Enola Gay
Page 32
The April 1, 1957, issue of Newsweek picked up the story; its research staff had not checked the facts. The Eatherly myth went national and international. Several European writers seized on a new cause: Eatherly was being punished because he had proclaimed his guilt over Hiroshima. Quickly the Texan became a figurehead for “Ban the Bomb” groups. Eatherly loved the publicity. A hero at last, he found himself repeating the views attributed to him before he ever pronounced them.
In 1964, William Bradford Huie, a distinguished reporter, published a book, The Hiroshima Pilot, that documented the fabrication of the Eatherly myth in the greatest detail. But myths are not subject to clarification. People believe what they want to believe.
In 1974, a throat malignancy robbed Eatherly of his voice, but in 1976, at the age of fifty-seven, remarried, the father of two young daughters, he seemed to have found his idea of serenity. He lives on social security and a disability pension in a modest cottage near Houston, Texas, a graying man in a straw hat and cowboy boots. He likes to watch television, fish, and play pool.
The crew of the Enola Gay go their separate ways. Since 1945, they have continued to receive hate mail, which peaks every year on August 6. From time to time, the police are called in to investigate death threats. For the most part, the fliers have learned to live with the anonymous insults and recriminations.
Beser still regrets “that I didn’t get to drop the bomb on Berlin because of what the Germans did to the Jews.” He spends a good deal of his time organizing the 509th reunions, which are held every three years.
Lewis auctioned his log in 1971 for thirty-seven thousand dollars. The money helped him buy marble, from which he sculpts religious motifs. Thirty years after Hiroshima, in 1976, he still felt it was “my plane” and “my crew” that flew the mission.
Van Kirk returned to college and got a degree in chemical engineering, with honors. In 1950, he joined DuPont and has been with the firm ever since.
Nelson lives in California. Caron collects memorabilia of the atomic missions, but has so far failed to make any real money from selling color prints of the Enola Gay.
Duzenbury and Stiborik live quietly and have long since put the mission behind them. Shumard died in April 1967.
Parsons became a rear admiral. He died on December 5, 1953. His assistant over Hiroshima, Morris Jeppson, is now a scientific consultant.
Ferebee remained in the air force and, after a stint in Vietnam, retired. He divides his time between selling real estate, cultivating his one-acre flower and vegetable garden, and occasionally camping out. Although he found his visit with Tibbets to Nagasaki “horrible,” he also remembers the hundreds of kamikaze planes he saw hidden in camouflaged hangars. He looks back on his experience as the world’s first A-bombardier without regret, believing it “was a job that had to be done.”
After the war, Field Marshal Hata was tried as one of the twenty-five major Japanese war criminals. He was found guilty in 1948 and sentenced to imprisonment for life. He died in 1962.
Lieutenant Commander Hashimoto, too, found himself involved in a trial—the court-martial of the captain of the Indianapolis, Charles McVay. Hashimoto’s impending arrival in the United States was announced by the navy on December 8, 1945, the day after the fourth anniversary of Pearl Harbor. The barrel-chested submarine commander received a cool reception. He understood a little English and did not like what he heard. During the trial, he often felt his evidence was being incorrectly translated.
McVay was found guilty of negligence and was demoted; his sentence was later remitted. Hashimoto became a merchant ship’s captain, often calling at U.S. and British ports. Now retired, he is head priest at a Shinto shrine in Kyoto.
Lieutenant Colonel Oya was interrogated by the Americans about the way he had treated prisoners of war. He tried to conceal the fact that ten POWs were murdered after the war’s end at Fukuoka on Kyushu; he told his interrogators the prisoners had died in Hiroshima along with the others held there. When the questions became difficult, Oya simply pointed at his injured neck and said, “Ever since the bomb my memory has gone.” In 1976, Oya was alive and well, a frequent visitor to the United States.
After the war, the hero of Pearl Harbor, Mitsuo Fuchida, was converted from Buddhism to Christianity. He toured the United States as a “flying missionary” and was not always welcomed by his audiences. He wrote a booklet entitled No More Pearl Harbors, and was annoyed by the military medals and citations he continued to receive. Fuchida died on May 30, 1976.
Flying instructor Matsuo Yasuzawa, who had flown his bent plane from Hiroshima, was barred by the occupying forces from flying again until 1952. By then, his eyesight had deteriorated and he was afflicted by a constant cough. He was unable to fulfill his lifelong dream of becoming a civilian airline pilot, and today lives frugally on a small disability pension.
Chief Warrant Officer Imai, having been in hiding on Tinian for well over a year, gave himself up in September 1945, the last man in his cave to do so. He is now president of a large builders’ association in Tokyo.
Today, Tinian has Commonwealth status within the U.S.–administered Trust Territories of the Pacific. The jungle has obliterated almost all signs of its wartime role. Some seven hundred Tinianese live in tin shanties in San Jose, the island’s only village. A white-robed and -hooded Capuchin priest takes care of their spiritual needs in an imposing pink Catholic church. Its tabernacle and baptismal font are U.S. Navy World War II thirty-gallon smoke tanks. The inside upper walls of the church are made of plasterboard taken from the 509th’s Tech Area.
