Killing the Rising Sun

by Bill O'Reilly

  Oppenheimer’s euphoria and relief cannot be measured. Unlike President Truman, he is cognizant of the A-bomb’s wider implications. He is already haunted by what he saw today, calling it “terrifying,” but at the same time recognizes the good in what he has accomplished.

  As he later tells a reporter, “Lots of boys not grown up yet will owe their life to it.”

  * * *

  For General Leslie Groves, the Trinity explosion is not the end of a job, as it is for Robert Oppenheimer. Instead, it is a stepping-stone to his final objective—which is why he immediately boards a plane for Washington, DC.

  “They were still upset by what they had seen and could talk of little else,” Groves wrote of the handful of scientists who joined him on the flight back east. “I learned later that the effects of the test on all who had witnessed it, particularly the scientists, were quite profound for a number of days.

  “As for me, my thoughts were now completely wrapped up with the preparations for the coming climax with Japan.”

  It will be a deadly and destructive climax, as an ungodly force will soon be unleashed on the land of the rising sun.

  14

  KURE, JAPAN

  JULY 16, 1945

  0600 HOURS

  Just twelve miles south of the Japanese port of Hiroshima, the Japanese submarine I-58 slips her berth and glides from the port of Kure, loaded with enough food, torpedoes, and diesel fuel to remain at sea for one month. The rising sun emblem is painted boldly in red and white on her gray conning tower. Above it, perhaps even more patriotically, is painted the Kikusui (“floating chrysanthemum”) battle standard, in homage to a medieval Japanese warrior who fought to the death against impossible odds for the glory of the emperor.

  A muggy, warm day is developing as Lieutenant Commander Mochitsura Hashimoto stands at the helm of his submarine. I-58 quickly clears the harbor and enters the inland sea that divides Japan’s many islands.

  The sub leaves behind a city in ruins. Three weeks ago, 162 American B-29 bombers laid siege to Kure, sinking two submarines still under construction and heavily damaging another. Several bombs came close to hitting I-58, but she survived unscathed. For the thirty-five-year-old Hashimoto, the fact that his ship has been spared is a source of great relief—second only to the good news that his wife and three sons also lived through the barrage.

  American B-29s have begun dropping mines across the entrance to Japan’s great ports, closing every harbor on the Pacific and a great number on the Sea of Japan. The mine campaign will effectively isolate the nation from the rest of the world.

  Hashimoto is pleased that his vessel is getting away from the homeland before Kure harbor can be mined, for he knows that American planes now dominate the skies over Japan.

  It is not just the heavy bombers of the Army Air Forces that are punishing Japan.1 Beginning six days ago, on July 10, the United States Navy has taken advantage of newly opened airfields on Okinawa to launch a steady stream of aerial attacks. Naval aviators are now flying hundreds of sorties a day over the Japanese mainland, destroying the nation’s shipping, railways, and limited aerial defenses. Instead of the behemoth silver B-29s that drop their payload from thousands of feet in the air, many aviators fly so low that the Japanese people actually duck as the fighter-bombers thunder overhead. Often they can clearly see the pilots’ faces.

  American power is slowly crushing Japan’s national morale. A cruel blow came just two days ago: eight ferries carrying coal from the island of Hokkaido to Honshu were sunk, with great loss of life. This leaves Japan with no vessels capable of transporting coal from the mines of Hokkaido to the Japanese factories that rely on them for power to run their machinery. Without factories, there can be no bombs, guns, planes, or tanks to fuel the Japanese war effort.

  Yet even if the factories could find another energy source, production is all but finished. Industrial leaders are now informing Japan’s military leaders that they can produce weaponry “for just a few days more” for lack of raw material.

