War Stories II (75 page)

For what seemed to be a long while, no one spoke. Then, they all began shouting at once: “Look at that! Look at that! Look at that!” Copilot Lewis said that there was a strange taste in his mouth. “It tastes like lead,” he observed.

“It's the taste of atomic fission,” Deke Parsons explained.

As the Enola Gay headed back toward Tinian Island, Paul Tibbets wrote a few notes in his logbook. His entry concluded with the words, “My God, what have we done.”

There was no official Japanese response following the bombing of Hiroshima. The U.S. had earlier begun printing and dropping millions of leaflets on Japanese cities, warning its citizens of the destruction to follow if their leaders did not surrender unconditionally. The day after the first blast, leaflets warned of more atomic bomb attacks.

The U.S. had originally planned to wait for some time before using another atomic bomb, but a forecast of bad weather pushed up the schedule. The confirmation came to the Tinian air base, where the second atomic bomb—nicknamed “Fat Man”—was kept. The mission would be for 9 August; the target was the Kokura Arsenal.

As the Americans prepared to give “Fat Man” a ride into history, the Japanese and Russians were still frantically negotiating. Until 8 August, the strategy was to somehow convince the Americans to accept negotiated terms rather than an unconditional surrender. That would buy more time for the Russians and Japanese to work things out once the Americans and Japanese stopped the war.

Japanese foreign minister Togo was still hopeful that Ambassador Hirota was making some headway with the Soviets when the Russians abruptly cancelled the talks. The Soviets later informed Tokyo that Russia was declaring war on the Japanese, effective the next day.

Togo and Hirohito were not told the rationale for the Russians' sudden about-face. Perhaps the awesome power and effectiveness of the atomic bomb made Stalin reconsider plans to side with Japan. The equation had suddenly shifted. Even if Japan could rebuild its navy, and even if the USSR could muster an unprecedented army, both parties now had to consider the new tactical advantage of the United States. The Americans had a bomb that made conventional warfare obsolete. It changed everything.

As Russia declared war on Japan, it immediately invaded Manchuria, which by now was just a shell of Japanese military occupation.

Meanwhile, throughout 7 and 8 August, the Americans continued to warn the Japanese of imminent destruction with leaflets and through radio broadcasts from Saipan. A second atomic bomb was coming.

Another aircrew, commanded by Major Charles Sweeney, had the responsibility to ferry “Fat Man” to its intended target over the Kokura Arsenal. This time, the B-29 was named after the man who was originally supposed to fly the plane, Colonel Frederick Bock, who at the last minute didn't make the flight. The crew nicknamed the B-29 “Bock's Car.” Sweeney was the commanding officer and pilot for the mission. Others on the flight crew included Captain C. D. Albury, copilot; Second Lieutenant Fred Olivi, third pilot; Navy Commander Fred Ashworth, weapons officer; Master Sergeant John Kuharek, flight engineer; and Sergeant Ray Gallagher, assistant flight engineer.

At 2200 hours on 8 August, “Fat Man” was loaded into Bock's Car for the mission. The last briefing took place just after midnight, and at 0345 on 9 August, the pilots were rolling down the runway to lift off and head for Japan.

Shortly after takeoff, Major Sweeney discovered that the 600-gallon reserve fuel tank switch was not working. After some failed attempts to fix it, they knew that they now had 600 fewer gallons of fuel for the mission. This would seriously limit their range and time over their target. Sweeney
even thought that they might have to make an emergency landing at a recently captured Okinawa airfield.

The flight seemed plagued by Murphy's Law. In addition to the malfunctioning reserve fuel tank, their fighter escorts were late at the rendezvous point. The flight engineer also reported a number of shorts in the B-29's electrical system. When the plane approached Kokura and the arsenal that was to be their target, the entire area was obscured by thick clouds and smog. The crew was unable to locate the necessary landmarks for targeting.

 

Atomic-bomb cloud.

Sweeney knew that they couldn't wait for the clouds to clear. The navigator and flight engineer did the math: With their remaining fuel minus the 600 gallons in the reserve tank, and the time lost waiting for their escorts and looking for an opening in the clouds, they had fuel and time only for a single run on a secondary target. They picked Nagasaki, knowing that it would be risky for them to change course, find Nagasaki, drop the bomb, and then turn and make it to Okinawa for an emergency landing.

When Bock's Car approached Nagasaki, the crew saw that clouds obscured the city. However, as they approached, a break in the clouds appeared. It was almost eleven o'clock in the morning. The break in the clouds held, and the bomb bay doors were opened and “Fat Man” was dropped over Nagasaki. The Americans made a sixty-degree turn and headed south.

