Enola Gay

by Gordon Thomas

  Asada’s fuze had detonated its bomb exactly as planned, thirty-five feet above the Saipan airfield. It had caused considerable destruction. Scores of parked B-29s were destroyed or damaged. The pilot of the Ginga reported to Asada that a large part of the air base was “an ocean of fire.” The photo-reconnaissance pictures showing the wrecked American planes reminded the scientists of similar ones taken at Hickam Field, Pearl Harbor. But it was a short-lived moment of triumph.

  The air force could not repeat the attack because its base on Iwo Jima was now in American hands, and the round trip to Saipan from Japan was outside the sixteen-hundred-mile range of the Ginga bomber.

  Nevertheless, Asada’s proximity fuze had been proved a success. The navy had ordered twenty thousand of them to be manufactured. Eventually, twelve thousand would be produced, many of them fitted to bombs and stored secretly on Kyushu awaiting an American invasion. When that came, it was planned, the bombs would be exploded at mast-height above the warships and troop-carrying landing craft so as to cause maximum casualties.

  Asada was praised by senior naval officers for his invention. He was pleased, though secretly he thought some of the approbation was an attempt to humor him. His death ray remained far from ready for use. But he was still optimistic and spending most of his time on the project.

  Meanwhile, the navy now had another new weapon.

  It was the brainchild of Dr. Sakyo Adachi, a scientific colleague of Asada’s attached to the naval meteorological department. Adachi had remembered what every Japanese high school pupil knew: although the great trade winds blow from east to west, from America to Japan, there is another wind, the Japan Current, which blows in the opposite direction.

  Adachi filled a balloon with gas and attached to it a small canister containing high explosive. The trial balloon bomb was launched and tracked for some distance by a Zero fighter. It climbed steadily into the Japan Current and then headed eastward on a journey which would take it across the Pacific, passing north of Hawaii, and eventually to the coast of the United States.

  Other balloon bombs followed.

  Radar was not yet advanced enough to warn of their approach.

  The Japanese, of course, did not know if the balloons had reached their target. But navy chief of staff Admiral Toyoda, mindful of his promise to carry the war to the American shore, ordered full-scale production of the balloon bombs.

  Soon, all of America’s West Coast cities would be targets. Given favorable weather conditions, the balloons might even reach Salt Lake City and Chicago.

  In the coming weeks, some six thousand balloon bombs would be launched. Of those that would arrive in the United States, most would fall in the deserts of California and Nevada and the forests of Oregon. It would never be officially revealed how many victims they had claimed. And nobody will ever know how many Japanese balloon bombs still lie unexploded in remote areas of North America.

  The first wire-service flash of Roosevelt’s death had reached army intelligence chief Arisue in Tokyo before most people in Warm Springs were aware of the event.

  Since then, he had been busily building up a psychological profile of Truman. Most of his information came from the Japanese military attaché in Bern, Lieutenant General Seigo Okamoto, who had been the link in Arisue’s abortive attempts to contact Allen Dulles.

  Aided as well by wire-service copy and transcripts of monitored broadcasts, Arisue came to an unexpected conclusion: Truman was going to be even tougher than Roosevelt.

  The new president would, in Arisue’s estimation, “overwhelm the old man” who had been prime minister of Japan for the past ten days.

  On April 5, a serious political crisis, brewing for weeks, had finally erupted in Tokyo. On that day, General Kumaki Koiso, the compromise premier following Tojo’s forced resignation, had suggested to the military that they allow him a share in their decision making. The generals had refused. Koiso had resigned.

  He was replaced by Admiral Kantaro Suzuki, a hero of the Russo-Japanese war, whose frail body bore three bullet marks—a legacy of the days he had fallen foul of right-wing extremists in the army.

  Arisue was astounded that Suzuki had accepted a post where the risks of death were even greater. He would have been more astonished to know that the emperor himself had charged Suzuki with the task of finding a means of ending the war. Those means did not, of course, include outright surrender.

  Within hours of accepting office, Suzuki had received alarming news. Japan’s ambassador in Moscow had cabled that the Soviet Union did not intend to renew its neutrality pact. It would be allowed to lapse automatically in one year. Finding an acceptable means of ending the conflict became even more urgent.

  The prospect of Japan’s negotiating a peace was very much on Arisue’s mind. On the very day Roosevelt was being buried on the other side of the world, he had learned that naval intelligence was again trying to contact Allen Dulles in Switzerland.

  Arisue understood the reasoning of his naval counterparts; it coincided with his own. Truman was a hard-liner; it would be better to settle with him now, while Japan still had some bargaining power left. The American bombing offensive, the sea blockade, the relentless ground-fire barrage which had now crept to within 350 miles of Tokyo—to Okinawa, where a fierce and bloody battle was raging for the last major island between the enemy and Japan’s westernmost mainland island, Kyushu—all these would ultimately weaken Japan to the point where the unacceptable unconditional surrender would be all that was left.

