Enola Gay

by Gordon Thomas

  Thirty-two thousand feet below, grouped near the AP, scientists and technicians from the First Ordnance Squadron waited to see if the latest adjustments they had made to the bomb’s proximity-fuzing system would work.

  Today’s bomb was filled with ballast and a pound of explosive, enough to cause a small aerial explosion so that the scientists could see whether the fuzing mechanism worked at its preset height of two thousand feet.

  Sweeney’s crew, No. 15, had been briefed by Tibbets on the test flight. He had reminded them of the importance and value of each fuzed unit, particularly as the system was still proving troublesome.

  Though Tibbets had not said so, he was paying the chubby-cheeked Sweeney and his fliers a rare compliment. In selecting them for a flight of considerable consequence for the scientists, he was openly acknowledging what almost all the other crews now accepted: crew 15 was probably the best in the 509th.

  The only challenge to this claim came from the vociferous Lewis and his crew.

  The relationship between Lewis and Sweeney had been cool from the days both men had worked on the original B-29 test program. Lewis suspected that the Boston Irish Sweeney had “kissed the Blarney Stone”; certainly, Sweeney had a great deal of charm, which he used to get the very best from all those he worked with. It didn’t work with Lewis, a failure that Sweeney philosophically accepted. Professionally, he felt that Lewis was “lucky” to be in the 509th, and even luckier to act, on occasion, as copilot to Tibbets.

  This sort of personal tension had increased the competitive spirit between the two crews.

  Tibbets watched the situation carefully. He never appeared to favor any crew unduly. After Sweeney had been assigned the test flight, Lewis had been asked to perform a series of takeoffs and landings with a nine-thousand-pound bomb filled with high explosive in his bomb bay. The exercise was not so pointless as it sounded to the crew. Tibbets wanted Lewis, and later the others, to become “psychologically prepared” for the possibility that one day they might be forced to land carrying an actual atomic bomb.

  Tibbets was aware of the view prevailing within the higher echelons of the Manhattan Project: unlike conventional bombs, the atomic bomb was far more valuable than the aircraft carrying it, or the crew. He conveyed this thought to Lewis. The pilot performed his exercises with the gentle care of a veteran Red Cross transport pilot.

  Approaching the aiming point, Sweeney watched Lewis circling far below. Then Beahan called out, in a Texas accent even Eatherly agreed was “broad,” that the AP was almost in the center of his bombsight’s cross hairs. Beahan, an overseas veteran like Ferebee, was a highly efficient technician, known to his fellow fliers as “The Great Artiste.” Crew 15 held him in such reverence that they boasted he could “hit a nickel from six miles up.”

  Beahan asked for a minute course change. Copilot Fred Olivi, a bulky twenty-three-year-old Italian from Chicago, watched Sweeney respond. Olivi thought it was “almost magic” the way Sweeney and Beahan worked together.

  The crew braced themselves for the familiar upward thrust following the bomb’s release.

  This flight would make another entry in the strictly illegal diary Sergeant Abe Spitzer was keeping of his time with the 509th. He was the radio operator and, at the age of thirty-five, looked upon by the rest of the crew as an old man. They would have been surprised at the gentle-voiced Spitzer’s acid observations on some of the men he worked with. But even Spitzer had to admit that, in the air, crew 15 was a closely coordinated unit.

  “Bomb away!”

  Beahan’s words were followed by a leap upward from the B-29, cut short when Sweeney went into the usual 155-degree turn. Simultaneously, an explosion rocked the bomber.

  Sergeant “Pappy” Dehart, the tail gunner and another Texan, shouted, “It’s blown up!”

  The bomb’s fuzing mechanism had detonated prematurely, less than a hundred feet below the B-29. The spent unit continued toward the ground.

  Sweeney brought the aircraft under control and landed. Tibbets was waiting for him. He put into words the unspoken fear of them all. “Let’s hope that doesn’t happen when we’ve got a real one on board.”

  Over the weekend of April 21, the 509th had made their usual journey into Salt Lake City, and already the complaints were being received in the duty office.

  Eatherly had set the pace, racing his roadster hub-to-hub against that of his flight engineer. They passed a whiskey bottle back and forth, from one car to the other, as they traveled at close to ninety miles an hour. The bottle was empty when they reached Salt Lake City.

