Morris 'Dick' Jeppson, Enola Gay Atomic Bomb Specialist, Dies With No Regrets

(April 8) -- On Aug. 6, 1945, Army weapons specialist Morris "Dick" Jeppson carried out his mission, like good soldiers do. But that day, Jeppson's mission was extraordinary.

That morning, 23-year-old Jeppson climbed into the B-29 Enola Gay along with the rest of the 12-man crew, flew into enemy territory and dropped the Little Boy plutonium bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

Jeppson had helped the secret Manhattan Project engineer the bomb's electronics and was likely the last crew member to touch the bomb before it was released, Dik Daso, curator of modern military aircraft at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum told The Washington Post.

On March 30, Jeppson died at the age of 87, having never publicly expressed regret about his role in the world's first atomic attack, which killed at least 80,000 people.

"You had a job to do, you just did it," Jeppson said at a 1995 reunion of the Enola Gay's crew.

His wife's car was outfitted with a bumper sticker that read, "If there hadn't been a Pearl Harbor, there wouldn't have been a Hiroshima," The Washington Post reports.

But in a 2005 interview with Time magazine, Jeppson made it clear he felt the weight of what he had done.

"People were looking down and seeing this enormous cloud coming up and the destruction spreading," he said. "And that's the point that it's somber because you know a lot of people are getting destroyed down there in the city."

Jeppson's death leaves just one surviving crewman from the famous flight. Theodore Van Kirk, 89, was the navigator aboard the Enola Gay and has said he is proud of his role in the bombing as well. Just last month, Van Kirk spoke at a Georgia high school, telling his audience, "One thing students know about the bomb is that it caused tremendous casualties, and if you read about the bomb, you'd think that was the reason we dropped the bomb -- just to kill a bunch of people.

"We dropped the bomb to save lives -- not to take lives -- to save lives by ending the war and stopping the killings. The Japanese were not surrendering. Their code was not to surrender. There is no telling how long the war would have gone on if we would not have dropped the bomb."

When the Enola Gay returned from its mission that day, Jeppson told Time, he sat down to dinner with naval officers and talked about his day, like they often did. "One of them turned to me and asked, 'What did you do today?' I'd heard a lot of their stories, so I thought I'd make just one remark," he said in the 2005 interview. "I said, 'I think we ended the war today.'"

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