Killing the Rising Sun

by Bill O'Reilly

  Tibbets was personally selected by General Leslie Groves to lead the elite detachment of pilots who will drop atomic weapons on Japan. He has been practicing the bombing for weeks, flying out over the Pacific with a dummy version of Little Boy and dropping it in the ocean. Now Tibbets is waiting on the weather. The skies have to be clear enough over Hiroshima for him to visually see his target and deploy the bomb.

  The final word will come from General Curtis LeMay, who will then inform Washington that he has given the order for Tibbets to take off. “Firm decision is expected from LeMay at 4 August 0400,” reads a top-secret classified telegram to the War Department.

  Colonel Tibbets knows it is almost time. “The actual and forecast weather were almost identical,” he will later remember.

  “So we got busy.”

  * * *

  In Tokyo, Emperor Hirohito is not concerned. The words “prompt and utter destruction” delivered by President Harry Truman have not resonated with the emperor. Like his prime minister, Kantaro Suzuki, he believes those words to be recycled rhetoric from previous meetings among Allied leaders. So he ignores Truman’s ultimatum, still believing that the Soviet Union will help broker a peace to his liking with the West—completely oblivious to the fact that Russian leader Joseph Stalin is just five days away from invading Japanese-held Manchuria.

  At a point when Hirohito’s nation desperately needs him to show wisdom and discretion, the emperor is behaving like a deluded fool.

  Meanwhile, a joint session of Hirohito’s cabinet and the Supreme Council for the Direction of the War is in session. Their topic of debate is whether or not any surrender is permissible. They have argued the matter for more than a week, with no conclusion in sight.

  Like their divine emperor, this assemblage of politicians and military leaders believes that President Harry Truman will not follow through on his demand of unconditional surrender. Time, they believe, is on their side. In a statement to the world’s media on July 28, the Japanese formally reject any notion that they will accede to Truman’s demands. Later that day, Japanese prime minister Kantaro Suzuki holds a press conference to reiterate those sentiments, stating that “the only alternative for us is to be determined to continue our fight to the end.”

  Joining their emperor in delusion, the Japanese leadership believes they still control their destiny.

  As Navy Minister Mitsumasa Yonai states about Truman’s promise of total annihilation: “America is beginning to be isolated. The government therefore will ignore it.

  “There is no need to rush.”

  18

  NORTH FIELD

  TINIAN, MARIANA ISLANDS

  AUGUST 4, 1945

  1500 HOURS

  Colonel Paul Warfield Tibbets Jr. is always on time.

  Cradling a Kaywoodie briar pipe in his left hand, the commander of America’s nuclear strike force strides past a cordon of armed guards, hurrying into the Quonset hut that will serve as today’s briefing room. Tibbets is obsessively punctual, and today is no exception. The meeting is due to start at precisely 3:00 p.m. As he pushes into the crowded room, he is not a second late.

  At thirty years of age, Tibbets—raised in Illinois, Iowa, and Florida—is short, compact, and very young for the advanced rank of full colonel. His hair is cut short, per military regulations, but everything else about his appearance suggests a man with a strong streak of individuality: that thick, dark hair is uncombed; a tuft of chest hair fluffs out of the unbuttoned collar of his wrinkled khaki uniform shirt; and, somewhat incongruously for such a vital mission, Tibbets wears shorts on this hot Saturday afternoon, making the moment appear almost casual.

  Colonel Paul Tibbets and Captain Deak Parsons briefing B-29 crews in advance of the Hiroshima bombing

  Tibbets surveils a packed room as he takes his place on the briefing platform. A photographer captures the moment on film. Each B-29 requires a crew of eleven men.1 Seven aircraft are now being readied for flight. The crews, all in lightweight khaki uniforms, sit on hard wooden chairs. Tibbets handpicked these men. All are in their twenties and thirties. They are the best of the best, soon to fly a world-changing mission over what they refer to as “the Empire.”

  Tibbets does not mince words. “The moment has arrived. This is what we have all been working toward. Very recently the weapon we are about to deliver was successfully tested in the States. We have received orders to drop it on the enemy.”

