Twilight of the Gods

by Twilight of the Gods (retail) (epub)

  FAT MAN HAD DETONATED about 1,800 feet above the Urakami Valley, a northern district of Nagasaki comprising densely built neighborhoods of traditional Japanese wooden homes, a Christian cathedral, schools and colleges, and two Mitsubishi industrial plants. The bomb was about three-quarters of a mile off target, northwest of the planned aiming point, but it still managed to do the job it had been intended to do. Exploding at the midpoint between the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works in the south, and the Mitsubishi-Urakami Ordnance Works in the north, the bomb demolished both factories.

  Because the local press had not yet reported that an atomic bomb had hit Hiroshima, many residents were not prepared for the possibility that one or two B-29s could destroy a city. When the two planes winged in from the north at high altitude, some ignored the air raid sirens and remained where they were standing, watching the intruders as they soared overhead. As in Hiroshima, the bomb detonated in a blinding cosmic ball of light, and anyone caught in the open within about half a mile of the hypocenter was vaporized instantly. The horrors of Nagasaki faithfully replicated those in Hiroshima three days earlier. Those who had taken shelter emerged afterward to find a dystopian hellscape, the sun blotted out and fires advancing, the terrain reshaped and unrecognizable. As in Hiroshima, the cloud of dust and smoke overhead eclipsed the sun, and the scene was suffused in a macabre reddish glow. The region around ground zero was made up mostly of smaller wooden dwellings of traditional Japanese architecture, and they had been almost entirely flattened, vaporized, or burned away. Across the landscape, corrugated tin panels and steel girders, twisted and blackened, stood among endless hillocks of wreckage. Houses directly below the epicenter were smashed directly downward, into the ground, their roof tiles merging into the mud and debris. At Nagasaki Medical College, half a mile from ground zero, all the campus’s wooden buildings were razed, and all persons inside were killed. In the concrete buildings, the walls provided enough shelter that about six of every ten occupants survived, though many suffered dreadful wounds. A teenaged girl cried out to her classmates, as they made their way from their bomb shelter back toward their school, “Weren’t there houses here when we came to the shelter?”55

  The wounded were strewn along the roadways, trapped beneath wreckage, some limping and some crawling, some naked or nearly so—the blast wave having torn away their clothing—many immobilized and begging for water (“Mizu, mizu, mizu!”). Some were burned so badly that they lacked recognizable facial features, with blood-matted hair and skin hanging from their bodies in ribbons; lacerations so deep that bones showed through the torn flesh; holding their arms out from the bodies to avoid the painful friction that would result from burned and abraded skin rubbing against burned and abraded skin. The procession of refugees on the road south of ground zero reminded one witness of a “march of ants.”56 As in Hiroshima, survivors instinctively headed for the river—in this instance, the Urakami River. Thousands clustered along its banks and plunged into its water, hoping to soothe their wounds or take a drink. Soon the river was a great floating mortuary, and the ebb tide carried the mass of bodies down to the harbor and out to sea.

  About an hour after the blast came the same hideous rain that had fallen on Hiroshima—strangely large globules of sticky black paste, hard and heavy enough to cause physical pain as it fell on people caught out in the open. The black rain convinced many survivors that the day of judgment was upon them. Some speculated they had arrived in jigoku, the Buddhist hell.

  Fat Man had fallen only half a mile from Urakami Cathedral, the largest and most famous church in Japan. The great stone edifice was almost completely leveled; only a few partial walls and one of the two bell towers stood among the rubble. The surrounding residential district was wiped out. For four centuries, since the arrival of the first Spanish and Portuguese Jesuit missionaries, the coastal region around Nagasaki had been a beachhead for Japanese Christianity. Since about 1700, the Urakami Valley had been the epicenter of this small but resilient community of faith, which had survived repeated campaigns of persecution, often by worshipping in secret. An estimated 10,000 Japanese Christians died in the atomic blast, or succumbed to their wounds soon afterward. Noting that Nagasaki’s great Shinto shrine (Suwa-Jinja) was unharmed, some Japanese argued that divine providence must explain the disparity. They mused that the ancient Shinto deities were stronger than the foreigners’ alien god.