On December 14, 1970, General Curtis LeMay was given a citation from the grateful people of Tinian for the “outstanding service” he had rendered them, “working untiringly to improve the welfare and living standards.”
Six years earlier, LeMay had been decorated by the Japanese government with the First Class Order of the Grand Cordon of the Rising Sun, for helping them build their postwar air-defense force. The award was criticized in the Diet, but Minoru Genda, who had masterminded the Pearl Harbor raid, defended the decision.
Genda himself received in 1962 the coveted U.S. Legion of Merit, conferred by President John F. Kennedy. In 1976 Genda was a senator in the Japanese Parliament.
Hiroshima today is a bustling hodgepodge of a city with a population near nine hundred thousand, almost three times what it was before the bomb. The citizens seldom talk of August 6, 1945. Those who still show signs of their injuries tend to keep to themselves, often suffering guilt that they lived while so many died. The A-bomb dome has been left standing as it was in all its gruesomeness as a terrible reminder. Seeing it, sightseers shudder, avert their eyes, and pass on.
In October 1976, Paul Tibbets again hit the international headlines when the highlight of an air show in Texas was a simulated atom bomb drop from the restored B-29 Tibbets was flying. U.S. Army engineers provided explosives to make a mushroom-shaped cloud.
Many people were appalled. The Japanese government protested, and the American government apologized.
Tibbets thinks the fuss was “ridiculous.” He, along with the organizers of the display, maintains that “the demonstration was simply a reenactment of history, similar to many such events held regularly all over the world.”
Some years ago, the Department of Defense deeded the Enola Gay to the Smithsonian Institution. In 1977, the Enola Gay lay scattered in several pieces over the floor of a hangar in Silver Spring, Maryland, waiting to be reassembled one day and exhibited in the new Aeronautics and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
Appendices
Chapter Notes
Throughout the preparation of this book, we have striven to be objective, factual, and impartial, allowing only our conscience and the facts as we have discovered them to guide us.
The source material we have used consists principally of extensive interviews which we conducted personally in Japan and the United States in 1975 and 1976 with participants in the events described, and o
f documentary evidence from both countries, much of which was originally classified as top secret and has only recently been released. Apart from the intrinsic importance of each of these two prime sources, we have used them as a means of providing checks and balances one against the other, so enabling us to present the story as authentically and as true to the historical record as possible.
When dealing with the Japanese language, we were very much aware that it seldom allows a literal translation into English; with the help of our interpreters, to whom we owe special thanks, we tried to take every care to preserve in the translation the meaning and tone of the original.
In the detailed source notes which follow, documents and reports to the best of our knowledge unpublished at the time of writing are so indicated; private papers, a third valuable source of research material, comprise personal diaries, aide-mémoires, letters, manuscripts; correspondence indicates the authors’ letters to and from those involved; transcripts refers to interviews conducted by others or to documentary broadcasts; finally, a number of published books and magazine and newspaper articles proved useful and are acknowledged.
The form of identification used is:
AI = Authors’ Interviews
B = Books
C = Correspondence
D = Documents and Reports
M = Magazines, Periodicals, and Booklets
N = Newspapers
PP = Private Papers
T = Transcripts
A combined list of all written material consulted may be found in the Bibliography; a list of interviewees is in the Special Thanks section.
PROLOGUE
B: The Birth of the Bomb (Clark); No High Ground (Knebel/Bailey); Now It Can Be Told (Groves); The New World (Hewlett/Anderson).
D: Letter, Einstein to Roosevelt, August 2, 1939; record of meeting September 23, 1942, in office of secretary of war (unpublished); letter, Groves to Dill, January 17, 1944 (unpublished).
T: “The Building of the Bomb” (BBC-TV).
ACTIVATION
1
AI: Tibbets.
C: Montgomery.
D: Memo, Derry to Groves, August 29, 1944 (unpublished).
N: Chicago Tribune interviews with Tibbets, March 10 to 22, 1968 (Thomis); The Register, Newport Beach, California, August 3, 1975.
PP: Tibbets (notes made subsequent to events described here).
T: Ashworth.
2
AI: Tibbets.
M: Air Force Magazine, August 1973: “Training the 509th for Hiroshima” (Tibbets).
PP: Tibbets.
3
AI: Tibbets, Beser, Jeppson, Brode.
D: Letter, undated, written in April 1943, from Condon to Oppenheimer; White House Appointments Register, August 26, 1944; memo, Somervell to Chief of Engineers, USA, September 17, 1944; Harrison-Bundy Files.
M: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, June 1970, April 1975, May 1975.
T: Groves.
4
AI: Yokoyama, Kaizuka, Kosakai, Genda, Fuchida.
