by Jeff Shaara
He serves as air force chief of staff until 1961 and retires from active duty in 1965. Always a vocal critic of the “softening” of America’s defensive shields, including what he sees as America’s tentative strategies in the Vietnam War, a frustrated LeMay sees an opportunity to put his viewpoint on a loud pedestal. He accepts the opportunity to run as the vice presidential candidate as part of Alabama governor George Wallace’s third-party campaign in the 1968 presidential election. Though Wallace has little expectation of winning, his high visibility brings out the most militant viewpoints of many in this country, who are mostly silenced by the vast outpouring of protest against the war. It is LeMay who uses that opportunity to express his support for the use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam, an incendiary philosophy that only helps polarize an already divided nation.
After the election, LeMay fades from public view, settles in California, and dies in 1990, at age eighty-three. He is buried at the United States Air Force Academy Cemetery, in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
PRESIDENT HARRY TRUMAN
The thirty-third president of the United States is a man both loved and despised during his terms of office, usually striving for what he believes to be in the nation’s best interests as opposed to the will of the politicians who surround him. He seeks reelection in 1948 and scores a stunning upset over the heavily favored New York governor, Thomas Dewey. During his tenure, he supports his new secretary of state, George C. Marshall, a key force behind what is titled the Marshall Plan. From 1947 through 1952, the plan puts into action an outflow of American aid and other financial policies that rebuild Western Europe and thus do much to revitalize the economy of a significant portion of the industrialized world.
Though accused by his political enemies of being tentative in what many see as a crucial struggle to prevent the spread of communism, he adopts the Truman Doctrine, offering unwavering support to any nation that faces a blatant threat of Soviet expansion beyond those borders the Soviets seal off in 1945, what Winston Churchill refers to as the “Iron Curtain.” In that same vein, Truman participates in the founding of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and vigorously supports American involvement in the United Nations.
In 1949, when the Soviet Union develops its own nuclear weapons, Truman recognizes the value of deterrence and supports the development and construction of larger and more effective weaponry, including the hydrogen bomb, which is significantly more powerful than the two bombs exploded over Japan in 1945. That policy remains controversial and is an integral part of international relations to this day.
In 1950 Truman vigorously supports intervention by the United Nations into an explosion of conflict in Korea. The nation, occupied during World War II by Japan, has been divided virtually in half by agreements and treaties that rarely involve the Koreans themselves, with an artificial border placed across the country at the Thirty-eighth Parallel. The north, influenced heavily by Soviet and Chinese politics and weaponry, invades the American-supported south, resulting in a response Truman labels a “police action.” But the war in Korea stretches past Truman’s own presidency, and fighting does not wind down until 1954. During the conflict there is considerable disagreement between Truman and Supreme Military Commander General Douglas MacArthur as to how the war should be fought. In August 1951 that conflict reaches its climax when Truman relieves MacArthur of his command, replacing him with General Matthew Ridgway. MacArthur returns home something of a political martyr and takes full advantage of a considerable volume of hero worship, at Truman’s expense. The result, for a president whose popularity with the American people vacillates to either extreme, is that Truman leaves office with the lowest approval rating in history.
Truman’s strength of will is consistently underestimated, and his homespun charm is often thought a sign of weakness. But what his political enemies view as weakness, the American public mostly takes to heart, and despite the various controversies, time heals America’s perception of their thirty-third president. Truman becomes generally beloved, especially as the memories of his presidency fade, and he is today considered one of the twentieth century’s more capable and popular presidents.
After leaving office, Truman and his wife, Bess, return to their home in Independence, Missouri. Truman will accept no compensation from any private corporation, and thus he and Bess subsist on his soldier’s pension from World War I, little more than one hundred dollars per month. That an American president should be virtually destitute is an embarrassment the Congress rectifies, and in 1958 Truman is awarded a permanent pension of twenty-five thousand dollars per year.
He pens his memoirs, published in 1955, but signs a publishing contract that limits his royalties severely, thus he never receives the level of compensation appropriate to the memoirs’ sales, which are significant. The two-volume set is regarded as one of the better presidential memoirs ever published.
Throughout the 1960s he continues to make public appearances, particularly to participate in official Washington ceremonies, but his health deteriorates. He dies in a hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, in December 1972, at age eighty-eight. He is buried at the Truman Library, in Independence, Missouri, where his wife Bess now lies beside him.
GENERAL LESLIE GROVES
If physicist Dr. Robert Oppenheimer can accurately be called the “Father of the Atomic Bomb,” Groves is its godfather. By sheer strength of will and a personality that few find appealing, Groves succeeds in maintaining a wall of secrecy around the Manhattan Project that seems inconceivable in today’s world.
