Before the Fallout

by Diana Preston

  After completing three circuits, Tibbets headed Enola Gay for Tinian. Deak Parsons radioed back a report of success: "Clear cut, successful in all respects. Visual effects greater than Trinity. Hiroshima. Conditions normal in airplane following delivery. Proceeding to regular base ."The chief weaponeer then relapsed into what other members of the crewr recalled as "a withdrawn and meditative" mood. Bob Caron could still see the mushroom cloud from his tail turret until they were more than 350 miles from Hiroshima. Tibbets handed the controls to Bob Lewis while he napped for a while. As he flew7 the plane home, Lewis was assessing events. Later that day he told a reporter, "Even though we had expected something terrific what we saw made us feel that we were Buck Rogers twenty-fifth century warriors." More soberly he wrote on his pad, "I had a strong conviction that it was possible, by the time we landed, that the Japs would have thrown in the sponge. Because of the total destruction I didn't feel there was room for anything but complete surrender." Tom Ferebee wondered whether the radiation to which they had been exposed might make him sterile. Deak Parsons tried to reassure him.*

  Tibbets took the controls again to land on Tinian. As they came to a standstill, they were greeted by a large crowd, the formal welcoming party many times outnumbered by well-wishers. When, pipe in mouth, Tibbets led his men down onto the tarmac through the hatch to the rear of the B-29's nosewheel, he was surprised to see General Carl Spaatz, the commanding general of the U.S. Army Strategic Air Force, approaching. Tib­bets barely had time to palm his pipe before the general pinned the Distinguished Service Cross on his creased flight overalls. Then a scrum of well-wishers surrounded him, slapping his back, rejoicing in the mission's success, and eager to hear more about it.

  *The unit had been adapted from an instrument designed to alert pilots to the approach of enemy aircraft to the rear. Instead of bouncing signals off an approaching hostile plane, they would respond to the approaching ground.

  * Ferebee need not have worried. He later fathered four sons.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  "MOTHERWILL NOT DIE"

  TOWARD MIDNIGHT on 5 August, Hatsuyo Nakamura, the widow of the tailor turned soldier Isawa Nakamura, who had been killed more than three years earlier on the day Singapore fell, heard on her radio a warning to all inhabitants of Hiroshima that twro hundred American bombers were approaching. Everyone should go to the safe areas. She woke her three children. With their sleeping rolls they set out from their small wooden house in the part of the city known as Nobori-cho for their appointed safe area on the northeast side of the city near Hiroshima railway station. They returned at 2:30 a.m. after the all clear signaled that the bombers had passed. Air-raid sirens woke Mrs. Nakamura again at around 7 a.m. as Claude Eatherly's weather plane approached, but she decided not to disturb her children to take them back to the safe area. The all clear soon sounded once more. Her children were beginning to wake, so she gave them a few peanuts for breakfast and told them to try to sleep, soon made difficult by the noise of a neighbor knocking down his own house to comply with the order to make firebreaks.

  Mrs. Nakamura was standing at her kitchen window watching him when, just after 8:15, a white flash enveloped her. Her house, which was only three quarters of a mile from the Aioi Bridge, collapsed about her, burying her under the debris. As she struggled to free herself, she heard her youngest daughter, Myeko, cry for help and, twisting around, saw her buried up to her chest. She could see no sign of her ten-year-old son, Toshio, or eight-year-old daughter, Yaeko. Then, from beneath the collapsed beams and tiles, came separate disembodied cries. Both were alive. Mrs. Nakamura frantically pulled the wood aside to free them. Afterward she released Myeko too.

  All four were dusty, dirty, frightened, and confused. Toshio and Yaeko said nothing, but young Myeko kept asking, "Why is it night already? Why did our house fall down?" Mrs. Nakamura got them out into the street, where they saw the neighbor who had been demolishing his own house lying dead. The authorities had previously designated Asano Park, a wooded area along the nearby Kyo River, as the evacuation place for Mrs. Nakamura's neighborhood. Now, with her children and with a hastily gathered bundle of clothes on her back, she and a neighbor almost instinctively hurried toward the park, past ruined houses. From under the rubble of some came cries for help half muted by the debris. Mrs. Nakamura felt compelled to ignore them as, in her determination to save her children, she pressed on.

