The Potsdam Proclamation issued by the United States, China, and Great Britain on July 26, 1945 called for Japan’s immediate unconditional surrender. The alternative, the allies warned, was “complete and utter destruction.” Three days later, the Japanese rejected it, setting the stage for the dropping of the atomic bombs. On the morning of August 6, the first atomic bomb, Little Boy, was dropped from the Enola Gay over Hiroshima.
The American public heard news of the atomic bomb for the first time the morning of August 6, 1945, sixteen hours after it happened. After statements by President Truman and Secretary of War Henry Stimson, a torrent of radio announcements and newspaper articles relayed the shocking news that a massive new weapon had been used against Japan. On August 8, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and on August 9, the second atomic bomb, Fat Man, was dropped on Nagasaki. New York Times science reporter William Laurence provided an eyewitness account of the bomb, “a thousand old faithful geysers rolled into one.” Fred J. Olivi, who was aboard the Nagasaki mission, recalled anxiously waiting for the news of a Japanese surrender.
On August 14, Japan surrendered. Journalist George Weller was the “first into Nagasaki” and described the mysterious “atomic illness” that was killing patients who outwardly appeared to have escaped the bomb’s initial impact. Controversial at the time, Weller’s articles were originally censored and considered lost until his son found copies and published them in 2006.
Aiming for Military and Psychological Effects
A Target Committee was established on April 27, 1945, to determine the best techniques and targets in Japan to produce the most effective military destruction and psychological effects on the Japanese Empire. At the initial meeting, sixteen areas were proposed for further study: Tokyo Bay, Kawasaki, Yokohama, Nugoya, Osaka, Kobe, Hiroshima, Kure, Yawata, Kokura, Shimosedka, Yamaguchi, Kumamoto, Fukuoka, Nagasaki, and Sasebo. Weeks later, the results of this study were presented at a second meeting.
Summary of Target Committee Meetings
May 10 and 11, 1945
Declassified government document
MEMORANDUM FROM MAJOR J. A. DERRY AND
DR. N. F. RAMSEY TO GENERAL L. R. GROVES
Status of Targets
A. Dr. Stearns described the work he had done on target selection. He has surveyed possible targets possessing the following qualifications: (1) they be important targets in a large urban area of more than three miles diameter, (2) they be capable of being damaged effectively by a blast, and (3) they are likely to be unattacked by next August. Dr. Stearns had a list of five targets which the Air Forces would be willing to reserve for our use unless unforeseen circumstances arise. These targets are:
(1) Kyoto—This target is an urban industrial area with a population of 1,000,000. It is the former capital of Japan and many people and industries are now being moved there as other areas are being destroyed. From the psychological point of view there is the advantage that Kyoto is an intellectual center for Japan and the people there are more apt to appreciate the significance of such a weapon as the gadget. (Classified as an AA Target)
(2) Hiroshima—This is an important army depot and port of embarkation in the middle of an urban industrial area. It is a good radar target and it is such a size that a large part of the city could be extensively damaged. There are adjacent hills which are likely to produce a focusing effect which would considerably increase the blast damage. Due to rivers, it is not a good incendiary target. (Classified as an AA Target)
(3) Yokohama—This target is an important urban industrial area which has so far been untouched. Industrial activities include aircraft manufacture, machine tools, docks, electrical equipment and oil refineries. As the damage to Tokyo has increased additional industries have moved to Yokohama. It has the disadvantage of the most important target areas being separated by a large body of water and of being in the heaviest anti-aircraft concentration in Japan. For us it has the advantage as an alternative target for use in case of bad weather of being rather far removed from the other targets considered. (Classified as an A Target)
(4) Kokura Arsenal—This is one of the largest arsenals in Japan and is surrounded by urban industrial structures. The arsenal is important for light ordnance, anti-aircraft and beach head defense materials. The dimensions of the arsenal are 4100′ X 2000′. The dimensions are such that if the bomb were properly placed full advantage could be taken of the higher pressures immediately underneath the bomb for destroying the more solid structures and at the same time considerable blast damage could be done to more feeble structures further away. (Classified as an A Target)
(5) Niigata—This is a port of embarkation on the N.W. coast of Honshu. Its importance is increasing as other ports are damaged. Machine tool industries are located there and it is a potential center for industrial despersion [sic]. It has oil refineries and storage. (Classified as a B Target)
(6) The possibility of bombing the Emperor’s palace was discussed. It was agreed that we should not recommend it but that any action for this bombing should come from authorities on military policy. It was agreed that we should obtain information from which we could determine the effectiveness of our weapon against this target.
B. It was the recommendation of those present at the meeting that the first four choices of targets for our weapon should be the following:
a. Kyoto
b. Hiroshima
c. Yokohama
d. Kokura Arsenal
KYOTO SPARED: SHRINE OF JAPANESE ART AND CULTURE
With President Truman’s warm support I struck off the list of suggested targets the city of Kyoto. Although it was a target of considerable military importance, it had been the ancient capital of Japan and was a shrine of Japanese art and culture. We determined that it should be spared.