  A number of fliers took rooms in the Hotel Utah, and soon noisy parties were under way. A redhead was seen running naked down a hotel corridor, pursued by several pilots in their shorts.

  On Monday morning, the Salt Lake City police department was phoning Wendover with a mounting list of breakages, assaults, and traffic violations.

  Tibbets managed to placate the civilian authorities. But the symptoms were clear: the 509th had reached breaking point.

  The time had come to leave Wendover.

  In Tibbets’s mind, there was another good reason for their departure. He had come to the conclusion that the scientists were “tinkering” with the atomic bomb; they seemed “more concerned with producing a perfect weapon instead of being satisfied with the one they had and using it to end the war. They wanted to improve the design, run more tests, make endless changes before they would let the bomb be used in combat.”

  This troubled Tibbets; he could imagine the physicists “still tinkering” when the war was over, “and the whole damn thing would have been a waste of time.”

  The 509th’s base was reserved on Tinian. Weeks ago, orders had been given that a ship be standing by at Seattle to carry the ground echelon to the Pacific. All Tibbets had to do was telephone Washington, use the Silverplate code, “and we could be in the war.”

  The thought of seeing action again was exhilarating. But the prospect of what would happen to him if he actually ordered the 509th to be mobilized worried Tibbets. “Groves might have me stripped of my command, posted to Alaska, even sign court-martial papers.”

  Nevertheless, Tibbets asked the base telephone exchange to connect him with Air Force Command Headquarters in Washington. Once plugged through to his liaison officer, his message was brief. “This is Silverplate. We are ready to move.”

  The matter was soon arranged. The group’s main ground-echelon force would leave Wendover for embarkation at Seattle on May 6. The bomber crews would fly out to the Pacific later.

  Soon afterward, Tibbets received a priority call from Washington, ordering him to fly there at once. His caller offered a gratuitous piece of news. “Colonel, you’re in big trouble with Gee-Gee.”

  Gee-Gee was one of Groves’s nicknames.

  Tibbets arrived in Groves’s office early in the evening.

  “As I came through the door, he erupted. Who the hell did I think I was, ordering my outfit overseas? For ten solid minutes he raked me over the coals, up one side and down the other, never repeating himself. I never had such a flaying. I had never seen him so mad. Then, suddenly, he stopped and gave me a big smile and said, ‘Goddammit, you’ve got us moving! Now they can’t stop us!’ He was tickled to death I had done it. Without my planes, there was no way the scientists could keep tinkering with their toy.”

  32

  The invitation to dinner with his commanding officer, Colonel Hiroshi Abe, came as a pleasant surprise to Tatsuo Yokoyama. The antiaircraft gunnery officer’s relationship with Abe had until now been distant and formal.

  Then, a week ago, Abe had invited Yokoyama to dine at his home near Hiroshima Castle this Saturday night. There was one condition: an air raid would cancel the invitation. In the past weeks there had been a number of alerts. And once, a stream of bombers had passed high over the city.

  But since the two bombs had been dropped over a month ago, on March 19, Hiroshima had remained free of attack.

  After eve
ning gunnery practice, Yokoyama dressed in his best uniform and told his sergeant where he could be reached.

  The sergeant, the gun post’s gossip, smiled broadly and said he was sure Yokoyama’s evening would be undisturbed, “because Truman’s mother is a prisoner in Hiroshima!”

  Yokoyama was astonished.

  The sergeant was insistent. “She was on a visit to the city when the war started. She has been here ever since!”

  “Who told you this?”

  The sergeant said he knew “somebody” on Lieutenant General Shoji Fujii’s staff. Fujii, the district commander, was keeping Truman’s mother in Hiroshima Castle as a hostage against air attacks.

  Common sense told Yokoyama to dismiss the story. But increasingly, the most outlandish tales turned out to be true. There had been the yarn about fifteen-year-old boys being taught to fly as kamikaze pilots in the Special Attack Corps. He had not believed what he had heard until he had actually seen some of them at Hiroshima Airport. He had also discounted the tale that old women were being shown how to sharpen bamboo poles and use them like spears, until he saw women practicing on the grounds of East Training Field.