  The psychological toll on the Japanese people is also a liability, yet they represent the nation’s last chance for a proper defense of the homeland. Hungry, homeless, and increasingly humiliated, the populace is now being ordered to adopt the suicidal Ketsu-Go strategy—that is, that all Japanese men, women, and children will fight to the death. Many households have already been issued sharpened sticks, and family members are expected to use them when the Americans invade.2

  For some Japanese soldiers in the distant battlefields of Asia, it is too late for Ketsu-Go. They see for themselves that the tide of war has turned. For the first time ever, many Japanese have begun to surrender—mainly because their weapons have been destroyed.

  “From May onwards prisoners in a terrible state came in daily, many of them armed with nothing more dangerous than bamboo spears, and trembling with a mixture of malaria and humiliation,” one British soldier in Burma will report.

  The Japanese war effort is almost on life support.

  But Mochitsura Hashimoto still commands one of the best submarines in the world. Hashimoto has been in charge of I-58 ever since the state-of-the-art vessel was commissioned in late 1944. She is 356 feet long and 30 feet wide at the beam, making I-58 larger than most American submarines. She carries nineteen Type 95 torpedoes, which have an accurate range of almost six miles and can travel through the water at more than forty miles per hour. In addition, I-58’s deck gun has been removed to make room for six kaiten torpedoes—eight-ton, forty-foot-long human-guided suicide missiles that are the underwater version of kamikaze aircraft.3

  A well-educated man, and a graduate of the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy, Hashimoto knows that Germany’s surrender means Japan stands alone against the world. More than two million soldiers and millions of other citizens stand ready to defend the home islands against invasion, but I-58 and Japan’s five other operational submarines represent the nation’s last great chance to be the attacker instead of the attacked.

  It has been an adventurous, if frustrating, ten months since Hashimoto first took the sub to sea. The I-58 has seen action off the coast of Guam and during the battles for Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Her job is to harass the American fleet, launching her Type 95s and kaitens at vessels anchored offshore in support of the invasions. But it is US pilots who have often done the stalking, attacking I-58 whenever she comes close enough to the surface to fire her arsenal. Hashimoto has been forced to dive deep to save his crew on many occasions. On April 25, three American destroyers cornered I-58, and there was little Hashimoto and his men could do but wait out the attack from three hundred feet beneath the surface. They survived, and afterward were credited with sinking an American tanker and an American aircraft carrier.

  But it was all a ruse. The truth is the I-58 had sunk nothing at all.4

  The fact that Hashimoto has not destroyed a single American ship is a matter of shame for him. To become a true man of honor, he needs a kill. He hopes that this voyage will erase the lone blemish on an otherwise spotless service record.

  Enemy ships seem to be everywhere in the Pacific now, offering I-58 a number of targets. Hashimoto’s orders are to “harass the enemy’s communications,” giving him the latitude to attack whenever he wants. And with I-58’s range of twenty-one thousand nautical miles, this means Hashimoto can travel almost any place in the Pacific that he wishes, a lone wolf in search of a sheep that has strayed from its flock.

  Hashimoto’s crew of one hundred officers and men realize that the war may be over by the time they return to port. They are an elite group, hand-selected for service aboard I-58. The end of the war will surely mean the dissolution of the Imperial Japanese Navy. This, then, will be their last mission.

  Hashimoto, the son of a Shinto priest, has erected a small shrine on board so that he might seek divine intervention. He prays that somewhere out there is an American ship destined to collide with one of I-58’s torpedoes.

  Soon, his prayer will be answered.


  “Dive,” orders Hashimoto.

  15

  POTSDAM, GERMANY

  JULY 25, 1945

  LATE EVENING

  President Harry Truman is homesick. On the road for almost two weeks, he has maintained his normal routine of rising early and enjoying a breakfast of oatmeal, orange juice, toast, and milk. Yet he misses his wife, Bess, and the things that make a home a home, like his favorite White House dinner of chicken and dumplings. But right now food is not on Truman’s mind. He is immersed in his journal, penning his notes on the Potsdam Conference. The reports of Trinity’s power have disturbed him, allowing the president to see at last that America possesses an unparalleled weapon of war.

  “We have discovered the most terrible formula in the history of the world,” Truman writes with his barely legible handwriting. “It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era, after Noah and his fabulous Ark.”

