“Son of a bitch,” Jerry said and went into a coughing spasm. “In a month I won’t be here.”
“Sure you will,” Johnny replied in a soothing tone. He took a small piece of torn uniform cloth out of his pants pocket, dipped it in the remaining water, and patted it on Jerry’s forehead. It made no discernible difference in his fever. “I wish you’d go to the hospital,” he said.
Jerry shook his head weakly in response. “You know what they got in that goddamn place? Sick people. Germs. Worst place to be. You go there to die.” He coughed again, face contorted with pain, and spit up more blood.
A buzzing sound became steadily louder: an aircraft engine. “One of ours,” Jerry said.
“How do you know?”
“I don’t. But the Japs are losing, so it’s gotta be ours. I bet we own the skies now.” More coughing, more blood. “Help me up. Help me move out in the sun. I want to see it.”
Reluctantly, Johnny helped Jerry to his feet. He weighed next to nothing, but so did Johnny. The two men staggered out into the sunshine. Johnny shielded his eyes. Jerry stared straight up, waiting. The plane, a single-engine dive-bomber with U.S. Navy markings, swooped low over the prison courtyard and waggled its wings. The belly of the aircraft was pale, almost white, but a brief glimpse as the pilot half rolled showed the upper surfaces to be a beautiful deep blue. The white star on the wing seemed as big, and as bright, as the sun.
“They know we’re here,” Johnny whispered.
Although the plane was out of sight, Jerry was still staring in that direction. “Low-wing, radial engine—damn. I bet that’s one sweet bird to fly. I bet my old A-24 is as obsolete as a P-26 these days.” He coughed again, doubling over in pain. It was all Johnny could do to get him back into the shade and sitting on the ground. His place at the wall was taken.
They heard the roaring of distant aircraft, the sharp crump of exploding bombs, and knew that the navy dive-bombers attacked ships in Manila Bay.
“So he’s really coming back—just like he said he would,” Jerry mused.
“That’s all the Filipinos talk about,” Johnny agreed. “He said he would return, and he is! While we spend the whole goddamn war just waiting for it to happen.”
“What a stupid war,” Jerry said in a matter-of-fact voice. “I was going to be high above all this nasty ground-pounder stuff. But some jackass forgot to send me a plane. Me and the whole 27th Bombardment Group—they put us in foxholes and called us infantry!”
Johnny nodded. He had shipped with Jerry and another old friend, David Hansen, in the President Hoover an eternity ago, and the men had compared their stories so often it had become a ritual with them. He touched the worn pocket of his uniform shirt, where he kept Dave’s dog tags—Dave hadn’t made it out of Cabanatuan, back in the summer of 1942. Johnny had vowed to bring those tags out with him, with the others he had been collecting—so that, somehow, the families of those men who didn’t make it would know that their loved ones hadn’t been alone, or forgotten, at the end. He shuddered at the thought that Jerry Rocker’s dog tags might be the next set to join his memorializing collection. Johnny shook the thought away—there were already too many of them.
“I was greased for Aberdeen Proving Grounds. Some personnel fuckup sent me here to Shangri-La instead.” He imitated a travelogue narrator.” ‘Enjoy wine, women, and song in the mysterious Far East.’”
Jerry cracked a small smile. “Well, Mac may not get here soon enough for me, but he’ll be here for you. You’ll get the wine and women yet. Singing you can get anywhere. Even here.”
“I’ve heard the singing, and a deep bass is no substitute for a soprano in a tight skirt and a low-cut blouse. Mac damn well better show up soon. I’ve got my orders for home, you know. And after you get better, maybe you’ll get a hot bomber like the one we just saw.”
Another bout of coughing was his only reply.
A day later, Jerry Rocker was gone. Johnny quietly slipped off his dog tags and added them to more than a dozen other sets.
You’11 be remembered, he promised to himself.
