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- I knew it was something special.

Took about three months, I realized that it was something real special.

But I had no idea as far as it being an atomic bomb.

[bomb exploding] - We did a little bit of a daredevil thing of getting down that low.

We were really not supposed to.

- [Host] What'd you see?

- It was an area that was just charred.

It was, if you could imagine, a blackened area.

[dramatic music] ♪ [dramatic music continues] ♪ [dramatic music continues] [lively music] - [Host] Finally, after almost four years of fighting, after losing almost 300,000 American lives, World War II was over.

It ended when it did because of something that happened one week earlier on August 6th, 1945.

[bomb blasting] The United States dropped the first atomic bomb.

It took the bomb 43 seconds to fall 31,300 feet.

And for many, that free fall marks a seam in history created by a propeller-driven B-29 aircraft, bearing a weapon unlike anything the world had seen.

- A short time ago, an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima and destroyed its usefulness to the enemy.

That bomb has more power than 20,000 tons of TNT.

- [Host] Colonel Tom Ferebee of Knoxville, North Carolina, was the bombardier aboard the Enola Gay.

I met Tom Ferebee in 1998.

You got the call to become part of one of these two crews in April?

- No, it was last August of '44.

- [Host] So a year before the mission took place.

- Just about exactly a year ago.

- [Host] Tom Ferebee was born November 9th, 1918 in Davie County, North Carolina.

He was one of 11 children.

He and his brother Bill were in their early twenties.

when the United States entered World War II.

- I arrived at Pearl Harbor, April the fifth, 1942.

- [Host] The Ferebee Brothers grew up on a farm in Knoxville during the Great Depression.

Like many families at the time, they were just getting by.

Their story is much like other World War II veteran stories we've collected over the decades.

- Predominantly agricultural state.

Big in tobacco, big in cattle, big in cotton in the Piedmont region.

- We were poor.

North Carolina was poor because we had depended on an agrarian economy.

So our people worked hard, you know, they worked real hard, didn't have a whole lot of money, but they had a lot of character and integrity.

- A lot of people were tenant farmers and my dad was a tenant farmer.

We grew our own food.

We didn't buy much from the grocery store.

Sugar and coffee was about all.

We didn't know any different, to tell you the truth.

It was hard times for everybody.

- [Host] In early 1942, hard times lingered, but so did memories of the last European War, then known as the Great War.

- You see, it hadn't been that long since World War I and the American people didn't wanna get involved.

Germany was bombing a fool out of England, you know, but still, we didn't wanna get involved.

But after Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt declared war on Germany and Japan.

- [President Roosevelt] It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned, many days or even weeks ago.

[bombs exploding] [guns firing] - [Newsreader] We interrupt this program to bring you a special news bulletin.

The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii by air.

- [Newsreader 2] The Japanese have attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, - [Newsreader 3] Then has attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii and Manila in the Philippine islands.

- We heard that first bulletin.

You can't imagine what happened in your thinking that very moment.

You knew what was going to happen to you.

And you knew that all you'd been witnessing and hearing about and reading about, here it is now, it's our war.

- So everybody was interested in ending this war.

So a lot of people volunteered then, just like I did.

- [Host] More than 360,000 North Carolinians served in World War II.

[artillery firing] - [Commentator] The enemy fights tenaciously, but he is reeling from the power and speed of the Allied attack.

[artillery exploding] - I didn't wanna be a foot soldier.

I volunteered for the Navy to keep from being drafted.

Well, I went to Charlotte and signed up, and I went from Charlotte to Raleigh and from Raleigh to Norfolk, Virginia.

And when I finished boot camp, I wanted to get into aviation any way that I could and I put in for aviation machinist school.

And when I finished that school and I went right straight to San Francisco, and from there to Pearl Harbor.

So I was just an enlisted man, but still I was considered a plane captain.

I serviced the plane when it was on the ground and when it was in the air, I flew with it as a gunner.

[guns firing] - [Host] While Bill enlisted in the Navy, his brother Tom joined the US Army Air Forces.

[airplane engines roaring] - He had an injury in high school football.

