Enola Gay

by Gordon Thomas

  The dazed convict left the office, too overwhelmed to speak.

  One by one, the other criminals were marched in, confronted with their crimes, and made similar offers.

  When the last man left, Tibbets turned to Uanna. “Major, I’m not a police department. I’m not interested in bringing people to justice. I’m interested in ending this war. All I want to do is get the proper work out of these men.”

  The arrival of the First Ordnance caused considerable excitement. Lewis put it succinctly. “If we think we’re something special—these guys are something else!”

  Even the slaphappy 509th had never seen such an untidy-looking outfit. Some of its members were middle-aged; one or two spoke with a distinct foreign accent. Some were Jewish technicians who until a few years ago had worked in workshops in Berlin and Munich.

  The squadron seemed capable of anything and was totally self-contained. They brought and erected their own workshops, connected their own electric power, installed their own special tools. The line crews of the 509th, themselves expert at most things, realized that their peers had arrived.

  The squadron’s members emerged from their compound only at mealtimes. Then they were accompanied by several burly agents. They all sat in a corner of the mess hall, and when strangers approached, they fell silent. The curious were firmly rebuffed.

  The evening of March 7, some of the men from the First Ordnance Squadron went down to the flight line to meet the regular shuttle service from Albuquerque which Dora Dougherty was now running. If they noticed a woman was flying the transport, they made no comment.

  There was only one passenger. He led the First Ordnance men over to a B-29.

  The regular flight crew had been told to answer any questions the man put to them. He seemed to be interested in the technical performance of the bomber, and spent some time examining the bomb-bay doors.

  At the end of his inspection, the man turned to the ordnance men. “These ships are not good enough for the job. They will have to be replaced.”

  With that, he walked past the gaping flight crew, boarded Dora’s transport, and was on his way back to Los Alamos.

  By lights-out, the whisper had spread. Beser would remember a fellow officer telling the story. “Hear about this nut who flew in, said scrap our aircraft, and flew out again? Just like he was a five-star general, not a guy in a naval captain’s uniform. Doesn’t he know there’s a war on—nobody can scrap aircraft just like that!”

  “We’ll get those planes.” Beser knew how much power Captain William Parsons wielded.

  Parsons had initially been considered as an alternate to Groves to head the Manhattan Project. He had come to Wendover to check out the planes that would fly the atomic strike. He found that constant test-flying and training had almost worn out the bombers. They were to be exchanged for the very latest models. These planes would have fuel-injection engines, electronically controlled reversible propellers, and generally would be much better than their predecessors.

  Tibbets would soon have the best fleet of bombers that America could provide.

  27

  In the early evening of March 9, the first of 325 B-29 bombers took off from Guam. This B-29 was a pathfinder, a torchbearer for LeMay’s gamble.

  Eleven other bombers followed it into the air. Between them, they would pinpoint the northeastern sector of Tokyo. LeMay code-named the operation “Meetinghouse.” In China, a meetinghouse was a place where important decisions were made.

  The pathfinders were to sow their incendiaries carefully in a giant “X” whose arms would cross several square miles of one of the most congested cities in the world.

  Chomping on a cigar, the chunky LeMay watched the main bomber force take off. In a few hours, either his bold plan would be vindicated or he would be in disgrace.

  None of the 325 bombers climbing into the dusk was armed. Their bomb bays were filled with a total of two thousand tons of incendiary bombs.

  LeMay had ended his briefing of the crews with: “You’re going to deliver the biggest firecracker the Japanese have ever seen!”

  Few fliers had reacted with enthusiasm. Doubtless many of them recalled the first American air attack on Tokyo, in 1942; three of General James Doolittle’s fliers whose planes had been forced down by the Japanese had been tried for murder, found guilty, and executed.

  LeMay’s crews were also concerned about their orders to attack at such low levels without armaments. Intelligence was not comforting. Around Tokyo the Japanese were reported to have 331 heavy-caliber guns, 307 automatic-firing weapons, 322 single-engine fighters, and 105 twin-engine interceptors.