  Unlike Hiroshima, which occupied a flat alluvial plain, Nagasaki was divided by hills and ridges. The uneven terrain shielded outlying districts of the city from the worst effects of the bomb. A steep ridgeline west of Urakami Valley absorbed most of the blast wave and radiation and largely spared the rest of Nagasaki. The hills facing ground zero were scorched, with most of the structures and vegetation burned away, giving them the appearance (said one witness) of a “premature autumn.”57 But on the other side of the ridge, one found another world, where the grass and trees were still green and most of the buildings appeared undamaged.

  As surveyors collected data from both atomic bomb sites, it was soon clear that the Nagasaki bomb had packed a bigger punch. Fat Man’s yield was about 30 percent greater than Little Boy’s, and the bowl-shaped topography of the Urakami Valley had amplified the force of the explosion. The second bomb had done considerably more damage to comparable structures at a comparable distance from the hypocenter.58

  As in Hiroshima, precise casualty figures were hard to pin down. It is believed that 40,000 to 75,000 residents of Nagasaki were killed on August 9 or shortly thereafter, with another 70,000 dead by the end of 1945.

  LOW ON FUEL, THE TWO B-29s had no hope of flying back to Tinian. The nearest friendly airfield was on Okinawa, a flight of 460 miles. Sweeney did not believe that he had the fuel to make it, but he would try to coax every last mile of forward progress out of every last gallon of gas. Starting at 30,000 feet, the Bockscar had plenty of altitude to give up. Sweeney throttled the engines back to 1,800 rpm, from their normal cruising setting of 2,000 rpm. Then he throttled back to 1,600 rpm, which was below the engine specifications. It would place a lot of strain on the engines, potentially damaging them. But if the Bockscar ran out of fuel before reaching Okinawa, the health of the engines would be moot. Assuming that they would be forced to ditch at sea, Captain Ashworth told the crew to put on their life jackets.

  Sixty miles north of Okinawa, with the fuel needles bouncing on empty, the radioman tried to hail the control tower at Yontan Airfield. There was no response. He tried every possible frequency; still no response. Sweeney put out a “mayday” call. He throttled the engines back to a virtual glide. As the airfield came into view ahead, Sweeney could see fighters and bombers in the landing circle. There was a lot of air traffic, but for some reason the control tower was not responding. The Bockscar did not have fuel to fly a landing pattern. Sweeney intended to simply aim for the end of the runway and attempt a virtual deadstick landing. But did the airfield know he was coming? “I want any goddamn tower on Okinawa!” Sweeney shouted to the radioman. He repeated the mayday call. Then he told the crew to fire flares from the overhead hatch. A crewman asked, which flares? “Fire every goddamn flare we have on board!”59

  The copilot opened the hatch and fired eight flares. Each one communicated a specific message, telling the control tower (for example) that Bockscar was on fire, out of fuel, and had wounded men aboard. But in this case the flares were only for one purpose, to get the airfield’s attention, and in this respect they succeeded. As the Bockscar made its final approach, the traffic cleared. The right outboard engine coughed, sputtered, and cut out. Sweeney said, “I was now barreling in straight ahead, like a runaway freight train.”60 He kept his airspeed up and aimed for the midpoint of the runway. Bockscar struck the pavement hard, bounced 25 feet in the air, and then settled back down. The left outboard engine quit. Airspeed was too high, about 140 miles per hour. The airplane began veering left, toward a hardstand lined with parked B-24s. Sweeney activated the reversible propellers—a feat
ure found only on the 509th Composite Group planes—and stood on the emergency brakes. The Bockscar veered back onto the centerline of the runway and finally came to a stop. As it rolled onto the taxiway, a third engine cut out. Sweeney cut the fourth and braked. He slumped back in his seat, exhausted. A tow truck would have to bring the plane the rest of the way. Bockscar had 7 gallons of fuel left in its tanks.

