly, the man who in his own person represents every one of us.

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