—HENRY L. STIMSON
Admiral Chester W. Nimitz: Born Too Soon
Frederick L. Ashworth, a graduate of the United States Naval Academy, served as General Groves’s representative on Tinian Island and the weaponeer on the Nagasaki mission. In February 1945, Groves instructed him to fly to Guam to inform Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific theater, of the atomic bomb. On September 2, 1945, on the battleship Missouri, Nimitz would sign the Japanese surrender documents for the United States. The following is Ashworth’s account of that February meeting.
From Smithsonian Oral History
INTERVIEW WITH FREDERICK L. ASHWORTH
The letter was addressed to Admiral Nimitz, signed by Admiral King, but I am convinced that General Groves wrote the letter. I do not think there is any question about that. What the letter said was that there would be a thing called an atom bomb in his theater about the first of August. And with some tongue in cheek, I thought, the letter said the bearer can answer any questions you might have about it.
So I jumped in an airplane and had top priority all the way to Guam where Admiral Nimitz’s headquarters were at the time. I had the old wartime cotton khakis on and by the time I got there, I was a pretty raunchy looking character. But I went immediately to Admiral Nimitz’s headquarters. I braved his aide in the front office and said, “I have a letter to deliver to Admiral Nimitz.”
He said, “Well…”
I said, “Look, I have to get it to him personally.” So finally he went in to see the Admiral.
When he came out, he said, “The Admiral will see you,” so we both walked into the Admiral’s office.
I said, “Admiral, he will have to go. This is between you and me,” or words to that effect. So I gave him the letter and the Admiral asked me a few questions.
One of the most important questions that Nimitz asked, I thought, was, “Don’t those people realize we’re fighting a war out here? This is February, and you’re talking about the first of August.”
I said, “Well, this is just to let you know what’s happening.”
Incidentally, there was in that letter an estimate that the yield might be about eight thousand tons T
NT [trinitrotoluene] equivalent, and so this amazed the Admiral a little bit.
Finally, he turned and looked out the window for a little while and turned back and said, “Well, thank you very much, Commander. I guess I was just born about twenty years too soon.”
The 509th Composite Group at Tinian Island
The 509th Composite Group was formed in December 1944, officially part of the Twentieth Air Force, 313th Bombardment Wing. Because of its top secret mission to drop the first atomic bombs, it was formed as a “composite,” intended to be self-sufficient. Initially stationed at the Wendover Army Air Field in Utah and Batista Field in Cuba, the 509th moved in May 1945 to Tinian Island in the Marianas to prepare for their mission. Author Stephen Walker gives us a glimpse of Tinian and portrays the special treatment of the 509th, with their own private movie theater and “$25,000 desserts,” as they trained for an unknown mission.
From Shockwave: Countdown to Hiroshima
BY STEPHEN WALKER
MANHATTAN IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC
From the air Tinian looked a little like Manhattan, and in a fit of homesickness the construction battalions had named the roads they built after New York City streets. There was a Broadway, unlike the real thing, a dead-straight six-mile highway, a Forty-second Street and a Wall Street, even a livestock reserve in the middle of the island called Central Park. The 509th compound was up on 112th Street and Eighth Avenue. Back home that was Columbia University territory, one of the key institutions where research on the atomic bomb had first begun. Tibbets had chosen his headquarters well. In a very real sense, the Manhattan Project had finally returned to Manhattan.
It was the biggest air base in the world. A dot in the Pacific Ocean, 1,500 miles south of Japan, twelve hours’ flying time there and back. One year earlier, in July 1944, the Americans had taken Tinian from the Japanese after seven days of vicious fighting. The enemy troops were pushed back to the southern tip of the island. Some of them surrendered. Others leaped to their deaths off the place the Americans afterward called Suicide Cliff. A few hid in the limestone caves that punctured the island’s only hill, Mount Lasso. And from these caves they watched the island undergo an astonishing transformation.
With their diggers and their cranes, the construction battalions—the Seabees—followed hard behind the troops, building roads, camps, warehouses, generators, sewage systems, and fuel depots. They built the docks to which the USS Indianapolis was now sailing at full speed with its lead-lined uranium bucket. And they built the runways. Within a matter of months they had completed all six of them, two on West Field and the other four on North Field, where Bob Caron’s plane landed.
North Field was, quite simply, unique. Its parallel runways ran east to west like a giant grid stamped on the bare plateau, linked by miles of taxiways and hundreds of hardstands. Its innumerable fuel dumps, bomb dumps, and support facilities supplied as many as 265 B-29s. And they flew almost every day. Nose to tail they lined up on the taxiways, engines roaring, wings trembling, awaiting their turn to depart from the runways Able, Baker, Charlie, or Dog. The ground shook as they took off exactly one minute apart, carrying their loads of jellied gasoline and incendiary bombs to the wooden cities of Japan. Together with other B-29s from nearby Saipan and Guam, they destroyed Tokyo over a single night on March 9, killing an estimated 100,000 people. That was just the beginning. Over the next four months, they went on to incinerate another fifty-seven Japanese cities. Night after night, they slogged up the so-called Hirohito Highway, perfectly fulfilling the objective of their commander, General Curtis “Iron Ass” LeMay, to “scorch and boil and bake to death” the cities of Japan. Over a matter of months the little Japanese airfield that had once stood on North Field had swollen into an awesome affirmation of American can-do and raw power.