B: Hiroshima in Memoriam (Takayama); A History of Modern Japan (Storry); Hiroshima (Hersey); The Fall of Japan (Craig); Death in Life (Lipton); Japan Subdued (Feis); Hirohito (Mosley); The Glory and the Dream (Manchester); The Hiroshima Memoirs (Hiroshima City).
D: U.S. Strategic Bombing Surveys (USSBS); Mission Accomplished.
PP: Notes made by Yokoyama in 1944–45.
2
AI: Tibbetts, Ferebee, Beser, King, Slusky, Grennan, Gackenbach, Perry, Caron, Strudwick, Biel, Jernigan.
B: The Hiroshima Pilot (Huie).
D: Roster of Officers, 393rd Squadron (unpublished); 509th Pictorial Album; Short Narrative History, 509th Group (unpublished); historical report, medical activity 509th Group (unpublished); History 509th/Twentieth Air Force (unpublished).
PP: Beser, Tibbets, Perry, Gackenbach.
T: Interview with Tibbets, USAF 5–4410–90 (unpublished); interview with Tibbets, Air Historical Branch, USAF, September 1966 (unpublished).
6
AI: Hashimoto.
B: Sunk (Hashimoto); Abandon Ship! (Newcomb).
7
AI: Tibbets, Beser, Brode, Jeppson.
B: Dawn Over Zero (Laurence); Brighter Than a Thousand Suns (Jungk); Now It Can Be Told (Groves); Atomic Quest (Compton); A Peril and a Hope (Smith); The Great Decision (Amrine).
D: United States Atomic Energy Commission, In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer; United States Atomic Energy Commission, Historical Document No. 279; Harrison-Bundy Files.
M: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, October 1958; Look, August 13, 1963; American Historical Review, October 1973; Journal of American History, March 1974.
T: Ashworth, Birch, Burroughs, Groves, Hayward.
8
AI: Asada, Suzuki, Nizuma.
B: Imperial Tragedy (Coffey).
D: Asada manuscript on Japanese navy and atomic energy, May 12, 1965 (unpublished); Asada research document 19176–2–18 (unpublished).
PP: Asada (notes made subsequent to events described).
9
AI: Arisue, Oya.
D: Office of Strategic Services: reports and intelligence data (unpublished); U.S. Army, Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, Counter Intelligence Section: reports and intelligence data.
PP: Oya (notes made subsequent to events described).
10
AI: Tibbets, Lewis, Beser, van Kirk, Duzenbury, Caron, Perry, King, Slusky, Jernigan, Biel, Grennan.
B: No High Ground (Knebel/Bailey); The Hiroshima Pilot (Huie); Seven Hours to Zero (Marx).
D: B-29 Familiarization File, marked “Enola Gay,” serial No. 15 (unpublished); Short Narrative History, 509th Group (unpublished).
PP: Notes kept by Tibbets, Beser, Perry, van Kirk; letters written by Lewis.
11
AI: Arisue, Sakai.
B: The Fall of Japan (Craig); Imperial Tragedy (Coffey); The Nobility of Failure (Morris); Samurai (Sakai).
D: Intelligence Summary No. 17 (vol. 2) Headquarters, Seventh Air Force, Central Pacific Area; analysis of Japanese radio broadcasts; Twentieth Air Force intelligence report ACESEA-WIS, No. 87 (unpublished); Japanese Research Division (ATIS) monographs Nos. 45, 53, 83.
N: Sunday Times, London, November 23, 1975.
12
AI: Tibbets, Lewis, King, van Kirk, Ferebee, Olivi, Sweeney, Beser, Grennan, Jernigan, Perry.
B: Seven Hours to Zero (Marx); The Hiroshima Pilot (Huie).
D: Short Narrative History, 509th Group (unpublished).
PP: Tibbets, Beser, Lewis, van Kirk.
13
AI: Yokoyama, Maruyama, Kosakai.
B: Imperial Tragedy (Coffey); The Fall of Japan (Craig); No High Ground (Knebel/Bailey); The Hiroshima Memoirs.
D: USSBS.
14
AI: Arisue, Oya.
B: The Fall of Japan (Craig); “Hiroshima Decision” (Baldwin) in “Hiroshima Plus 20” (New York Times).
D: Office of Strategic Services: reports and intelligence data (unpublished).
15
B: The Glory and the Dream (Manchester); Now It Can Be Told (Groves).
D: Sachs’s memo to Roosevelt, December 8, 1944.
N: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Denver Post, Chicago Tribune, all of December 7, 1944.
16
AI: Tibbets, Sweeney, Beser, Lewis, Ferebee, van Kirk, Grennan, Caron, Duzenbury, Stiborik.
D: General Order No. 6 USAAF (unpublished).
PP: Beser, Lewis, Tibbets.
17
AI: Perry, Tibbets, Beser, Downey, van Kirk, Ferebee.
PP: Beser (letters); van Kirk (notes).
18
AI: Tibbets.
D: Memo written by Groves of meeting at White House between Stimson and Roosevelt (unpublished); memo, Groves to Marshall (unpublished); memo, Groves to file (unpublished), all of December 30, 1944.