  About half an hour after the explosion, as the intensity of the fires consuming the city grew ever stronger, heavy rain began. At first it fell in large, sticky, black drops—"black rain"—water intermingled with soot, muddy dust, and debris flung into the air by the explosion. The rain also contained radioactive material released by the bomb. Some desperately thirsty, traumatized people instinctively opened their mouths and let the contaminated water cool their parched throats.

  Mrs. Nakamura's family were among the first to arrive at Asano Park. The park was a private riverside estate with rock gardens, ornamental trees, and bamboo groves. The Nakamuras had not been affected by the black rain. However, once in the park they went down to the river to drink from it. Immediately they began to vomit from the effects of the polluted water, as did all those around them who were doing likewise. The Nakamuras lay prostrate on the ground until, during the afternoon, the fires from the city raging out of control began to catch the trees of the park. Luckily, a storm combining black rain and strong winds held the fires back, and the Nakamuras spent the night where they were. The next day a German Jesuit priest from their neighborhood brought them to safety outside the city, with the children riding on a handcart. On 12 August they moved to live with Mrs. Nakamura's sister-in-law in a nearby town.

  Futaba Kitayama, the young mother who had seen the bomb fall from "an airplane as pretty as a silver treasure" and explode "with an indescribable light" made up her mind that, despite her severe burns, she must survive to see her three children again—she had sent them to the countryside a little while previously for safety. "Suddenly, driven by a terror that would not permit inaction I started to run for my life," she recalled. "I say 'run,' but I had no idea where the road was. Everything was covered in wood and tiles so I had no idea which way to go. Such a bright morning until a moment ago, what in the world could have happened? Now we were under a thin cover of darkness, just like dusk. The dull haze, as if my eyes were covered with mist, made me wonder if I was losing my mind. Looking around unsteadily, I saw something that looked like people running on the bridge. 'That's Tsurumi Bridge. If I don't get over it right away, I'll lose my chance to escape,' I thought. Jumping over trees and rocks like a crazy person, I ran towards the Tsurumi Bridge. When I arrived I saw a horrifying spectacle. Countless bodies squirming and writhing in the flow of people and water under the bridge. Their faces were grey and so swollen I couldn't tell male from female. Hair stood straight up. Arms waved in the air. Voices groaned wordlessly. They were jumping into the river one after another. The strong ray had burned my work pants to rags, and my whole body was in agony, so I was preparing to jump in with them when I remembered that I couldn't swim."

  When she turned around, she saw that the whole city was "a solid sheet of flames. Calling out the names of my three children in turn, I encouraged myself over and over, saying 'Mother will not die. Mother will be alright.' Looking back, I simply cannot remember where or howr I ran. The many pitiful sights I saw are etched in my brain."

  Eventually she came to another bridge, where, she recalled, "corpses were floating by like dead dogs and cats, their shreds of clothing dangling like rags. In the shoals near the banks I saw a woman floating face up, her chest gouged out and gushing blood. Could such terrifying sights be of this world? Suddenly I lost strength and [after crossing the bridge] had to sit right in the middle of the [neighboring] drill ground. All around me, junior high school girls and boys from another volunteer corps writhed on the ground. They seemed crazed, crying 'mother, mother.' As my eyes took in the cruel sight of their burns and gaping wounds
so horrible I couldn't bear to look at them, an enormous rage welled up from deep within, but I didn't know where to direct it. Even these innocent children . . . crying for their mothers first one, then another, breathed his or her last. All I could do was look at them.

  "I gathered all the strength in my flickering body and soul and fell in line with people heading towards the mountains. Probably about 3 pm, having been utterly lethargic for some time, I sat down. As I gazed around with what was left of my eyesight I could tell that the station and all of Atagocho had become a sea of fire. I felt lucky to have escaped. Gradually my face grew stiff. Gently touching my cheeks with both hands, I measured with my eyes the distance between my hands as I took them away and sawr that my face had swollen to about twice its normal size. My vision was more and more restricted, 'Oh no, soon I won't be able to see. Could I have come this far only to die here?' Stretcher after stretcher came by carrying the injured. Carts and trucks drove by full of injured people and corpses that looked more like monsters. On both sides of the road, many people wobbled this way and that, as if sleepwalking."

