Airman makes small peace sign

Press, 9 August 1985, Page 6

Airman makes small peace sign

NZPA-AP Chicago An American flyer who took part in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 40 years ago is making a gesture of peace by returning a relic of that tragedy—the head of a stone angel that once adorned the front of Nagasaki cathedral. “My heart is greatly relieved. I finally got it back to where it belongs,” said Raymond Gallagher, aged 63, who as a 23-year-old Army Air Corps electrician was aboard the 829, “Bock’s Car,” which droppad the atomic bomb on

on August 9, 1945. He had also flown in the formation that bombed Hiroshima three days earlier. Mr Gallagher gave the 41cm sculpted head to the Rev. John O’Malley, a priest now serving in Hiroshima who returned to his hometown of Chicago to celebrate a Mass yesterday at Holy Name Cathedral to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing.

After be returned to Japan, Fr O’Malley would present the angel’s head to the Bishop of Nagasaki for

placement in the city’s newcathedral, Mr Gallagher said. Mr Gallagher has displayed the carving in his home since 1945, when his brother, John, found it in the rubble of Nagasaki while serving there with the United States Navy. Mr Gallagher, a Catholic, decided to return the sculpture when he read about Fr O’Malley’s participation in the memorial Mass. “I thought it would be a way to get it back to the place where it belongs,” Mr Gallagher said. He gave the

piece to Fr O’Malley after the Mass. The sculpture was slightly damaged but remained unbroken when the city was destroyed. About five years ago a test with a Geiger counter had showed the piece to be slightly radioactive, Mr Gallagher said. “It’s kind of eerie that it’s still radioactive.” Before the Hiroshima mission, Mr Gallagher had already flown six conventional bombing runs over Japan. But when the Hiroshima bomb detonated, it was “mind-boggling,? he said.

“We were told we were going to drop a powerful bomb, but we couldn’t comprehend its power. After the explosion, nobody said anything. We just looked out in awe. We couldn’t believe what was happening,” he said.

“They told us we would feel the shock wave. It just pounded at the bottom of our ship.” he said. On the Hiroshima mission scientists aboard his plane to monitor the explosion had explained the bomb’s workings. “I asked him (one of the • scientists): What about the

people on the ground?’ and he said, ‘Mister, anybody that heard that bomb on the way down is dead.’” Mr Gallagher said that he still found it difficult to describe how be felt about the dropping of the atomic bombs.

“It hurts when I see pictures of the people who were hit, but I keep thinking, too, of all the men who never came back from that war,” he said.

“I’m not looking for a cop-out or anything like that,” he said. “We did our jofcas soldiers. But this is a geSure of peace.”