Every bomber group on Tinian joined in this machine of mass destruction except one: Bob Caron’s group. These men never flew with the others. They never even flew to Japan. They had inexplicable powers and privileges: within weeks of arriving they had ejected the Seabees from the best living quarters on the island. They had every comfort, every whim attended to. They had the best showers, the best whiskey, the best caterer who cooked the best steaks. They had five fridges and several washing machines. They even had their own private movie theater, the Pumpkin Playhouse, with seating capacity for a thousand. Whenever they wanted ice cream it was said they simply took one of their B-29s up to 30,000 feet with a tub of the stuff in the bomb bay to freeze it—the $25,000 dessert, it was called. They also had a very odd name: the 509th Composite Group. Everybody knew what a bomb group was. But what was a composite group?
The rumors had started back in May, almost as soon as the group’s advance party arrived. By the time their first B-29s with the big black arrows on the tail had made the long haul across the Pacific, the rumors were raging around Tinian like an epidemic. Suddenly everyone was talking about the 509th. Within days the whole island seemed to know that they were over here to win the war. How they were supposed to do that was anybody’s guess, but they were certainly different from everyone else. Even their planes were different. They looked like B-29s but they had some very odd features. For instance, they were almost entirely unarmed—their only protection was a tail gunner. They had unique bomb doors that were pneumatically driven, opening and shutting in the blink of an eye. And they could taxi backward! They had reversible pitch propeller that nobody else had, and they sometimes used them to reverse into parking bays like sports cars rather than swing around in a great big lumbering arc like ordinary mortals. Their bomb hooks were strange too, British Type G attachments that were only ever used on British Lancasters carrying very big bombs. And their bombs were even stranger: huge, swollen, ellipsoidal things weighing five tons.
As for their security, it was something else. The parking area for their B-29s was in an isolated corner of the base. It was very heavily restricted. The guards there had strict orders to shoot anybody who attempted to get too close. One man had already tried. General John “Skippy” Davies was the commander of the 313th Wing, which meant he was also technically responsible for the 509th. But the moment he approached one of their B-29s he was immediately challenged by a sentry. The general asked if the sentry knew who he was. The sentry replied that he did, but he would still have to shoot the general if he put so much as one foot nearer that plane. That was as close as “Skippy” Davies got to any of the 509th’s B-29s.
Of course the real irony was that the rumors spinning around the island were nothing compared to the gossip spinning inside the 509th. Bob Caron was not the only one wondering what he was doing here. So were all the rest of his crew. So were all the other fourteen B-29 crews in the group. So were hundreds of its ground personnel. None of them knew exactly what it was they had spent so long training for. There was only one man who did know: their commander, Colonel Paul Warfield Tibbets. And he was keeping his mouth shut.
PUMPKIN BOMBS
Pumpkin bombs were developed for the 509th Composite Group to train for handling atomic bombs. Approximately the shape and size of the Fat Man bomb used over Nagasaki, they were filled with conventional explosives and used in 51 sorties over Japan from July 20, 1945 to August 14, 1945.
PRACTICE RUNS
We found out that the [509th unit] navigators were practicing a lot [while training in the Southwest] by tuning in on the nearest radio station and listening to the baseball game or some songs, homing on the radio station. Anybody can do that for heaven’s sake! So we sent them all down to Batista Field, Cuba and sent them out on missions over the South Atlantic. One guy said to me, “Ted, aren’t you afraid you’re going to lose some of these crews over there?” And I said, “Would you rather lose them now or when they are on their mission?”
—THEODORE “DUTCH” VAN KIRK, NAVIGATOR ON THE ENOLA GAY
Official Bombing Order, 25 July 1945
TO: General Carl Spaatz
Commanding General
United States Army Strat
egic Air Forces
1. The 509 Composite Group, 20th Air Force will deliver its first special bomb as soon as weather will permit visual bombing after about 3 August 1945 on one of the targets: Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata and Nagasaki. To carry military and civilian scientific personnel from the War Department to observe and record the effects of the explosion of the bomb, additional aircraft will accompany the airplane carrying the bomb. The observing planes will stay several miles distant from the point of impact of the bomb.
2. Additional bombs will be delivered on the above targets as soon as made ready by the project staff. Further instructions will be issued concerning targets other than those listed above.
3. Discussion of any and all information concerning the use of the weapon against Japan is reserved to the Secretary of War and the President of the United States. No communiques on the subject or releases of information will be issued by Commanders in the field without specific prior authority. Any news stories will be sent to the War Department for specific clearance.
4. The foregoing directive is issued to you by direction and with the approval of the Secretary of War and of the Chief of Staff, USA. It is desired that you personally deliver one copy of this directive to General MacArthur and one copy to Admiral Nimitz for their information.
(Sgd) THOS. T. HANDY
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