MY GOD! WHAT HAVE WE DONE!

A Maywood Man Was There When Hiroshima Died

By Mark Howat

The year was 1945.  The month was August… and it was the sixth day.  It was the day Man leveled a city and snuffed out 85,000 lives. And the New World was here… and there was no turning back.  

It was the day Hiroshima died. It rolled in its own blood and vomit and became dust. The heat of the sun touched the city, and the world could never be again what it once was.  In 1 millionth of a second, Hiroshima knew for all time the total fury of War and the hate of Man and the Wrath of God.

A Maywood man was there the day they changed the world. At 30,000 feet in the air, he saw the beginning of the atomic age, and he groped for words when the bomb fell on Hiroshima.

"My God!  What have we done!"

And there below a city disappeared. Black, swirling smoke choked the life out of whatever it touched. 

In 3 minutes it climbed 6 miles in the air and still it clawed its way upward till it reached 10 miles.

And 12 men stood breathless. For there were no words to convey the feeling and horror and awe that came over them.

Robert Alvin Lewis, former captain, United States Army Air Force, now just plain citizen, Maywood, N.J., took controls of the Enola Gay at 0227 on the most fateful day in almost 2,000 years of Man’s history.

In less than 7 hours, he would help to change the world.  But at 0245, he had no thought of the morrow as the B29 lifted itself into the air and hummed toward the Land of the Rising Sun.

Robert Alvin Lewis had been a football star at Ridgefield Park High School 10 years before. And then he had been employed as an engineer for the Heide Manufacturing Company in New York. But at 0420 on Aug. 6, 1945, Robert Alvin Lewis was hungry so he ate.  And the Enola Gay inched closer to Japan. 

And a late moon hung like a silver wafer against a backdrop of ink in the east, while the people of Hiroshima slept.

For a year, Captain Lewis had been trained for this flight. For a year he knew of it,  and now he knew nothing. He knew he had to drop a bomb, to get away fast, and that was all.  Hiroshima, Kokura, Nagasaki… take your pick. You can blast anyone to Hell and back, it's up to you. Everything's up to you. Success or failure, winning or losing a war maybe… even changing the world; who could tell at 0710, with sunbeams bouncing off the Enola Gay, the way a wave might kiss a bottle bobbing in the ocean.

Pioneering wasn’t new to Captain R. A. Lewis. Had he been born a few hundred years earlier he might have shown Columbus a thing or two.  But Captain R. A. Lewis had been born at the close of the Great War, only to live through a greater one.  He pioneered in the B-29, and at Elgin Field in Florida he set, what was at the time a B-29 altitude record of 39, 600 feet in the skygiant.  So pioneering came easy to
Captain R. A. Lewis as his B-29 sighted land at 0830 on the day they changed the world.

It was then that they chose the target.  Climbing to 30,000 feet in the air the decision was made.  Hiroshima, 45 minutes flying time away, was to be the first city ever to know the violence of Nature when Man split the atom.  Hiroshima, headquarters for the Second Imperial Japanese Army, was to be target zero.  Hiroshima... A virgin city in that it had not been scarred by the bombs of war, would feel the explosive might of 20,000 bombs for 1 millionth of a second.  Hiroshima, and one bomb, and a lifetime to live with for the crew of the Enola Gay.

Unseen, unknown, unchallenged, she floated toward the city.

It was a beautiful Monday with ceiling and visibility unlimited.  The buildings stood tall and erect and the city was awake. For the city was at war, and her people were ready for war as they knew it.  They expected bombings and killings and new blood would be spilled.  But how much blood and when?

At 0911 the city was sighted.  The Enola Gay moved in like a gull silver and gleaming and ready to kill.  She had a 4 minute run on a perfectly open target.

The Enola Gay, 8 miles away, was shaken twice by the force of the explosion.  The bomb was triggered to explode at 1,800 feet above the city and it did.

The sight of the havoc that Man wrought on Hiroshima that moment touched the very soul of
Bob Lewis.  Minutes later he picked up a pencil and wrote:

“In front of our eyes was without a doubt the greatest explosion Man has ever witnessed.  The city was nine-tenths covered with smoke of a boiling nature, which seemed to indicate buildings blowing up, and a large column of a white cloud.  In less than 3 minutes, it reached 30,000 feet, then went to at least 50,000 feet.

“I am certain the entire crew felt the experience was more than any one human had ever thought possible.  It just seems impossible to comprehend just how many Japs did we kill.  I honestly have the feeling of groping for words to explain this, or I might say ‘My God,’ What have we done.’

“If I live a hundred years, I’ll never get these few minutes out of my mind. Looking at Captain Parsons,{ Navy scientist who worked on the bomb }, he is as confounded as the rest.  And he was supposed to have known everything and expected this much to happen. 

“After a few last looks, I honestly feel the Japs may give up before we land at Timan.  They certainly don’t care to have us use any more bombs of atomic energy like this.

“Bob Carron, our tail-gunner got excellent pictures, and everyone on the ship is actually dumb struck, even though we had expected something fierce.  It was the actual sight that we saw that caused the crew to feel that they were part of another century."

And so the world as Bob Lewis and the crew of the Enola Gay knew it ended.  For them and for the rest of Man life could never be what it once was.

 Ten years have past.  Long years or short years, depending on where you were Aug. 6, 1945. To the pilot of the Enola Gay, the day is like yesterday.  There are no today’s, and tomorrow never comes.  It’s always yesterday.  It’s always Aug. 6, 1945, a 4 – minute run on a perfectly open target and the city that died on the day they changed the world.

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Nine months after the Enola Gay obliterated Hiroshima with the first atomic bomb ever used against a military target, Captain Robert A. Lewis, copilot of the B-29, married the former Mary Kelly of West New York.  This couple lives in a modest home on Edgewood Place in Maywood. They have three children: Susan Eileen, 8, Robert Jr., 7, and John Peter, 3.

Today Lewis is personnel and labor relations manager for the Henry Heide firm.  After getting out of the service he was a pilot for American Airlines, making hops across the Atlantic for a year.  But his wife got nervous with him away so often and flying so much, so Lewis gave that up. 

*       *         *       *

How does Lewis feel about the bomb today?  Was it right or wrong?  He says it can never be wholly right but being at war and using an untried weapon certainly would allow for its use at the time.

Lewis knew of the fierce slaughter on Iwo Jima, and says that taking the mainland of Japan would have resulted in casualties that would have made the Hiroshima figure look small.  “Every Jap had his own cave, and every one would have fought to the death,” he added.

But no nation should ever again use an atomic bomb on another people he declares.