  Behind Tibbets are two blackboards covered by thick cloth. Two intelligence officers step forward and remove the drapes, revealing maps of Hiroshima, Kokura, and Nagasaki. Tibbets states that these are the intended targets.2 He then breaks down each crew’s responsibilities: Captain Charles McKnight, in the B-29 named Top Secret, will fly to Iwo Jima and remain there as a backup in case of emergency; Major Ralph Taylor Jr.’s Full House, Captain Claude Eatherly’s Straight Flush, and Major John Wilson’s Jabit III will fly over Japan the day prior to the bombing to check the weather; Necessary Evil, piloted by Captain George Marquardt, will photograph the explosion; and Major Charles Sweeney’s The Great Artiste will measure the blast by dropping scientific instruments that will float to the ground by parachute and then radio details back to Guam and Tinian.

  Tibbets will pilot the lead plane containing the A-bomb. As of now, the aircraft has no nickname.

  Since the “509th Composite Group” was activated in December 1944, these crews have trained in utter secrecy. They are not popular here in Tinian, where other bomber squadrons mock their many privileges and top secret compound. But they ignore the taunts, knowing that they have been training for a high-level mission that could end the war. Tibbets was given fifteen B-29s, and a top secret training location in the Utah desert. Once the crews Tibbets handpicked flew to Tinian a month ago, they began simulating a most unique sort of bombing mission: instead of dozens of bombs, they practiced dropping just one rotund “pumpkin bomb.” At five tons, twelve feet in length, and five feet in diameter, the pumpkin bomb approximated the size of the atomic bomb known as Fat Man. This allowed pilots to get a feel for how the actual bomb will fall as it is deployed from their forward bomb bay.

  Little Boy is a different shape from Fat Man, measuring ten feet long and just a bit more than two feet in diameter. The men of the 509th successfully drop-tested a nonatomic replica of Little Boy on July 23.

  Tibbets calls forty-three-year-old navy officer William S. “Deak” Parsons to the platform. An ordnance expert by training, Captain Parsons has served in a most unique capacity during the war, spending much of his time at Los Alamos, where he worked not only with Robert Oppenheimer on the design and development of Little Boy but also with General Groves on the Target Committee. He even observed the Trinity explosion less than a month ago.

  Since then, Parsons has been Little Boy’s constant companion, overseeing its delivery to Tinian. It was Parsons who personally met with Captain Charles McVay of the USS Indianapolis in San Francisco to convey the order that his ship “will sail at high speed to Tinian” with the bomb components.

  Throughout his two years in Los Alamos, Captain Parsons’s primary motivation for designing the bomb has been to end the war. This ambition became personal shortly after the Indianapolis set sail from San Francisco, when Parsons made a rapid detour to see his young half brother in a San Diego naval hospital.

  Bob Parsons was among the twenty thousand American casualties during the fierce fighting on Iwo Jima. Once handsome, the Marine Corps private’s face is now permanently disfigured: the right side caved in, his jaw gone, a pink prosthesis in the orb where his right eye once rested.

  Deak Parsons knows he can do little to help his younger brother but believes dropping the A-bomb will prevent the same thing from happening to other young American men.

  At the podium, Captain Parsons looks at the faces of the aviators gathered in this stuffy Quonset hut and tells them all about the weapon that will win the war.

  “The bomb you are about to drop is something new in th
e history of warfare,” Parsons begins. “It is the most destructive weapon ever produced.”

  Parsons then tells the men about the Trinity blast, an explosion “ten times more brilliant than the sun.” Following orders to keep the source of the detonation a secret, he does not use the words “atomic” or “nuclear.”3 Instead, he draws a picture of the enormous mushroom cloud in chalk on a blackboard, describing how the cloud vacuumed sand up off the desert floor and carried it thousands of feet into the air.

  “We think it will knock out everything within a three-mile area,” Parsons tells the men, adding that Little Boy might be even more powerful than the Trinity explosion: “No one knows what will happen when the bomb is dropped from the air.”

