While the internal debate continued, U.S. monitors listening to Japan Radio had picked up a report of a recent statement by Suzuki, the new prime minister of Japan. Although secretly charged by the emperor to bring an end to the war, Suzuki had delivered an astonishingly militant speech to the Diet, telling them that unconditional surrender was totally unacceptable. Japan must fight to the very end.
Suzuki made a passionate appeal to the people.
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.
Truman’s first public pronouncement on Japan since becoming president answered Suzuki.
The Japanese people have felt the weight of our land, air and naval attacks. So long as their leaders and the armed forces continue the war, the striking power and intensity of our blows will steadily increase, and will bring utter destruction to Japan’s industrial war production, to its shipping and to everything that supports its military activity.
The longer the war lasts, the greater will be the suffering and hardships which the people of Japan will undergo—all in vain. Our blows will not cease until the Japanese military and naval forces lay down their arms in unconditional surrender.
Just what does the unconditional surrender of the armed forces of Japan mean for the Japanese people? It means the end of the war. It means the termination of the influence of the military leaders who brought Japan to the present brink of disaster. It means provision for the return of soldiers and sailors to their families, their farms and their jobs. And it means not prolonging the present agony and suffering of the Japanese in the vain hope of victory.
Unconditional surrender does not mean the extermination or enslavement of the Japanese people.
It was a clear statement of the American government’s position: Surrender unconditionally, or face Armageddon. Shortwave broadcasts beamed it to Japan.
Truman’s warning was dismissed as propaganda. Japan Radio repeated the nation’s determination to fight on.
Truman could only reflect: They have been warned.
Shortly before dawn, Mayor Awaya and his family, along with many other households in the district, were awakened by the sound of trucks, loud knocking, and cries of fear.
The Kempei Tai, the dreaded military police, were continuing the roundup they had begun in early May of people suspected of voicing in private the opinion that the government should make peace. Almost four hundred prominent public figures had been arrested in Hiroshima in the past fortnight.
The Kempei Tai throughout Japan had begun arresting all suspected radicals following the broadcast of Truman’s speech on May 8.
Since then, the American broadcasts had been a constant reminder to those in Japan who dared risk their lives listening that the truth was other than as broadcast by Japan Radio.
Many of the American broadcasts were made by Captain Ellis Zacharias, U.S.N., speaking in fluent Japanese. His voice was becoming as familiar to some Japanese as was that of Tokyo Rose to American servicemen in the Pacific.
Few of his listeners suspected that Zacharias’s words were being carefully studied by government officials in Tokyo for a sign that the United States might, after all, change its mind about unconditional surrender. To the bulk of his listeners, Zacharias was simply an astonishingly well-informed foreigner with a rare understanding of how the Japanese thought and expressed themselves. He did not threaten or bluster; he simply presented the inescapable facts.
In Hiroshima, the Kempei Tai had carried out their customary predawn arrests. Operating from headquarters on the grounds of Hiroshima Castle, the eight-hundred-man-strong Kempei Tai unit had full powers over every civilian and soldier in the city. The interrogators were provided with an official manual, entitled Notes for the Interrogation of Prisoners of War, which contained specific instructions on how to apply a variety of tortures to the body and mind.
The Kempei Tai in Hiroshima were able to perfect their techniques on local civilians whom they had arrested. But what the interrogators hoped for were American prisoners. All units in the area had been alerted that if any enemy fliers were shot down, they must immediately be delivered to Kempei Tai headquarters at Hiroshima Castle.
36
The evening of May 8, Tibbets sipped a few soft drinks in the officers’ mess at Wendover and retired early. He had moved into the club after his wife and children had vacated their house just outside the base gates; all the 509th’s families had now departed in preparation for the group’s move to Tinian. Lucie Tibbets and the boys had gone home to her parents. Tibbets, caught up in an ever-increasing merry-go-round of flying between Wendover, Washington, and Albuquerque, felt it was “best” that his family were away. He was being driven hard; his mind was a whirl of conferences and high-level telephone conversations, often conducted in code, with Groves. He was having to cope with the strain of running a complex organization in which he was the only one who knew the precise details of the end product. Every problem ultimately ended up on his desk; every hour he had to make decisions, whether they involved flying-fitness reports, engine reports, bombing reports, security reports, or sickness reports. His life, he felt, was “just one damn report after another.”
Lucie wrote that she and the children had settled in “just fine” with her mother. Tibbets was pleased, but without his wife, life at Wendover was even emptier. The departure of the eight-hundred-man-strong main ground echelon for Tinian two weeks earlier had left the base seeming “like a ghost town.”
Tibbets was glad of an excuse to get away to Omaha to do what he called “a little shopping.”
On the south side of Omaha, covering hundreds of acres, the Martin bomber plant was carefully guarded. Flying over the plant, Tibbets glimpsed the guards at the main gate and the men patrolling the high fence that surrounded the area.