At the war’s end, he continues to lead what is still labeled the Manhattan District, which in 1947 evolves into the Atomic Energy Commission. Groves is awarded the Legion of Merit and promoted to lieutenant general (three stars) in 1948. Knowing he has consistently made enemies in Washington by the unyielding fierceness of his personality, which some describe as disgustingly rude, he realizes he can climb no farther up Washington’s military ladder, and later in 1948, he retires. He moves to Darien, Connecticut, and goes to work as an executive for the Sperry Rand Corporation, until he retires again in 1961. He pens a memoir of the Manhattan Project in 1962 and returns to Washington. He lives out a peaceful retirement there and dies suddenly from a heart attack in 1970, at age seventy-three. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
CAPTAIN WILLIAM “DEAK” PARSONS
Immediately after the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima, Parsons is promoted to commodore. For his actions he is awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, the Legion of Merit, and a Silver Star. In 1948 Parsons is promoted to rear admiral, and later serves as a member of the fledgling Atomic Energy Commission, but remains in the navy, and, appropriately, serves as assistant chief of the Bureau of Ordnance. He dies suddenly of a heart attack in 1953, at age fifty-two, and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
COLONEL PAUL TIBBETS
Returning from the bombing run over Hiroshima, Tibbets finds himself the center of massive public attention, a position with which he is never comfortable. Immediately after the official surrender of Japan, Tibbets is granted permission to visit Tokyo, and learns that, while the airfields near Hiroshima are unusable, it is possible to fly into Nagasaki. Accompanied by two longtime friends, his navigator, Dutch Van Kirk, and his bombardier, Tom Ferebee, Tibbets logically enough keeps his anonymity among the Japanese, and learns to his surprise that the citizenry in Nagasaki is doing what citizens are doing throughout the rest of Japan (and Germany). They are making every effort to return to something of a normal life, even with the virtual destruction of their city. Tibbets comes away from the visit with respect for the civilians, writes, “I felt no animosity, neither did I have a personal feeling of guilt about the terror we had visited upon their land. It was unfortunate of course that these people had been obliged to pay such a price for a war into which their country had been led by a handful of ambitious and ruthless politicians and militarists.”
With the war’s end, Tibbets is still in se
rvice to Curtis LeMay, and LeMay orders him to leave Tinian and report to Washington, D.C. Along the way, Tibbets visits Roswell, New Mexico, where he offers a final farewell to many of those who had served the 509th as air and ground crews, most of whom are scheduled to be discharged from the postwar air force.
Expecting to return to something of a normal family life, Tibbets is dismayed to find that he is greatly in demand by newspaper and radio reporters. For the first year after the war’s end, there is little controversy surrounding the dropping of the bomb, most of the attention focused instead on the practical peaceful applications of atomic energy, a topic Tibbets is woefully unqualified to address.
In 1948 Tibbets recognizes the coming of the jet age, and attends Air Command and Staff School to familiarize himself with the new technology. He soon becomes a staunch advocate of the new B-47 bomber, a six-engine jet that enters service in 1951, and he serves as a test pilot for the aircraft, which quickly becomes a primary tool for the increasing needs of the Cold War. As LeMay assumes command of the fledgling Strategic Air Command, Tibbets is brought along.
In 1952 Tibbets is amazed when Hollywood comes calling. Though aware that he has some celebrity status, he does not expect that his life story is to be put on film. Above and Beyond stars actor Robert Taylor as Tibbets, and reenacts the story of the bombing of Hiroshima. Tibbets learns firsthand that Hollywood’s version of history can vary considerably from the truth. Tibbets responds to the film’s mixed reviews and unexpected variations of fact with a standard cliché: “Well, that’s show biz.”
The fame that follows Tibbets adds considerable pressure to a marriage that has struggled for most of its seventeen years. In 1955, the struggle ends, as Paul and Lucy Tibbets are divorced.
Tibbets is named to serve on the staff of the American contingent to NATO, and with his marriage over, moves to France, settling in the town of Fontainebleau, near Paris. As part of a more international social scene, Tibbets is introduced to Andrea Quattrehomme, a French divorcée. Though there is a language barrier between them, that soon fades, and in 1956 they marry.
Bored with his NATO duties, Tibbets returns to the States in 1956 and is assigned to the 308th Bomber Wing at Hunter Air Force Base in Savannah, Georgia. He soon understands that the position is one of repairing an outfit with a dismal reputation, and his own reputation is enhanced by his success. Thus he is called upon to address the same challenge with other units, and is assigned to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida. But there are rewards to this kind of service, and in 1959 Tibbets is promoted to brigadier general. Always on General LeMay’s radar, Tibbets is called again to Washington, and in 1961 assumes leadership of the Office of Strategic Analysis for the Strategic Air Command, and a year later develops the National Military Command Center in the Pentagon, which serves as SAC’s watchdog for any potential enemy activities that might threaten the United States. As such, he is now managing what is in essence the nerve center for secret military communications worldwide.