  He decided to check the Truman story with Colonel Abe.

  Abe’s house was a small, compact dwelling near the castle. He was a widower and lived there with his daughter. Yokoyama was surprised to see he was the only guest.

  Abe was a good host, with a plentiful supply of sake. Mellowed and relaxed, Yokoyama asked about President Truman’s mother.

  Abe laughed uproariously. He said he wished the story were true; then she could answer some questions about her son.

  Lowering his voice, Abe told his guest still another story. “Truman’s mother is from Hiroshima! That is why we have not been bombed. She has told her son to spare this one city in all Japan.”

  Yokoyama asked why, then, was Hiroshima being prepared for attack? What was the purpose of the fire lanes?

  Abe told him, “It helps create a mood of militancy. People who lose their homes will be ready to fight even harder for their lives, Japan, and the emperor!”

  Yokoyama asked if this meant that after all these months of practice he and his men would have no chance to fight. If this were so, he would respectfully request a posting to Tokyo or one of the other cities where air attacks were now frequent.

  Abe calmed his guest and invited him to eat. Dinner was served by Abe’s daughter, a plumpish, moon-faced girl in her late teens. After dishing up bowls of rice and slivers of meat and fish, she left the men to eat and talk.

  Yokoyama again brought up the question of a transfer.

  His host looked at him carefully. “I have not invited you here to discuss such matters, but rather something that is important to me.”

  Yokoyama became respectful and silent as his host explained that he had long been impressed by the younger man’s qualities. Abe revealed he had even made inquiries about Yokoyama’s family background. “It is very satisfactory. You have honorable parents.”

  Knowing what was coming, for such inquiries could mean only one thing, Yokoyama waited.

  Abe’s next words were harsh and matter-of-fact; a businessman making an offer. “Marry my daughter, and your future will be assured. I will see to that.”

  Bowing gravely, Yokoyama promised his host to discuss the matter with his family. Such talks were essential before the proposed marriage could be formally contracted.

  It would mean a trip home to Tokyo. Yokoyama found that prospect almost as exciting as the reason for making the journey.

  When Yokoyama reached Hiroshima Airport on April 28, he found the army transport he planned to take to Tokyo had left early. It worried Yokoyama that he had missed the flight. He knew how much trouble Colonel Abe had taken to get him a seat on the plane.

  Yokoyama tried to hitch a lift on the next transport to the capital. He was told to wait. He sat on the ground outside the operations room and waited for his name to be called.

  Hiroshima’s airport was being extended. It was too small for the growing demands of the military. It was crammed with their aircraft. Yokoyama watched a transport taxi by. From a nearby hut a group of youngsters filed out to the plane in their cut-down overalls. Waiting to greet them was a handsome young flying officer, Second Lieutenant Matsuo Yasuzawa, one of the air force’s most experienced instructors. Every pilot Yasuzawa trained now was meant to be a kamikaze. These youngsters were his latest intake. Their average age was sixteen years.

  Yasuzawa was flying them to an airfield about a hundred miles from Hiroshima, on Kyushu, where they would receive their final training. Afterward, they would leave for Okinawa, where this first month since the Americans had invaded, nearly a thousand kamikaze pilots had died. They had sunk or damaged over a hundred American ships.

  Yasuzawa realized how important holding Okinawa was to Japan. He hated having to remain behind as an instructor. He had recently been stopped by a senior officer just as he was about to take off in a training plane with the intention of ramming into a B-29 that was bombing his airfield. Yasuzawa was considered too valuable to lose; apart from instructing experienced pilots how to fly more advanced aircraft, Yasuzawa had the ability to take a raw recruit and teach him the rudiments of flying in ten days. The kamikaze pilots were being given only ten hours’ tuition. They barely knew how to fly. To make sure they did not lose their nerve at the last moment, the cockpits of their suicide craft were sometimes screwed down shortly before takeoff. Once they were airborne, the young pilots had no alternative but to die.

  Today, as he settled himself at the controls of his well-used transport, Yasuzawa felt he would end the war preparing school-boys for combat while never experiencing it himself.