  But Arisue and the other moderates did not believe Japan should surrender unconditionally. He believed that, by negotiation, Japan should attempt to hold some of the territory her forces had occupied in the war, and even if this proved impossible, there must at absolute minimum be a guarantee by the Allies of the emperor’s safety and continuing omnipotent rule.

  Arisue did not trust the navy to achieve even this fundamental requirement in its maneuvering in Switzerland. He cabled military attaché Okamoto in Bern and told him to redouble his efforts to contact Dulles.

  33

  On Truman’s desk was a letter from Stimson. It had arrived the day before, April 24.

  Dear Mr. President,

  I think it very important that I should have a talk with you as soon as possible on a highly secret matter. I mentioned it to you shortly after you took office, but have not urged it since on account of the pressures you have been under. It, however, has such a bearing on our present foreign relations and has such an effect upon all my thinking in this field that I think you ought to know about it without much further delay.

  Truman had arranged an appointment for his secretary of war at midday. The president would be happy to have any information that might help him keep the Russians in their place. He had shown his mettle three days earlier when Molotov and Gromyko, en route to the opening session of the United Nations in San Francisco, had stopped by the White House. Truman had told them the Soviet Union was reneging on its Yalta agreements. His language was so blunt and without diplomatic euphemisms that Molotov had bridled. “I have never been talked to like this in my life.”

  Truman’s reply was crisp. “Carry out your agreements, and you won’t get talked to like this.”

  Promptly at noon, the secretary of war arrived. Stimson said he was expecting one other person. Five minutes later, Groves appeared. He had slipped in through the back door to avoid arousing speculation among the journalists stationed in and around the executive mansion.

  Stimson said the meeting was to discuss details of a bomb equal in power to all the artillery used in both world wars.

  Groves winced inwardly. He had earlier told Stimson not to lay too great an emphasis on the bomb’s power; he did not want the new president to become alarmed at the sheer magnitude of the weapon.

  But Stimson was determined to lay out all the facts. He began to read from a prepared memorandum.

  Within four months we shall in all probability have completed the most terrible weapon
ever known in human history, one bomb of which could destroy a whole city.

  Although we have shared its development with the United Kingdom, physically the U.S. is at present in the position of controlling the resources with which to construct and use it and no other nation could reach this position for some years. Nevertheless, it is practically certain that we could not remain in this position indefinitely.

  Stimson explained that the theory behind the making of an atomic bomb was widely known. He went on to conjure up a nightmare that could come to pass.

  We may see a time when such a weapon may be constructed in secret and used suddenly and effectively. … With its aid, even a very powerful unsuspecting nation might be conquered within a very few days by a very much smaller one. … The world in its present state of moral advancement compared with its technical development would be eventually at the mercy of such a weapon. In other words, modern civilization might be completely destroyed.

  Truman paused, then posed a question: was Stimson at least as concerned with the role of the atomic bomb in the shaping of history as with its capacity to shorten the war?

  “I am, Mr. President.”

  While they were speaking, the United Nations was about to hold its opening session in San Francisco. Stimson had anticipated Truman’s raising this matter. He continued to read from his memo.

  To approach any world peace organization of any pattern now likely to be considered, without an appreciation by the leaders of our country of the power of this weapon, would seem to be unrealistic. No system of control heretofore considered would be adequate to control this menace. Both inside any particular country and between the nations of the world, the control of this weapon will undoubtedly be a matter of the greatest difficulty and would involve such thorough going rights of inspection and internal controls as we have never before contemplated.

  Groves had never heard Stimson speak like this. For a moment he may have wondered whether the secretary had been contaminated by his contact with all those “longhairs” who had tried to make Groves’s life such a misery these past months. Then, with a sense of relief, Groves heard what Stimson went on to say.

  The secretary stated that, in spite of all this, he still favored using the bomb against Japan; that if it worked, it would probably shorten the war.

  The meeting ended with Truman’s agreeing to the formation of a specialist panel, to be known as the Interim Committee, to draft essential postwar legislation and to advise Truman on all aspects of atomic energy.

  Stimson agreed to be its chairman.

  34

  At precisely 6:55 A.M. on April 30 in Hiroshima, Dr. Kaoru Shima was awakened by a five-hundred-pound bomb exploding two blocks from his clinic. It had fallen on the Nomura Life Insurance Building. By the time the doctor had leaped out of bed and rushed to the window, nine other bombs had fallen in a ragged line across the city, killing ten people, injuring another thirty, and damaging twenty-four buildings.

  So swift and unexpected was the attack that no warning had been broadcast over the local radio, and no antiaircraft fire directed against the lone B-29 which had dropped the bombs.

  Dr. Shima rushed to reassure his patients and staff. Next, he made several telephone calls to Hiroshima Castle. He then waited until the usual morning staff meeting before speaking about the matter further. Dr. Shima knew it was important not to disturb the normal routine of the clinic.

  As he sat cross-legged on the floor sipping tea and discussing case histories and further treatment, his calmness soothed his staff. It was only at the end of the meeting that he mentioned the bombing.

  Though the army had imposed a news blackout about the attack, Dr. Shima had discovered that the city’s military leaders believed the raid was a fluke.

