Belly of the Beast

by Judith L. Pearson

  With a sudden and terrible reckoning, many in the Japanese government realized that not only was the country unable to defend herself adequately, but she wouldn’t be able to feed herself into the next spring. Japan was on the verge of panic, plagued by disease and starvation. While the military factions of the government still insisted on keeping the Japanese people in the dark, Imperial diplomats were desperate to find peace with honor.

  The diplomats secretly asked Sweden, Russia, and Switzerland to arrange a summit with the United States. When the government’s military fanatics, still in the majority on the Japanese Supreme Council, heard mention of proposed peace talks, they responded with the threat that they would kill anyone who discussed it further.

  The Emperor did make the request, on July 7, that the war be ended as soon as possible. But since the Emperor never spoke directly to them, and the message traveled through many levels of secretaries and assistants, the military leaders did not interpret the Emperor’s words as a call for surrender. They opted to continue fighting, choosing annihilation versus disgrace and suicide versus surrender.

  The Imperial fanatics at Japan’s helm believed beyond a doubt that the United States’ invasion of the Home Islands was imminent. They were unable to pinpoint an exact date, but they were certain now since the new President, Harry S. Truman, had spent his first three months as commander-in-chief becoming familiar with the invasion’s strategies, that it would not be long before the evil white invaders arrived.

  Truman had been vice president under Roosevelt for eighty-two days. During that time, he had been invited to the White House only once. Consequently, when he took office after Roosevelt died, he had little mote knowledge of the ongoing war against Japan than did the American public. At the close of Truman’s first cabinet meeting, Secretary of War Henry Stimson pulled him aside to disclose the details of a secret project that had been carried on since 1942 by a group of the world’s top scientists. The secret project’s code name was Manhattan, after the Manhattan Engineer District Office, the site where all of the research began.

  At the outset of the Manhattan Project, Stimson explained to the stunned Truman, Roosevelt and Churchill had decided not to inform Stalin of its existence or its goal. Many members of both the American and British governments weren’t convinced the Soviet chief was as much interested in world peace as he was in furthering his own agenda, so sharing sensitive information with him too early might have a deleterious effect on the project. Stalin did, however, have moles inside the Manhattan Project in the form of an exiled Getman scientist, who kept the Soviets informed as the project unfolded.

  More than one hundred twenty thousand people had worked on the Manhattan Project between 1942 and 1945. They were located in thirty-seven different facilities at the cost of $2 billion. They called their final product the atom bomb, although co-creator Dr. Robert Oppenheimer affectionately referred to it as “the gadget.”

  The morality and cost of using such a destructive weapon were questioned throughout its development. Some scientists weren’t certain that it could be prevented from destroying all life on the planet, even if its ground zero was thousands of miles away. On July 16, at 0529, those fears were allayed when the test bomb, code-named Trinity, was detonated at Alamagordo Air Base in the New Mexican desert. Even at twenty miles, observers felt the heat of the explosion on exposed skin, and they reported that the radiation level in the rising mushroom cloud was so intense it emitted a blue glow. The dress rehearsal had been a success.

  The Allies, meanwhile, kept the pressure on Japan by continuing the B-29 runs. On July 17, fifteen hundred planes bombed Tokyo, taking off from the Okinawan airbase. To the south, another base had been established on Tinian, an island in the Mariana chain, but its purpose was not associated with the bombardment of Tokyo. Located fifteen hundred miles from Japan, it was home to the 509th Composite Group. This seventeen-hundred-man outfit had spent months honing their skills with high-level bombing test-runs in Utah before shipping out for the island base.

  A total of four hundred B-29s were on the island, but a select group of planes had been kept secluded from the rest. These planes were outfitted differently and were kept near a specially constructed air-conditioned hut. On July 26, personnel at the hut took delivery of the materials needed to assemble the first atomic bomb to be used against an enemy, code-named Little Boy.

  Concurrently, five potential targets for the bomb were being considered by a committee composed of American military strategists and governmental officials. The first site was the city of Kyoto, an urban industrial center with a population of one million. As the result of the destruction occurring in other areas of Japan, a large number of people and industries had been moved to Kyoto, which was one of Japan’s intellectual centers.

  Hiroshima was the second city being considered. It was home to an important army depot and was a port of embarkation located in the middle of an urban industrial area. It was a good radar target, but it was not thought to be a good incendiary target because of the city’s proximity to rivers.

  The third choice was Yokohama, another important urban industrial area that had so far been untouched by other bombing raids. Its major manufacturing activities included aircraft, machine tools, docks, and electrical equipment. It was also the site of oil refineries. As the damage to Tokyo had increased, additional industries were moved to Yokohama, but it was also home to the heaviest anti-aircraft concentration in Japan.

  The fourth target choice was the arsenal in the city of Kokura. It was one of the largest arsenals in Japan, housing light ordnance, anti-aircraft, and beachhead defense materials. Properly placed, the bomb’s blast could potentially damage not only the arsenal, but the surrounding urban industrial structures as well.

