My name is Joseph Statra and I was a pilot in the second world war. It was back in the 1940’s that, as a pilot I was told to evacuate all Americans from Hiroshima before the bomb was dropped. Since I was one of the best pilots in the American army at the time, I was usually given different tasks then the rest of the men. The other pilots were to evacuate the Americans on the ground, those Americans had designated meeting places, so it wasn’t hard for other pilots to find them, but I had to search for other pilots and Americans who were still in Hiroshima who hadn’t heard about the bomb. My mission was to search, find, and evacuate all Americans still in Hiroshima. 

The U.S army general told me I had five days to evacuate the Americans, and at exactly 7:00 Am Japanese time, they would  drop the bomb. I started flying right away, I searched and searched , pleading to find some pilots, to save someone. For four days I searched below and above, once I found a pilot but he was one of the evacuating pilots and he was already on his way out. I watched him fly away in the distance and then I started up my engine, and flew once more into the vast expanse of the sky, and started once again my futile search for the Americans. It was on the fifth day that a thought came to me, a thought that probably saved my life…

The thought that took me completely by surprise, the thought that came so suddenly, the thought that saved my life was that, I never changed the time of my watch to Japanese time! The general said that they would drop the bomb at 7:00 Am  Japanese time. It was 4:45 Am American time, but it was 6:45 Am Japanese time, 15 minutes before the bomb would be dropped! I remember turning around the plane and knowing that I would never make it out of Hiroshima in time, all I could do was get as far away from the drop site as possible. Then, fifteen long minutes later, I remember a huge heat wave burst through the cold air conditioned plane. The plane started falling, it fell so fast I felt nauseated, I looked behind me and there was a huge hole, and the reinforced steel of the plane was melting, slowly creeping towards me. My life started flashing before my eyes as I slowly realised that I might die there and then.