  He explained their view to the staff: the enemy would not have sent a solitary bomber halfway across the Pacific simply to drop a few bombs on Hiroshima. The B-29 had doubtless become separated from a larger force, missed its original target—probably Kure—and simply scattered its bombs on the nearest available city, which, unhappily for them, happened to be Hiroshima.

  The staff was not altogether reassured by this explanation. One raised the perpetual fear that the bombers would return in force.

  Dr. Shima knew that the city’s good fortune in thus far escaping mass air attack had increased the expectation among many of its people of such a calamity’s occurring. Dr. Shima knew that by “imagining the worst,” people felt they could actually ward off disaster.

  He himself was a fatalist, believing that whatever lay ahead, nothing he could do would alter matters. He now offered his staff a simple reaffirmation of his beliefs. “If we are attacked tonight or sometime in the future, we can do nothing to prevent it. What we can do is to remain calm and cheerful and set an example to our patients.”

  Alone in his office that night, Dr. Shima did something that an increasing number of Japanese were doing. He tuned his radio to receive the shortwave transmission relayed directly from Guam, bringing, in impeccable Japanese, news of the war that Japan Radio could never broadcast.

  The penalty for listening to such enemy broadcasts was death. But for men like Dr. Shima who had come increasingly to distrust the claims of continuing victories made by Japan Radio, the risks were worthwhile.

  Radio Guam had been first with the news that Iwo Jima had fallen; this morning, the modulated voice of the unknown Japanese-American speaking from fifteen hundred miles away spoke of the terrible losses the Japanese were experiencing on Okinawa. Then the broadcaster dealt with the latest raids on Tokyo and other cities. He warned that Japan would be razed to the ground unless it surrendered.

  The broadcast left Dr. Shima with a feeling of acute despair. He returned the radio dial to the local station, switched it off, and left his office to go home to bed.

  Shortly after dawn that same day, in Kure, the wife of submarine commander Mochitsura Hashimoto tried to awaken her husband. An air-raid alert had just sounded, and it was time for the family to go to the shelter.

  Cradling her three small sons in her arms, Hashimoto’s wife called with increasing urgency for her husband to wake up.

  Hashimoto continued to sleep. Nothing short of an earthquake would awaken him after his last, traumatic voyage.

  On April 2, the day after the Americans first landed on Okinawa, Hashimoto was ordered to attack enemy shipping in the area. The outward journey had been a foretaste of what lay ahead. American bombers had mined the coastal waters of the Inland Sea, making it hazardous even before reaching the waters of the Pacific. And when Hashimoto finally arrived off Okinawa, he was promptly bombed by American planes. During the seven days he remained near the island, he was attacked at least fifty times. The longest period he could allow on the surface was a scant four hours in the middle of the night, barely enough time to ventilate the boat and recharge its batteries.

  Hashimoto had just missed seeing the American cruiser Indianapolis limping from the scene of battle. It was returning to San Francisco for repairs after having been badly mauled by a kamikaze.

  At Okinawa, submarine I.58, like the Indianapolis, took a beating. Even so, Hashimoto was furious when he was ordered back to base. Only when he reached Kure on April 29 had he learned that his boat was the sole Japanese submarine to return safely from Okinawa. He was also informed that I.58 would have to remain in dock for a major inspection.

  Too tired to really care, Hashimoto had stumbled home to bed, giving firm instructions to his wife that nothing should be allowed to disturb him.

  Now, all her urgent calling did not awaken him. Then she realized it was too late—the familiar drone of aircraft engines was overhead.

  Kure Harbor held most of Japan’s remaining warships. It was a priority target for American bombers, which regularly attacked the area in spite of its well-entrenched defenses. This morning, the bark of antiaircraft fire mingled again with the noise of exploding bombs.

  Clutching her children, Mrs. Hashimoto lay dow
n beside her still-slumbering husband and listened to the sounds of war.

  35

  Precisely at 9:00 A.M. on May 8, 1945, President Truman broadcast live to the American nation. In London and Moscow, Churchill and Stalin gave their people the news at the same time. “The Allied armies, through sacrifice and devotion and with God’s help. …”

  Victory in Europe was a fact.

  Truman’s words, delivered on this, his sixty-first birthday, confirmed what every American wanted to hear: Germany had surrendered unconditionally. For the first time in modern history, the entire armed forces of a nation became prisoners of war.

  In the national rejoicing for V-E Day, most ordinary Americans momentarily forgot Japan. Truman did not. In the twenty-four days he had been president, he had thoroughly briefed himself on his predecessor’s position on a Japanese surrender. Truman had come to the same conclusion: just as with Germany, only unconditional surrender was acceptable for Japan. Pearl Harbor and Japanese atrocities against American prisoners of war made such an uncompromising attitude virtually inevitable.

  However, inside the State Department, some officials were arguing that the American government should modify this position, and that a way should be found to make peace with Japan before the Russians intervened and established a Soviet influence in the Pacific. Opposing this view were those who felt that any leniency was unwarranted and would allow the Japanese militarists to survive.