Enola Gay

by Gordon Thomas

  He recalled reading that the U.S. Marines had recently captured the Mariana Islands in the Pacific. The newspapers had dubbed one island “the place where the Seabees are going to build the largest aircraft carrier in the world.” It was just thirteen hundred miles from Japan. Its name was Tinian.

  Tibbets filed it in his memory.

  4

  The fall of Tinian in late July had totally failed to shake Second Lieutenant Tatsuo Yokoyama’s belief in the invincibility of the Imperial Japanese Army.

  This September evening, as usual before gunnery practice, the forty men at the antiaircraft gun post on Mount Futaba, in the northeastern outskirts of Hiroshima, were lectured by their young commander on the need to keep faith with the high command’s belief in ultimate victory.

  In appearance, Yokoyama at first glance seemed the classic caricature in countless American cartoons: buck teeth, slanted eyes, sloping forehead; a wiry figure in baggy blouse, with sloppy leggings encasing bandy legs.

  But his image was deceptive. He was a crack rifle shot at seven hundred yards. He was capable of carrying four hundred rounds of ammunition—double that carried by an American infantryman—and trained to exist on a bowl of rice and fish a day. He regarded surrender as the greatest shame he could inflict upon his family and country. Deeply religious and hyperpatriotic, he devoutly believed in the divinity of the emperor and the sacred duty of the army to protect his majesty. He would not spare his family, his soldiers, or himself to serve the emperor.

  Yokoyama had three heroes: first, Minoru Genda, the young officer who had convinced the high command that an unexpected, carrier-based air attack on Pearl Harbor was feasible and militarily desirable; second, Captain Mitsuo Fuchida, Genda’s close friend, who had led the 354 planes to Hawaii. Both had connections with the city where Yokoyama was now based. Genda had relatives in Hiroshima; Fuchida sometimes visited friends there. Yokoyama’s third hero was General Hideki Tojo, “The Razor,” Japan’s architect of war.

  Yokoyama told his men that they should look upon the “withdrawal” from the islands of Saipan, Tinian, and Guam in the Marianas as a predetermined action, part of a carefully prepared plan to draw the enemy closer to Japan.

  There, as they all knew, a vast army was waiting, and eager, to deal America and her Allies a blow which would send them reeling. The Americans could win a battle, he reminded his men, but Japan had never lost a war since 1598. He told them that the Japanese “departure” from the Marianas meant the day must be approaching when enemy bombers launched from there against Japan would at long last come within range of their guns.

  In anticipation of that moment, he drove his bored gun crews hard. The men knew he would punish them severely at the first sign of slackness. Under his commands the guns moved smoothly on their greased bearings, their slim barrels traversing the air over Hiroshima.

  Yokoyama passed among the gunners, urging them to imagine they were in action. Suddenly, one of the guns jammed. Yokoyama saw that a piece of waste cotton had been left in the mechanism. He halted the practice and furiously ordered the crews to strip, clean, and reassemble the guns. He then returned to his quarters to write up the incident in the daily report book and to think of a suitable punishment for the errant crew. He decided on two extra drills.

  But first he would enjoy a ritual he performed every evening. At the window of his billet, he surveyed the city through binoculars. He knew there would have been little change during the last twenty-four hours, but the panorama always soothed him.

  When he had first surveyed the city from his vantage point close to the crest of Mount Futaba a year before, Yokoyama had been struck by an oddity: Hiroshima resembled a human hand. By holding out his right hand, palm down, fingers spread, he reproduced a rough outline of the city. The port was at his fingertips in the south; beyond lay the depths of Hiroshima Bay and the Inland Sea. His wrist corresponded to that area where the Ota River ended its uninterrupted flow from the hills in the north and entered a broad, fan-shaped delta. There it broke into six main channels, which divided the city into islands. These were linked by eighty-one bridges. Directly under his palm was Hiroshima Castle, the center of a huge military operation.

