Peace Activist Odd Man Out at Atomic Reunion : Hiroshima: For Gen. Paul Tibbets and Enola Gay crew, it ended the war. But reconnaisance pilot Richard Sherwood witnessed the devastation and dedicated life to peace.

Richard Sherwood thought it ironic.

The men who dropped the Hiroshima atom bomb--the deadliest weapon ever unleashed in war--were gathering at their old training base to dedicate a monument to peace.

This, Sherwood had to see. For whatever the atom bomb did to end World War II, it secured no peace for him.

In August, 1945, Sherwood was a 21-year-old bomber pilot stationed in the western Pacific. He didn’t help drop the world’s first nuclear weapon on Hiroshima, Japan, but he believes his mission was even more troubling--witnessing the charred ruins during a low-level photographic flight after the blast.

The devastation he saw changed his life, and he vowed to work toward nonviolent ways of settling conflicts, a vow he keeps today as a peace activist in Salt Lake City.

He had hoped his work for peace would help him forget the horrors of war. It did not. So last weekend, after 45 years, Richard Sherwood decided to confront his past head-on.

“A Celebration for World Peace,” said the banner strung over the road. “Wendover Welcomes the 509th Composite Group.”

Wendover, a little desert town on the Utah-Nevada border 120 miles west of Salt Lake City, served as the World War II base for the 509th, a top-secret wing of the Army Air Corps formed specifically to drop the untested atom bomb.

There had been reunions before, but last weekend’s gathering was the largest, drawing nearly 500 members and wives.

There were three big attractions. A monument to the 509th would be unveiled. They’d be able to visit their old air base, now abandoned. And best of all, they’d get to see retired Brig. Gen. Paul W. Tibbets, former commander of the 509th and still its spiritual leader.

Tibbets piloted the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. He didn’t make the decision--that was President Harry S. Truman’s burden--but today he is the bombing’s most outspoken defender, saying it brought a quick end to World War II and saved more lives than it cost. He has no regrets, no remorse, and no patience for those who question the rightness of using the bomb.

Arriving at the reunion, Sherwood had little patience for the general.

“Tibbets!” he said angrily. “Tibbets would have a different feeling if he had been 150 feet over that destruction and saw what I saw.”

When the atom bomb exploded above Hiroshima, it created a fireball that leveled 62,000 buildings and killed 80,000 people. Directly beneath the blast, people were vaporized. Up to two miles away, the heat charred skin. Stone walls glowed red, and rivers clogged with floating bodies.

Sherwood recalls “an utter chaos of squirming human destruction” and still breaks into tears at the memory. “I felt so cannibalistic, I could scarcely accept what I saw.”

After the war, Sherwood returned home to Salt Lake City and tried to forget. He married, finished college, and got a job with the city’s water department.

Above all, he said, he kept busy.

But the memories stuck. In 1981, at the urging of his Methodist minister, he became more active in peace issues, hoping to find what he calls “sanction” for his World War II involvement.

Sherwood has protested the MX missile and participated in peace walks in the Soviet Union. More recently, he organized a vacation-exchange program between Americans and Soviets.

At 66, his sharp pilot’s eyes have dimmed somewhat but still are as blue as the desert sky. His thick brown hair has thinned and whitened.

He looked like most of the men at the reunion, where aging soldiers peered through bifocals at name tags to jog their fading memories of old wartime buddies. Few recognized Sherwood, which did not surprise him. He says he was attached to another wing, flying with the 509th only briefly as a replacement pilot.

Some expressed doubt at his tale. Tibbets, who has written a book about the mission, could not remember Sherwood’s reconnaissance flight, but neither could he remember that it did not occur. “After 45 years, who can say? Go with his story,” Tibbets said.

Most of the men Sherwood approached just wished he would go somewhere else with his tale. He wanted to recall the horrors of war. They wanted to reminisce about beer parties and wild Army nurses.

“Listen, I don’t want to argue the point with you,” said Fred Kopka, who worked in the 509th mess hall. “It was us or them, kill or be killed. The Japanese were going to fight tooth and nail if we had to invade Japan. The bomb saved a million lives.”

