Burning Conscience; The Case of the Hiroshima Pilot, Claude Eatherly, Told in His Letters to Gunther Anders, with a postscript for American reader by Anders

New York: Monthly Review Press, 1962. First American Edition [stated]. Presumed first printing. Hardcover. Good/Fair. xxiii, [1], 139, [3] pages. Frontis illustration. Preface by Bertrand Russell. Foreword by Robert Jungk. Footnotes. The book also contains a postscript for American readers by Gunther Anders. DJ scuffed and worn: small tears, small pieces missing. DJ is price clipped. G�nther Anders (born G�nther Siegmund Stern; Breslau, 12 July 1902 - Vienna, 17 December 1992) was a German philosopher, journalist, essayist and poet. Trained in the phenomenological tradition, he developed a philosophical anthropology for the age of technology, focusing on such themes as the effects of mass media on our emotional and ethical existence, the illogic of religion, the nuclear threat, the Shoah, and the question of being a philosopher. In 1992, shortly before his death, G�nther Anders was awarded the Sigmund Freud Prize. Anders studied with the philosopher Martin Heidegger in Freiburg. He married fellow Heidegger student Hannah Arendt. Anders became a leading figure in the anti-nuclear movement. Claude Robert Eatherly (October 2, 1918 - July 1, 1978) was an officer in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II, and the pilot of a weather reconnaissance aircraft Straight Flush that supported the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, August 6, 1945. Claude Eatherly was the pilot who flew the lead plane over Hiroshima and gave the go-ahead signal to drop the first A-bomb. Later, appalled by the terrible deed in which he had participated, Eatherly sought in many ways to express his profound guilt. In 1959, the German philosopher Gunther Anders began a correspondence with Eatherly, who was then in a mental hospital. That correspondence, which lasted for two years, is the basis for this book. Eatherly claimed to have become horrified by his participation in the Hiroshima bombing, and hopeless at the possibility of repenting for or earning forgiveness for willfully extinguishing so many lives and causing so much pain. He tried speaking out with pacifist groups, sending parts of his paycheck to Hiroshima, writing letters of apology, and once or twice may have attempted suicide. It was in this hospital that he began to correspond with G�nther Anders, a German philosopher and pacifist, who became his friend in a battle to promote the abolition of nuclear weapons. Eatherly wrote:

Whilst in no sense, I hope, either a religious or a political fanatic, I have for some time felt convinced that the crisis in which we are all involved is one calling for a thorough re-examination of our whole scheme of values and of loyalties. In the past it has sometimes been possible for men to "coast along" without posing to themselves too many searching questions about the way they are accustomed to think and to act - but it is reasonably clear now that our age is not one of these. On the contrary I believe that we are rapidly approaching a situation in which we shall be compelled to re-examine our willingness to surrender responsibility for our thoughts and actions to some social institution such as the political party, trade union, church or State. None of these institutions are adequately equipped to offer infallible advice on moral issues and their claim to offer such advice needs therefore to be challenged.

William Bradford Huie, in The Hiroshima Pilot, cast doubt on the Eatherly story, pointing out that Eatherly continued to practice for potential future nuclear bombing missions in the years following the war. He believes that pacifist and anti-nuclear activists created or exaggerated elements of Eatherly's story for propaganda purposes, and that Eatherly cooperated in this mythmaking from desire for fame or attention. No other persons involved with the bombing of Hiroshima expressed guilt in the way that Eatherly did. Enola Gay pilot and commanding officer of the 509th Composite Group, Colonel Paul Tibbets, said in his autobiography "Flight of the Enola Gay" that he couldn't understand why Eatherly felt so guilty. While Eatherly did command the weather B-29 that scouted Hiroshima about an hour ahead of Tibbet's B-29 (which was carrying the "Little Boy" atomic bomb), "Buck" Eatherly had already turned back for their Tinian Island base by the time the bomb was dropped. Contrary to popular opinion, one of Eatherly's Straight Flush crewmen has suggested that Eatherly was actually upset that the Hiroshima raid had not made him famous, and was only too eager to play to the journalists that came to get the story of the "distraught pilot"