Enola Gay

by Gordon Thomas

  Scanning the horizon to the north, Imai could see the coast of Saipan, less than four miles away. As usual, the intervening sea was busy with American ships of all sizes and kinds. Some were making their way to the American naval anchorage at Tinian Town, three miles southwest of where Imai lay.

  Inland from Tinian Town, originally only a cluster of shacks but now a busy military port, the Americans had completed the work the Japanese had begun: clearing away jungle to make runways, aprons, taxiways. Paved roads led to fuel and bomb dumps, workshops, and warehouses. There was a growing number of hospitals. Imai concluded that the Americans must be expecting a large number of casualties in some impending battle. His belief in the imminence of a Japanese assault on the Marianas grew. In fact, the hospitals were being readied to receive the casualties expected from the invasion of Kyushu.

  Surveying the countryside, Imai’s attention was attracted by something unusual. Below and about half a mile to the northwest, gangs of soldiers were completing the fencing in of a compound.

  Rectangular in shape, half a mile long by a quarter-mile wide, the compound was tucked away in a low-lying area near the coast.

  The new fence around the compound was high and forbidding. Behind the wire were different-sized Quonset huts connected by paths and roads. Until this morning the huts had been occupied by army construction gangs whom Imai had previously watched completing work on the giant airfield beyond the compound. Now they were vacating these quarters.

  In the center of the compound, a smaller, closed-off area had been erected; thick coils of barbed wire surrounded a group of windowless huts. Armed guards stood at the only gate to this area. There were also several guards at the main entrance to the compound.

  Imai felt uneasy. The compound looked like a prison camp; perhaps the inner area was a punishment block. In Imai’s mind, this could mean only one thing: the Americans were planning a new drive to round up the remaining Japanese on the island.

  Imai touched his weapons: a long ceremonial sword and a pistol. He didn’t know if damp had made the bullets useless, but he was sure the sword blade, made by the same secret process that had fashioned the swords of the ancient samurai, was as sharp as the day he had received it, shortly before he had arrived on Tinian, in March 1944.

  Peering down on the strange new compound, Imai was determined about one thing: he would rather die than surrender and end up imprisoned there. He was fascinated by the activity around the main entrance to the compound; a continuous procession of trucks was now driving up to the gates. There, the guards stopped and checked every vehicle.

  As one of the trucks pulled up, two men got out and removed a large board from the back.

  Imai focused his binoculars on the scene. Two white-helmeted MPs, carbines cradled in their arms, came into sharp focus. They looked tanned, healthy, and bored. He moved his glasses slightly to bring the board into view. Imai could read and speak a little English. Although he could not make out all the lettering, he was able to distinguish the numbers and some of the words. They were:

  RESTRICTED. 509TH COMPOSITE GROUP

  ALL PASSES TO BE SHOWN

  AT ALL TIMES

  A feeling of relief filled Imai. It was not, after all, a prison camp. But the compound was clearly different from all the others he had observed; it seemed to Imai that this one “must be very important.”

  Then another and more pressing thought filled the warrant officer’s mind. So intent had he been on watching all the activity that he had completely neglected to note where the American garbage trucks had emptied their loads. Now he and the men waiting back in his cave would have to forage in the darkness among the trash cans—a risky business in view of the patrols that guarded each compound.

  Nevertheless, Imai’s time on Mount Lasso had been worthwhile. Careful not to leave any trail, he hurried back to the cave.

  Inside, it was filthy, the ground littered with old food tins and other bits of flotsam scavenged during night forays throughout the island. Stacked in a corner were rifles and a few cases of ammunition. Beside them was a radio transmitter-receiver.

  The last message it had received was on the night Tinian fell, when the supreme commander of the Imperial Japanese Army in Tokyo had sent word that help would be coming. Since then, there had been silence. Imai wished somebody knew how to fix the transmitter so that he could send a message to headquarters in Tokyo about the strange new compound on the island.

