Killing the Rising Sun

by Bill O'Reilly

To which the former Enola Gay Haggard added quietly, “Paul, if you want to go fly airplanes, you’re going to be all right.”

  Now, with the black block-letter painting of Enola Gay’s name on the silver fuselage, she and her son will forever be linked in history.1

  “There stood the Enola Gay,” Tibbets will later write, “bathed in floodlights like the star of a Hollywood movie. Motion picture cameras were set up and still photographers were standing by with their equipment. Any Japanese lurking in the surrounding hills—and there were still some who had escaped capture—had to know that something very special was going on.”

  Soon, the thrum of the 2,200 horsepower B-29 Wright Cyclone engines fills the air as the advance weather planes Jabit III, Full House, and Straight Flush lumber down the 8,500-foot east-west Runway Able, which has been nicknamed the “Hirohito Highway.” One by one, the planes take off and ascend into the night for the twelve-hour round-trip flight to the Empire.

  The time is 1:37 a.m.

  Colonel Paul Tibbets and Enola Gay are set to take off in one hour.

  * * *

  Preparation has been intense. At 2:00 p.m., Little Boy was pulled by tractor to a special loading pit. Due to its size, it cannot fit beneath the B-29’s fuselage for loading like normal bombs. Instead, a concrete-lined pit has been dug into the earth. At 2:15, Enola Gay was backed over the pit before the atomic weapon was loaded into the bomb bay with a hydraulic lift. Captain Deak Parsons entered the bay at 3:30 to practice the eleven steps necessary to arm the bomb midflight, which he has never done before. Just this morning, four B-29s rolling out for standard bombing missions crashed on takeoff, detonating all their explosives. Parsons is openly fearful that a similar crash of Enola Gay will wipe Tinian off the map.

  Little Boy being loaded into the bomb bay of Enola Gay

  By 5:30, with the words “Enola Gay” painted in block letters just beneath the cockpit, the B-29 was ready for preflight testing, which went off without incident.

  At 8:00 p.m., Colonel Tibbets conducted a final briefing. In addition to flight routes, altitudes, and departure times, he pinpointed the location of rescue ships and submarines that would be in the area in case a plane had to ditch in the ocean. This information was particularly vital because the US Navy had just issued a warning for all ships to stay at least fifty miles away from Hiroshima. This reduced the potential number of rescue vessels, meaning that only a pinpoint water landing would save Tibbets and his crew in an emergency.

  Catholic Mass was prayed at 10:00 p.m. A Protestant service followed immediately at 10:30. Almost every man attended one or the other. Tibbets, a man whose only faith is in the physics of aviation, attended neither. The men are loose but pensive—trained professionals who have flown scores of combat missions. However, during the final preflight midnight meal of sausage, blueberry pancakes, and real eggs in the mess hall—affectionately nicknamed the “Dogpatch Inn”—Tibbets was nervous, though trying not to show it. He ate little, preferring to drink black coffee and smoke his pipe. His time had almost come.

  * * *

  Three hundred miles southwest of Tinian, the USS Oneida, a fast attack transport, has just arrived in the bustling anchorage at Ulithi, an island atoll four hundred miles northeast of Palau. She dropped anchor at 1500 hours on August 5, the same time Little Boy was being loaded into Enola Gay’s bomb bay. Oneida is carrying a cargo of fresh army soldiers traveling from Pearl Harbor to Okinawa, where they will train for the invasion of Japan.

  The Oneida is a new ship, commissioned just last December. She is 455 feet long and 62 feet wide at the beam, with a top speed of 17.7 knots. In her short time afloat, she has taken a nearly full tour of the Pacific, maintaining almost nonstop motion carrying men and cargo in and out of combat zones. Since leaving San Francisco on January 30, Oneida has visited nineteen ports or anchorages.2

  A young ensign from Brooklyn, New York, is among the ship’s fifty-six-man officer corps. He is twenty-one and quick-witted, the son of a New York City policeman. In his nine-month stint aboard Oneida, the recent graduate of the navy’s V-12 Navy College Training Program at the College of the Holy Cross has seen action off the coast of Okinawa, witnessed defeated Japanese soldiers up close when the Oneida ferried 1,050 prisoners of war to Pearl Harbor last month, and experienced all manner of weather—most of all rain, heat, and tropical humidity. In one month’s time, the ensign will even endure a typhoon aboard Oneida.