  The B-29 crewmen are stunned. Such a weapon is beyond their comprehension.

  Tibbets once again takes his place on the briefing platform.

  “Whatever any of us, including myself, has done until now is small potatoes compared to what we are going to do,” he tells his men. “I’m proud to be associated with you. Your morale has been high, even though it was difficult not knowing what you were doing, thinking that maybe you were wasting your time, and that the ‘gimmick’ was just somebody’s wild dream.

  “I am personally honored—and I’m sure all of you are, too—to take part in this raid which will shorten the war by at least six months.”

  Tibbets gazes out over the room one last time.

  “Depending on the weather, this mission will go off on August sixth.”4

  19

  HIROSHIMA, JAPAN

  AUGUST 5, 1945

  11:00 P.M.

  It is bedtime on this Sunday night. Throughout Hiroshima, citizens rest up for the coming workweek. In the city’s Ujina district, thirty-two-year-old firefighter Yosaku Mikami is well past the halfway point of his twenty-four-hour shift. If all goes well, he will sleep through the night before getting off work at 8:00 a.m. Then Mikami will ride by streetcar to his house on the edge of town, in the Sakaemachi district, heading in the opposite direction of commuters traveling to their places of work in the city.

  Most mornings, Mikami returns home to the smell of breakfast being cooked over burning coals in a hibachi. His wife greets him warmly as his two young children prepare for school.

  But the morning of August 6, 1945, will be different.

  Many in Hiroshima use the word bukimi—strange or otherworldly—to describe the uneasy awareness in recent days that the Americans have not leveled their city. Some predict with grisly humor that it is only a matter of time before their luck runs out. As a firefighter, Mikami approves of the firebreaks being cleared throughout Hiroshima—wide-open areas in the middle of the city where wooden homes and buildings have been knocked down and the rubble removed to prevent fire racing from house to house, as it did during the Tokyo firebombings of March 1944.

  Mikami is saddened and relieved at the same time by precautions that civil authorities are taking to spare women and young children. Thousands are being evacuated to the countryside; among them are Mikami’s wife and children, who departed just this morning. Their final destination is uncertain right now. If relatives will not take them in, they will be forced to sleep in temples or public halls along with the thousands of other Japanese citizens being sent away for their own safety.

  Tomorrow morning will be lonely for Yosaku Mikami, for he will walk into his empty home and begin to think about this missing family.

  * * *

  Air-raid sirens suddenly awake sixteen-year-old Akira Onogi inside his family’s home, adjacent to a small warehouse. The sound has become a regular part of many nights, often the result of American bombers flying overhead en route to other targets. Thus, Akira feels no rush to go to an air-raid shelter. Japan’s 1937 Air Defense Law was created for a night like this, but the long war and the reluctance of America to bomb Hiroshima have desensitized its residents. A second siren signaling a false alarm means that all is clear; on the other hand, the unmistakable thunder of an approaching B-29 bomb squadron means young and old alike must immediately get to an air-raid shelter. Despite the risk, Akira and the other four members of his family prefer to remain comfortably in bed.

  Tonight, 588 B-29s are attacking five target cities throughout Japan, though Hiroshima will not be one of them. Not a single plane will be shot down. The Americans, it seems, can bomb wherever they want, whenever they want, and whatever they want.

  Soon enough comes the all clear. Akira rolls over and goes back to sleep. Though in his second year of junior high school and an avid student, Akira is no longer allowed to attend classes. Instead, like his fellow students, he has been mobilized to aid the war effort by laboring in the factories. He is due to rise early for work at the Mitsubishi shipbuilding plant. It is his patriotic obligation but not a job that he enjoys.

  The August night is pitch-black but warm. The only sound Akira hears is that of light snoring from his parents. But the boy is not worried that his rest is being disturbed, for he has made other plans for the morning of Monday, August 6. In a minor act of protest, he plans to stay home from work and read a book.

