Norris Jernigan

Prepared by the Witnesses of War team

Norris N. Jernigan was born on 11 June 1925 in Eugene, Oregon. On 10 June 1943, the day before his eighteenth birthday, he enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces’ aviation cadet programme, hoping to become a pilot.

After leaving flight training, he was assigned to the intelligence office of the 393rd Bombardment Squadron at Fairmont, Nebraska. In September 1944, the squadron moved to Wendover Army Air Field, Utah, where it became part of Lieutenant Colonel Paul Tibbets’s 509th Composite Group, preparing for the delivery of atomic weapons.

Serving as a private first class, Jernigan helped assemble mission folders containing maps, aerial photographs and weather information, and typed reports following aircrew debriefings. In May 1945, he arrived on Tinian Island in the Mariana Islands, continuing his intelligence work as the group prepared for operations against Japan.

He was stationed on Tinian during the atomic bombings of Hiroshima on 6 August and Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. Despite working within the unit, he recalled that secrecy was so strict that he learned the weapon was an atomic bomb only after the Hiroshima mission.

Jernigan was discharged in March 1946. Decades later, he recorded oral histories describing the secret preparations at Wendover and his experiences on Tinian.