  Maybe they could even arrange to have it bombed.

  2

  Tibbets continued to inspect the compound to ensure it would be a suitable final home for the 509th. He had flown from Wendover to do so. He would have been there sooner, but had delayed his departure from the United States so that his senior navigator, van Kirk, who had come with him, could have news before leaving of the birth of his new baby son. It was a gesture in keeping with Tibbets’s aim to treat his men with consideration at all times—until they tried to take advantage. Then he could treat them, in his own words, “rougher than any MP master sergeant in a military prison.”

  Tibbets took his time over the inspection: he wanted the 509th to have “the best going,” and not even Groves’s personal representative on the island, Colonel E. E. Kirkpatrick, who was accompanying him on the inspection, was going to hurry Tibbets into a decision.

  Impassive as usual, restricting his words to a few questions, Tibbets led Kirkpatrick and the commanders of the 509th’s squadrons from one hut to another. Kirkpatrick had hoped Tibbets would not be “too finicky about housing.” The rule on crowded Tinian was twelve officers or twenty enlisted men in a Quonset hut twenty-nine feet wide by fifty feet long. As group commander, Tibbets would share his accommodation with three or four senior staff officers.

  Tibbets responded typically. “Before you settle my living space, I want to make sure the men are comfortable. This will be the fourth move they’ve had to make since arriving out here. I want it to be the last.”

  Kirkpatrick thought Tibbets a “bit cocky”—a view he would express to Groves in a secret memo—“inclined to rub his special situation in a bit, but smart enough to know how far he can go. He plays his cards well.”

  Tibbets thought it essential to establish the ground rules on how the 509th were to live and work. During his one previous visit to the Marianas, he had made it clear what those rules were. He wasn’t, he would later insist, “looking for special treatment,” but simply seeking to ensure that the group was properly settled within the framework of an existing and complicated air force operation.

  On this second visit, he detected opposition—muted but discernible—behind the “glad-handing.”

  Some of it came from the Seabees, who were being moved from the most comfortable quarters on the island to make room for the 509th. Tibbets sympathized with them. They were all Pacific veterans, many of whom would be called upon to shed more sweat and blood in the invasion of Japan.

  Tibbets knew that the invasion would be costly. The long and bitter campaign to secure Okinawa had just ended. It had taken over 500,000 troops three months to subdue the Japanese garrison of 110,000, who had fought fanatically and died almost to a man. If the American casualty figures for Okinawa were any guide—49,151 dead plus 34 warships sunk and 368 badly damaged—the resistance to be expected on the main islands would be formidable.

  The latest American intelligence reports indicated that some of the two million battle-hardened troops in China were being brought home to help defend the homeland. Already in Japan were another two million soldiers, untried in battle but eager to fight. The vast mass of the imperial forces had not been beaten.

  Tibbets had expressed to LeMay the hope that the atomic bomb would make them “see sense,” and avert unnecessary bloodshed. LeMay concurred. The meeting between the two men at LeMay’s Guam headquarters on June 27 had been cordial enough, though LeMay still had reservations about being able to pinpoint a target from thirty thousand feet. He told Tibbets the 509th fliers should get s
ome experience, suggesting that, initially, they could drop their practice bombs on the nearby island of Rota, which was still in Japanese hands.

  As their meeting was ending, LeMay made an unexpected remark. “Paul, I want you to understand one thing. No flying for you over the empire.”

  Tibbets was stunned.

  Puffing steadily on his ever-present cigar, an action which made him look like a younger, not quite so bulldoggish Churchill, LeMay explained his reasons. “We don’t want to risk losing you. I understand you know more about this bomb than any flier in the air force. You’re too valuable. You’d better stay on the ground.”

  Tibbets said nothing. LeMay’s order made sense: if he fell into Japanese hands, the entire project would be jeopardized. But Tibbets was determined on one thing: he would fly the first atomic strike, “come Hell or high water.”

