FLASHBACK: Enola Gay Vet Indignant When Williams Asked About 'Remorse' for A-Bomb
Scott Whitlock
August 7th, 2021 12:15 PM
It’s important to remember that, though Brian Williams was forced to resign in disgrace for telling multiple lies, the ex-NBC Nightly News anchor made plenty of obnoxious, stupid comments before he lost his job.
It was 16 years ago this week, on August 5, 2005, that Williams prodded an Enola Gay pilot about his “remorse” for dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945. (This was for the then-60th anniversary of Hiroshima.)Talking to the late Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk at the Smithsonian, the NBC journalist scolded the veteran as the two stood near the Enola Gay. Van Kirk was having none of it:
BRIAN WILLIAMS: You just told me the story about one photograph from the war that always kind of catches you, the Japanese soldier returning to his city that's been destroyed. Do you have remorse for what happened? How do you deal with that in your mind?
THEODORE 'DUTCH' VAN KIRK: No, I do not have remorse. I pity the people who were there. I always think of it, Brian, as being, the dropping of the atom bomb was an act of war to end a war.
https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/scott-whitlock/2021/08/07/flashback-enola-gay-vet-indignant-when-williams-asked-about