  Hiroshima, 1945

  Yokoyama amused himself by identifying various installations and placing them in the corresponding positions on the back of his hand. At the tip of his index finger was Hiroshima Airport, with its military aircraft. On his thumb he located Toyo Industries—the company made rifles and gun platforms for warships. At the end of his little finger was the Mitsubishi works, with its dockyards and cranes.

  The factories, together with the dozens of smaller plants in the city, maintained round-the-clock shifts. A recent edict had inducted schoolchildren into working eight hours a day making weapons. Almost every man, woman, and child in the city was actively engaged in the war effort.

  Now, in September 1944, most factories in Hiroshima faced a shortage of materials. The patrol boats used for coastal duty were immobilized for lack of fuel, and training flights from the city’s airfield were curtailed.

  Yet this evening the war seemed as remote as ever to Yokoyama. The city below him was peaceful, a vast cluster of black-tiled roofs encased in a natural bowl of reclaimed delta surrounded by green hills and peaks.

  But in Yokoyama’s opinion Hiroshima was highly vulnerable to air attack. All a bomber need do was drop its load within the bowl to be almost certain of causing damage. Apart from a single kidney-shaped hill in the eastern sector of the city, about half a mile long and two hundred feet high, Hiroshima was uniformly exposed to the spreading energy that big bombs generate.

  Structurally—like San Francisco in the earthquake and fire of 1906—Hiroshima was built to burn. Ninety percent of its houses were made of wood. Large groups of dwellings were clustered together. And, unlike San Francisco in 1906, Hiroshima in 1944 had antiquated firefighting equipment and poorly trained personnel.

  From where he stood, Yokoyama could clearly see the city boundaries. Only thirteen of Hiroshima’s twenty-seven square miles were built up, and only seven of these densely, but in that area some thirty-five thousand people were crammed into every square mile. His battery on Mount Futaba was there to protect them.

  He saw that the gun crews were ready. Another practice began. Yokoyama watched them. The men were stripped to the waist, sweating in the warm evening air. Load, aim, unload. A new traverse. Load, aim, unload. A swift, stylistic ritual of crisp commands and grunts.

  He was pleased with them now, the way they responded promptly to his orders. They were the same commands he had given them for every drill since the battery was commissioned as part of the Hiroshima antiaircraft defense system in May 1943. Twenty-one guns of various calibers now defended the city. They had yet to be fired in anger in the third year of the war.

  The practice over, the crews were about to relax when Yokoyama ordered the first punishment drill. As soon as that ended, he began the second one, watchful for any signs of slackness. That would earn the crews further punishment.

  Satisfied, he relieved the gunners and led them to their quarters. There, as usual, he listened solicitously to their small talk. It was part of his duty to listen, just as he was expected to eat, drink, and sing with his men, to lend them money from his pocket, to invite them to visit his parents’ home in Tokyo. This was traditional behavior for a Japanese officer—the fostering of a comradely feeling, the encouraging of a relationship in which he was both father figure and close friend. It was what had helped to make the Imperial Japanese Army so formidable.

  This evening his crews asked him a familiar question: when would they see action?

  He understood their desire to fight. It was part of the samurai tradition, of the two-thousand-year history of Japan. The wish for battle was coupled with an absence of fear. Japan, more than any other nation, had excised fear from its warriors; death for them was part of living.

  Yokoyama told his men to be patient. But he worried whe
ther they would ever have the chance to shoot, to taste that special excitement. He wondered whether the story he had heard was true. A man who worked in local government had mentioned it to him. Yokoyama had at first dismissed it. But his friend had been so insistent, so specific, claiming “inside sources” for his information. Could there be any substance to the tale that many people in Hiroshima had relatives in San Francisco and Los Angeles who had petitioned Roosevelt to spare Hiroshima from attack and that he had agreed to do so as “a gesture of goodwill”?

  Yokoyama knew that if this were true, then the enemy bombers would never come to Hiroshima, and all his practices would have been in vain.

  5

  Tibbets arrived at Wendover three days before the 393rd Heavy Bombardment Squadron. His prediction proved to be right. The officers and men hated Wendover, the bleaching heat, the inhospitable desert, the primitive accommodations, the dust, the rank drinking water, the termites, the rats and mice, the sheer remoteness of their position.