He landed and taxied his transport to the aircraft reception area, passing several B-29s being towed out of the assembly sheds. He was happy to see that here, at least, it was just another working day and that the airplane workers had not taken time off to recover from their victory-in-Europe celebrations.
At the reception area he presented his ID card to a waiting manager and was taken to a long, cavernous building. There, his credentials were checked again. Nobody without proper authority was admitted.
The code name Silverplate ensured that Tibbets was going to be able to do something few other fliers in the air force could: he was going to choose his own personal B-29, the one he intended to use on the first atomic mission.
The senior assembly-line foreman escorted Tibbets down the production line. Regularly, they paused to clamber up the scaffolding to look at a bomber. Once, Tibbets turned to the foreman and said the B-29 they were inspecting looked fine.
The foreman shook his head. “First shift.”
“First shift” signified a bomber whose assembly had been started by a shift that had just returned to work after its days off—by men who were still recovering from two days of drinking and partying or just plain relaxing. They were not quite at their best; they sometimes produced a bomber “where all the nuts and bolts haven’t always been double-checked.”
Tibbets moved on.
The foreman stopped at another B-29. Gangs of riveters and fitters swarmed over the fuselage. They gave Tibbets a brief, curious stare, then continued their work.
Tibbets and the foreman climbed up to the cockpit. It was already fitted with its leather seats. Tibbets sat down and looked out through the domed nose at the bustling factory floor.
The foreman’s shout was reassuring. “This is the one for you.”
The plane’s assembly had been started by men who were working at their peak, where “even the screws on the toilet seat were given an extra turn.” The foreman told Tibbets this was the best plane in the factory. His words sealed the transaction.
A d
elivery date was agreed upon. Tibbets told the foreman that he would send Lewis and his crew to pick up the plane.
37
There was one vacant chair at the long conference table on May 28. It was next to Tibbets’s chair. Senior naval and army officials and scientists from the Manhattan Project looked pointedly at the empty space. Tibbets stared back impassively. Inwardly, he was seething. Inexplicably, Beser had failed to show for this important Target Committee meeting.
The previous meeting, on May 12, had clarified many operational details: the proximity fuzes on the atomic bomb would probably be set to detonate about two thousand feet above the ground; if the weather over the target made it impossible to bomb visually, the weapon should be brought back, this operation inevitably involving some risks to the base and other aircraft; if for any reason it was found necessary to jettison the bomb, care must be taken that this was not done in water near American-held territory, since “water leaking into the gun-type bomb will set off a nuclear reaction.”
The May 12 meeting had also discussed specific targets. The emperor’s palace in Tokyo had been considered, but was not recommended. However, the committee members “agreed we should obtain information from which we could determine the effectiveness of our weapon against this target.”
Finally, the meeting had earmarked four cities for possible atomic attack. They were, in order of preference, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Yokohama, and Kokura. All four cities had been “reserved”: bombing of them by conventional weapons was henceforth prohibited. Now, at this third meeting of the Target Committee, these and other targets were to be further considered.
Promptly at 9:00 A.M., Groves took his place at the far end of the room. The meeting opened with an aide’s handing out target-description files. Each contained large-scale maps, reconnaissance photographs, and related data; as the meeting was also to review air-sea rescue procedures and navigational aids, maps of the Pacific and Japanese coastal waters were distributed.
Tibbets had wanted Beser present specifically to answer any questions about radar. He had allowed him to fly to Washington in advance so that the radar officer could visit his parents in Baltimore over the weekend. Beser had promised to meet Tibbets outside the conference room before the meeting began, but there was no sign of him.
Beser arrived after an MP had closed the doors to conference room 4E200 and posted himself outside them.
The WAC officer at the reception desk near the MP eyed Beser suspiciously. “Are you lost, Lieutenant?”
“Not if this is the Pentagon, ma’am.”
“This is a restricted area, Lieutenant.”
“I know. And I’m late!”
Beser turned toward the guarded door. The MP stiffened. The WAC raised her voice. “You can’t go in there!”
Beser turned. “Ma’am, if this is the Target Committee meeting, they’re expecting me!”
“You want me to believe a lieutenant is expected in there with all that top brass!”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Lieutenant, why don’t you go get some coffee and forget you ever walked in here.”
“Ma’am, you’re making a heck of a mistake—”
“Lieutenant, go!”
“Yes, ma’am!”
Beser left and waited outside the reception area. Thirty minutes later he was still there when he heard a whispered conversation going on behind him. He turned to see an angry major towering over the WAC. The door of the conference room was ajar. The major spotted Beser.
“Are you Beser?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Goddam, you should have been inside!”
“I know. Somebody should have told this lady that.”
“They’re waiting for you to answer a question! Get in there!”
Beser strolled as nonchalantly as he could into the conference room.
A navy captain was addressing the gathering. He stopped in midsentence and glared at Beser.
