9/11

IN 1955 AN AMERICAN TV SHOW DID THE UNTHINKABLE: IT AMBUSHED A HIROSHIMA SURVIVOR WITH AN ENOLA GAY PILOT

The tv show "This Is Your Life" surprised Kiyoshi Tanimoto by introducing him to one of the American bomber pilots on live television.
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“Now you’ve never met him,” comes the voice of Ralph Edwards, host of the wildly popular 1950s television show, “This Is Your Life.” You “have never seen him but he’s here tonight to clasp your hand in friendship.”

And with that, a large, square figure stepped out from behind a screen to shake the hand of what appears to be a deeply reticent Kiyoshi Tanimoto.

Tanimoto, a Methodist minister, was 36 years old when he became a survivor of Hiroshima. As to the shadowy figure who stepped out from behind the screen? Capt. Robert Lewis, co-pilot and aircraft commander of the Enola Gay — the B-29 bomber that unleashed the first atomic bomb, Little Boy, on the city of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945.

At the time, Tanimoto was visiting the United States to coordinate care for 25 women who had been badly disfigured by the dropping of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima.

Dubbed the Hiroshima Maidens, the women were going to Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City for reconstructive surgery in May of 1955, and Tanimoto believed that he was in the studio to be interviewed about these women and their suffering, according to Electric Literature.

www.historynet.com/hiroshima-survivor-meets-enola-gay-pilot/