  The least favored target was Niigata, a port of embarkation on the northwest coast of the island of Honshu. Niigata’s importance was increasing as Japan’s other ports were being damaged, plus machine tool industries were located there, as well as oil refineries and storage. But it was less significant when compared to the other target choices.

  The final possibility was the Emperor’s palace itself. The committee agreed early on that the palace should not be an initial target, but that information should be obtained about the advisability of making it the target of future atom bombs.

  After hearing all the facts, and debating the pros and cons of each location, it was the recommendation of the committee that the first four choices for targets should be Kyoto, Hiroshima, Yokohama, and the Kokura Arsenal. When the committee presented the list to Secretary Stimson and President Truman, it was noted that Koyoto had also been Japan’s former capital. As such, it had a significant place in the nation’s history, and President Truman had it removed from the list. The discussion of possible targets for the atom bomb continued, and a decision was ultimately reached. Should it prove necessary to employ Little Boy, it would be dropped on Hiroshima, where it would wipe out not only the war industries but the headquarters of the Second General Army as well.

  With the target for the atom bomb decided, the Allies sought to find peace with the Japanese once again. A meeting between President Truman, Churchill, and Churchill’s successor, Clement Attlee, was held to draft a declaration calling for the unconditional surrender of the Emperor and his people. Named the Potsdam Declaration, it was presented to the Japanese government, which rejected it on July 30, 1945, as a mere rehash of earlier proposals.

  It appeared that there was no other course available to end the horrible war that had dragged on so long and cost so many lives. On August 5, Allied planes dropped seven hundred thousand leaflets on the Hiroshima area, urging its citizens to evacuate the city immediately.

  August 6 was a perfect summer day in Japan. The citizens of Hiroshima who had chosen to remain in town ignored the squadron of B-29s that cruised overhead. They had become used to the planes, which usually flew reconnaissance missions. At 0811, the ten-thousand-pound bomb was dropped.
It was air-burst at nineteen hundred feet above the city to maximize destruction, and by 0815 hours, Hiroshima ceased to exist.

  In the days that followed the bombing of Hiroshima, President Truman made a radio broadcast in which he told the Japanese people that the attack on Hiroshima “was only a warning of things to come.” He told them to surrender or “face a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.” The Japanese stubbornly refused to surrender.

  Again military strategists and governmental officials discussed a course of action. The bomb’s creators had a second weapon, code-named Fat Man, ready for use. In addition, they felt they could have a dozen more bombs ready by November, if necessary. Fat Man’s target would be the arsenal at Kokura on the northeast coast of Kyushu, but warning leaflets had been dropped over all the target cities remaining on the list. Military intelligence surmised that there were probably camps housing Allied POWs in or near all of the remaining targets. But the importance of each of the chosen cities could not be disregarded.

  Fat Man was originally scheduled for detonation on August 11, but poor visibility was predicted and the detonation was moved up two days to the 9th. Unlike the clear skies over Hiroshima three days earlier, Kokura was obscured by smoke and haze. The pilot spent ten minutes without sighting his aim-point, as his instructions were to bomb visually. He then proceeded to his second target, Nagasaki, farther south on the island of Kyushu, and dropped Fat Man at 1101 hours, detonating it at 1,650 feet.

  At the news that a second jumbo bomb had been dropped on Nagasaki, an Imperial conference convened and the debate began about what step the Japanese should take next. Most of the Japanese military leaders were prepared to continue resisting. Others suggested that perhaps the terms outlined in the Potsdam Declaration should be reconsidered. The Emperor himself arrived at the conference shortly before midnight on August 9 and heard from both sides.

  In the dark hours of the night, Hirohito reasoned that if continuing the war meant “destruction of the nation and a prolongation of bloodshed, then I swallow my own tears and give my sanction to the proposal to accept the Allied proclamation on the basis outlined by the foreign minister.”

  Although President Truman received word of the Japanese acceptance on August 10, provisos had been added to the peace agreement. It was several days before the Allies had made clear once again that they sought unconditional surrender. American military had informed the President earlier in the day that materials for a third bomb could be shipped to Tinian on August 13. It could be ready for detonation on August 17.

  The third bomb was never needed. On the morning of August 14, Emperor Hirohito made clear to his cabinet that he accepted the peace terms originally laid out by the Allies. It was his intention, he said, to do anything to end the war and persuade the Japanese military to lay down their weapons.

  The ministers suggested that perhaps the Emperor should address the nation directly with the news of the surrender. This was an unprecedented idea, and the decision was made for the Emperor to record the address. Upon listening to the tape, the ministers decided the quality was not clear enough for radio transmission and the Emperor was obliged to deliver his surrender speech a second time. The tape of this speech was held under lock and key until the moment of broadcast, because of the risk that a remaining military zealot would steal it.

  At 1200 hours on August 15, the Japanese national anthem was played on radios across the war-weary Empire, and Hirohito spoke to his people for the first time. In the history of Japanese emperors, commoners had never heard them speak. Hirohito told his “good and loyal subjects” that they must “endure the unendurable and accept the unacceptable.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Freedom and Old Glory

  As they had for the Japanese people, the B-29s flying overhead had become commonplace for the POWs at Pine Tree Camp. When the air-raid sirens sounded on August 9, as they had almost daily ever since Myers arrived, the prisoners and patients who were mobile were herded into their flimsy bomb shelter. None of them thought the shelters would protect them from anything, but one of the men had discovered a hole through which he could watch the bombing runs. It provided great entertainment for the other prisoners when he later shared his observations with them. On this particular day, when he positioned himself to watch the action overhead, he saw something indescribable.