When he went to flight school in Texas, at high altitude that knee would stiffen up and he couldn't work the rudder pedal.

So they washed him out.

He came home and helped my dad on the farm in the summer of 1941.

And that fall, he went back to bombardier school and became a bombardier, and that's how he became a bombardier.

- [Host] Tom Ferebee was a success in bombardier school.

He was stationed in Europe where he'd meet Colonel Paul Tibbets.

- He was in Tibbets' squadron.

He was Tibbets' lead Bombardier.

They were shot up on every mission that they were on and barely made it back to England.

[planes firing] He had 63 combat missions in Europe and North Africa before Tibbets brought him back to train to drop the atomic bomb.

It took a lot of training to get prepared to drop the atomic bomb.

And in Tibbets' book that I was reading, he said that he was the bravest man he'd ever seen in combat.

- [Host] Tom Ferebee's combat service in Europe caught the eye of top military leaders in Washington, especially General Hoyt Vandenberg.

- He told me they had something planned for me, but he didn't know what it was.

So they sent me to Ardmore, Oklahoma where they processed crews and B-17s back over the seas.

And I stayed there about a month and I got ordered a letter, I mean, a message from General Armstrong, and he said, "I'm trying to have you transferred to my B-29 wing in Grand Island, Nebraska.

So about an hour later, I got a top secret message from Washington, highest urgency.

They were transferring me to to Wendover, Utah.

So I got checked on and it was a fighter base.

And I arrived and nobody on the base and no airplanes or nothing, and went up to headquarters and there's a lieutenant, in fact he was from North Carolina, and a secretary.

And I told 'em I was supposed to report to somebody but they said, "Well, you can't, they're in a meeting."

- [Host] At the time, Ferebee did not know just what the people in that room would be known for.

- About 10 minutes later, Paul stuck his head out of the room where they were having the meeting.

So, I meet General Grove and Doctor Oppenheimer, Dr. Compton, and I forget the other, it was another doctor, Szilard, but they were all briefing Paul.

And then they called me in and gave me a little briefing and I went out and discussed with Paul and he said, "Well, they said we could get two crews by name anywhere in the world."

- [Host] Tom Ferebee spent nearly one year training for the mission, not fully aware of what that mission was.

- There was some dissension among some of the people in General LeMay's headquarters, about Paul being capable of flying it because he hadn't been practicing with me.

So I called him and told him he better get over there, that things were not too good.

No reason why that we should train together in a B-29, because no difference in dropping a bomb from a B-29 than a B-17.

And we'd flown many missions together in B-17s so it wasn't necessary.

And because, like I say, people make all the special training and stuff for it, there's no difference in the world dropping an atomic bomb than a regular bomb.

The same bomb site.

- Even with the weight?

- Well, I dropped some big bombs before.

But the weight was a little different, yeah, but I'd dropped a lot there with this other crew for the same weight.

But no, that made no difference whatsoever.

- [Host] But the process was the same/ - Yeah, it was no different.

- [Host] As August 6th, 1945 approached, the crew transferred to Guam ahead of the Hiroshima assignment.

- We didn't know the date until I actually called the briefing.

- The week before?

- Well, Paul and I went up to Guam about three or four days before and went over the targets with General LeMay and his staff, and decided on the heading and everything would go in.

And I actually decided on the primary target.

So that was the first time I knew of a date.

It was approaching, I don't remember whether they exactly said August the sixth when we went up there to him or not, but I knew it was approaching when we'd be gone.

- [Host] Total secrecy surrounded the mission.

The air crew was briefed on their assignment one day before the atomic bomb dropped.

- Everything was so secret.

You can't imagine how secret everything was.

He just told his mother in a letter that he would be gone for a while, but for her not to worry, that he'd be all right.

- Each time I'd fly something, we'd call it a drop, I called it a unit or a gadget, never a bomb.

In fact, I never heard the word atomic used until I landed back at Tinian after the mission.

- [Host] The B-29 was named for the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets' mother, one day before the bombing run.

The bomb called "Little Boy" weighed four and a half tons.

- Normally, on a regular mission, other people load the bomb.

You wouldn't even be around the airplane when they loaded them, actually.

