by Jeff Shaara
Truman caught a shadow, a brief flicker of movement back near a row of steel drums. He knew it was a Secret Service agent, knew there were more, and probably some naval guards, lurking in every dark hole. Truman turned again to the water, thought, yep, I suppose there’s somebody out there who’d do whatever it took to knock a hole in my head. Jap agents all over the damn place, so they tell me. Well, not out here. If there were any Jap subs puffing around anywhere in this whole damn hemisphere, they wouldn’t let me hang my face over the side of this ship like some gawking tourist. But in Washington … watch your step. They hated it when I walked to work, couldn’t wait for me to move my ass from Blair House to the White House. Hell, I liked walking to work. Hardly anybody recognized me, and the mornings can be damn nice in the spring. Once the Secret Service started clearing off sidewalks, shoving people aside, well, that took all the fun out of it. I liked Blair House too. There are too damn many offices in the White House, too many people who insist on talking to me. Everybody’s in a hurry, their pressing matter more pressing than the next guy’s. At least the Secret Service is happy. I’m behind thick walls, makes it a lot tougher for some Jap agent to pop a rifle in my direction. Well, maybe we can put a stop to that business altogether, give those people a reason to go home. I oughta hear something once I get to Potsdam. Unless there are delays, some problem that rattles the physicists, some reason why Oppenheimer or any of the rest of them think we need to wait, to do more research. They’re pretty rattled already, and I can’t blame them for that. I’m rattled, and I don’t have the faintest damn idea how this new bomb is supposed to work. They don’t like to talk about it, but they’re not sure the damn thing will work at all. Or, maybe it will work too well, and destroy the world. Now, there’s a hell of a notation for the encyclopedia. Harry Truman, Final President of the United States. Most Notable Accomplishment: Destroyed the World.
For eighty-two days he had become accustomed to being on the outside, rarely included in FDR’s most high-level discussions, especially with the military people. Truman wasn’t bothered by that, knew that the relationship between the president and his vice president could never be chummy. Both men were, after all, politicians, and there was always life after holding office, and then you were likely not to be chums at all. Indeed, he thought, Washington is still Washington. He shook his head. Well, it’s not always like that. But we’re not used to having our president die in office. Now there’s one damn good thing about the Constitution. Rules for this sort of thing. Otherwise somebody would just take charge, big mouth and big guns. We’d end up with somebody like … oh God … MacArthur. Yes, thank you, Founding Fathers. Whether FDR kept me involved really didn’t matter. But that piece of paper told everyone what they had better do next. There’s a new guy in charge. Tell him all the secrets.
The meeting had come in late April, and after Roosevelt’s death, it was the second shock Truman received. The messenger had been Henry Stimson, the secretary of war, and across Truman’s desk had come the astonishing details of something called the Manhattan Project. Until that meeting, just days after FDR’s death, Truman had no idea at all what the project was, no idea that the United States had been spending enormous numbers of man-hours, employing some of the finest minds in the world of physics, to develop a weapon unlike any ever known. Truman had faced the nervous Stimson, who seemed unhappy to be the one to inform the new president that the project had been so secret it was thought unwise to include in its inner circle the vice president of the United States. But Truman knew about it now, even if he didn’t completely understand the physics of nuclear fission. Stimson had told him that the physicists were confident then that the first atomic bomb would be ready for testing within four months of that meeting.
He glanced up at the sliver of moon, thought, that’s pretty damn soon. And damn it all, I have to go to this conference and stare down Joe Stalin, and keep my mouth shut about the biggest damn bomb ever built, a weapon that could very well stop this war. We’re not even sure the thing will explode, and that’s gotta be driving the physicists and their teams insane. Never been done before, ever. Might be a nice enhancement to my baseball bat if I could tell Joe Stalin that this damn bomb not only exists, it actually works. Hey, Joe, you get your damn tanks out of Poland or we might have to use Moscow as a testing ground.
He closed his eyes, a sharp shake of his head. Don’t do that, Harry. This isn’t a backyard spat, and this is a hell of a lot more important than punching a bully in the eye. This is a secret, and if there’s one man on this earth who doesn’t need to hear about it, it’s Stalin. Churchill knows, thank God for that. He knew from the beginning, and I guess it makes sense that FDR would have brought him into the ring. The Brits were aching pretty bad, too much blood, too much gloom. Even if Churchill had to keep his mouth shut, at least we could let him know that we were working like hell to stick something new up our sleeve. The thing that stirs my coffee is that, from what we know now, Hitler was doing the same thing. Whether this big damn son of a bitch actually fires off or not, I’m a lot happier that we’re testing this thing over some desert in New Mexico than some Nazi bastard doing it over London. God, I can’t even think about that.
There had been additional meetings, some with the military men who stood guard over the Manhattan Project, some with the physicists themselves. With every piece of new information, Truman had become increasingly amazed that the secret had been as well kept as it had. This is Washington, for God’s sake. Between Drew Pearson and William Randolph Hearst, you know damn well that FDR’s enemies would have paid big to expose something as big as this. Jap agents had to be throwing money around every military base, every Washington hotel, trying to find out any little ditty they could. This one could have made somebody rich as hell. But so far, the secret is still … a secret. Damn impressive.