  LeMay had confidently predicted that this defensive arsenal would be outwitted by his surprise tactics. Now he must wait for confirmation from General Tom Power, his chief of staff, flying in a lead bomber with orders to radio back news of the attack.

  The pathfinders arrived over Tokyo at midnight. The city was in darkness. The weather forecast was correct: skies were clear; a chill, twenty-eight-mile-an-hour wind had sent most people to bed early.

  Flying downwind, the pathfinders marked the target area with magnesium, napalm, and phosphorus, sowing their canisters in straight lines across wooden buildings and narrow streets.

  At 12:30 A.M., the main task force arrived over Meetinghouse. No fighters scrambled to meet them; ground fire was minimal. As LeMay had predicted, Tokyo’s defenses were caught totally unawares by his low-level assault.

  The B-29s began to bomb systematically along the spreading arms created by the pathfinders. They dropped loads of pipelike canisters to fuel the growing inferno.

  Fifteen thousand feet above the flames, Power’s plane circled the target. The chief of staff radioed a commentary back to Guam. “It’s spreading like a prairie fire … the blaze must be out of control … ground fire sporadic … no fighter opposition. …”

  The conflagration spread and intensified, sending great whirls of superheated air high into the sky. The bomber pilots felt they were flying, one reported, “in Dante’s Inferno.” Turbulence from the firestorm raised the huge bombers hundreds of feet higher into the air, then sucked them down again. Fliers were sick from the bouncing. Then a new sensation made them vomit afresh: it was the sickly-sweet stench of thousands of bodies burning.

  Finally, as planned, at 3:30 A.M. the last B-29 dropped its seven tons into the furnace and fled southward.

  Power radioed his final report. “Target completely alight. Flames spreading well beyond Meetinghouse. All Tokyo visible in the glare. Total success.”

  The fires were a funeral pyre for some one hundred thousand souls. Almost half a million more were injured. Two hundred and fifty thousand buildings were destroyed in an area of about sixteen square miles.

  Of the 325 bombers that created this holocaust, 14 were lost.

  LeMay’s gamble had worked. He immediately ordered further low-level sorties against Nagoya, Osaka, Kobe, and Okayama.

  During the past two months, all LeMay’s efforts had been devoted to developing these tactics. There had been no time for anything else—certainly not to listen to the recurring rumor that some crack new outfit was coming to the Marianas.

  But now, in his moment of triumph, the rumors took on substance. LeMay was told that part of North Field, Tinian, was being annexed on direct orders from Washington to house a “special bombing group.”

  LeMay reckoned that unless it arrived soon, there might be little left for this new outfit to bomb except ruins and paddy fields.

  28

  In Tokyo, General Army Headquarters was in turmoil. Following the incendiary raid, the high command was evacuating to the more protected, tree-shaded grounds of the military academy at Ichigaya Heights, in the west-central area of the city.

  The journey across Tokyo was unusually difficult, for LeMay’s raiders had created universal panic.

  In the immediate aftermath of the attack, with air temperatures in the blitzed area reaching two thousand degrees, the frenzy to es
cape had turned ordinary citizens into savages. Thousands jumped into the Sumida River, to die either from drowning or when the fires sucked out the oxygen from their lungs. Police and firemen were trampled in the panic. Great mounds of dead were piled in the streets of northeast Tokyo.

  In the past twenty-four hours, thousands had trudged out of Tokyo with nothing but the clothes they wore. Behind them, they left charred families and friends. This exodus posed a serious problem. The refugees could spread panic, cause confusion, and lower morale.

  Major General Seizo Arisue was glad it was not his concern to deal with such matters. His immediate interest focused on the reaction of naval intelligence to the raid.

  They had withdrawn their peace feelers to Allen Dulles. It did not take Arisue long to discover why. Far from being demoralized by the attack of LeMay’s bombers, the admirals had stiffened their will to resist.

