by Steve Olson
After the Hiroshima bomb had been dropped, President Truman had said in a statement, “We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city. We shall destroy their docks, their factories, and their communications. Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan’s power to make war. If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the likes of which has never been seen on this earth.” But Japan had not accepted the US terms. Japanese radio stations were already downplaying the extent of Hiroshima’s destruction. So many of Japan’s cities had already been firebombed that the nation’s leaders seemed not to care much about one more being destroyed. They seemed to be more concerned about the Soviet Union’s entry into the war the previous day. Soviet tanks rolling into Manchuria demonstrated once and for all that Japan could not rely on any other country to come to its rescue. Yet the Japanese leaders still refused to surrender.
Sweeney’s mission was to drop the second bomb on Japan as quickly as possible to show that the United States would keep punishing the Japanese until they gave up. But Sweeney knew that the United States did not have a ready supply of atomic bombs. The next bomb, after the one hanging in the bomb bay of the Bockscar, would not be ready for several weeks. If he failed in his mission, Truman’s threat would be empty. Sweeney also knew that the top brass considered this bomb even more important than the first. During the previous evening’s briefing, Tibbets had said that this bomb made the Hiroshima bomb obsolete. All future bombs would be based on this design, which meant that the scientists and military leaders were especially interested in what it could do. That’s why two other B-29s were on this mission, too—to document the bomb’s destructiveness.
Suddenly, as if walking through a doorway, the Bockscar emerged from the storm. The crew members collectively exhaled. A few settled into their seats to try to get some sleep. Through the window above his head, Sweeney could see a few stars amidst the remnant clouds. A faint band of dawn appeared on the eastern horizon.
On the flight deck behind Sweeney, Fred Ashworth and his assistant Phil Barnes were monitoring a box covered with switches and lights that would alert them if there was a problem with the bomb’s fuses or firing circuits. Ashworth and Barnes had been added to Sweeney’s crew to ready and monitor the bomb on the way to Nagasaki. Exactly who was in charge of dropping the bomb was never made clear to either Sweeney or Ashworth, which would cause problems later in the mission. But even before then, Ashworth and Barnes had to endure a crisis. Moving the mission up two days because of the weather had played havoc with the ground crew’s schedule. The crew had worked around the clock to get the bomb assembled and loaded onto the Bockscar. Inevitably, mistakes occurred.
Not long after emerging from the storm, Barnes woke Ashworth from a nap. “We got something wrong here,” Barnes said. “We got a red light going off like the bomb is going to explode right now.”
A light on the side of the flight test box was blinking furiously.
“Oh my God,” said Ashworth. “Do you have the blueprints? This bomb can pre-detonate if we drop below a predetermined level. What’s our altitude? Where are the blueprints?”
With the blueprints rolled out beside them, Barnes and Ashworth removed the casing from the test box and began going over the wiring. Ten desperate minutes later they discovered the problem. The settings of two switches had been reversed. Barnes flipped the switches to their proper positions, and the red light went back to normal.
After about four hours of flying, Sweeney spotted the small circular island of Yakushima, about 40 miles south of Japan’s main islands. Within a few minutes he caught sight of the instrument plane, which was being flown by Fred Bock, the usual pilot of the eponymous Bockscar. As with the Hiroshima mission, three planes were supposed to travel together: one to drop the bomb, one to measure its effects, and one to photograph the explosion. When Tibbets had chosen Sweeney to lead the mission, Sweeney and Bock had switched planes, since there was not enough time to move the observation instruments from The Great Artiste to the Bockscar. But neither Sweeney nor Bock could see the third plane that was supposed to meet them at the rendezvous. That plane, the Big Stink, was being flown by James Hopkins, a 26-year-old Texan. Sweeney and Hopkins had a strained relationship. They had bickered the previous day over the proper way to conduct the rendezvous over Yakushima. “I know all about that,” Sweeney later reported Hopkins saying. “You don’t have to tell me how to make a rendezvous.” Now their spat was having dire consequences. Hopkins, in the Big Stink, was flying several thousand feet above Sweeney in long doglegs, not in the tight circles Sweeney was following. “Where the hell is he?” Sweeney shouted to his copilot.