  They hated not knowing why they were there.

  On September 12, their second morning at the base, they awakened to find further cause for hatred. A formidable wire fence now penned them in. Inside its perimeter were warning signs. The largest, beside the base exit gate, read:

  WHAT YOU HEAR HERE

  WHAT YOU SEE HERE

  WHEN YOU LEAVE HERE

  LET IT STAY HERE

  Sentries stopped anybody leaving.

  Thickly coiled barbed wire barred the entrance to a number of hangars and workshops. Freshly painted notices announced that behind the wire lay the ordnance, armament, engineering, and radar shops. Each notice carried the legend:

  RESTRICTED AREA

  The wire was thickest around hangar No. 6. There, a notice announced:

  TECH AREA “C”

  MOST RESTRICTED

  What was a Tech Area? Why “C”? Where were “A” and “B”? Nobody knew.

  Those who tried to talk their way past the military policemen guarding the Tech Area were curtly told they faced arrest if they persisted.

  The Western United States

  A week ago, at the end of their training in Nebraska, the men of the 393rd had been proud that their squadron’s record was way above average. They had expected to go overseas soon. Some of the more enterprising had purchased quantities of silk stockings, soap, and perfumes to tempt the English and French girls they had heard so much about. One enlisted man had packed his record collection of jitterbug 78s, planning to sell them on London’s black market.

  Instead, the 393rd had been shuffled off to Wendover.

  There were no bombers at Wendover. Just a few rundown transport planes. Rumor said they had come to Wendover to pick up factory-fresh B-29s. But where were they? And why here?

  Nobody knew.

  The brief optimism withered. Other rumors rose, welled, and faded. Officers, like their men, had no idea of what was happening. Their commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Classen, had gone into the base headquarters on arrival and had hardly been seen since. And when he did appear, he deflected all questions.

  By breakfast time, MPs were everywhere, their motorcycles and jeeps sending scuds of dust into the air. The 393rd had never tasted such sand. It permeated their clothes, skin, and food. The flavor to their cereals, eggs, and hash-browns this morning came from the great salt flats around the airfield.

  After the meal, the squadron listened in stunned disbelief as their intelligence officer, Captain Joseph Buscher, tried to make light of their situation. He reminded them that he was a lawyer, used to pleading—and he said he was pleading with them now to “give the place a chance.”

  Buscher admitted that he could not tell them why they were at Wendover, but he could tell them that the base was “only 125 miles from Salt Lake City, Utah. Elko in Nevada was “as close.” Buscher hoped they would find Wendover itself “fascinating.” The town, with a population of 103, was split down the middle by the Utah–Nevada state line. Half of Wendover ran their lives according to Utah’s Mormon Church. On the other side of town, there were bars, eateries, and slot machines.

  “What about broads?”

  The questioner was Captain Claude Eatherly, a tall, wickedly handsome pilot with a way with girls, cards, and a bottle of bourbon. With his small-boy grin, Texas drawl, and fund of jokes, Eatherly was the squadron playboy.

  Buscher ignored Eatherly’s question and launched into a solemn recital of how the flats had been formed, how the pioneer wagons of 1846 had foundered in the salt. For those who liked exploring, enthused Buscher, the tracks of some of the wagons were still embedded in the flats.

  “So will our bones be if we stay here!”

  The words were spoken by a frustrated first lieutenant, Jacob Beser, the squadron’s radar officer. Beser longed for action. When Britain had gone to war, he had tried to join the Royal Air Force. His parents had stopped him, insisting he complete his engineering studies at Johns Hopkins University. The day after Pearl Harbor, Beser had overcome parental opposition and enlisted in the Army Air Force. He had eventually become one of the service’s highest-rated radar officers. Radar was new and growing in importance. That did not impress Beser—not unless he could use his knowledge “to kill a few Nazis.”

  Beser was a Jew. A small, wiry, quick-witted man, fiercely proud of his middle-class background, he held strong opinions on almost everything. They did not always make him popular. Some of his fellow officers thought him an oddball. The enlisted men looked upon him as a “longhair” because of his university background.