  View of Hiroshima after the dropping of the atomic bomb

  "I realized that while I could see a little, I needed to find a safe place where I would not be hit by a truck and could quietly trust myself to fate. Peering here and there through barely open eyes, I saw my own sister squatting and resting. 'Sister, sister, help me.' Without thinking I ran towards her. My sister at first looked at me doubtfully. Finally, she recognised me. 'Futaba-chan you look . . . ,' she couldn't say any more and just held me. 'Sister, I can't see any more. Please take me to my children.'" Her sister put Futaba on a vegetable cart and took her to a relief station. After a couple of days the doctors said her case was hopeless. Futaba persuaded her sister to take her to her home.

  "That evening my children arrived at last. When I heard their voices scream 'mummy' I felt rescued from the depths of hell. ' I 'm O.K. These burns are nothing much.' And I cried as the children I had missed so much came and clung to me. On the 11th I was quietly preparing myself to give up and die when my husband arrived, having tracked me down. At that time my suffering was so bad I found brief solace thinking, 'Ah, good. Now if they lose their mother they'll still have their father' and I was happy. Then, three days after finding us, my husband, who had no serious injuries at all, began vomiting blood. Then he was gone, leaving behind a wife, unsure she would see another day, and his three beloved children. Our little boy sat near my pillow crying, 'mummy.' I almost bled with grief and, even now, as I recall that time, the tears flow. 'My poor children, I can't die now, I can't leave them orphans.' With all my heart I prayed to the spirit of my husband, asking help. Over and over I was told I had no hope, but miraculously I lived."

  · · ·

  Down in the port area, twro and a half miles from the center of the blast, a twenty-eight-year-old army doctor, Hiroshi Sawachika, remembered, "I had just entered [my office] and said good morning and I was about to approach my desk when outside it suddenly turned bright red. I felt very hot on my cheeks. I felt weightless as if I were an astronaut. I was then unconscious for twenty or thirty seconds. When I came to I realized that everybody including myself was lying at one side of the room. I went to the windows to find out where the bombing had taken place. And I saw7 the mushroom cloud over the gas company. I still had no idea what had happened, I realized that my white shirt was red all over. I thought it was funny because I was not injured at all. I looked round, then realized that the girl lying nearby was heavily injured with lots of broken glass stuck all over her body. Her blood had splashed and made stains on my shirt."

  He was told that "injured citizens wrere coming towards us for treatment [;there were] big hospitals in the center of the town, so why should they come here, I wondered, instead of going there? With lots of injured people arriving, we realized just how serious the matter was. As they came to us they held their hands aloft. They looked like they were ghosts. We made the tincture for their treatment by mixing edible peanut oil and some other things. We had to work in a mechanical manner in order to treat so many patients." After a while he went into a nearby room, where patients were waiting. "I found the room filled with a smell that was quite similar to the smell of dried squid when it has been grilled. The smell was quite strong. It is a sad reality that the smell human beings produce wdien they are burned is the same as that of the dried squid when it is grilled. The squid—we like so much to eat."

  Afterward he walked back through the rows of people awaiting treatment. "I felt someone touch my leg, it was a pregnant woman. She said that she was about to die in a few hours 'but I can feel that my baby is moving inside. It wants to get out of the womb. I don't mind if I die. But if the baby is delivered now it does not have to die with me. Please help my baby live.' There was no obstetrician there. There was no time to take care of her baby. All I could do was tell her that I would come back later when everything was ready for her and her baby. Thus I cheered her up and she looked so happy. The image of that pregnant woman never left my mind. Later I went to the place where I had found her before, she was still there, lying in the same place. I patted her on the shoulder but she said nothing. The person lying next to her said that a short while ago she had become silent."

  · · ·

  The atomic bomb had exploded with a temperature at its center of 1,800,000 degrees Fahrenheit, generating a white-hot fireball. Immediately beneath the explosion the ground reached more than 5,400 degrees Fahrenheit. (Iron melts at half that temperature.) Over a mile away, clothing on people outdoors spontaneously burst into flames. Pressure rose to over six tons per square meter (several hundred thousand times normal atmospheric pressure). Nearly all wooden houses wdthin a mile and a half had, like Mrs. Nakamura's, collapsed. Of the energy released, 35 percent was released as heat, 50 percent as blast, and 15, percent as radiation.