At the previous evening’s briefing, Tibbets had told Sweeney and his crew that they were to wait only 15 minutes at the rendezvous site. If one of the other planes did not show up in that time, they were to leave immediately for the target. But Sweeney did not want to leave. Hopkins was flying the photography plane, which was not essential to the mission, but not having Hopkins there would make the mission incomplete. Despite his orders, Sweeney circled over Yakushima for 45 minutes. During this time, weather reports arrived from two other B-29s that had flown ahead to the primary target, Kokura Arsenal, and the secondary target, Nagasaki. The weather over the primary target was clear, reported the Enola Gay. The Laggin’ Dragon said that the weather over the secondary target was almost as good—only two-tenths cloud coverage.
“The hell with it,” Sweeney finally said. “We can’t wait any longer.” He wiggled his wings at Bock, and the two planes swung away to the north.
Hopkins, flying his lazy doglegs high above, never saw the two planes below him. All the planes were under strict orders not to use their radios, but Hopkins, increasingly frantic, decided that he had to take the risk. “Has Sweeney aborted?” he radioed back to Tinian. But the first word was lost in transmission, and the radio operators on Tinian only heard “Sweeney aborted.” When Farrell, who had come to Tinian to serve as Groves’s representative on the island, heard that message, he ran outside and threw up.
Kokura Arsenal was just to the south of the spot where two of Japan’s four major islands—Kyushu to the south and Honshu to the north—come within a few miles of each other. It was sure to be heavily guarded. The arsenal was a major source of munitions for the army and was surrounded by heavy industry and workers’ homes. Sweeney also knew that the Japanese, after Hiroshima, would be on the lookout for three-plane formations flying over unbombed cities. Even though the Big Stink had gone missing, he felt highly visible.
At 9:45 local time (an hour earlier than Tinian time), after almost seven hours of flying, the Bockscar approached Kokura. The delay over Yakushima had been costly. During the time Sweeney had been looking for Hopkins and flying to the target, clouds had rolled in from the ocean. Also, since the US bombing had not stopped after the destruction of Hiroshima, more than 200 B-29s had firebombed the nearby industrial town of Yawata the day before, and smoke from the still-burning city had drifted east over Kokura. Workers at the arsenal may even have been burning oil in drums or emitting steam to create a smokescreen, though those reports proved difficult to verify in future years.
Despite the clouds and haze, Sweeney lined up the Bockscar for a bombing run. Below and in front of Sweeney, in the plane’s plexiglass nosecone, bombardier Kermit Beahan readied his Norden bombsight to pick out the target. Beahan, who turned 27 that day, was a friendly and dapper Texan who was widely considered one of the best bombardiers in the army. Sweeney’s usual plane, The Great Artiste, had been named for Beahan, reflecting his skills as both a bombardier and a ladies’ man. But Beahan could see nothing through the clouds. “I can’t see the goddamned target,” Beahan said over the plane’s intercom. “There’s a goddamned cloud over the goddamned target.”
“No drop,” Sweeney said. “Repeat, no drop.”
He eased the plane into a br
oad left turn and prepared to come at the target again. This time, as the Bockscar approached Kokura, flak began to burst around them. In World War II, bombers rarely made a second run on their target, since that gave defenders time to zero in on an airplane. Sweeney took the plane up to 31,000 feet to try to avoid the flak.
“I can’t see it,” Beahan yelled again as they approached.
“No drop,” Sweeney said. He had to follow orders.
As Sweeney wheeled the Bockscar around for a third pass, his radar operator, Abe Spitzer, said, “Zeros coming up. Looks like about ten.” Sweeney flew the plane a thousand feet higher. He would try another angle—maybe the target would be visible from that direction. The flak was so close that it was causing the airplane to shudder. But it was hopeless—the clouds were impenetrable.
Sweeney had to decide. The flak was too close, the Zeros were approaching. After spending so much time waiting for Hopkins and making three runs on Kokura, the Bockscar was dangerously low on fuel. According to flight engineer John Kuharek, they no longer had enough gas to get back to Tinian. At this point, they would be lucky to get to the nearest US base on Okinawa. Spitzer, from his station in front of the radar equipment, asked, “What’s wrong with Nagasaki?”
