The two old warriors walked slowly with their canes down the halls of Park Springs, pleasantly pointing out the amenities of their retirement community near Stone Mountain: clubhouse, barbershop, library and a tavern where you can get a drink for $2.50.
Not that there’s much socializing going on, said Dutch Van Kirk, who’s pushing 90. “We all go to bed early,” he chuckled.
But it was lunchtime, so Van Kirk and buddy Jim Starnes, also nearing 90, were in prime form. As they ate salads and sipped iced tea, they recalled iconic exploits of 65 years ago when each was present for key moments that ended World War II.
Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk was the navigator of the Enola Gay, the B-29 that on Aug. 6, 1945, dropped the atomic bomb “Little Boy” over Hiroshima. Flight commander Paul Tibbets needed someone to chart the course, so he picked his old flying mate, Van Kirk. With the death of Morris Jeppson in March, Van Kirk is the only one left from the dozen aboard, the sole keeper of the mission.
Four weeks later, on Sept. 2, 1945, Starnes, navigator of USS Missouri and the mighty battleship’s officer of the deck, dressed in a crisp pair of khakis and greeted Japanese military officials as they boarded to sign the papers of surrender. It was his job to set up the ceremony. He worried the peg-legged foreign minister, Mamoru Shigemitsu, might tumble down the stairs.
“I like to say Dutch ended the war, and I made it official — got them to sign on the dotted line,” Starnes said. “He was very responsible for the success of the bomb drop.”
The two didn’t meet until 2005 (Van Kirk gets popular every five years at the Hiroshima anniversary) when Starnes read an article in Time that mentioned that Van Kirk lived Stone Mountain. Starnes asked around and “I found out he lives down the street.”
“We figured it’s a real coincidence: two navigators of historical events to have ended up in the same place, same time,” Starnes said.
The two have many things in common other than expertise with a sextant. Both were born in February 1921. Both signed up before Pearl Harbor. Both saw lots of combat and then came stateside to teach navigation. Both were called back into action. Both had successful careers after the war and retired in 1986 (real estate and banking for Starnes; a 35-year career as a DuPont executive for Van Kirk). And both raised large families (four children for Van Kirk, seven for Starnes).
Maybe fate put the veterans together in their twilight. But it was not destiny that placed them in their respective seismic events, Starnes said.
“Our being there was the consequences of the choices we made earlier,” he said.
Starnes, an Atlanta native and Emory University student, enlisted in 1940 thinking that “seeing the world was great sport.” He can’t remember how he came to be a navigator, other than being good at math. He served on the USS Boise, a light cruiser severely damaged in a U.S. victory near Guadalcanal in October 1942.
“We were the first ones who picked up the Japanese coming down the slot,” Starnes said. The shelling was so fierce “the dark of night became the light of day.”
Some 300 sailors were either killed or wounded when a shell hit his ship. Six feet higher and he’d have been buried at sea.
Van Kirk, a Pennsylvania boy, joined the Army Air Corps but washed out as a pilot. He then trained as a navigator and found himself flying B-17 missions out of England, often as the lead plane, responsible for getting his group there and, more importantly, back.
“I never got lost,” he said. He later served in North Africa and flew on 58 missions at a time when bombing crews felt lucky to survive a dozen.
His 59th flight, the one that put Van Kirk into the history books, may have been his easiest. The Japanese air force and navy had been destroyed, so there was no opposition to their flight. It was as uneventful as a drive up I-85, he once said. Last week, he likened it to a bus ride.
For a few seconds after the drop, he thought Little Boy was a dud. He was wrong, of course. His description of the blinding flash and the fast-rising, churning column of fire and smoke is well known. He is generous with his time, telling his story to countless classrooms, Rotary clubs and history round tables. He just wants people to know what happened and groans thinking about a widespread lack of historical knowledge.
Yes, the carnage was horrific, he said, but necessary. Japan’s navy and air force may have been beaten, but it had a huge army massed on the mainland, awaiting an invasion.
Van Kirk was moving slow last week, having returned from a gun show in Dallas where he signed 800 copies of a book about Hiroshima. He has his own book coming out next year. The working title? “Hiroshima: The final word.”
In 2007, Van Kirk sold his log of the flight at an auction. He got $300,000. He believes Ross Perot was the buyer.
“Hey, I took the money and ran,” he said with a shrug. “I had it laying around my house all these years in a steel box.” It moved with him 14 times as he climbed the ladder at DuPont.
Starnes laughed at the concept of Van Kirk’s payday.
“Dutch is a much better entrepreneur than me,” said Starnes, who, as officer on the deck, kept the log of the USS Missouri for that famous ceremony. That log, he said, is on display in a glass case at the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum in Independence, Mo.
He was on a business trip decades ago when he dropped in to look at the log and reminisce. “That’s me,” Starnes told a passing guard. “A few minutes later, we had an audience.”
That both men did well after coming home was no surprise.
“When I got out of the service, I thought I could do anything,” Van Kirk said. “I’m 19 years old, and they gave me a B-17 to fly. My dad would hardly give me the car keys. If I could fly a B-17, I could fly anything.”
Starnes had similar confidence, but times were tough after the war, even with a new law degree.
“The fact that I was an officer in the Navy and on the deck of the Missouri meant nothing; it was like a fairy tale,” he said.
Law offered no money, so the young father had a brainchild. He bought a house and noticed the real estate agent earned an easy commission. He went into selling homes, then bulk sales, then lending, then building.
“There were 16 million people coming home from the war,” he said of the massive peacetime shift. “With the pent-up demand, it was like shooting fish in a rain barrel. It just shows, if you have a good thought, do something about it.”
Starnes later retired as the CEO of mortgages of the North Carolina bank that later merged into Bank of America. He became a widower this year, losing his wife, Betty. Van Kirk, who takes care of his wife, Imogene, said he’s going to slow down on his talks and travel.
But later, after lunch, he asked Starnes if he would like to travel with him to an out-of-state appearance. Starnes, who has done some minor appearances with Van Kirk, stared at his friend as if he had just asked him to re-enlist. No, Starnes said, he’s mostly done with traveling.
But they are still well in demand as speakers.
“World War II interest is heightened by mortality,” Starnes said.
“There’s a limited amount of time for people to get information firsthand. Dutch and I might not be here next year. We have from 10 minutes to 10 years available to us.”
About the Author