  As with so many soldiers and sailors, the young officer does not know what lies ahead for him. There are, of course, rumors of a massive American invasion of the Japanese mainland. All American military personnel know that would lead to catastrophic casualties on both sides.

  The ensign will do his duty, whatever happens, but he would like to make it home alive. There is a young woman waiting for him.

  * * *

  A methodical man, Colonel Tibbets makes one last walk around Enola Gay, scrutinizing her for signs of trouble. With seven thousand gallons of fuel and a four-ton bomb, she is almost seven tons overweight, so even the slightest malfunction could be deadly.

  “I made sure there were no open pieces of cowling, no pitot covers left hanging, and that the tires were inflated and in good condition. I also checked the pavement for telltale evidence of hydraulic leaks and looked into the bottom of the engine cowlings with a flashlight to be sure there was no excessive oil drip.”

  Tibbets enters the cockpit through a ladder at the aft end of the nose gear. The other eleven members of the crew also get on the plane, find their seats, and arrange themselves for the long flight.

  Tibbets sits in the seat on the left reserved for the aircraft commander. Copilot Bob Lewis takes the right seat. There is tension between the two men, for Enola Gay was Lewis’s aircraft before Tibbets chose to change the name and fly it on this mission.

  Outside, spectators wait patiently on the tarmac for Enola Gay to take flight. Tibbets is in no hurry, unworried about his audience or the bruised feelings of Captain Lewis as he runs through yet another preflight check of instruments and systems.

  Once all four engines are running, Tibbets does a final check of the oil-pressure, fuel-pressure, and RPM gauges. The thrum of the propellers causes Enola Gay to shake; only when she takes flight will the vibration cease. “The entire checkout and starting procedure required about thirty-five minutes and it was now 2:30,” Tibbets will remember.

  “Waving to the crowd of almost one hundred who were standing by, I gunned the engines and began our taxi.

  “Destination: Hiroshima.”

  21

  HIROSHIMA, JAPAN

  AUGUST 6, 1945

  7:10 A.M.

  The humid air is filled with warning. Air-raid sirens again awaken the citizens of Hiroshima. The morning has dawned warm and clear, with just a few wispy clouds in the sky. A single American B-29 has been seen flying toward the city, causing the alert to sound and disrupting the start of the business day—a time for cooking the morning meal and boarding the streetcar to work. Air-raid warnings are now a constant nuisance, but at this late point in the war it seems unlikely the Americans will finally bomb the city. So while some residents dutifully flee into bomb shelters, others go about their day.

  In the huge harbor, shrimp fishermen tend to their nets, as their ancestors have done for centuries. They ignore the air-raid warnings, as they have nowhere to flee. In the southern section of town near the port, the Ujina fire station is relatively calm, and fireman Yosaku Mikami looks at the clock. He is less than sixty minutes away from the end of his twenty-four-hour shift, but any bombing will cause fires, meaning Yosaku’s services will be needed immediately.

  Despite the evacuation of his family yesterday and the empty house that awaits him, Yosaku is eager to get home. He patiently waits for the sound of the all-clear siren, and at 7:32 he hears it. The danger has passed—or so it seems.

  * * *

  On the other side of town, sixteen-year-old Akira Onogi is executing his plan to t
ake the day off from work at the Mitsubishi shipbuilding plant. A studious boy, Akira is angry that he can no longer attend school due to the war. But he now lies content on the floor of his parents’ home, reading a book. Akira is looking forward to a day of leisure—he has no plans at all.

  * * *

  The all-clear siren alerts the people who took shelter at the Hatchobori streetcar station that they can now emerge. Twenty-year-old Akiko Takakura is a cautious young woman, but she now resumes her journey to the Geibi Bank, where she does secretarial work. The bank, with its stone walls and armored window coverings that let in almost no light, is less than a half mile from the T-shaped Aioi Bridge spanning the Ota River—what will soon be ground zero.

  Three days ago, the clock tower at Hiroshima University stopped working at precisely 8:15. The city lacks the spare parts and material to fix it, so the great clock looking down on all of Hiroshima remains frozen in time.

  As Akiko enters the lobby of her workplace, she notices that the bank clock in the lobby is just a few moments away from striking 8:15.

  It is an omen Akiko will never forget.