• WEDNESDAY, 6 SEPTEMBER 1944 •
LOS ALAMOS, NEW MEXICO, 2311 HOURS
The starry sky spilled into the far limits of infinity, the vastness of space illuminated by the countless specks of distant suns. Here in the high desert, the view of those stars was unimpeded by smoke or haze or city lights. The nearest community of any size, Santa Fe, was miles away; closer by, the surroundings consisted of uninhabited desert. Even here in the great scientific complex on the mesa, surrounded by its concentric rings of barbed wire, the tall towers occupied by alert, steel-eyed guards, the gates that were locked and double-barred and protected by machine-gun-toting sentries, it was dark.
But that did not mean that Los Alamos was sleeping. Especially not in this place, at the very heart of the compound, where the Critical Assemblies group was conducting crucial tests.
This was G Division, centered in the drab-green two-story building that was shaped like a long rectangle, with clapboard sides and a shingled roof. It was surrounded by its own security fence, a perimeter within the perimeter, where only the most privileged were allowed to venture. A car, headlights dimmed, approached the building. The overworked physicist at the wheel steered impatiently around a slow-moving army truck and parked his government green Studebaker at the south end of the structure. He brushed the dirt off his suit—a futile gesture; none of the Los Alamos roads were paved—and walked up to the guard post.
Even though Dr. Robert Oppenheimer was the director of Los Alamos, the guard still inspected his identification before passing him through the last barbed-wire fence surrounding the building. The main entrance was in the center of the long side of the rectangle.
Oppenheimer went through that door, wiping the perspiration from his forehead. It was noticeably hot inside, even though the blazing New Mexico sun had set hours earlier. The temperature in the building was modulated slightly by the fans in every open window. They kept the air circulating and made it bearable.
A staircase led upward directly in front of him, while a corridor extended to the left and right. Oppenheimer turned left. At the end of the corridor, about twenty yards away, another door. The corridor itself was lined with offices. With annoyance, Oppenheimer noticed papers lying around in full view, and in one case a file cabinet drawer left open. This would inevitably draw the attention of the security people and waste more time. There was no time left to waste. That damned flunky of MacArthur’s—Sutherland—was increasing the pressure for results! Results! Results! He evidently thought the Manhattan Project was like the Sears catalog. Just put the item number on the order form and you’ll get it COD.
Oppenheimer shook his head, disbelief mingling with frustration. After all, the project had made unbelievable progress in only a few short years. Starting with experiments in New York and Chicago, the greatest physicists in the world had answered the summons of the American government. Millions of dollars—an unprecedented investment in untried technology—had led to crude experiments in radiation, the assembly of materials to make a pile that would approach critical mass. Keen scientific minds had worked together, steadily advancing the understanding of physics, radiation, and the potential of atomic energy.
It had not been long before security considerations, not to mention the potential danger to large communities, had forced the relocation of the Manhattan Project to this barren Southwestern desert. Almost overnight this mesa had become a small city, with scientists and their families living here and a vast army security presence protecting the whole. Huge manufacturing facilities had been created at Oak Ridge, in Tennessee, and along the Columbia River at Hanford. These factory complexes were producing enriched uranium and plutonium—a totally new element, the first ever created by man. Progress was still astounding, but to the army—and especially to that bastard Sutherland—it could never be fast enough. Hence the need to work like this, toward midnight and beyond.
Ton
ight’s experiment involved work on the Little Boy uranium bomb. The Oak Ridge facility had shipped enough pure U 235 to meet the theoretical needs of the bomb, but the theory still required testing. Oppenheimer was responsible for the Fat Man plutonium bomb as well. Much of the plutonium from the Queen Mary plant at Hanford had recently been delivered to Los Alamos, making the secret city in the New Mexico desert the repository of the largest collection of radioactive material in the world. Oppenheimer would not have a good night’s sleep until it was all over, but the end was in sight. And an end to all this stress, he thought.
The far door led into a crowded two-story-high laboratory space that was about thirty yards long and twenty wide. A number of complicated mechanical structures filled the space. At the moment, two scientists were building stacks of uranium 235 bars within a framework of bricks of beryllium. Subcritical assemblies—called Lady Godivas because they were unshielded—involved building these piles of several dozen bars and measuring the increased neutron activity as the stacks approached critical mass.
