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“In the military, all you do is what they tell you.Col. “I helped convince city commissioners to turn it into a park and hopefully, it will be a park for the rest of time and that was our idea,” Smith said. “What impressed them was that I had been part of the air-sea rescue support for dropping the first atomic bomb, but I was a lot more impressed that when I was city manager of Holly Hill I helped create Sunrise Park,” Smith said. He’s grateful for the award, but can think of other accomplishments that mean more to him here. Smith occasionally shares his experiences in museums, civic organizations and classrooms, always careful to point out how little he actually knew at the time about the historic event.Ī few years back, he was honored by his high-school alma mater as a Cuda Achiever for his role in the Enola Gay mission. We created hell in their homeland, but I believe it (the bomb) saved Japanese lives as well as ours.” “The Army Air Corps made them pay a price for it. “War is hell and the Japanese military created hell at Pearl Harbor,” he said. Smith never has been burdened by moral conflicts over his role in dropping the first atomic bomb. “I know when I cross Spruce Creek I’m home,” he said. When he returned from war to New Smyrna Beach in the fall of 1945, he married, raised two children and devoted himself to public service, working as city manager in Daytona Beach in the 1970s and in Holly Hill in the 1980s.
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Over the years, others in the squadron have returned to the Mariana Islands for reunions, but Smith has never joined them. “There were 11 of us on the crew and there may be one other than me still alive now.”
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“Mostly, I think about how lucky I was to come out alive,” Smith said. On the 70th anniversary, he expects to ponder his good fortune. “The atomic bombings arguably contributed to the rise of the United States as a superpower and the dominant power in the world today, the start of the Cold War and the transformation of … Japan into an economic powerhouse and a key American ally,” Seah said by email.įor Smith, not a day passes that his mind doesn’t turn to that mission, if only for a moment. That opinion is validated by Leander Seah, history professor and director of the Asian Studies Program at Stetson University in DeLand. “I consider it the most significant event of the 20th century." “I never would have dreamed what it did when it exploded,” said Smith, who later flew missions to observe the bomb’s destruction. The Enola Gay didn’t end up in the water, of course, and it wasn’t until the planes were returning to Tinian that the crew heard an announcement from President Truman about the atomic bomb. “It was an easy mission, just circle around above that submarine.” “The theory was that if the Enola Gay had to land in the water, we’d fly over it and drop rafts and such,” Smith said. for a position off the Japanese coast about 350 miles from Hiroshima. In addition to Smith’s crew, the Enola Gay was accompanied by two other B-29s, one to take pictures and another to observe the bomb’s aftermath. “We weren’t scared on that one because nobody was shooting at us,” said Smith, 90. By comparison, his role on a support aircraft on the Enola Gay mission unfolded less dramatically. Missions ranged from dropping mines to disrupt Japanese shipping to unleashing 500-pound bombs on airfields, Smith recalled.