  The Eighth Air Force commander, General James Doolittle, had watched the wild landing. He had been sure the plane would crash. Afterward Sweeney reported to his office and explained what his mission had been. Neither man missed the significance—they were, in a sense, bookends. Doolittle had led the first air raid on the Japanese homeland, in April 1942; Sweeney had just dropped the bomb that would effectively mark the end of the war.

  After eating a meal in the mess hall, the Bockscar’s crew reboarded their plane, now refueled, for the five-hour run to Tinian. At 10:30 p.m., the airplane landed on Runway A at North Field. The mission had lasted nineteen hours. There was no welcoming party, no press, no celebrations at all. Sweeney was interrogated by Tibbets and LeMay, who concluded that he had made several bad judgments and had nearly botched the mission. They debated whether to haul him before a court of inquiry. But in the end, they decided to leave it alone. Insofar as the world knew, the Nagasaki mission had succeeded, and they preferred to keep it that way. The harrowing details of the Bockscar’s near-demise were not made public until decades later.

  IN TOKYO, IN A LONG MEETING of the SWDC that morning, the Big Six found themselves evenly divided along their familiar three-to-three lines. Notably, even the three hardliners conceded that the war must end, and they agreed “in principle” to Foreign Minister Togo’s proposal to initiate truce negotiations with the Allies. But they insisted upon attaching several conditions. General Anami vowed that neither he nor the army would abide an unconditional surrender. He referred to the looming threat of anarchy and even civil war, which could have been interpreted as a threat. He was backed, as usual, by General Umezu and Admiral Toyoda.

  In the midst of their deliberations, at 11:30 a.m., the council was informed that Nagasaki had been hit by another atomic bomb. But the ominous news did nothing to resolve their impasse.

  After three hours of vexed debate, the two factions were deadlocked between a “one-condition” and a “four-condition” response to the Potsdam Declaration. All six men agreed that the Allies must consent to retain the emperor and the imperial house. The peacemakers Togo, Suzuki, and Yonai argued that this should be the sole condition; any additional demands, they warned, would be tantamount to a rejection of the Potsdam Declaration, and the war would continue until Japan was destroyed. But the hardliners held out for three additional conditions. First, that there be no foreign occupation of Japanese soil; second, that Japanese forces overseas would be withdrawn and demobilized under the command of their own officers; and third, that the Japanese would conduct their own war crimes prosecutions.

  In an emergency meeting of the full cabinet that afternoon, Admiral Yonai stated baldly that Japan had no chance of repelling an Allied invasion on Japanese soil. Anami countered that the army was confident of inflicting heavy losses on the Allies as they stormed ashore, and such a blow might at least bring about the conditions for a more favorable peace. Anami added, “We will find a way to escape an impossible situation with gyokusai [fight to the death] by 100 million people.”61 Several civilian ministers emphasized the impossibility of fighting on, citing the woeful state of transportation, shipping, fuel reserves, the economy, and agriculture. The home minister, whose portfolio included law enforcement, warned of a breakdown in civil order if the public learned that surrender negotiations were underway. That evening at 8:00 p.m., the views of all ministers not on the SWDC were recorded. Six backed Togo’s “one-condition” response, four voted to support the belligerent “four-condition” response, and the others offered intermediate views or pledged to support the prime minister’s decision.

  Under normal circumstances, the impasse might have been resolved in good time. The customary methods of nemawashi (“digging around the roots for a consensus”) were underway. The most eventful discussions of this momentous day occurred in private one-on-one meetings in the ministries and at the Imperial Palace. Prime Minister Suzuki and Marquis Kido each had several private audiences with Hirohito, keeping him closely informed of the status of the debate in the SWDC and the cabinet. Several members of the jushin (the “senior statesmen,” comprising all former Japanese prime ministers) met with Kido. Former foreign minister Mamoru Shigemitsu, who had a close rapport with Kido, was fetched from his country home in Nikko to lobby for Togo’s position. Several members of the royal family were active throughout the afternoon. Prince Takamatsu, the emperor’s younger brother, at first backed the four-condition response—but he was gradually persuaded by the peace party’s reasoning, and by the end of the day he was firmly behind the one-condition response.62

  A second echelon of civilian officials, working behind the scenes with the peacemakers in the cabinet, maneuvered to orchestrate a “sacred decision” for surrender. Chief cabinet secretary Sakomizu collected the signatures of the Big Six on a document consenting to a formal imperial conference at the palace. Evidently, Sakomizu led the SWDC hardliners to believe that they would simply be presenting their views to Hirohito. Had they suspected that the emperor would rule directly to break the stalemate, they could have withheld their signatures and the meeting would not have been possible.