  The words flow quickly onto the page, but each is chosen with care. For good or bad, Truman knows that history will long judge this journal entry. It was only yesterday that he authorized the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan.

  After conferring with his military advisers and with Winston Churchill in Potsdam just before noon on July 24, 1945, Truman has allowed the process to move forward. It was a fairly easy decision, despite the objections of some nuclear scientists at Los Alamos and even General Dwight Eisenhower, Truman’s top commander in Europe, who believes that Japan is close to surrendering. In the end, Truman came to the conclusion that an invasion would cost too many American lives.

  Though he will later state that “the final decision of where and when to use the atomic bomb was up to me—let there be no mistake about it,” the truth is that the decision was made long ago by Franklin Roosevelt, who had no qualms whatsoever about the prospect of using the atomic bomb. FDR was so fed up with the death and destruction in Europe and the Pacific that he had little hesitation in justifying the two-billion-dollar Manhattan Project.

  Nonetheless, Truman is the one man in the world with the power to stop the bombing of Japan, and he chooses not to do so. He issues no verbal or written order to announce his decision. Truman does nothing more than get out of the way; what will happen, will happen. It is a rare display of passive behavior by a man so prone to action, but his thinking is clear.

  It is late in the night as Truman continues his journal entry in Potsdam: “This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target, not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless, and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop this terrible bomb on the old capital or the new.”

  The decision to spare the modern capital of Tokyo and the nearby port at Yokohama has made it almost inevitable that Hiroshima will be attacked first. The waterfront city of 350,000 has not once been firebombed, making it a prime unscathed target. Many of its residents are Japanese soldiers and marines; the port itself is one of the nation’s largest military supply depots. Truman’s insistence on military targets makes Hiroshima a natural bull’s-eye for the bomb known as Little Boy, which has just reached the island of Tinian and is being unloaded from the USS Indianapolis at this very moment.

  And with Truman’s refusal to destroy the ancient Japanese capital city of Kyoto, the city of Nagasaki is added to the target list in its place.

  “The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement asking the Japs to surrender and save lives,” Truman writes. “I’m sure they will not do that, but we will have given them the chance. It is certainly a good thing for the world that Hitler’s crowd or Stalin’s did not discover this atomic bomb. It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful.”

  Although it has been more than a week since the successful A-bomb explosion in New Mexico, Truman still had not yet shared the news with Joseph Stalin. Now that the targets have been finalized, the Soviets are to be informed.

  The revelation to Stalin comes at the end of another frustrating day of debate about the shape of the postwar world. Russia’s bargaining position is to relentlessly demand more control over territories it has seized in Europe. The US position is to refuse Russian expansion.

  The Soviets now have more than one million men on the Manchurian border, poised to attack Japanese occupying forces. The presence of such a large Soviet force in China means that the Soviets will soon want a considerable say in the future of Asia. It is a tiresome negotiation, yet Truman has stood up to the Soviets time and again, refusing to allow Stalin to occupy more territory.

  The ornate great hall of the Cecilienhof Palace is sweltering. For reasons of decorum, the president will not remove his double-breasted suit coat or even loosen his bow tie. Throughout the afternoon, fifteen leaders and diplomats sit around the ten-foot-wide circular conference table, with Joseph Stalin to Truman’s far right and Winston Churchill to his left.

  This summit meeting marks the first time Truman and Stalin have met in person. Over the course of the negotiations, the president has been uncowed by the Russian leader, who prefers to wear a military uniform and answers most questions with a simple grunt. This habit amuses Truman, even though he is well aware of Stalin’s barbarity.

  Shortly before 5:00 p.m., the meeting ends. At the conclusion of a long afternoon around the bargaining table, Truman rises from his seat and walks five chairs to his right, where Stalin stands to stretch his legs. Casually, so as not to alarm the Russian leader, Truman quietly informs Stalin that the United States has “a new weapon of unusual destructive force.”