Tibbets motioned for Beser to sit beside him. Beser began to whisper an explanation to Tibbets. “First the train from Baltimore was late. Then I couldn’t get a cab at Union Station, and finally this WAC—”
The captain interrupted Beser’s soliloquy. “If the lieutenant is quite ready to answer the question?”
Beser looked around helplessly.
Tibbets saved him from further embarrassment by restating the question. “The matter is this. The navy wants to place a submarine three miles off the Japanese coast and put out a loran beam for us to navigate by on our approach to the target. In the event of trouble, the beam could also be used to guide us to the submarine for a possible sea rescue.” Loran was a sophisticated radar development that both the navy and air force had started using.
The captain spoke again to Beser. “The question is, Lieutenant, what are your views on this proposal?”
“It’s bullshit!”
The captain gaped. Tibbets groaned. The rest of the room remained deathly quiet. From the top of the table, Groves’s voice filled the void. “Why do you say that?”
“Sir, I don’t believe you can hold a submarine that steady. The tides are going to pull it off track. The boat’s going to be fighting the motion of the sea. The submarine must be on the surface for loran to work. And in no way can it remain surfaced three miles off the Japanese coast without coming under attack.”
Groves’s next words closed the matter. “Those seem good enough reasons. Let’s move to the next item on the agenda, the positioning of rescue aircraft. …”
Beser turned to Tibbets and whispered anxiously, “Was that all right?”
Tibbets mouthed a one-word reply. “Bull’s-eye!”
For two days, in the closest secrecy, some of the best civilian, scientific, and military brains in the United States had met to consider the future of the atomic bomb.
The Interim Committee, under the watchful eye of Secretary of War Stimson, was holding its fourth and, as it was turning out, its most crucial meeting in a month.
For this meeting, the committee’s distinguished scientific panel was also present. The members were Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, Ernest O. Lawrence, and Arthur Compton. Not only did this panel advise the committee, it also acted as a conduit for the ideas of other scientists.
The committee’s discussions had continued well into this first day of June. The committee listened intently as the Manhattan Project’s scientific director revealed details of both types of bomb, the uranium gun-type weapon and the plutonium bomb, which would undergo testing at Alamogordo in seven weeks’ time. Since each bomb was virtually handmade, supplies were strictly limited, and it had been decided not to test the uranium bomb, as “it is expected that it will work.”
The uranium bomb, like its sister, would achieve its principal effect by blast; that effect might be felt up to a mile or more away from the explosion.
In answer to another question, Oppenheimer stated the bomb would be ideal for use against a concentration of troops or war plants, and that it might kill “about 20,000 people.”
Shortly afterward, the meeting adjourned for lunch.
No notes were taken during the meal, and who said what would forever remain a matter of dispute. According to physicist Arthur Compton, he asked Stimson whether it might be possible to arrange a nonmilitary demonstration of the atomic bomb in such a manner that the Japanese would see the futility of continuing the war.
Both Lawrence and Oppenheimer were said to be skeptical of the suggestion. Oppenheimer was said to have doubted “whether any sufficiently startling demonstration could be devised that would convince the Japanese that they ought to throw in the sponge.”
After lunch, Stimson reportedly argued that “nothing would have been more damaging to our effort to obtain surrender than a warning or a demonstration followed by a dud—and this was a real possibility. Furthermore, we had no bombs to waste. It was vital that a sufficient effect be quickly obtained with the few we had.”
The ultimate responsibility rested w
ith Stimson for recommending to Truman whether and how the bomb should be used. Privately, he had already made up his mind. He felt that “to expect a genuine surrender from the Emperor and his military advisors, they must be administered a tremendous shock which would carry convincing proof of our power to destroy the Empire. Such an effective shock would save many times the number of lives, both American and Japanese, that it would cost.”
The Interim Committee came to the same conclusion. At the end of its deliberations, it offered three recommendations for the president about the first use of the atomic bomb.
It should be used as soon as possible;
It should be used on a military installation surrounded by houses or other buildings most susceptible to damage;
It should be used without explicit prior warning of the nature of the bomb.
While the president was being advised to act, some of the scientists who had helped make the awesome new weapon were still trying to limit its use. Some preferred that Japan be warned; others insisted that a public demonstration of the bomb’s might would be enough to cause Japan’s militarists to capitulate.
On June 12, seven scientists from the Chicago laboratory submitted a petition to the secretary of war urging a demonstration before observers from many countries in an uninhabited area. It was the Franck Report, destined to become the most famous document concerned with the use of the atomic bomb. It was submitted, through channels, to the Interim Committee’s Scientific Panel.
On June 16, the panel met in Oppenheimer’s office in Los Alamos to consider the report. They acknowledged it was a fair-minded and serious attempt to present all sides of a complex issue. But in the end, the panel reported “with heavy heart” to the Interim Committee that “we can propose no technical demonstration likely to bring an end to the war; we see no acceptable alternative to direct military use.”
The committee agreed with the conclusion of its Scientific Panel. In four momentous days, the Franck Report had been delivered, discussed, and discounted.
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