  Soon after Yasuzawa’s transport trundled into the air, Yokoyama watched a navy fighter-bomber land and taxi toward the communications room. Officers ran to meet it. Out of the cockpit climbed an immaculate figure in a spotless white naval uniform. It was Captain Mitsuo Fuchida, the pilot who had led the raid on Pearl Harbor and was now the Imperial Japanese Navy’s operations officer.

  Listening to the respectful greetings of the other officers, Yokoyama gathered that Fuchida was in Hiroshima to attend one of the regular army-navy liaison conferences. Yokoyama bowed deeply as Fuchida walked briskly past him. The flying ace did not return the greeting. Yokoyama doubted whether Fuchida even noticed him.

  Shortly afterward, an officer told Yokoyama there would be no seat available for him that day to Tokyo. He left the airport, his mind still filled with the image of Fuchida. It would be something to cheer him on the long journey he now faced by train to the capital.

  Across the city, in their Hiroshima home, Mayor Senkichi Awaya listened sympathetically as his wife and eldest boy told of the rigors of their nightlong train journey from Tokyo. Several times the blacked-out train had been forced to stop until American bombers passed.

  Although Mrs. Awaya had agreed to bring their son to Hiroshima weeks ago, only recently had it become convenient to transfer him from his school in Tokyo to the one attached to Hiroshima University. They had decided the other three children would remain in the capital. Their eldest daughter was married and living in Kobe.

  The mayor’s assistant, Maruyama, sought to reassure Mrs. Awaya. “They will all be safe as long as they stay out of the center of the cities. And here, you will be safe. Hiroshima is not a large city. They will bomb other places first. By the time it is our turn to be attacked, the war will be over.”

  The train carrying Yokoyama to Tokyo left at 4:00 P.M. Six months had passed since he had last made the journey. Nothing had prepared him for the changes he now saw: city after city bore the marks of incendiary bombing. As he came closer to Tokyo, even the darkness could not conceal the destruction.

  Leaving the Shimbashi railway station, Yokoyama set out to walk to the southern suburbs where his parents lived. His route took him past the Imperial Hotel. Designed by the brilliant American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, the Imperial had su
rvived the great Tokyo earthquake of 1923, but now it was a gutted ruin. Farther on, the Ginza—the business and nightlife heart of Tokyo—was a scorched wasteland of ashes and craters.

  Yokoyama realized that he had been misled: in Hiroshima the newspapers and radio had given no inkling of the scale of the destruction in Tokyo. For the first time he felt he had been betrayed by the army. He could now see clear evidence that Japan was incapable of winning the war.

  Eventually, he reached his parents’ home. The house was intact, but Yokoyama wondered how long it would remain so. The American bombers seemed intent on working their way outward until all of Tokyo was destroyed. Wearily, he entered the house convinced that Japan must make peace or face extinction.

  His parents were waiting for him. After they made him comfortable, he told them the purpose of his visit, explaining about Abe’s marriage proposal. Yokoyama described what little he knew of his commander and his daughter. His parents listened gravely. Finally, Yokoyama’s father spoke. Normally, a marriage joining two military families was a desirable thing, but these were not normal times; values were changing. Nobody could be sure what the future attitude of people would be toward members of the armed forces. To have been in the army might be a disadvantage. To be married to the daughter of a ranking officer could even be a liability.

  Yokoyama’s parents would promise no more than to consider the matter further after they had made the necessary inquiries about Colonel Abe’s antecedents.

  Professor Tsunesaburo Asada’s wife bowed gracefully to her husband as she boarded the train for Nara, bound, along with the families of other important Japanese scientists, for the comparative safety of the countryside. In the past fortnight, Osaka had been attacked three times by formations of B-29s; 20 percent of the city was destroyed.

  Mrs. Asada turned and bowed again from the train. Then she was lost behind the press of people crowding the windows to wave to loved ones on the platform.

  Asada did not wait for the train to leave. He had work to do. His long period of research had begun to pay off. One of Japan’s latest and most advanced long-range bombers, the Ginga, carrying a single seventeen-hundred-pound bomb, had flown to Saipan and attacked the main American air base on the island. The bomb was fitted with Asada’s proximity fuze, similar to the one that had exploded prematurely under Sweeney’s bomber.