  “A huge, pale gray cloud—looked like a big mushroom—just rose right up in the sky,” he told the men in his barracks that evening. Myers and Tarpy listened to him intently.

  “What do you think it was?” Tarpy asked. The question was followed by several weak hypotheses.

  “Don’t know,” the first man said. “I think the Japs invented some kind of air island.’ They’re gonna use it to float arms and tanks and troops across the ocean to the west coast. I think they’re gonna try to invade us before we invade them.”

  More discussion followed, none of it coherent, as they disagreed about what the prisoner had seen. They did agree, however, that whatever the thing was, it had gone away and nobody in the camp seemed to be the worse for it.

  Had the bomb fallen on Kokura as it was originally scheduled to do, it would have almost certainly killed all of the POWs being held in southern Japan. There were prisoner casualties nonetheless. At the bomb’s hypocenter in Nagasaki, three hundred and fifty American, British, Australian, and Indonesian-Dutch prisoners were killed instantly. A little over a mile from the hypocenter, the camp at Fukuoka #14 was completely destroyed, with between sixty and eighty POWs perishing. Five miles farther from the hypocenter, at Fukuoka #2, four men died as a result of the bomb blast.

  One of the prisoners had a radio secreted away and he listened to the stories about what had occurred flooding the short-wave radio bands. The information traveled quickly between English and Japanese radio operators and, because of inconsistencies in translation, the bomb was being called names like “autonomic bomb” and “adam bomb.” The most incredible derail of all was that so much destruction could come from just one bomb.

  The war did not end at the stroke of noon on August 15, 1945, for the POWs being held in Asia. Almost immediately after the bombing, the faces and attitudes of the Japanese guards changed. Questions flew around the camp, most of them dealing with reprisals. How would the prisoners be treated now? If the Japanese were angry about the firebombing earlier, would they now be so incensed that they would kill the POWs without hesitation? The prisoners assumed that the Allied troops were not far off, and some had heard the disconcerting rumor that, in the event of an invasion of the Home Islands, the Japanese were going to drive the prisoners in front of them onto the battlefield, using them as human shields. Either that or the Japanese were simply going to massacre them all.

  The fears were justified. Elsewhere throughout the Japanese Empire, camp officials continued brutalities even after they had heard the Emperor’s speech. Prisoners were shot or beheaded or hacked to death in camps outside of Japan. For most of the seventeen thousand men being held in the one hundred and seventy-six camps throughout the Home Islands of Japan, though, a different scene transpired.

  In Pine Tree Camp, the men got up at their usual times to fall out for muster and work detail, only to be told by the guards that there was no work that day. The Japanese gave a myriad of reasons: a cave-in at the mine, a cholera outbreak, the equipment was broken. The POWs were given the day off and then watched as officers burned records from the administrative offices by the armfuls. The gunso, sergeants, and other guards, who had spat ferocious tirades at the men for three years, were now whispering.

  Finally, the words were spoken: senso owari. The war is over.

  Myers and Tarpy awoke one morning several days after the official surrender to find that the Japanese had simply left the camp. Their quarters were empty, the supplies gone, the gates open. The enormity of being free after being captive for so long was something that took a while to sink in. Most of th
e men went about that day discussing what they were going to do when they got home. But all of them kept an air of caution about them, for fear that the war had not really ended and the Japanese might capture them once again.

  The caution faded as soon as a plane appeared over the camp. It waggled its wings at the prisoners in the compound of Pine Tree Camp and flew off. Shortly more planes appeared, their pilots dropping seabags packed with their own belongings: shoes, socks, skivvies, messages, magazines, chocolate, and cigarettes. The first stage of the liberation, called “Operation Birdcage,” had begun, which called for the Allied aircraft to locate the POW camps. Myers and Tarpy were about to be liberated.

  Another wave of aircraft flew over the camp, dropping leaflets that instructed the prisoners to create the letters “PW” out of anything they had, as long as they could make it visible enough to be seen from the air. The leaflets also asked that the number of men in the camp be listed. The men used blankets and clothing held down by rocks, and spelled out the requested information.

  The second phase of liberation, “Operation Mastiff,” then began, the phase to resupply the desperately needy men. Packages began falling from the skies containing the things they needed most and had been deprived of the longest—food and clothes and medicine. To keep the contents of the packages somewhat together, the military used crates and barrels on pallets, some weighing as much as five tons, affixing them with parachutes. The huge B-29s dropping them were flying so low, the chutes never opened. The goods dropped from the sky and crashed through the roofs of the barracks and hospitals. They exploded on impact, the force either crushing the contents or extruding them. One man thought he’d been shot when in reality the “blood” he saw was only the contents of a jug of tomato puree.