“That’s when I realized we had lost Basilone. Word went down the line from hole to hole: They got Basilone.”
The date is February 19, 1945. The Battle of Iwo Jima will continue for five more weeks. In addition to “Manila John” Basilone, 6,820 other Americans will die.
Almost twenty-one thousand Japanese soldiers also die or go missing in action. This is virtually their entire garrison, yet Japan is no closer to surrender.
* * *
The SS British Columbia Express chugs into Manila’s harbor just two days after the city is finally liberated from the Japanese. The date is March 6, a Tuesday. General Douglas MacArthur rides out to meet the ship in a small boat. His landing craft is an unusual choice of launch; the utilitarian barge is normally meant to deliver men and matériel into combat, not ferry a five-star general to reunite with his long-absent wife and son.8
The warm tropical air smells of diesel fuel from the 225-horsepower engine, which musters a speed of just twelve knots. MacArthur is emotional. He has not seen Jean or young Arthur in five months. The tough sixty-five-year-old general’s devotion to his family can often bring him to the edge of tears. He knows that the Manila his family will soon see is not the city from which they fled three years ago. They will be shocked.
Yet Manila is free.
Jean awaits her husband on deck, clutching a set of clean bedsheets, not knowing if the family will need them. Arthur stands at her side, immaculately dressed.
Douglas MacArthur scrambles up a ladder and is piped aboard. He wraps his arms around his wife and son, in full view of his three aides and the sailors on deck crowding to get a view of this famous general.
Having witnessed the devastation of Manila and knowing the horrors endured by its people, Douglas MacArthur is more grateful than ever that his family is safe.
He pulls Jean and Arthur tight against his chest.
And he does not let go for a very long time.
8
TOKYO, JAPAN
MARCH 10, 1945
12:08 A.M.
Annihilation approaches as a hard northwesterly gale lashes Tokyo. An attacking wave of B-29 bombers flies low over the city. The “bikko,” as the Japanese have nicknamed America’s most powerful aircraft, drop a small number of conventional bombs, then make the long turn south toward the Bōsō Peninsula. It has been almost three hours since the first air-raid sirens wailed over the blacked-out city. Tokyo has been largely untouched since the Americans began bombing Japan four months ago, so few citizens have bothered to leave their wood-and-paper homes for the safety of air-raid shelters on this clear and cold night. As the B-29s drone into the distance, the nervous people of Tokyo feel confident enough to settle down to sleep.
Seven minutes later, that confidence is shattered. The mournful yowl of the sirens once again floats over the city. This time, Tokyo’s residents race for concrete shelters, all too aware that a second air-raid siren is confirmation that a brutal bombardment is imminent. The shelters hold just five thousand people, but hundreds of thousands desperately run through the streets—fathers, wives, children, grandparents, pregnant women. Many wear packs strapped to their backs that contain their vital possessions. Worried that they may not make it to the shelters in time, fathers instruct their families to take refuge in any place that offers concealment. They throw their bodies into trenches, canals, and hastily dug holes in the ground. Some gape at the sky, where spotlights sweep back and forth to illuminate the sky for antiaircraft gunners.
The moon is a crescent as the B-29s approach the heavily populated Joto district, home to forty thousand people per square mile. The observant among them realize that the planes are flying thousands of feet lower than usual. American planes typically attack from an altitude of more than five miles high; these B-29s are just a mile above the city.