  According to the Hiroshima city government, the death toll by December 1945 was 140,000 plus or minus 10,000 of the 350,000 people estimated to have been in the city that day. It included those who had died from the immediate effects of the bomb and later from radiation. Deaths from radiation-related diseases still continue.* The dead are estimated to include up to 10,000 Koreans—nearly all forced laborers—and about 1 o American airmen being held prisoner in Hiroshima castle after being captured when their bombers were shot down.

  Because of the destruction of all means of communication, news of the attack did not reach Tokyo until around midday. Not until 7 August did the Japanese authorities send Professor Nishina to Hiroshima to confirm that the bomb had indeed been an atomic one. His plane developed engine trouble and had to turn back, and he did not arrive until the next day, 8 August, forty-eight hours after the explosion. The rapid clicking of his Geiger counter, together with the evidence of high temperatures provided by melted clay roof tiles and the obvious radiation injuries suffered by the victims, left him in no doubt. He later expressed awe at "the product of pure physics," but his greatest sensation was horror. Pride or refusal to contemplate defeat led Field Marshal Shunroku Hata, who had survived in his headquarters near Hiroshima, to play down the effects of the bomb. He reported that, in his view, the bomb was "not that powerful a weapon." However, during the evening of 8 August Nishina telephoned the prime minister's office in Tokyo with confirmation that it was indeed an atomic bomb, with, he calculated, a force of around twrenty thousand tons of TNT, that had obliterated Hiroshima.*

  Less than six hours after Nishina's call, the Soviet Union implemented its declaration of war against Japan, communicated earlier on 8 August, and more than one and a half million of its troops crossed into Manchuria, pushing back the Japanese forces in front of them. Just a few hours later, at about 11 a.m. on 9 August, before the Japanese government had time to consider either Nishina's report or the implication of Russian entry into the war, Fat Man destroyed Nagasaki.

  After Hiroshima, General Spaatz had been ordered "to continue operations as planned" in the ori
ginal directive to him that additional bombs be "delivered on" the target cities as soon as made available by the project staff. The second bomb had originally been scheduled to be dropped on 1 1 August, five days after Hiroshima, but the project team on Tinian had brought the date forward by two days in discussion with Paul Tibbets since good weather was forecast for 9 August and the five succeeding days were expected to be bad. General Farrell later explained, "We tried to beat the bad weather. But secondly, there was a general feeling among those in the theatre [Pacific] that the sooner this bomb was dropped, the better it wrould be for the war effort."

  Nagasaki was the secondary, not the primary, target for the delivery aircraft Bock's Car, piloted by Charles Sweeney. The primary was Kokura, but Sweeney found it cloud-covered and diverted to Nagasaki. Leonard Cheshire, whom Groves had this time allowed to fly as an observer together with William Penney, described a boiling blackness with a mushroom cloud "the colour of sulphur" with an "evil kind of luminous quality." The immediate death toll—at around forty thousand—was lower than Hiroshima, but the devastation was still immense.

  That afternoon, 9 August, in Tokyo, an imperial conference convened at which Hirohito's ministers expressed differing views on the wisdom of surrender. The meeting went on through the evening and into the early morning of the next day. At 2 a.m. on 10 August, Hirohito gave his view that the Japanese should accept the Potsdam Declaration and surrender. The sole precondition his ministers appended before informing the Allies was that their acceptance was on the understanding that the Potsdam Declaration did "not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a sovereign ruler."

  Secretary of State Byrnes's response to the offer did not address the condition either way. Nevertheless, Japan formally surrendered on 14 August at the emperor's express command. The next afternoon the emperor broadcast to his people for the first time. His thin, high-pitched voice told them in archaic court language that he had agreed to the surrender to save humankind "from total extinction." His government had conducted the war for self-defense and to preserve the nation's existence. Listeners then heard a cabinet announcement denouncing the United States for the use of atomic bombs in contravention of international law. Hirohito would die some forty-three years later on 7 January 1989, still emperor of Japan.