Sherwood moved on. He wanted to talk to Tibbets. But Tibbets was busy, signing autographs for admirers who had lined up to buy his line of commemorative Enola Gay books, posters, coffee mugs and videos. Sherwood decided to try again later.

At a “men’s remembrance,” Sherwood persuaded the organizers to give him a few minutes at the microphone. He told of his Soviet-American exchange program. The audience listened politely, but the brochures he left by the door went virtually untouched.

Nonetheless, by nightfall, Sherwood was elated. In the empty parking lot of the Wendover visitors’ center, he sat by the 509th monument, which still was shrouded in black plastic.

He said the reunion made him feel less lonely in his anguish.

“There’s no doubt in my mind they’re hurting too,” he said. Why else, he asked, would they be so defensive about their role in dropping the atomic bomb? Why else would they feel (the need) to erect a monument praising themselves?

“I see me and them, and I know where they’re coming from,” Sherwood said. “I had feelings of disgust for Tibbets. I no longer do. What’s happening here today gives them a feeling of acceptance for what they did. They’re getting sanction. I understand how they’re feeling.”

But understanding is not enough, he said.

“We have to change. There’s no way out of atomic holocaust unless we find an alternative to building bigger and better bombs. There are some real differences we can make. All we have to do is start to realize that everybody has a responsibility to live internationally. The world is too small now to isolate ourselves.”

Lightning filled the air and thunder rumbled ominously close. But Sherwood paid no mind. He spoke excitedly of connecting with other cultures, of teaching young people not the glory of war but the joy of peace, of redirecting mental energy now devoted toward destructive technology.

“Talk about atomic explosions. Lord, we could have an explosion of ideas that would boggle your mind.”

By morning, the storm had passed, and the parking lot filled with people for the dedication ceremony. The black plastic covering the monument was gone, replaced by red, white and blue bunting. The speakers’ platform groaned under the weight of dignitaries, and the 23rd Army band played rousing military tunes.

Paul Tibbets rose to speak, and the crowd gave him a standing ovation. At 75, he is hard of hearing and walks stiffly, but he held their respect as if he still was their commanding officer.

Be not ashamed for bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he told those gathered. Nuclear weaponry has “caused peace to reign . . . for 45 years,” he said.

The United States was fighting a war against an entrenched enemy, he said. If Allied forces had been forced to invade Japan, perhaps a million lives would have been lost, he said, compared to the estimated 180,000 who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Americans today often don’t appreciate the sacrifices that ensured our present good fortune, he said.

“They don’t want to exercise their brains by reading about what happened in those days. Well, that leaves some of us to tell them what happened. Hopefully, they will remember it,” he said.

Then Tibbets unveiled the memorial, a 16-foot granite obelisk supporting a bronze replica of the Enola Gay. Below was a plaque with the logo of the 509th Composite Group, a lightning bolt and the phrase “First Atomic Bombardment.”

For a peace monument, it was strikingly martial. But then, so was the ceremony. Little mention was made of the victims. A Japanese author had been scheduled to speak, but he was quickly unscheduled the previous night--along with the Japanese national anthem--after suggesting that Japan might have surrendered without the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

The Rev. William B. Downey, 509th chaplain, closed the ceremony with a dedicatory prayer:

“We thank thee, God, for the atom bomb, through which peace came to our world.”

A squadron of jet fighters thundered overhead and the band struck up another tune. Tibbets and other crew members of the Enola Gay were corralled for pictures in front of the obelisk.

Suddenly, Richard Sherwood was there too, smiling and shaking Tibbets’ hand. Sherwood shouted a few words, but Tibbets could not hear above the crowd. He gave Sherwood a puzzled look, then turned again toward the cameras.

For a moment, the hawk and the dove stood together. Despite their differences, they have a common bond in their conviction that the world must never forget the lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But just what is that lesson?

Peace comes through strength, says Tibbets.

Peace comes through understanding, says Sherwood.

It is clear which message won this day. Tibbets was the hero. Sherwood was in the way. A camera-toting woman shouted, “The crew, just the crew,” and Sherwood retreated into the crowd, an observer once again.