Inside the American aircraft, an adrenaline rush wipes out the monotony of the long flight to Tokyo; it has been seven hours since the Americans took off from bases on Saipan, Tinian, and Guam. Three hundred and thirty-four aircraft of the XXI Bomber Command have flown fifteen hundred miles over open ocean to drop their payloads. To make room for an extra ton of bombs, each plane has been stripped of machine guns and ammunition, leaving these Superfortresses vulnerable to Japanese fighter aircraft. The pilots and navigators were shocked when informed of this decision during their briefing. The order is a calculated gamble on the part of American commander General Curtis LeMay, a thirty-eight-year-old career aviator considered “belligerent” and “brutal” by some, but widely revered for his tactical brilliance. With the deadly battle for Iwo Jima still raging, he believes that crushing the will of the Japanese people is now more important than simply bombing military targets.1
LeMay’s gamble pays off. Few Japanese pilots can be scrambled to confront the air invaders, leaving the B-29s free to drop their ordnance with patient precision. Some Japanese aviators are afraid, unaware that the formidable armada has been stripped of the machine guns that might shoot them down. Harsh winds also give the American bombers an unexpected form of cover, distorting radio and radar signals. The Imperial Japanese Navy picked up the incoming flights more than a thousand miles out to sea, but due to a combination of the winds and a lack of communication between the navy and army, their warnings never make it to the Japanese night fighter squadrons stationed on the Kanto Plain outside Tokyo.
At precisely 1:00 a.m., the bomb bay doors open.
Fourteen minutes later, Tokyo is ablaze.
* * *
It is a holocaust. The B-29s drop special M-69 firebombs from the belly of each fuselage. These are quite different from the atomic fission bombs being developed in Los Alamos, New Mexico, but on this night they are far more deadly.
This firebombing of Tokyo, known as Operation Meetinghouse, is the most horrific bombing in history, far deadlier than the recent Dresden attacks—or any other bombing of the Second World War.2
The use of mass aerial bombardment in World War II forever alters how future conflicts will be waged. The atomic device, which will use elements like uranium in order to create a single explosion of extraordinary intensity, has yet to be tested. The M-69 used on the people of Tokyo is a twenty-inch steel pipe packed with the jellied gasoline known as napalm, which constitutes the Esso Corporation’s most important contribution to the American war effort. The M-69s are bundled into clusters of thirty-eight, which are then loaded inside a finned casing and dropped from the aircraft. Two thousand feet above the ground, the casing opens, releasing the bombs and allowing them to plummet to the earth separately. Nothing happens immediately upon impact, but three seconds later a timed fuse ignites a white phosphorous charge, which forces the napalm to shoot out of the three-inch-wide pipe. Slow-burning and sticky, the napalm affixes itself to clothing, hair, and skin, burning straight down to the bone.
One M-69 is capable of starting a massive fire. One ton of M-69s will ensure complete destruction.
On the morning of March 10, 1945, American B-29 bombers drop two thousand tons of M-69 napalm bombs on Tokyo.
Driven by winds of nearly hurricane force, fire envelops entire city blocks. Mobs of Japanese citizens race for their lives, only to be surrounded by the inferno and summarily asphyxiated as the flames suck all the oxygen from the air. Water mains are destroyed by the blaze, rendering fire hoses useless. Crews armed with water buckets are helpless to stop the carnage. Eighty firefighters and more than five hundred volunteers refuse to leave their posts and burn to death where they stand. Flames destroy ninety-six fire engines. Orange tongues of fire shoot so high from the ground that they reflect off the underbellies of the silver bombers overhead.
As the heat rises, updrafts reach thousands of feet high, actually bringing the smell of burning human flesh into the nostrils of the American pilots. Many planes return to their home base with their fuselages coated in soot.
Soon fire consumes sixteen square miles of Tokyo. The entire geisha district is turned to ash. Hospitals, homes, t
emples, train stations, bus depots, convents, theaters, fire stations, workers’ hostels, and schools are destroyed. From the safety of the Imperial Palace, which the Americans have specifically chosen not to bomb, Emperor Hirohito beholds a red glow across the horizon, turning darkest night into day.
Trapped inside walls of flame that throw off unimaginably high temperatures, citizens spontaneously burst into flames. Debris flies through the air, striking people dead at random. City canals boil. Dead bodies bob in the icy rivers. Charred corpses litter the ground, many still burning due to body oils. The heat takes its toll on the living as well, melting faces, fingers, and toes. Skin literally peels off bodies, hanging in great flaps from torsos.
At 3:20 a.m. the bombing stops.
As dawn rises over Tokyo, one-fourth of the city has been destroyed. One hundred thousand people are dead; forty thousand people are badly burned but alive. One million Japanese are homeless. Of the 324 B-29s that carried out the bombings, just 12 planes were lost, mainly due to engine failures.