  Little does Akira know that he will soon play a role in a real-life story beyond anything the written word can accurately describe.

  * * *

  Akiko Takakura needs to be up early on Monday. Someday she hopes to be a preschool teacher, but for now the twenty-year-old is a bank employee. In the morning she will eat her breakfast of breakfast corn, soybean draff, and rice before taking the streetcar to the Hatchobori Station and then walking to her job at the Geibi Bank. It will be the height of rush hour, the streets teeming with commuters. But it will also be a lovely stroll, enhanced by views of the Ota River, the parade ground where Japanese soldiers perform their morning calisthenics, and Hiroshima Castle, a revered local landmark dating back to the sixteenth century. If all goes well, Akiko will climb the nine stone steps to the double doors leading into the three-story Geibi Bank building by 8:15 a.m.

  The bank is built of stone and features protective armored shutters on the first and second floors to deter robbers. Female employees must arrive at work thirty minutes before the men in order to clean the office space, so once inside, Akiko will stamp the bank’s attendance log and then step behind the teller windows to begin the dusting of desks and other minor organizational tasks that form the start of her workday routine.

  She is a model employee. Her superiors appreciate that she likes to arrive early for work.

  It is a trait that will soon save her life.

  * * *

  After the Trinity A-bomb test took place in the New Mexico desert three weeks ago, British physicist William Penney of the Manhattan Project measured the blast and reported that another such explosion “would reduce a city of three or four hundred thousand people to nothing but a sink for disaster relief, bandages and hospitals.”

  The force of the test explosion was equivalent to ten thousand tons of dynamite. A brilliant fireball was followed by a purple cloud glowing with radioactivity that soared into the stratosphere. Everything within the blast zone was vaporized.

  If a man had been standing within that zone, he would have died in a fraction of a second, but not before his bone marrow boiled and his flesh literally exploded from his skeleton. In the next millisecond, nothing of that person would remain except compressed gas, which would be instantly sucked up into that great purple cloud racing high into the sky.

  The Trinity A-bomb test killed no one. But now a new chapter of warfare is about to begin.

  20

  NORTH FIELD

  TINIAN, MARIANA ISLANDS

  AUGUST 6, 1945

  0130 HOURS

  The bringer of death sits in the front seat of a six-by-six army truck. Approaching the B-29 he personally selected for this mission, Colonel Paul Tibbets wears a one-piece tan flight suit and a billed cap. In preparation for the coming twelve-hour mission, he carries cigars, cigarettes, loose tobacco, and a pipe. Should his plane be shot d
own, Tibbets also has a handgun. And, if capture becomes a possibility, he also carries twelve cyanide pills, one for each member of his crew. Better to end their lives than be tortured into giving away A-bomb secrets.

  Tibbets knew there would be commotion about tonight’s mission. But he never expected the sight before him: floodlights turn the black tropical night into day. Flashbulbs pop as Tibbets and his crew arrive at the flight line. Scientists and technicians flit around the bomber, fussing over last-minute details. Inside the forward bomb bay, safely concealed from view, is the bulbous, 8,900-pound shape of Little Boy, soon to be dropped from a height of five miles onto Hiroshima. The target point is the concrete-and-steel Aioi Bridge, whose T shape is easily visible from the air.

  Just hours ago, the B-29 with the number 82 painted on the rear of the fuselage finally got a nickname. Tibbets wrote the words on a scrap of paper and handed it to a sign painter in midafternoon. In the past, he has favored aggressive names such as Butcher Shop and Red Gremlin for his aircraft. But the plane he will fly tonight will hold a special place in history, so he indulges in a rare display of sentiment.

  By 4:00 p.m. the aircraft was formally christened Enola Gay, in honor of Tibbets’s fifty-four-year-old mother. Years ago, when the colonel angered his father by quitting his job as a physician’s assistant at a venereal disease clinic to pursue a flying career, it was Enola Gay who calmed the waters. “If you want to go kill yourself,” his father had said angrily, “I don’t give a damn.”

  Colonel Paul Tibbets just moments before taking off to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima