Charles Pellegrino

Charles R. Pellegrino (born May 5, 1953) is an American writer and the author of several books related to science and archaeology, including Return to Sodom and Gomorrah, Ghosts of the Titanic, Unearthing Atlantis and Ghosts of Vesuvius. Aspects of Pellegrino's book The Last Train from Hiroshima have been disputed as has Pellegrino's claim to have earned a PhD.

Pellegrino earned bachelor's and master's degrees at Long Island University in the mid-1970s.

In January 2010, Henry Holt published Pellegrino's Last Train from Hiroshima, a look at the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima from the vantage of survivors.

The New York Times initially praised the book as "sober and authoritative" and as a "firm and compelling synthesis of earlier memoirs and archival material". Nevertheless, a month later the New York Times questioned claims made in Pellegrino's book:

[The book] claims to reveal a secret accident with the atom bomb that killed one American and irradiated others and greatly reduced the weapon’s destructive power… There is just one problem. That section of the book and other technical details of the mission are based on the recollections of Joseph Fuoco, who is described as a last-minute substitute on one of the two observation planes that escorted the Enola Gay… But Mr. Fuoco… never flew on the bombing run, and he never substituted for James R. Corliss, the plane’s regular flight engineer, Mr. Corliss’s family says. They, along with angry ranks of scientists, historians and veterans, are denouncing the book and calling Mr. Fuoco an impostor.

Veterans of the 509th Operations Group, the Air Force unit which dropped the atomic bombs, issued a detailed list of substantive problems with many of the book's claims about the bomb and the Air Force personnel involved.

The New York Times added, "Facing a national outcry and the Corliss family’s evidence, the author, Charles Pellegrino, now concedes that he was probably duped. . . . [H]e said he would rewrite sections of the book for paperback and foreign editions." Despite Pellegrino's claim in The New York Times that he had been "duped" by Fuoco, further investigation revealed that Pellegrino had repeatedly mentioned one of the book's most disputed claims (a supposed fatal accident at Tinian Island on 4 August 1945) before Mr. Fuoco had allegedly confided it for him. Doubts also arose about the existence of two westerners allegedly present in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing.

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