In 1964 Tibbets’s career takes a completely different turn when he is assigned to the Military Assistance Group to India. But Tibbets’s celebrity becomes an albatross, as India’s government follows an increasingly leftist philosophy that brands the United States the world’s most dangerous power. One newspaper in particular offers the opinion that Paul Tibbets “should not be allowed to breathe the air of India.” Despite the political controversy, the government does accept the American military’s assistance in modernizing India’s air force, and Tibbets assists in the construction of a series of radar stations in the Himalayan Mountains, along India’s border with China. Tibbets and his wife spend nearly two unpleasant years in India, and Tibbets is relieved when, in 1966, he is recalled to Washington. But he is offered command of the Department of Defense Transportation, which in effect makes him the port master of every American debarkation center, whether air, land, or sea. It is not a position that appeals, and Tibbets realizes that his thirty-year career with the air force should be concluded.
Tibbets and his wife take the opportunity for an unfettered vacation in Europe, but it is interrupted when he receives word that his mother, Enola Gay Tibbets, has died.
In the Vietnam War years, the tone of the nation shifts significantly against the military, and Tibbets finds himself targeted increasingly by antinuclear sentiment. He is stunned to read reports in European magazines that claim, among other things, that Paul Tibbets is confined to an insane asylum, resulting from his grief over the Hiroshima bombing. Though he tries to avoid the public spotlight, he becomes painfully aware that he has become a symbol of what some are insisting is America’s darkest hour.
In 1976 Tibbets becomes president of the civilian Executive Jet Aviation Company, and relocates to Columbus, Ohio. The company has a troubled past financially, but Tibbets does for them what he has done for the various air force commands throughout his life, and within a short time the company prospers.
In 1986 Tibbets retires, and in 1989 writes his memoirs. But he cannot escape the occasional outbursts of controversy and vitriol aimed at him for his role in the war, and he responds aggressively to some of the criticism against him in an updated edition of the memoir, published in 1998. He writes:
One must sympathize with any movement designed to reduce or eliminate human slaughter. Nuclear warfare is indeed inhuman and ought to be banned. By the same token, other forms of warfare, such as the dropping of fire bombs and the shooting of soldiers with cannon and rifles, are likewise uncivilized and should be outlawed. Those who try to distinguish between civilized and uncivilized forms of combat soon find themselves defending the indefensible. To suggest that one specific act of war is barbaric and thereby illegal is to imply that other forms of slaughter are acceptable and consequently legal.
Interestingly, those who protest most vigorously our use of the atomic bomb against Japan deplore the killing of so many people in just two raids. One is given the impression that a thousand planes rather than two, should have been used to accomplish the same result.
Though many reports over the years suggest that General Tibbets endured his later years in an agony of guilt, his own quote on the cover of his memoir best sums up his feelings: “To me, [the bomb] meant putting an end to the fighting and consequent loss of lives. In fact, I viewed my mission as one to save lives rather than take them. The intervening years have brought me many letters and personal contacts with individuals who maintain that they would not be alive if it had not been for what I did. Likewise, I have been asked in letters and to my face if I was not conscience stricken for the loss of life I caused by dropping the first atomic bomb. To those who ask, I quickly reply, ‘Not in the least.’ ”
He dies in Columbus, Ohio, in 2007, at age ninety-two.
Actually, the bomb is no more revolutionary than the first throwing stick or javelin or the first cannon or the first submarine. It is simply a new instrument added to the orchestra of death which is war.
—GEORGE PATTON
It is a sobering thought that our two bombs, feeble by today’s standards, were the curtain-raiser on what many view as the supreme human tragedy. Mankind’s best hope is that the prologue was so frightening that the main show will be canceled.
—GENERAL PAUL TIBBETS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JEFF SHAARA is the New York Times bestselling author of No Less Than Victory, The Steel Wave, The Rising Tide, To the Last Man, The Glorious Cause, Rise to Rebellion, and Gone for Soldiers, as well as Gods and Generals and The Last Full Measure—two novels that complete the Civil War trilogy that began with his father’s Pulitzer Prize–winning classic The Killer Angels. Jeff Shaara was born into a family of Italian immigrants in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He grew up in Tallahassee, Florida, and graduated from Florida State University. He lives again in Tallahassee. Visit the author online at www.jeffshaara.com.
Jeff Shaara is available for select readings and lectures. To inquire about a possible appearance, please contact the Rand
om House Speakers Bureau at [email protected].