  Stalin pauses, then says through his interpreter: “I am glad to hear it.”

  The truth is, Stalin already knows about the atomic bomb, thanks to his spies inside the Los Alamos research facility. “I hope you will make good use of it against the Japanese,” the Russian dictator says—and makes his exit.

  Almost immediately, Truman is confronted by Churchill, who is confused, as is Truman’s interpreter, Charles Bohlen, a Soviet expert and American diplomat. Secretary of State James F. Byrnes joins them. The men can’t believe Stalin is so indifferent.

  In fact, Joseph Stalin is panicked. He is a man for whom total power is everything, and the idea that his military might could be diminished is intolerable. Joseph Stalin has murdered millions of his own citizens and has allowed his troops to loot and pillage Germany and Eastern Europe. His goal is to dominate the world. He is terrified that this new weapon will shift the balance of power in favor of the Americans.1

  After leaving the great hall of Cecilienhof Palace, Stalin quickly dictates a telegram to the scientists at work on Russia’s own nuclear program: “Hurry with the job.”

  16

  MANILA CITY HALL

  MANILA, PHILIPPINES

  JULY 30, 1945

  1515 HOURS

  The most powerful man in the Pacific has no idea the atomic bomb is operational and that massive destruction is just days away.

  At the Potsdam Conference, President Truman’s military advisers now know about Trinity, as do Britain and Russia’s top generals.

  In Germany, American general Dwight Eisenhower, commander of all Allied forces in Europe, was informed of the nuclear weapon’s success over dinner one week ago. “They told me they were going to drop it on the Japanese,” Eisenhower will later write. “I was against it on two counts. First, the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hate to see our country being the first to use such a weapon.”

  But General Douglas MacArthur, the most senior officer on either side of the war, a man who has served under eight presidents, who has been awarded a Medal of Honor and commands a territory five times the size of the United States with more than one million fighting men at his order, has been told nothing.

  Even as his sta
ff continues to prepare for the invasion of Japan, an event Douglas MacArthur believes will result in “a million casualties,” the general lives a life of leisure. He spends his days regaling with war stories the reporters and delegates from Washington who have come to the Philippines to pay their respects and enjoys long lunches at “Casa Blanca,” the mansion he has appropriated for his family amidst the devastation of Manila.

  On this sweltering Monday afternoon, another delegation fills his second-floor office. The guests include Assistant Secretary of the Navy H. Struve Hensel and Vice Admiral Ross T. McIntire, who until very recently served as Franklin Roosevelt’s personal physician. Their manner is deferential, befitting the respect due a commander of MacArthur’s stature. While his guests remain seated, the general paces the room and thinks out loud throughout their visit, as is his custom. MacArthur’s top staff, who admire him tremendously, sometimes mimic this behavior to add a little levity to their day.

  As the thirty-minute meeting winds to a polite conclusion and the five-man delegation is ushered out the door, MacArthur has a few brief moments to reflect on the shocking news that landed on his desk yesterday: Japanese troops are pouring onto the island of Kyushu, with “no end in sight.”1

  Instead of the eighty thousand soldiers MacArthur believed would be defending the invasion beaches, nine Japanese divisions comprising more than five hundred thousand men are now digging in on the coastline, waiting for the Americans to land. Almost all are stationed at Kyushu’s southern beaches, site of MacArthur’s Operation Olympic invasion zones.

  MacArthur is troubled. Allied forces now control most of the Pacific, as MacArthur demonstrated by wading ashore during the invasion of Borneo just a few weeks ago. But the Japanese still own much of Asia’s Pacific Rim. Their air force bases in Korea, China, and northern Japan will allow them to launch kamikaze aircraft against an invasion fleet. In addition, the Imperial Japanese Navy’s Twelfth Flotilla, based on Kyushu, has nine hundred hidden planes that will be utilized for suicide flights. Vintage wooden biplanes, invisible to American radar, are also being retrofitted for nighttime suicide attacks.