  Naval chief of staff Admiral Soemu Toyoda announced that the only way Japan could survive “with dignity” in the face of such terror was to fight on, to launch determined counterattacks, to make America realize the Japanese nation would never surrender. The navy, he let it be known, was considering means of carrying the war to American shores.

  The talk at army headquarters was even fiercer. Staff officers, thirsting for revenge, devised a plan to saturate the Marianas with shimpu attacks, but the problems of getting the kamikazes to within striking distance proved insurmountable.

  Gauging the strength of this bellicose mood, Arisue decided this was not the time to talk peace with the enemy. He also decided to suspend his own efforts to reach Dulles.

  Word of the destruction in Tokyo had not officially reached Hiroshima. The censor’s office had so far refused to clear reports on the raid for the nation’s press and radio.

  The news reached Hiroshima unofficially on March 12 by one of the few trains civilians could still use. Within an hour after the refugees from Tokyo had arrived in Hiroshima, Mayor Senkichi Awaya knew what had happened in the capital. Using his official position, Awaya managed after several hours of anxious waiting to reach his wife by telephone. She and the children were unharmed. He told his wife to bring the children with her and join him as soon as possible in Hiroshima, where they would be safe.

  Sachiyo Awaya hesitated. She and the children had all survived the raid; the refugees were probably exaggerating; anyway, the army in Tokyo said it was unlikely the bombers would return, and if they did, next time they would receive a hot reception.

  Awaya was aware that at any moment the connection might be interrupted; telephone operators had the authority to terminate any call which was not of a military nature. The mayor spoke urgently. “The enemy will return. That is the nature of war. You and the children must come here.”

  Still, his wife expressed her reluctance to leave Tokyo. He then advanced an argument that he knew she would find difficult to reject. “It is possible that we will all die in the battles to come. If that is to happen, I wish us to die together as one family.”

  His wife promised that as a start she would bring their eldest son. The fourteen-year-old boy could continue his education at a school in Hiroshima.

  One week later, between 7:30 and 8:00 A.M. on March 19, Hiroshima experienced its first air raid. Four carrier-based fighter-bombers flew across the city. Only two bombs were dropped; one fell harmlessly in a river, the other killed two people and destroyed their homes.

  The planes escaped before antiaircraft fire could be brought to bear on them. The incident caused widespread excitement and speculation in the city. Fierce arguments broke out between skeptics and the proponents of the view that Roosevelt had agreed to spare Hiroshima. In the end, the supporters of this theory triumphantly pointed to the fact that the bombers had not made a second pass over the city. The two bombs they had released were dropped in error—that is why they had sheered away. And, to clinch their case, the proponents pointed to an inescapable truth: while there were a number of air-raid warnings in the two weeks that followed, no bombers had come anywhere near the city.

  These recent warnings delayed mayoral assistant Kazumasa Maruyama’s regular weekly trip into the countryside to barter for food for his wife and Mayor Awaya.

  This morning Maruyama had risen at five and left his wife still sleeping in their tiny bedroom. He listened to the radio before leaving the apartment. The radio was important. Air-raid warnings were broadcast over it. It was the radio, with its first hint of a “strategic withdrawal,” that had prepared listeners for the loss of Iwo Jima.

  The newscaster this morning was as confident as ever. The Special Attack Corps, the kamikazes, had yesterday struck another mortal blow against the enemy off the shores of Okinawa. Among their many targets was “the pride of the enemy fleet, the warship Indianapolis.” The name of the ship did not register with Maruyama, but he deduced that behind the blaring words, the radio was starting to prepare its audience for an unpalatable fact: the enemy had reached the shores of Okinawa.

  If Okinawa should fall, Maruyama had no doubt, the enemy would then invade Japan itself.

  The thought of what that would mean was too horrible to contemplate. The newspapers and radio spoke of American soldiers as “bloodthirsty devils”; perhaps, after all, he had been wrong to support the mayor’s idea of bringing his family to Hiroshima. Perhaps they would be better off near Tokyo, protected by the largest concentration of defending troops.