The latest word had come just prior to his boarding the Augusta, that the first test would come very soon in the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico. The plan was for three bombs to be built, one for the test, and the others for use against targets in Japan. The arguments over targets had begun in earnest, and Truman knew that the military men would be the best qualified to make that decision. The city most favored was Kyoto, a city of such importance to the Japanese that its destruction would surely bring the Japanese to the peace table. But Kyoto’s importance was the primary reason Truman vetoed it as a target. The city was more historical than military, a religious and cultural center like no other city in Japan. Truman had insisted that the target be someplace with more military significance, a direct strike into the heart of Japan’s war machine. The list had been assembled, and the advisors had come up with four that made the most sense. Truman had studied the short list with no real sense of the priorities of each, though the military men had offered suggestions why each, or any, was important. Truman had the list still, studied it in his mind now. Kokura, Hiroshima, Niigata, and Nagasaki. I can’t really tell them which one is the best target. I just don’t have that answer. It might depend on weather, of course, and it might be the pilot’s decision, the ultimate discretion, which target can be hit. Damn, what a place to put a bomber pilot.
Throughout the meetings, the physicists, especially Robert Oppenheimer and Enrico Fermi, had been adamant that this bomb would end the war. Even though nothing like this had ever been used before, and even though no one really knew just what might happen when it detonated, there had been no hesitation among those men that the bomb be used directly against a Japanese target. Truman agreed with the military men who had been enthusiastic about the possibilities of what this weapon could do. The Japanese had defined the moral argument from the very beginning, and as word reached the Western newspapers of what was happening in China, what had been done to prisoners of war at Bataan, or the civilians in every place the Japanese had conquered, the fury of the American people had grown substantially. The military had their own fury, of course, and yet throughout the war, the Americans had played as close to the
rules as anyone could expect. But the kamikaze attacks against American sailors had seemed to be the final straw, confirmation that the enemy in the Pacific was nothing like the Germans. Not even the spreading news of the Holocaust had seemed to affect the American troops with the kind of visceral disgust for what the Japanese had done. Germany’s sins could be placed too easily at the feet of Hitler and a few of his henchmen, but the astounding viciousness of the Japanese seemed to pervade their entire military culture, a culture that Truman knew was nothing the Americans had ever faced before. He had been astounded to hear a broadcast, forwarded to him from the monitoring stations that recorded Japanese radio. The speech had come from Japan’s Prime Minister Suzuki.
Should my services be rewarded by death, I expect the hundred million people of this glorious empire to swell forward over my prostrate body and form themselves into a shield to protect the emperor and this imperial land from the invader.
With such resolve being fed to the Japanese people, who would no doubt respond as their emperor hoped, the decision to use this extraordinary weapon caused Truman no heartburn at all. Quite the opposite. Without such a decisive piece of weaponry, the American invasion of Japan was the only viable strategy that remained. If the speculation about the power of the atomic bomb was accurate, Truman believed along with his generals that this one weapon could prevent the potential loss of an enormous number of American troops. But Suzuki’s speech had offered up another reason for the Americans to avoid an invasion, something that many of the military advisors had given little attention. If the Japanese defended their homeland with the same ferocity they had inflicted on other lands, Truman had to believe that the loyalty of the Japanese people to their emperor might result in a fight that would cause the slaughter of millions of Japanese civilians, a moral nightmare for the United States, and especially for the young American soldiers who would stand at the point of the spear. To the commanders who had seen the barbarity of the Japanese up close, the morality of that was no issue at all. Increasingly there was a mood among the troops that Japan needed to be punished, all of Japan. It was an argument Truman could not dismiss. Throughout Asia, the people who had suffered such extreme depravity at the hands of the Japanese troops and their leaders had to receive at least some compensation, even if the best that could be accomplished was a weapon that some might see as overkill, an act of vengeance.
Though the military chiefs were mostly unequivocal in their support for the Manhattan Project, as June rolled into July, Truman felt that something had changed among the physicists, a slight whiff of what Truman felt was hesitation, or even pacifism. Truman suspected that the shift in mood was the result of the victory at Okinawa, the sense that the Japanese were beaten already, that this new weapon might be unnecessary. But the military chiefs had blasted that opinion to pieces, few believing that Okinawa would change anything in Tokyo.