  When the squadron was posted to Wendover, Beser had applied for a transfer to a combat unit. His request had been turned down.

  But now, listening to the urbane Buscher struggling to extol the virtues of Wendover, Beser began to feel excitement. “The place sounded so goddam awful that there just had to be a good reason for my being there,” he later recalled.

  Tibbets’s old friend, Major Thomas Ferebee, had also arrived. His formidable combat record in Europe made Ferebee one of the most seasoned and respected bombardiers in the air force. He was the perfect choice to train the 393rd’s bombardiers in the precision-bombing techniques that Professor Ramsey had told Tibbets were going to be essential for dropping an atomic bomb.

  Although he was glad to see Ferebee, unexpected problems stopped Tibbets from sitting down with him for a relaxed talk.

  For a start, there was the delicate position of Classen. The 393rd’s CO was a Pacific veteran with a distinguished combat record. His leadership qualities had made the squadron a cohesive unit. To move him at this stage would be unthinkable. Tibbets had discussed the situation with Classen, explaining that in effect the squadron would have two commanders: Classen would be responsible for its day-to-day running; Tibbets would make all the important policy decisions. He had told Classen he trusted this somewhat unusual arrangement would work. Classen had shown no real reaction.

  Tibbets had tried to sweeten matters by giving Classen a briefing on their unique mission. He hoped that would instill a mood of equally divided responsibility “in all but a few areas.” But after Classen had gone, Tibbets wondered whether dual command was really possible.

  Other matters soon pushed such thoughts from his mind.

  Since breakfast, two men had been closeted with him. He knew the older man well. Lieutenant Colonel Hazen Payette had served with him in England and North Africa as intelligence officer. A shrewd and penetrating questioner, Payette was at Wendover to supervise security at Tibbets’s request.

  Major William L. “Bud” Uanna had arrived unannounced. He politely explained that Colonel Lansdale had sent him, plus some thirty agents detached from the main Manhattan Project, to help “police” the 393rd.

  Tibbets liked Uanna’s style. He was coolly pleasant and uninterested in anything but his work.

  Uanna had arrived with a bulky briefcase. The files it contained were a further reminder to Tibbets of the vast intelligence-gathering resour
ces of the Manhattan Project.

  There was a detailed dossier on each member of the 393rd. The information had been gathered from their families, friends, school reports, employment records, and medical files.

  Many thousands of man-hours and dollars had been spent on tapping telephones, secretly opening letters, collecting details of extramarital affairs, homosexual tendencies, and political affiliations. The dossiers represented the most thorough secret investigation until then carried out in the name of the U.S. government.

  Uanna produced the file on Eatherly. It showed the pilot was an obsessional gambler, with an “emotional problem.”

  Tibbets studied Eatherly’s service record. He had logged 107 flying hours as a pilot ferrying Lockheed Hudsons to Canada; 103 hours flying LB-30s; a spell on antisubmarine patrol in the Panama Canal Zone; regular transfers from one squadron to another. A normal enough flying record. Eatherly’s fitness reports spoke of his “flamboyance” and of his being “an extrovert.” Tibbets knew the type. He had flown with “wild Texans” like Eatherly in Europe. They frequently got into trouble on the ground. But they were good pilots. Tibbets decided he would let Eatherly remain in the 393rd.

  By late morning, the jokers in the 393rd were running out of steam. One of them had been sharply reprimanded by an MP for trying to post a slogan:

  WELCOME TO ALCATRAZ

  The first letters were being written to loved ones. A number contained the inevitable phrase: Wendover is a good place to be—from.

  Uanna’s agents had infiltrated the squadron, carrying forged papers which allowed them to pose as clerks, cooks, even a garbage detail. They were not always successful. Captain James Strudwick found a man checking the wiring in his quarters who “didn’t know one end of a socket from another.” Mess officer Charles Perry discovered two men in the mess hall “who had trouble distinguishing a soup ladle from a carving knife.” Executive officer John King was astonished to see “a man dressed in a line chief’s overalls whose hands had never come near a wrench.”