  On Tinian, having completed his inspection of the new compound’s living quarters, kitchens, and mess halls, Tibbets examined the “inner sanctum,” the Tech Area workshops. There, if all went well, the bomb would be finally assembled. Two of the workshops would be ready in a few days; the other pair would not be complete until August 1.

  Tibbets thought schedules were “running tight”; he wished he could remain on Tinian to see things through. But his presence was required as an observer during the critical test-firing of the plutonium bomb at Alamogordo.

  His tour of the compound complete, Tibbets expressed himself satisfied. The 509th would move into its new quarters on July 8.

  For the moment, there was no more he could do on Tinian. Having briefed the group’s senior officers on daily routine matters, Tibbets began the long, weary plane journey back across the Pacific.

  3

  Squatting around an upturned crate, Beser and the other players tried to concentrate on their game. Even now, in the sudden tropical darkness, the cloying, enervating heat was stifling. The only garment each man wore, shorts—khaki trousers cut off about six inches below the crotch—was soaked with sweat.

  As the evening wore on, the men around the makeshift card table had to raise their voices to make their bids heard. Not far away, a stream of B-29s were taking off on another firebomb raid.

  Tonight, as usual, the officers in the hut counted the number of aircraft, keeping score by the distinctive sound of engines being boosted to maximum power prior to takeoff. So far, the tally was 249 bombers airborne.

  Silence returned to the island. But Beser offered a side bet that another bomber would take off within the next half hour, to make a round total of 250. Nickels and quarters were tossed onto the crate.

  Soon afterward, the unmistakable roar of four 2,200-horsepower Wright Cyclone engines starting up shattered the silence, and Beser collected his winnings.

  Tired now of their game, he and the others listened to the bomber going through its preflight engine tests. Navigator Russell Gackenbach—the young lieutenant who had survived the security snares on that first day at Wendover—went out of the Quonset hut to watch the takeoff.

  It was a pitch-black Tinian night, moonless, with a hot breeze blowing in off the sea.

  Gackenbach sensed, rather than saw, the B-29. His ears followed the bomber as it left the apron and taxied to the runway. He glimpsed short stabs of flame from the engine exhausts. The engines were boosted to full power, the stabs grew brighter, then disappeared as the bomber roared down the runway.

  Gackenbach cocked his head: one of the engines was out of pitch. He shouted into the Quonset hut. The others had also heard the sound. They joined Gackenbach. The group listened as the aircraft continued to roar down the runway.

  “He’s airborne!”

  Gackenbach’s shout of relief was followed by Beser’s warning. “He’s not going to make it!”

  The words were followed by a bright, orange-red flash, low in the sky over the runway, enveloping the bomber.

  A split second later, the roar of high-octane fuel exploding over incendiary bombs reached the horrified watchers. The flash spilled across the night sky, briefly lighting up an area of several hundred square yards.

  The flames and noise faded as the wail of crash trucks took over.

  The 509th officers turned and went back into the hut. They all knew that the most the crash trucks could do was sweep up a few charred remains.

  Lewis switched on the intercom and told the crew to prepare for landing. Until now, it had been an eventless journey. Some fifteen miles ahead, Tinian appeared as an indistinct mass, hidden by a morning sun haze.

  At his station, a small, windowless cubbyhole just forward of the front bomb bay, radioman Dick Nelson tuned the radio compass to Tinian’s signal. Three days in the air, interspersed with brief stopovers where the food and accommodations were poor, had dampened Nelson’s enthusiasm. He felt tired, in need of a bath, and, though he would never admit it to any of the men around him, a little apprehensive about the future.

  Tinian Island, 1945

  He checked the IFF; the device continued to give out the silent signal which identified the B-29 as an American military aircraft.

  The flat voice of a ground controller on Tinian gave Lewis the wind’s speed and direction at North Field.