And all I would do is just go to briefing and get the weather information, the winds and the altitude I was supposed to drop from and everything, and briefing on any aircraft or fighters expected, stuff like that.

- [Host] At 2:45 in the morning, Sunday, August 6th, 1945, the Enola Gay left Tinian Island.

[airplane engines rumbling] It was a six and a half hour, nearly 1,600 mile flight to Hiroshima, Japan.

- You have an eyepiece about that size, I guess.

And it's kind of a telescope.

And you look through that and you can put your crosshair down about 25 miles away, as I remember, ahead of your aircraft.

I'd have the drift already set in and everything.

And when it locked on the target I didn't have much to do.

But you could see, well, about 60 mile, I could see the city.

But there's about 25 mile before I could actually get my crosshairs on it and start synchronizing.

But I was already lined up with it perfectly.

That's another thing I insisted on, that we go upwind to give me more time, because some of the staff and the General LeMay said I wanna go downwind to not be in there, not as much time.

I said, "I'm going up there to hit something.

I'm not just going up there..." So I wanted to go upwind where I'll have more time to synchronize everything.

So we did.

- [Host] After synchronizing the target and making sure the bomb bay doors would open, Ferebee waited as the plane few closer to its drop destination.

The aircraft slowly climbs to its bombing altitude over Iwo Jima.

[airplane engines rumbling] Shortly after eight in the morning, a weather plane in Hiroshima reports that the weather is good over the city.

- I was convinced they knew what they were doing.

I didn't know exactly what they were doing, but I was convinced they knew what they were doing.

But we saw the stills photos of the Alamogordo thing before we went.

So all they did was tell us to stay away from the cloud so we knew approximately what it was gonna look like from the still photo they showed us of the Alamogordo thing.

- [Host] At around 8:15 in the morning, the doors opened and the 9,000 pound bomb fell for 43 seconds before detonating 1,700 feet above ground.

[bomb exploding] The 12-man crew of the Enola Gay had been instructed to wear special green goggles to protect their eyes from the atomic flash.

And everyone, except Paul Tibbets, the pilot, and Tom Ferebee, followed those instructions.

- So I wanted to see if it was falling clear and I was looking down watching it.

So when it went off, it blinded us just momentarily.

But when it went off, we were going in the opposite direction, but it still blinded us.

So when I saw it go off, and I remember the pilots and I were supposed to look and decide whether it was a full order detonation or not.

So he was back in the radio room and I got up, went back and discussed it with him, and we looked at it as we went by it, and it was obvious that it was a full order detonation.

So that's why I was just happy that it worked.

- [Host] This was the first time in history an atomic bomb had been used, and none of the Enola Gay crew could know what to expect when that bomb detonated.

- Well, the first thing we noticed, was also was a kind of a bump, bump bump, and I thought it was flak.

I turned to Paul and I said, "The so-and-so's are shooting at us."

And then about that time we both realized it was combustion from the bomb, but it wasn't anything bad.

- [Host] But that's something you hadn't felt before?

- No.

Well, it felt to me like, but I'd felt a big burst of flak close to it in Europe.

You got kind of a crunch, crunch like that, and I thought that's what it was.

But then it turned out it was the bomb, combustion of the bomb.

It was planned properly and it was flown properly so there just wasn't much to it, except it was something special and had never been done before, where the other bomb had been exploded, or one like it.

But mine had never been tested.

So when it went, I was just happy that it went off.

- We are now prepared to destroy more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have in any city.

We shall destroy their docks, their factories, and their communications.

Let there be no mistake, we shall completely destroy Japan's power to make war.

- [Host] Despite warnings of total destruction, the Japanese refused to surrender.

[airplane engines humming] Three days later on August 9th of 1945, another B-29 dropped a second atomic bomb, this time on Nagasaki.

[bomb exploding] - When I came back off that thing, I knew it was something big but I never realized it would last as long as it has and change the world as much as it has.

Because it made a quite an impact, much more than I ever realized at the time.

- And I hadn't heard from him in six months.

A friend of mine that was from Alabama, he got a letter from home telling him that Tom Ferebee was the bombardier.