Otto Frisch was one of the two men who stood in front of a ten-foot-tall iron frame nicknamed the Guillotine. Frisch had wiry black hair that he brushed back over his high forehead, a large and bulbous nose, and a tendency to slouch. He was also one of the world’s top physicists, and this was his experiment.
The other man was a young graduate student from Princeton named Richard Feynman. Brilliant and blunt, he had once reviewed the work of a senior scientist on one experimental program and summed it up in two words: “It stinks.” Feynman had compared this experimental program to tickling the tail of a sleeping dragon. Frisch, who liked a good joke even when he was the target, promptly named it the Dragon Experiment. It was extremely dangerous. They should have built it offsite, but under the most recent demands of MacArthur and Sutherland, there had been no time for such an extensive precaution. Everyone’s under too much stress, he thought.
The G Division team had previously performed this experiment with uranium hydride—less radioactive than U 235—but today was the real thing. The idea was to assemble a subcritical mass of the small blocks of uranium, minus a big hole in the center to allow neutrons to escape. Then the remaining portion of uranium would be dropped from the top of the Guillotine to pass through the center hole. During the split second when the dropping mass was in line with the stationary uranium, there would exist a critical mass—that is, the fundamental condition needed for a self-sustaining nuclear reaction. That reaction would momentarily flare into reality until gravity pulled the uranium through the bottom of the hole and canceled the condition.
In proposing the experiment, Frisch had said, “It’s as near as we can possibly go toward starting an atomic reaction without actually burning up.” Now, as he watched the last-minute preparations, Oppenheimer felt all the tension and excitement implicit in Frisch’s observation.
The early experiments had gone extremely well, producing the first controlled nuclear reaction that went supercritical with prompt neutrons alone.
This would be the real thing.
The central mass of U 235 had been pulled to the top of the Guillotine by a chain. At Frisch’s command, the mass would be released to drop freely through the hole in the center of the remaining U 235. Geiger counters stood by, clicking steadily, and a recorder and backups were ready to preserve the results of the test. An engineer stood beside the Guillotine, ready to process the data on a log-log decitrig slide rule.
Frisch started the count. “Five.”
All other work in the laboratory had stopped. Everyone was watching the Guillotine.
“Four.”
The Lady Godiva nearest to the Guillotine was barely subcritical. The scientist building it moved closer to the stack as Frisch continued to count.
“Three.”
The hydrogen in that scientist’s body began to reflect back neutrons.
“Two.”
Almost instantly, the flickering monitoring lamps that detected neutron activity went to nearly solid red. The Geiger counters clattered so fast the noise became a buzz. The temperature of the Lady Godiva began to rise. Out of the corner of his eye, the scientist noticed the change. He turned, his arm swinging, to knock blocks away and make the stack subcritical again.
“One.”
He hit the stack with too much force, knocking a cascade of uranium bars in the direction of the Guillotine. “Shit!”
“Drop—wait!”
The technician holding the chain turned to see the blocks falling in his direction, skidding across the floor. He let go of the chain.
The mass of U 235 dropped, but still chained, not free. The clatter of the chain made the technician turn back.
He grabbed the chain.
The core stopped in the center hole.
The lab technician released the load.
Warning lights turned red. Geiger counters hissed like demonic serpents.
The technician yanked on the chain with all his strength. The chain came off its pulley. The critical U 235 was stuck.
“Dammit!” Frisch jumped forward to dislodge the falling U 235 from the stationary mass.
The neutron count passed 1020. The temperature of the critical mass was rising two degrees per millisecond. Frisch burst into flames.
Fires erupted all over the lab. Feynman, his lab coat burning, ran for the corridor door across the room from the Guillotine, which was now a molten mass. Oppenheimer was right behind him, feeling the searing heat against his back, seeing his own stark shadow in the terrifically brilliant light of the reacting uranium.