General Curtis LeMay’s stated goal for this mission was that Tokyo be “burned down and wiped off the map to shorten the war.”
Emperor Hirohito tours the burned-out portions of Tokyo on March 18. His caravan of vehicles and his own maroon Rolls-Royce carry the official chrysanthemum crest, signifying that a gyoko—a blessed visitation—is taking place. He comes upon exhausted citizens pawing through rubble, searching for some fragment of their former lives. Upon seeing his vehicles, instead of adopting a subservient stance, the people glare. Hirohito does not stop the cars to engage his subjects, nor does his facial expression display sorrow or regret. Despite the war weariness so evident among Tokyo’s citizens, Japan’s elite will send an emissary to Hirohito two days later, imploring him not to surrender. It is their belief that the Japanese people will become used to the bombings and grow closer together in the process.
In the weeks that follow, Japanese citizens lose sleep, as staying up late to prepare for yet another bombing attack leaves them exhausted and distraught. There is a rise in absenteeism in factories and a slowing of the nation’s war production.
Yet the Japanese still will not surrender. Not even when General LeMay repeats the same firebombing in Nagoya, Yokohama, Osaka, Kobe, and Kawasaki.
Instead, schools in Japan close. As a sign that the nation will fight to the bitter end, all children are put to work producing food or munitions; some are even taught how to operate antiaircraft guns.
But that won’t be necessary. After two weeks of “burn jobs,” the firebombing of Japan comes to an end. There are two reasons: First, LeMay’s pilots are exhausted. And second, after dropping five million M-69s on Japan, the XXI Command has run out of firebombs.
9
ROOM H-128, CAPITOL BUILDING
WASHINGTON, DC
APRIL 12, 1945
5:00 P.M.
A light rain falls on the nation’s capital as Harry Truman strides into a high-ceilinged room, thirsty for a drink. The vice president wears a gray suit with a white handkerchief folded in his breast pocket. Even after a long day presiding over the Senate, Truman appears dapper and polished. As he enters room H-128, on the ground floor of the Capitol, to enjoy Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn’s nightly happy hour, Truman is content and at ease. Tomorrow, as he wrote to his mother just a few moments ago during a particularly long speech by a “windy Senator from Wisconsin,” he will deliver a national radio address on Thomas Jefferson Day, the anniversary of the third president’s birth. Other than that, he doesn’t have much on his mind.
“Harry, Steve Early wants you to call him right away,” Congressman Rayburn says the instant Truman steps through the door. The large room housed the Committee on Territories back in the nineteenth century, and the ceiling is painted with a mural celebrating America’s expansion. At Rayburn’s urging, the lone star of Texas was recently added to the collection of painted birds and plants. Otherwise, the room resembles a very comfortable men’s club.
The sixty-three-year-old Rayburn has been Speaker for five years and often uses these nightly booze meetings he has dubbed the “Board of Education” as a means of building coalitions to support bills or simply to strategize. Invitations are extended according to Rayburn’s political needs. Attending the Board of Education once or twice in a term is considered to be a status symbol. Some, however, like Truman and Texas congressman Lyndon B. Johnson, can stop by for two fingers of bourbon and branch water any time they like.
Truman picks up the phone and dials National 1414, the phone number for President Roosevelt’s longtime press secretary Steve Early. Calls from the White House are rare, and Truman still has not been vice president long enough to have penetrated FDR’s inner circle. So even though the president is at his Warm Springs, Georgia, hideaway, recuperating from the long journey back from Yalta, Truman is quick to answer Early’s message in case something important is required of him. So far in his term, that has not been the case.
“This is the V.P.,” Truman says at the sound of Early’s voice.
Early gets to the point. “Come to the White House as quickly and quietly as you can.”
“Jesus Christ and General Jackson,” Truman exclaims, replacing the phone.
“I’m wanted at the White House right away,” he tells Rayburn.