And he told me.

Now, this was about a week after he dropped the bomb.

- [Host] On August 14th, 1945, after two atomic bomb drops within three days, Japan fully surrendered.

- One rainy night laying on the cot, I heard all this screaming and shouting and yelling, and oh, the bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

And the war was over.

- At that time, we were getting ready to go to Japan, but they dropped a bomb and that's what saved our neck.

It was a happy time, I can tell you.

- A lot of people were partying and drinking and this chaplain had a service the next morning and he said, "This is gonna be a great responsibility because you're gonna leave from here and you're going to have to be responsible for what happens in our country.

And the part of the rest of the world, it's going to have to move on from these wars."

- [Host] North Carolinians across the state celebrated the announcement that war was over.

- People went crazy, even in small towns.

I remember the people shouting and hollering and dancing, just overjoyed that the war was over.

Those that hadn't been killed were coming home.

- The guy who managed Rose's Five and Dime opened the store and gave away every US flag he had.

And my mom kept that flag with a notation of, it was for VJ day.

It was a time of relief.

Stores had holidays for two days.

Everybody just celebrated.

- [Host] It was after the mission that Ferebee and the crew learned how effective they had been.

The bomb missed its target by a scant 700 feet, but that made no difference to anyone on the ground and anyone who heard about it across the world.

- There was just nothing.

No life there.

- [Host] Roy Coats of Smithfield was a pilot during World War II.

He was one of the first to fly over Hiroshima after the bombing.

- We did a little bit of a daredevil thing of getting down that low.

We were really not supposed to.

- [Host] What'd you see?

- It was an area that was just charred.

It was, if you could imagine, a blackened area.

- [Host] Approximately 140,000 people died at Hiroshima.

Many from the initial blast, but also from radiation.

- If the same circumstance, I'd do it tomorrow.

Without any hesitation.

- Anybody now who's condemning the United States for the actions that was taken at that time, it bothers me.

- I have seen B-24s, Marine B-24s that were operating out of Guadalcanal when I was there.

come in with the plane shot all to hell.

Blood splattered clear to the rudder.

You don't get over that.

- And I visited the survivors of Bataan, the Death March, about five, six years ago.

And I'm going up this summer.

Spent a couple of days with 'em on their anniversary.

And yeah, those people tell their stories.

I mean, I mean, it was awful.

I mean, it's horrible the way they were treated.

And well, they would've all been killed at tour if this thing hadn't have gone off.

If we'd have invaded, they'd have been killed immediately.

- [Host] This mission liberated those people?

- Yeah, well, as far as right then.

I mean, eventually some of 'em might've been, but they told me that not one of 'em would've lived through the winter because they would have froze to death because they were so weak and they had no heat or anything, even if they hadn't have killed them.

But if we'd invaded, they were gonna kill 'em anyway.

- [Host] In May of 1991, Tom spoke to a crowd in his hometown of Knoxville.

- Tom spoke to the people out here at Knoxville on Veterans Day, And different ones went up to him and told him that they wouldn't be alive today if he hadn't dropped that bomb.

I'm sorry that I get emotional.

The only time that I ever saw Tom get emotional was when they unveiled that marker up here at the old home place.

He had nerves of steel.

- Well, I don't talk about it a lot, but something like this, I mean, I don't mind at all, 'cause I'd like to see some people from North Carolina get a little recognition, and yeah.

- [Host] You're a hero to a lot of people.

- Well, I hope they figured I did help, I did my part and... - [Host] But you don't like being called a hero?

- No, I don't feel I'm anymore a hero than anybody else.

You just happened to be on a certain mission.

I mean, I don't think I did anything that above and beyond what the normal person would do.

- [Host] But still, it is a mission that almost... - Yeah, I understand that, yeah.

And it made much more impact than I realized at the time I did it.

And it seemed like it's getting more complicated as it goes along.

But there's a, like I say, there's many people in North Carolina that did just as, maybe it didn't cause the impact that what mine did, but they still did their part.

[solemn music] ♪ [solemn music continues] ♪ [solemn music continues] ♪ [solemn music continues] ♪ - [Announcer] Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.