2nd Lt. Durden William Looper, Co-pilot, Lonesome Lady
“Let me start with co-pilot Durden Looper. Durden was a farm boy from Arkansas, very humble parents, very humble people, but very nice people. Durden, being the co-pilot, was probably my closest friend...I should mention that Durden Looper, he was married. His wife Ruth, I met them. He had a daughter.”
2nd Lt. Durden William Looper, 18 Mar, 1923 - 6 Aug-1945
“Durden Looper was the co-pilot. Very close to his family. He had a wife and a chid born while he was in the Air Force. But he wanted to go back to be a farmer. You know if we had been any place long enough, he would have planted a garden, surely.”
Despite numerous queries the War Department, Looper's family was not informed of his fate.
Most of the information that the families of the Hiroshima POWs received was from Tom Cartright directly or from the information that he provided numerous times to the U.S. War Department. The earliest known public story was a 20 November, 1975, article by Repps B. Hudson, initiated when Durden Looper's brother, Walter, contacted the Missouri newspaper.
6 August, 1945
Durden Looper was one of the American POWs who tragically lost his life on 6 August, 1946.
Thanks to the efforts of Shigeaki Mori, his name is included in the list of deceased the Hiroshima National Park Memorial Hall for Atomic Bomb Victims.