Sweeney had been thinking the same thing. He knew he couldn’t drop the bomb visually on Kokura. His only option for a visual drop was the backup target. That’s what he would do. He swung his plane south, away from Kokura—in the process almost running into Bock, whom he had not warned about the maneuver. Since that day, people in Japan have spoken of the “luck of Kokura”—being spared from annihilation by a threat that you did not even know was there.
Sweeney did not have enough fuel to fly to Nagasaki over water and avoid Japanese defenses. Luckily, the Zeros fell behind and no flak rose from below as he made his way across Kyushu. “Can any other goddamned thing go wrong?” he yelled to his copilot.
He turned to Kuharek. “What’s the score?”
“Fifteen hundred gallons left, sir,” the flight engineer responded.
“Jesus,” said Sweeney, almost inaudibly.
A few minutes later, he told Spitzer, “Send Commander Ashworth up here.”
When Ashworth arrived at the front of the plane, Sweeney said, “Here’s the deal. We’ve got just enough fuel to make one pass over the target. Get that, one pass. If we don’t drop it at Nagasaki, we may have to let it go in the drink. There’s a slim chance that we might be able to make Okinawa with it still aboard, but the odds are damn slim.”
Ashworth’s face drained of blood. “What does that mean?”
“It means that, if you agree, we ought to do a radar run. . . . I’ll guarantee we come within five hundred feet of the target.”
Ashworth remained silent for a long time. Dropping the bomb by radar was strictly against orders. “Let me think it over, Chuck.”
Ashworth walked back and forth in the crowded crew area behind the pilots, clasping and unclasping his hands. Who had the authority to make this decision was not clear. He could be overruled by Sweeney. But he was the weaponeer in charge of the bomb and had to make a decision, even if the decision was wrong. Below them, the forested mountains and settled lowlands of Kyushu slipped away to the north, bringing them ever closer to Nagasaki.
Finally Ashworth walked back to Sweeney. “We’ll have to risk getting the bomb back to Okinawa,” he said. “Our orders were that we weren’t to make a radar drop. I’ll have to carry out orders.”
“Roger,” said Sweeney. But Sweeney was deeply angry. He probably couldn’t get the bomb back to Okinawa. More likely he would have to drop it in the ocean to have enough fuel to get to safety. But the wrath he would face from everyone on Tinian if he did that was unbearable.
The plane was five minutes from Nagasaki. In the crew area, Ashworth continued to agonize about what to do. If Nagasaki was cloudy, they were not supposed to drop the bomb there either. But what if they couldn’t get the bomb back to Okinawa and it was lost, with no backup to replace it? What was more important—the orders he had received, or carrying out the mission?
He walked back to the front of the plane. “I’ve changed my mind, Chuck. We’ll let it go over Nagasaki, visually, radar, or what have you.”
“I could kiss you,” Sweeney said.
They were two minutes away. Beahan began to line up the run on his bombsight. But as they approached Nagasaki from the southeast, they all could see that the weather, as at Kokura, had deteriorated. The central city, where they were supposed to drop the bomb, was obscured by clouds. Radar operator Jim Van Pelt had his face close to the five-inch radar screen. He was using it to locate the aiming point, in the middle of downtown Nagasaki, near the commercial district, surrounded by houses, with a row of elegant temples on the eastern edge of the city. He called out directions to Sweeney and Beahan so they would know when to drop the bomb.
Suddenly, from the front of the airplane, Beahan called out, “I’ve got it! There’s a hole in the clouds. I can see the target.”
Though downtown Nagasaki was covered with clouds, Beahan, in the very tip of the B-29’s nosecone, could see that the valley northeast of downtown, where the Urakami River flowed, was partly clear. It wasn’t the aiming point. But they were flying straight toward it, and Beahan knew from his previous study of potential targets that the valley was heavily populated and contained several Mitsubishi arms plants.
“You own it,” said Sweeney.
The atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki exploded above the Urakami Valley, a section of the city northwest of the downtown commercial center. The Bockscar approached the city from the southeast. The distance from the original aiming point to the hypocenter—the point on the ground beneath where the bomb exploded—is about two miles. Map courtesy of Matt Stevenson; drawing courtesy of Sarah Olson.
Beahan called out the headings for Sweeney as he adjusted his Norden bombsight.
“Never again,” Beahan muttered as he released the bomb. “Never, never again.”
PART 3
UNDER THE MUSHROOM CLOUD
“This was the day of the apocalypse which Nagasaki will remember forever.”
—Raisuke Shirabe
Chapter 16
NAGASAKI MEDICAL COLLEGE HOSPITAL
AT EXACTLY ELEVEN O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING ON AUGUST 9, 1945, Raisuke Shirabe was writing a research report in his office on the second floor of the surgery building at Nagasaki Medical College Hospital. He heard an airplane approaching. The air raid sirens had gone off at seven that morning, but the warning had expired at nine, and no further alarms had sounded. But this airplane was coming closer. It was obviously headed toward the Urakami Valley, not toward some other city in Japan. Shirabe rose from his desk and crossed the room to the door of his office. He hung his white lab coat on a hook and put on a dark suit jacket.
Just as he reached for the doorknob, the room filled with an unbelievably bright, bluish-white light. He immediately crouched near a sink next to the door. At that moment, the entire building shuddered. Parts of the wooden ceiling collapsed onto Shirabe’s back, and a ferocious wind howled through the open windows. Everything in the room began to fall and swirl around him, as if he were in the middle of an immense windstorm. His eyes were tightly shut, but he could hear the roaring of the wind and feel objects falling on his back and head.
After a few moments he stood up and looked around. His office was completely dark. He heard a sound like that of heavy raindrops falling, which he thought might be dirt that had been lifted into the sky by the explosion. “I cannot describe my thoughts during this period,” he later wrote. “It was like I had been left alone in the middle of hell.”
Raisuke Shirabe, a surgeon at Nagasaki Medical College Hospital. Courtesy of Nagasaki Association for Hibakushas’ Medical Care.
Slowly the room began to lighten. Everything in his office—the bookcases, desk, bed, screen—had been knocked over. The contents of the room were scattered everywhere and covered with parts of
the ceiling. Shirabe went to his desk. The paper he had been writing, his watch, his briefcase—all were gone, and he knew he would never be able to find them. Picking his way through the debris, he entered the hallway and walked down the nearby stairs. At the entrance to the building, he came across a woman whose appendix he had removed a couple of days earlier. She was standing with the support of a man but seemed otherwise unharmed. He briefly examined the woman and told her, “You’re all right, don’t worry.”
The two dozen or so heavy concrete buildings that made up Nagasaki Medical College Hospital were on the lower parts of the slope leading toward Mount Kompira, on the eastern side of the Urakami Valley. It was the oldest Western-style medical college in Japan, founded in 1857 by the Dutch physician Johannes L. C. Pompe van Meerdervoort, and had produced generations of doctors and nurses who had practiced throughout Japan. Even in the summer of 1945 it was thronged with students, though most would be drafted as soon as they graduated and sent to the war.
Shirabe walked quickly toward a bomb shelter in the hill behind the hospital, fearing that another bomb might drop at any moment. He began to come across bodies lying on the ground. He looked back at the hospital buildings. All the windowpanes had been blown out, and bodies were hanging from several of the open windows. How could a bomb have done all this?
Air raid shelters in Japan typically consisted of two caves dug into a hillside with a tunnel between them to accommodate more evacuees. The shelter behind Nagasaki Medical College Hospital was already filled with people. Inside, Shirabe met a nurse from his department who had a severe wound on her forearm. He took out his handkerchief and tied it around her elbow to stop the bleeding.
He decided that he needed to help others escape from the hospital, so he left the shelter and made his way toward the main building. But so many people were streaming out the door that he could not make his way inside. Many were headed up the hill to the east of the hospital, trying to get away from the destruction. He noticed, for the first time, that he seemed to have no injuries, unlike most of the people emerging from the building.