  * * *

  Enola Gay flies over Japan at an altitude of 30,700 feet. The overloaded bomber can climb no higher. Weather plane Straight Flush, which caused the air-raid sirens to sound in Hiroshima this morning, has reported that the weather is fine for visual bombing. With that message, the fate of the city is sealed.

  “It’s Hiroshima,” Colonel Paul Tibbets barks into Enola Gay’s intercom.

  Six hours ago, shortly after taking off from Tinian, Captain Deak Parsons and his assistant, Lieutenant Morris Jeppson, wriggled through the small pressurized opening separating the bomb bay from the rest of the aircraft. Little Boy almost entirely fills the cavernous space. The ugly bomb is bulbous, with four square tail fins to guide its descent, a design predicated upon performance instead of appearance.

  A single shackle holds Little Boy in place. Braces keep the bomb from swaying side to side. Standing on a small catwalk, Parsons positions himself at the rear of the device. He needs light to see what he is doing, so Jeppson, a physicist educated at Harvard, Yale, and MIT, provides it.

  The captain works quickly, running through an eleven-step checklist that arms Little Boy. Opening a small panel, he inserts four silk packages of cordite powder. This smokeless propellant will detonate the uranium “bullet” at one end of the bomb’s inner cannon barrel. The small chunk of enriched U-235 will race down the barrel and collide with a separate sphere of uranium known as the nucleus at the opposite end. Within one-trillionth of a second of the bullet striking the nucleus—a “picosecond,” in technical terms—the splitting of one atom into two smaller atoms will begin the process of nuclear fission. The explosion will follow immediately, releasing deadly heat and radioactive gamma rays.

  As Parsons arms Little Boy, the sharp, machined edges of the rear panel cut his fingertips. Undaunted, he finishes the job in twenty-five minutes. His final act is to insert three green dummy plugs between Little Boy’s battery and its firing mechanism.

  Little Boy is armed but fragile. Anything that ignites the cordite charges will cause it to explode, killing all the men on Enola Gay; thus, the green plugs placed between the electrical connections. As long as those plugs are secure, Little Boy will not detonate.

  * * *

  Just before they enter Japanese airspace, Deak Parsons sends Morris Jeppson back into the bomb bay one last time. The blond lieutenant replaces the green plugs with three red arming plugs, thus establishing an electrical circuit between the battery and the bomb.

  Little Boy is now alive.

  * * *

  One hour later, Enola Gay bombardier Thomas Ferebee announces, pointing straight out the front bubble window of the aircraft, “I’ve got the bridge.”

  The Aioi Bridge was chosen as Little Boy’s aiming point because of its location in the center of Hiroshima and its unique T-shaped appearance, visible from the air.

  Looking down, Colonel Tibbets can see the white buildings of downtown Hiroshima; he can actually see a mass of movement that looks like people walking to work. “My eyes were fixed on the center of the city, which shimmered in the early morning light,” he will later remember.

  Enola Gay flies the last miles to Hiroshima uncontested. No enemy planes or antiaircraft fire greet the Americans. Japanese air defense officials, having already sounded three air-raid warnings during the night, choose to ignore the B-29’s approach, thinking it to be on a simple reconnaissance mission.

  With ninety seconds to go, bombardier Thomas Ferebee positions his left eye over the Norden bombsight’s viewfinder. If he does his job properly, allowing for Enola Gay’s airspeed of 330 miles per hour and the slight amount of wind that will cause the bomb to drift, Little Boy should fall to the ground with pinpoint accuracy.

  “One minute out,” Tibbets announces, breaking radio silence.

  Ferebee flicks a switch that sends a sharp tone into the headphones of the Enola Gay crew and those of the men in the two scientific planes following behind, reminding them of what is to come. They are to put specially darkened goggles over their eyes to protect their vision. All three planes have been ordered to flee the vicinity as soon as possible to avoid the aftershock of the atomic explosion.

  “Thirty seconds,” says Tibbets.

  “Twenty.”

  The bomb bay doors open at precisely 8:15 a.m.—the exact moment at which the Hiroshima University clock froze three days ago.

  “Ten … nine … eight … seven … six … five …

  “Four … three … two … one…”

  At 8:15:17 a.m., Little Boy is set loose from its shackle.

