Monday, February 22, 2010

Last Train from Hiroshima Author Duped


Author of The Last Train from Hiroshima, Charles Pellegrino, admitted to being duped by Joseph Fuoco, who claimed to have substituted at the last minute for James R. Corliss, as the Enola Gay's flight engineer. Fuoco, who died in 2008 at age 84 never flew on the bombing run and he never substituted for Corliss. He had claimed to the author that there was an accident before the bomb was dropped that was kept secret in which an American was killed and others irradiated. The real flight engineer's family, scientists, historians and veterans are denouncing the book and calling Fuoco an imposter. Corliss died in 1999, but his family preserved the documentary evidence of his participation in the historic flight.
"I am stunned," Pelligrino said. "I liked and admired the guy. He had loads and loads of papers, and photographs of everything." Pelligrino will rewrite parts of the books for paperback and foreign editions. Read more in the New York Times article.

Learn more about the Enola Gay and the bombing of Hiroshima with this book and DVD.

Enola Gay DVD 940.5425 E59
Get a look inside the bomber that helped bring World War II to a stop.
Duty: a father, his son and the man who won the war by Bob Greene
Journalist Greene learns what World War II meant to men of that generation. He becomes friends with Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay and comes to understand his father, also a World War II veteran.

posted by mb