THE HIROSHIMA PILOT by William Bradford Huie. 318 pages. Putnam. $5.95.
Deep in the heart of Texas is a man who has become even more of a martyr than the heroes of the Alamo. He is Major Claude Eatherly, who, according to ban-the-bomb legend, led the atomic raid on Hiroshima, repented what he had done and, racked by guilt, turned to a life of petty crime to punish himself. Between times, he discoursed on the total sin of the atom bomb. Wrote Edmund Wilson: "He seems to have been unique among bombers in having paused to take account of his responsibility and in attempting to do something to expiate it." Echoed Bertrand Russell: "The steps he took to awaken men's consciences to our present insanity were actuated by motives which deserve the admiration of all who are capable of feelings of humanity." British Poet George Barker was inspired to verse:
And in and out of the nuthouse
That dupe and scapegoat's led
With a mushroom as big as America
Growing out of his head.
Hunger for Attention. William Bradford Huie, a freewheeling writer who has made a career of debunking, did what no other authority on Eatherly has done: he went to the records of the Air Force, checked with the Veterans Administration and interviewed Eatherly's friends and family. He found little to inspire hero-worship.
Eatherly never dropped a bomb in World War II. He served Stateside until his 509th Composite Group was picked for the atomic raids. He was assigned to be weather scout on the Hiroshima run. He checked the visibility over Hiroshima, then radioed the go-ahead to the Enola Gay, carrying the bomb. Returning to base without seeing the explosion, Eatherly was virtually ignored, while the crew of the Enola Gay got all the glory.
Eatherly was nettled. Far from feeling guilty, he hungered for recognition, according to his crew mates. He tried out for the postwar Bikini tests but lost out in competition. He was refused a regular commission in the Air Force, and after enrolling in the U.S.A.F. meteorological school, was eased out of the service for cheating on an exam. While being mustered out, he got mixed up in a harebrained scheme to invade Cuba and make it a 49th state. Federal agents discovered a cache of arms and the plot was aborted. Eatherly received a suspended sentence.
"Save the Children!" Eatherly then took a more prosaic job as a Texaco salesman in Houston. Legend has it that he was tormented by a recurring nightmare in which he woke up screaming, "Bail out! Save the children!" (His wife says he slept like a log.) After his wife had a miscarriage, he was afraid radiation might have affected his spermatozoa. He began to drink heavily and pass bad checks. In 1950, he made a halfhearted attempt at suicide and was admitted to the VA hospital in Waco, Texas.
He was in and out of the hospital like a yoyo. When he was out, he committed attention-getting crimes like holding up a grocery, then leaving without the cash. A Fort Worth reporter got wind of him and played him up as a hero who had fallen on bad days. A psychiatrist treating Eatherly declared that he was suffering from a guilt complex for bombing Hiroshima.