  Now Lewis gave the crew an enthusiastic view of the island. “It’s wonderful! The jungle looks just like in the movies! Those beaches are made for Esther Williams! And the water’s the bluest I’ve ever seen! We’re gonna have a great time!”

  After some six thousand miles and three days of flying, Lewis called out the landing orders.

  When the wheels had been lowered, Stiborik and assistant engineer Shumard, in the waist blister turrets, confirmed the landing gear was locked in position.

  “Flap check. Five degrees.”

  Again, Stiborik and Shumard reported when the flaps were down.

  “Flap check. Twenty-five degrees.”

  The men in the blister turrets confirmed the change.

  Moments later, Lewis touched down on North Field and taxied to the 509th’s special dispersal area.

  Caron’s immediate—and abiding—impression when he crawled out of the tail turret was that “we had landed on the world’s biggest latrine.”

  The bomber had parked downwind of one of the giant cesspools dug by the Seabees.

  Lewis guessed he would soon get used to the stench. If that was the only drawback to Tinian, it really was Paradise, with its Quonset huts beneath palm fronds, and paths made of crushed coral kept tidy by smiling natives.

  To further a feeling of home-away-from-home, and because Tinian was roughly the same shape as Manhattan, the principal roads had been named and signposted as New York streets.

  Broadway was the longest thoroughfare, running from North Field past the foot of Mount Lasso down toward Tinian Town; a splendid highway, over six miles in length, lined with living and working quarters.

  Parallel to Broadway, on the western side of the island, was Eighth Avenue, running from the beachhead the marines had established when they invaded Tinian, down past the island’s second-largest landing strip, West Field, and eventually ending at Tinian Harbor.

  Hugging the west coast was Riverside Drive, a gently curving road off which were several small beaches and coves.

  Forty-second Street was at a busy crossroads in the southern section of Tinian, close to Wall Street, Grand Avenue, Park Row, and Canal Street, which led to Second Avenue, and another group of familiar-sounding roads, Fifty-ninth Street, Sixty-fourth Street, Seventy-second Street, and Eighty-sixth Street.

  The 509th were in temporary quarters just east of Broadway near Eighty-sixth Street. When Lewis and his crew reached their huts, they found them empty. Nine of the 509th’s crews were away on a practice mission, dropping high-explosive bombs on Rota.

  It seemed to Lewis that he had arrived on Tinian not a moment too soon.

  4

  After two weeks of study, the situation was becoming clear. While there were still some gaps, Major General Arisue had been able to make an a
uthoritative assessment of Japan’s internal political situation.

  It was desperate.

  The battles between the militarists and the moderates, so far confined to words, threatened to shake the imperial throne. What concerned Arisue was the prospect of bloodshed after the talking between the two sides finally stopped. In his heart he believed the most extreme elements would even kill the emperor if he opposed their stated intention to lead Japan to victory or to fight until not a single person was left alive in the country.

  Opposing these fanatical diehards were the moderates, led by the Marquis Koichi Kido, lord keeper of the privy seal, the man the emperor trusted above all others. It was Marquis Kido who had kept the peace when the two factions had confronted each other at the imperial conference of June 8. But he had been unable to keep the conference from deciding to continue the war to the bitter end. In the emperor’s presence, and without his saying a word, they had decided there must be no surrender.

  Then, four days later, a moderate, a naval admiral, his path to the throne cleared for him by Kido, had presented the emperor with clear confirmation of what Kido had already told him.

  The admiral’s report detailed serious shortages of raw materials. In the war industries, the workers—many of them schoolchildren—were beset by lack of experience; output was constantly falling short of expectations. Industrially, Japan was becoming moribund. Except for morale, the overall situation was dire.

  On June 18, Prime Minister Suzuki called a meeting of Japan’s Inner Cabinet. While Arisue had been unable to obtain precise details of the meeting—held the same day President Truman approved the invasion plans—he did establish that the war minister and the representatives of the army and navy had maintained their stated position: all forward planning must be linked to the demands an enemy D-Day would create.