  The historic late-night conference convened just before midnight in a cramped and stifling air raid shelter in the basement of the palace. The members of the council, wearing formal suits or dress uniforms and white gloves, sat in rigid wooden chairs under electric lights. The emperor, dressed in a uniform, sat facing them. Behind him was a gilded gold screen. Sakomizu read the Potsdam Declaration aloud. Drafts of two prospective responses—the peace party’s one-condition acceptance and the hardliners’ four-condition acceptance—were distributed to all participants.

  Speaking first and with great force, Togo recited the arguments he had been advancing since early that morning. There was no other realistic course, he said, but to accept the Potsdam Declaration with the sole proviso that the emperor’s status be preserved. To add a litany of other conditions would be tantamount to a flat rejection of the Allied terms. Talks would break off before they had begun, and Japan would face the revolting options of suffering complete destruction or (with even greater loss of face) consenting to unconditional surrender after all. Anami replied with indignant bluster, insisting that the Japanese army was not yet defeated and would enjoy considerable tactical advantages in a battle for the homeland. The army should be allowed to beat the invader back; in the wake of such a battle, the government would possess the leverage to obtain better terms at the bargaining table. Speaking softly, Yonai supported Togo’s view. The two chiefs of staff, Umezu and Toyoda, said they agreed with Anami, though neither seemed to possess Anami’s conviction. Marquis Kido and Baron Kiichirō Hiranuma, the Privy Council president, sided with the advocates of the one-condition acceptance. The debate continued for two hours, until everyone in the room had spoken. Suzuki withheld his opinion, perhaps because he wanted to present himself as an honest broker, and he knew what was going to happen next.

  At two in the morning, the aged prime minister rose to his feet and faced his colleagues. “Gentlemen,” he intoned, “we have spent hours in deliberation without coming to a decision and yet agreement is not in sight. You are fully aware that we cannot afford to waste even a minute at this juncture.” He turned to face the throne. “I propose, therefore, to seek the imperial guidance and substitute it for the decision of this conference.”63

  There was no constitutional precedent for this maneuver, and it seems to have stunned the hardliners. With rare exceptions, Hirohito had refrained from breaking deadlocks in his cabinets. The last time he had exercised this dubious authority was in February 1936, during an
aborted army coup d’état. Anami and his allies could have raised a point-of-order objection on the spot, and forced the conference to adjourn before the emperor could voice his opinion. But to do so would have required a show of defiance in the man-god’s presence. It would also have caused the government to fall, exacerbating the national crisis. Perhaps, in the moment, they were too dumbfounded to speak up. Or perhaps, as some have speculated, the hardliners actually wanted the emperor to rule for surrender, because they knew that no realistic alternative existed, and felt that only a firm imperial decision would compel their rebellious subordinates to fall in line.

  After an emotional silence, Hirohito spoke in a low voice. “I agree with the first opinion as expressed by the foreign minister,” he said. He was deeply saddened by the sacrifice of so many brave and loyal soldiers and sailors, and the suffering of the Japanese people under aerial bombardment. But the sole alternative to accepting the Allied terms was national annihilation, as well as prolonged suffering throughout Asia and the world. As for the army’s proposed decisive battle in the homeland, the emperor bluntly stated that he had lost confidence in his military commanders, because past experience had established “that there has always been a discrepancy between plans and performance.”64 The time had come, said Hirohito, to “bear the unbearable”—a reference to the Meiji emperor’s verdict on the Tripartite Intervention of 1895, when Russia, Germany, and France had pressured Japan to rewrite the peace treaty ending the first Sino-Japanese war. His grandfather’s remark was a fitting precedent for Japan’s current agony. Once again, a mortifying loss of face must be endured for the sake of national survival.