Forty-five seconds after leaving the bomb bay, “Fat Man” exploded 2,000 feet above the city with a force of twenty-one kilotons of energy. The bomb detonated near the outer edge of Nagasaki, taking out the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works. At the instant of the explosion, there was a glare brighter than the sun. Seconds later, Bock's Car was shaken with terrible turbulence caused by the intense shock waves of the explosion.

Fire and smoke enveloped the city and over 70,000 people—one-fourth of the population—were killed instantly. An equal number were injured in the blast and thousands of others would suffer radiation sicknesses over the next fifty years. The size and fury of the fiery blast widened out across the city and then began to rise above it. Lieutenant Olivi saw the column of flames and smoke rising and feared that it might envelop the plane, even at 30,000 feet.

The crew managed to escape the mushroom cloud of fury and set a direct course to Okinawa. There they refueled and took off for their home base on Tinian, returning there about three in the afternoon, nearly twelve hours after the mission had begun.

On 10 August, the Japanese government and military leaders met again to discuss their strategy and response to the surrender terms. The bylaws of the Japanese cabinet said that they had to have a unanimous decision on such matters, and members were at an impasse, with six favoring surrender, three willing to continue the war, and five neutral votes. Then the word came about the destruction of Nagasaki by another atomic bomb.

The cabinet moved to the Imperial Palace to present the matter to the emperor and seek his counsel. Hirohito listened to all of the arguments and offered his conclusion that the time had come for the Japanese people to “bear the unbearable.”

There were peace and war factions within the cabinet. As their country continued to lose battle after battle, leading politicians tried to inspire the people into supporting the country's lost cause and national pride of not being defeated. To even discuss surrender, let alone consider accepting it, was difficult. The “war faction” believed that Japan could still win one final battle to prevent the invasion of their homeland.

These militarists had created their own “super weapon”—not quite an atomic bomb, yet still a powerful weapon: the kamikaze. At first, aircraft were used as manned bombs. Later, various kinds of ships and submarines were sent on suicidal attacks. Next, the leaders tried to convince the Japanese people to consider the kamikaze of last resort—resisting the invasion themselves with spears, rocks, and whatever else they could find to kill Americans. They were told that if they didn't kill an enemy soldier before they were killed, they would die in shame.

The “peace faction” simply reminded the militarists that even if the citizen kamikazes repulsed an invasion, the Americans and Allies would simply launch a second invasion when the kamikazes were all dead, and then they would succeed. Those who sought a peaceful end to the war reminded the others what might happen if the U.S. decided not to invade but instead
used more of the terrible bombs. They pointed out to the war faction what a tremendous waste of lives such actions would spawn. They urged their comrades that despite surrender, the country could at last have peace and save countless lives in the process.

Emperor Hirohito and Prime Minister Suzuki were in favor of accepting the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, even though they believed it would be a national humiliation to do so. Yet the idea that the emperor would support the idea of surrender was unimaginable to most of the Japanese military leaders.

The war faction stuck to their position. The three military leaders of the cabinet were adamant. One urged the cabinet to implement the kamikaze plan and commit twenty million Japanese lives in an effort to achieve victory. To offer to sacrifice one-fifth of Japan's population to such a lost cause must have sounded ridiculous and insane.

It was obvious: The time to surrender had now come, even though many in the military still wanted to fight to the end. In a sobering break with Japanese tradition, Hirohito intervened and told the cabinet that he could no longer bear to see his people suffer in war. Following another leaflet bombing of Tokyo with papers outlining surrender terms, Hirohito decided to issue an Imperial Edict accepting the unconditional surrender.

Prime Minister Suzuki quietly warned the emperor that if the militarists thought there was any hesitation or weakness in the Japanese government, he might be assassinated and replaced in a takeover coup.

As the Japanese leaders debated, Emperor Hirohito secretly recorded a radio broadcast accepting the terms of the surrender and announcing it to the Japanese people. When one of the opposition generals got word of the secret recording (to be broadcast on 14 August), he attempted a coup. His men assassinated the commander of the palace guards, put Emperor Hirohito under virtual house arrest, and sent troops to search all of the palace and government offices for the recording. The guards turned over nearly every room and office in the palace and government office building but couldn't find the recording.

The attempted coup unraveled by morning, however, and the general who started the coup shot himself and the Japanese war minister committed ritual suicide. The cabinet then voted unanimously to accept the terms of the surrender.

The recording of the emperor's address to the Japanese people was broadcast at noon, announcing acceptance of the unconditional surrender and the end of the war. This was followed by a news release from a Japanese news agency confirming that the unconditional surrender had been accepted.