A serious argument had been made for exploding a bomb off the Japanese coast, with no surprises, everyone notified well in advance, the whole world allowed to watch. If the Japanese High Command had any doubts about American superiority in arms, some said that this would clinch it, would inspire even the most fanatical Japanese generals to call it quits. But many of the military people thought that idea a waste of time, and there were two very good reasons why. Since 1942, Japan’s newly acquired empire had been crushed around the edges, then crushed in the vicious campaigns that drove closer and closer to Japan. But every American commander who faced them saw for himself that the Japanese tactics and strategy had never seemed to change at all, no matter how much might and how much superiority in arms they had faced. No, he thought, if they won’t even give up some pissant little island in the middle of nowhere, how can we expect them to lay down arms to give up their whole damn country, emperor and all? That one’s pretty simple. Their losses have been staggering, and yet they’ve shown no hint of any willingness to accept defeat. Truman had been as baffled by that as the men around him. Okinawa had been a perfect disaster for the Japanese, and surely the Imperial High Command would know that mainland Japan was the next target. And yet the rhetoric from Tokyo had not changed at all. Truman had heard some of the Ultra intercepts, the Japanese communications codes broken early in the war. The code breakers had done the same with the German codes, which had given the Allies in Europe an outstanding advantage. Most of the Japanese communications had now become so primitive that the code breakers were hardly in use at all, since most of the bases far from Japan had been crushed or cut off. But Truman had heard some of the pronouncements, had been astounded that the Japanese people were being told of ongoing victories against the enemy, including their magnificent triumph at Okinawa. The Americans knew of food shortages, and that, for Japanese civilians, gasoline and many basic staples were nonexistent. And their men, he thought. Their sons and husbands and fathers are simply gone, and no one there sees a problem? So, no, we cannot expect that a demonstration of some new powerful weapon, no matter how dramatic, is going to change that.
The second argument was more straightforward. What if the bomb didn’t work? Yep, that would be a good one. We tell Tokyo, hey, bring your emperor and half your army and come on out to Yokohama Beach, and watch this. And so they gather out there, with half the world’s newspaper reporters, just to watch us drop a big damn steel ball into the ocean. Sploosh. I can just hear MacArthur, or even Nimitz. Uh, never mind, boys. And excuse us, but we’ve gotta go back home and help the president beat the crap out of every damn physicist we can find. As for the war, yeah, well, we’ll get back to you on that one.
No, it’s not funny. Not even close. The military says we need this, and it’s hard to argue against that. Already we’re mobilizing hundreds of damn transports, and gathering up every healthy GI for a beach party that will make Normandy look like a rainy day in Miami.
The noise that came from the Japanese High Command was as militant as ever, defiantly anticipating that the Americans would make their next move against the mainland itself, which was exactly what was planned. The invasion was scheduled for November 1, a massive surge into the harbors and across the beaches at several points near key Japanese targets. The operation had been given a name, Olympic, and Truman had been briefed by the joint chiefs that the first phase of the invasion would involve more than a half-million American ground troops, with that many more to follow close behind. George Marshall and the other planners assumed the operation would carry on through the spring of 1946. Despite the most optimistic estimates, it was apparent that the war would last for another year, possibly longer. As for casualties … Truman pondered that, all those estimates of American dead, some far more optimistic than others. Some of those boys think that if they feed me baby food, I’ll give my okay to their plans without a second thought. Sorry, but no general has to tell me what a ground war looks like, because I’ve seen one. I know exactly what will happen to our boys. If I thought the Japanese could be convinced they ought to quit, fine, show me how to convince them. Nothing, not a damn thing has worked so far. We’ve been busting up their bases and driving their people into hell for better than three years, and no one’s given me any sign that they’re any less willing to die for their damn emperor today than they were in 1942.
It was disturbing to him that some of the very scientists who developed this extraordinary weapon were now hedging their bets by insisting it not actually be used on a target, but only as a demonstration, a show of force that could not be ignored. That’s pure bull, he thought. Every report says their people are more enthusiastic about fighting now than ever. We won’t be fighting just their army, we’ll be fighting every damn Jap citizen. Call it what you will, their Home Guard, or militia. It means that sooner or later every GI will stand face-to-face with some mama-san holding a musket, or a pitchfork, and they won’t just step aside. What will that do to our boys, faced with civilians who are as dangerous as the soldiers? How many more cities will General LeMay have to incinerate before he eliminates that threat? Hell, we�
�d do the same thing if the Japs landed a fleet of invasion ships on the California coast. American civilians would put up a hell of a fight if they were defending our homes in San Francisco or Los Angeles. Put anybody’s back to their own wall and they’ll turn up the volume. So, sure, if there’s a chance to end this sooner … there’s no argument that trumps that. We sure as hell don’t need pussyfooting about this, not after so much has gone into it, and by damn, every one of those scientists and every damn general knows this decision is mine, and mine alone, and that order left my office a month ago. Right now it doesn’t much matter which city it’ll be … if this son of a bitch works, we’ll hit those people hard enough to make even the emperor take a little pause.
Truman began to pace now, caught a glimpse of the guard in the shadows, moving with him. He stopped, hands clasped behind his back, turned to the shadows.
“Come out here. You’re giving me the jitters.”
The man emerged, two more to one side.
“Sir. Sorry, but you know our orders.”
“No problem there, boys. But you can knock off the cloak-and-dagger stuff.” He paused. “You know what I’ve done?”
The man seemed puzzled by the question, searched past Truman toward the railing.
“Not here, you … sorry. You know the kinds of decisions I’ve gotta deal with? Every damn day?”
“Yes, sir. Difficult decisions, sir.”