As Truman steps out the door, he realizes he has left his hat behind in his office. He walks each day for exercise, maintaining a brisk pace of 120 steps per minute. But now, Harry Truman begins to run. He dashes the length of the Capitol Building, his footsteps echoing off the marble floor. He wonders if Roosevelt has decided to cut short his trip to Georgia, or if there is some special errand pertaining to the Congress that the president requires of him. The two men have met in person just twice, so any summons from the president has a tone of urgency. Truman senses that Roosevelt is angry with him, though he does not know why. This only increases his desire to get to the White House as soon as possible.
By 5:25 p.m., the vice president’s car is parked beneath the North Portico of the White House. Truman steps out and is escorted inside by two ushers. One of them guides him to a small oak-paneled elevator. Nothing is said. Truman still has no idea why he has been summoned. Stepping out from the elevator on the second floor, he is surprised to see Eleanor Roosevelt and her daughter, Anna, wearing black dresses. Truman’s relationship with the First Lady has been wary and strained, so she would never summon him for social reasons, let alone invite him up to her personal study.1
Quickly, Truman realizes why he has been summoned.
“Harry,” the now former First Lady tells him, “the president is dead.”
Her voice is calm, for she has known for more than an hour. The marriage between Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt has lasted forty years, but it is largely one of political convenience. FDR was known to stray—indeed, the cerebral hemorrhage that finally killed him in Georgia took place in the presence of his mistress, Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” Truman asks Eleanor as the truth sinks in.
The First Lady looks directly at the new president. “Is there anything we can do for you? For you are the one in trouble now.”
* * *
The time is 7:09 p.m.
A stunned Harry S. Truman places his left hand on a red-edged Bible and raises his right. His wife and daughter, nine cabinet members, six congressional leaders, several members of the White House staff, and a handful of reporters are crammed into the Cabinet Room. Everyone is standing. A portrait of Woodrow Wilson, Truman’s favorite president, overlooks the proceedings as Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone of the Supreme Court recites the oath of office. “I, Harry Shipp Truman,” begins Stone.
Truman has the presence of mind to correct him. “I, Harry S. Truman,” he replies.2
The oath continues.
Outside the Cabinet Room, a small army of reporters and photographers has gathered in the West Wing. News of Roosevelt’s death has already flas
hed around the world, drawing a crowd of thousands to now stand vigil in front of the White House.
“So help me God,” intones Stone, bringing the oath of office to an end.
“So help me God,” replies President Harry S. Truman.3
The Bible on which Truman has sworn his oath is a cheap Gideon edition normally found in hotel rooms; it was all that could be found in the commotion. But now this common Bible has become a historical artifact. Outwardly, Truman shows no fear of what is to come, his face “taut,” in the words of one report, but the new president concludes the oath impulsively, suddenly pressing the Bible firmly to his lips in a sincere kiss.
* * *
On April 24, President Truman is briefed on the top secret news that the United States will soon test an atomic bomb. “Within four months,” begins the report brought to Truman in the Oval Office, “we shall in all probability have completed the most terrible weapon ever known in human history, one bomb of which could destroy a whole city.”
If successful, this weapon could end the Pacific war, though at great loss of life to civilians. Hundreds of thousands, if not more than a million, Japanese citizens may die.
One day after that, Truman authorizes the wholesale invasion of Japan by American forces. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers are expected to perish if the attack is finally given the go.
The invasion of Japan, however, might be unnecessary if the A-bomb is ready.
The final decision about dropping the bomb will be made solely by Truman, though at this point he is not sure what the A-bomb really is.
But Truman knows that the bleeding of American lives needs to stop—Japan must be crushed.
10
LOS ALAMOS, NEW MEXICO
APRIL 22, 1945
5:00 P.M.
The most dangerous man in the world is celebrating his forty-first birthday. Sipping on a dry gin martini, the eccentric and brilliant physicist, J. Robert Oppenheimer, moves from conversation to conversation in the living room of his 1,200-square-foot stone-and-wood cottage. The air smells like pipe tobacco. His guests are physicists, chemists, and Nobel Prize winners, their accents British, American, and Eastern European.1
Killing the Rising Sun Page 7