  Still dwelling on the dilemma the broadcast had created in his mind, the mayor’s assistant headed out of the city on foot.

  Commodities were more useful than money for obtaining a few vegetables and fruit to augment the legal rations. From today, those rations were to be cut further, the rice portion reduced to three bowls a day for twenty days in any month. No food would be issued for the remaining calendar days. The quality of the rice was so poor that Maruyama would never have eaten it before the war. Fish, the other staple of the Japanese diet, was also becoming scarce. American bombers were systematically destroying the fishing fleet.

  Maruyama was warmly greeted at the farm. He was the most important customer among all those who came to offer goods in exchange for food. Soon, Maruyama was sitting cross-legged in his stockinged feet in the farmhouse living room, sipping tea.

  Normally the farmer plied him with questions about life in the city. This morning it was the farmer who had information to impart, and he was determined to make the most of it.

  Maruyama provided the opening by mentioning that the air raid had made many people nervous in Hiroshima.

  “The city will not be bombed again.”

  Maruyama smiled wanly, but he knew he must not offend the farmer; he was a touchy man and could sell his produce to whomever he liked. Maruyama said he hoped his host was right and that the city would be spared.

  “It will. You see, when the war is over, Americans will build their villas here! It is such a beautiful city.”

  Maruyama complimented the farmer on being privy to such interesting information.

  “I cannot tell you how I learned it. But I can tell you this, Mr. Secretary, that a client almost as important as you told me.”

  Nodding gravely, Maruyama stood up. It was time for business. He opened the bundle of old clothes he had brought. As each item was displayed, the farmer reached into his own sacks and laid out his purchasing price in produce.

  Maruyama estimated that, with the clothes, he had purchased enough food for the mayor as well as for his wife and himself for three days—perhaps five if his wife was extra careful. He exchanged deep bows with the farmer, carefully bundled up the produce, bowed a last time, and retraced his steps to Hiroshima.

  He had traveled less than a mile when a peasant rushed out of his cottage and shouted that the radio had just announced another air-raid alert.

  Unable to resist, Maruyama did his own bit of rumormongering. “Don’t worry. Hiroshima won’t be bombed again. Haven’t you heard? The Americans want to build their villas here! Maybe even Rooseve
lt will come!”

  He walked briskly on toward the city.

  29

  Group bombardier Tom Ferebee was relaxed as he announced laconically, as he always did at the initial point, that straight ahead and thirty-two thousand feet below he could see the small desert town of Calipatria in Southern California.

  Beyond the town lay the Salton Sea and the 509th’s bombing range.

  There were now three minutes to go before the brand-new bomber reached the aiming point. It was the first of the replacement aircraft that Parsons had deemed necessary. It had arrived at Wendover on March 9 and had been closely examined by Tibbets, van Kirk, and Ferebee.

  The new bomber was different. Though a lot of the armor plating as well as the guns had been left out, it was built more ruggedly. Tibbets admired the reversible propellers. Ferebee liked the quick-action bomb doors; they were designed to close in two seconds after a bomb was released. This would allow the plane to carry out its 155-degree turn even faster. Van Kirk appreciated his navigator’s seat; it was more comfortable than the one he was used to.

  A team of engineers and mechanics had flown in with the aircraft. At Tibbets’s request, they had made a number of minor adjustments. But one of the engineers was not satisfied with the way the bombsight gears were working. Ferebee said he could adjust matters after a test drop or two. The engineer fussily explained that was not the way he did things. He put in a monitoring set and was given special clearance to make this one flight to observe the operation of the Norden sight.

  Tibbets assigned Lewis to try out the new bomber on what was by now a regular milk run from Wendover to the Salton Sea. Ferebee was on board partly because this time they were to drop one of the precious “fuzed units.” These were dummy bombs the exact shape of the atomic bomb and containing the proximity-fuze firing mechanism. Each of these mechanisms cost the equivalent of a Cadillac.