The bomb they carried, dubbed Little Boy, was the world's first atomic bomb dropped in combat. Which leaves Van Kirk as the only living crew member of the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that set out from Tinian on 6 August 1945. And then, less than two months ago, Morris Jeppson, a bomb expert, became the penultimate member of the crew to pass away, dying in a hospital in Las Vegas. Others died through the 80s and 90s and Paul Tibbets, the commander of the plane, in 2007.
The first was William Parsons, a military engineer who died in 1953, followed by Robert Shumard, another engineer, 14 years later. Over the last 65 years they have fallen one by one. His uncharacteristic inactivity is explained by the fact that none of the 11 crew members who joined him on that fateful flight will be in Tinian this year, and without them he didn't have the stomach to go. But this year, Van Kirk declined the invitation. This year, he tells me, he has been invited to travel, all expenses paid, to Tinian, the tiny Pacific island where, 65 years ago on that same day, he set out with 11 other men on an aeroplane journey that would change the world.
The absence of any plans is unusual, because Van Kirk is usually heavily in demand on 6 August.