“Unnatural work produces too much stress,” Oppenheimer said. Feynman, not a student of Hinduism, didn’t recognize the passage from the Bhagavad Gita.
As the U 235 passed the ten thousand-degree mark, he didn’t have time to ask.
• THURSDAY, 7 SEPTEMBER 1944 •
BILIBID PRISON, MANILA, PHILIPPINES, 0600 HOURS
“Me ga sameru!” The guard banged on the metal door of Johnny’s cell, shared with four other prisoners, and shouted at them to wake up. Johnny opened his eyes slowly. He ached from the long night on the bare cell floor, from the constant hunger, from his swollen testicles. It was cold inside the cell at night, and dew had formed on the slimy walls. He still didn’t own a blanket.
In the dim light from the single small rectangular slit window he could see his cell mates stirring as well. All five men rose slowly and awkwardly to their feet. They did not talk. There was nothing new to say.
They had all heard the rumors, of course, spread by the Filipinos who worked in and around the prison. MacArthur was on Luzon! His armies had landed at Lingayen Gulf, the same place the Japs had come ashore in ′41. To the prisoners, Lingayen Gulf was still a long way away from here, from Manila. And by all accounts there were hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers in between the two places.
Johnny pushed the heavy metal cell door open. The Japanese never bothered to lock them in.
Normally in Bilibid Prison the daily muster was pretty informal, but today the guards were making the companies line up in formation and at attention. This was never good news, if only because it delayed the meager rice soup they called breakfast.
The Japanese captain in charge of the prison walked into the courtyard after all the men had lined up. He was carrying a clipboard. Behind him marched his translator and two officers Johnny hadn’t seen previously.
The guards had set up a small wooden box as a speaker’s platform. The captain stepped up onto the box and looked coldly at the prisoners. They bowed in unison. There was a penalty for failing to bow. No one wanted to pay the penalty twice.
The captain began to speak in Japanese, pausing after each sentence for the translation. “Attention to orders. Companies One through Five will follow Lieutenant Sato. Companies Six through Ten will follow Lieutenant Watanabe. The others will remain in position until these ten companies have departed. That is all.” The prisoners bowed again. The captain stepped off the bo
x and strode out of the courtyard. The translator stayed behind to help the two lieutenants line up their companies.
Johnny stepped out in front along with Sergeant Owens. As captain, he gave orders only to Sergeant Owens, who in turn shouted them to the men. “Attention! At ease, march!” The “at ease, march” order meant the men didn’t have to maintain cadence but did have to maintain proper interval and distance. The prisoners marched sloppily even by that loose standard. As they paraded past, Johnny noticed many of them had the hundred-yard stare, that glassy-eyed dead look of a man who had surrendered hope.
Johnny suspected his own eyes looked the same.
They marched out of the courtyard, through the long dimly lit corridor lined with cells, then into an outer perimeter courtyard. In front of them, the great trellis gate opened with the creaking sound of worn machinery, and Johnny passed out of Bilibid Prison.
The procession marched through the streets of Manila. Filipinos bowed respectfully, ostensibly to their Japanese masters, but angled so their bows aimed instead to the prisoners. The only thing the men of his company were leaving in Bilibid Prison was breakfast. Johnny could smell food—real food—cooking. His mouth salivated and his stomach rumbled. The thought of eating real food was so overwhelming that he had to resist the temptation to break ranks and follow the spicy scents of Philippine cooking, even if that meant his death. It was the first emotion he’d felt in days.
Lieutenant Sato gave directional commands to Company One’s commander, and Johnny’s Company Three simply followed. A Japanese sergeant supervised his company but did nothing except look menacing. It took about an hour of marching to reach Manila Harbor. The harbor was crowded with ships, but Johnny had no idea whether that was normal. All he sensed was the scent of sea air and the stink of rotting fish. Even rotting fish smelled appetizing.
MacArthur's War: A Novel of the Invasion of Japan Page 24