  * * *

  Instantly, Enola Gay lurches upward, finally rid of the four extra tons beneath her nose. Tibbets wrestles her sharply to the right, almost standing her on a wing as he turns away from Hiroshima. He has less than fifty seconds to distance himself from the blast. If he fails to cover enough ground, Enola Gay will be destroyed by shock waves.

  Despite the 60-degree bank, a move more suited to a lithe fighter aircraft than a massive bomber, bombardier Ferebee keeps his left eye affixed to his Norden bombsight, allowing him to watch Little Boy plummet to earth. The bomb wobbles after first being dropped, but the four stabilizing fins soon force the nose down, propelling it toward the heart of Hiroshima.

  Ferebee is transfixed, knowing that he is witnessing history. Ten seconds pass. Twenty. Thirty. Almost too late, he remembers that the explosion’s brightness will blind anyone who stares at it. Just in time, Ferebee unglues his eye from the bombsight and turns away from Little Boy’s descent.

  Forty-three seconds after its release, at an altitude of 1,890 feet over the Aioi Bridge in downtown Hiroshima, Little Boy’s radar proximity fuse detonates. Within the bomb’s inner cannon, the four cordite charges explode, sending the uranium bullet hurtling the length of the barrel, where it collides with the second mass of U-235. The chain reaction is instantaneous. In the blast that follows, a fireball spreads out over the target zone. It travels at one hundred times the speed of sound, rendering it silent. One-millionth of a second later, the people of Hiroshima begin to incinerate.

  Almost twelve miles away, the shock wave slams into the escaping Enola Gay so hard that Tibbets shouts “Flak,” thinking the plane has been hit by ground fire. He feels a strange “tingling sensation” in his mouth, the result of his fillings interacting with the radioactive elements now billowing thousands of feet into the air.

  But Enola Gay is safe. All twelve men on board are alive. In six hours they will celebrate with whiskey and lemonade and spend the night far from the hell they have just created.

  * * *

  Little Boy explodes three hundred yards from its primary target. The temperature inside the bomb at the moment of nuclear fission is more than a million degrees Fahrenheit, which sends out a white flash of light ten times the brightness of the sun. Millionths of a second later, the heat on the ground d
irectly below the bomb spikes to 6,000 degrees, bringing with it deadly radioactive gamma rays.

  A thirty-five-year-old widow, Mrs. Aoyama, has sent her young son off to his mandatory work detail early. Per her daily routine, she is outdoors, working in the vegetable garden she shares with monks from a nearby Buddhist temple. The vegetable garden is located directly beneath the exploding Little Boy, the precise spot on the earth that will be known as the hypocenter.

  Mrs. Aoyama is vaporized.

  Death comes so quickly that her nerve endings do not have time to react to pain, nor even acknowledge the presence of the light and heat liquefying her bones and boiling her brain at a temperature five times greater than that of boiling water.

  Thousands of men, women, and children within a half-mile radius of Mrs. Aoyama are simultaneously reduced to lumps of charcoal, their internal organs evaporating inside their charred corpses. Downtown Hiroshima is instantly covered in smoking black piles that were once human bodies. One woman standing in front of the Hiroshima Central Broadcasting Station tries to flee, only to be carbonized in a running position, her baby pressed tightly to her body.

  But that is just the beginning.

  Three milliseconds later, the sky erupts into a fireball three hundred yards wide as the surrounding air ignites, liquefying everyone in its proximity.

  Then comes the blast as the explosion rockets outward with the force of twenty thousand tons of TNT, followed immediately by a billowing mushroom cloud that rises more than fifty thousand feet into the air, sucking up dust, dirt, and bodily gases from the vaporized remains of those killed at the hypocenter.

  Within seconds, seventy thousand people are dead.

  Almost every person and building within a one-mile radius of the hypocenter has vanished.

  Pets, birds, rats, ants, cockroaches—gone.

  Homes, fishing boats, telephone poles, the centuries-old Hiroshima Castle—all disappeared.

  Day turns into night as the mushroom cloud blots out the sun. Beyond the one-mile radius of the hypocenter, some have survived, though at a horrible cost. Flash burns blind all those unfortunate to be caught looking in the direction of the blast, while the intense heat maims and disfigures thousands, many of whom live miles away. One group of Japanese soldiers is burned so badly that their faces literally melt away; it is impossible to distinguish the back of their heads from the front.