The First War of Physics (49 page)

Abe Spitzer, radio operator aboard the B-29
The Great Artiste
, kept an illicit diary during his time on Tinian. ‘We snickered here and back in the States,’ he wrote, ‘when informed that if this development was successful, the war would be shortened by at least six months. We did no snickering now.’

Tibbets made some emotional closing remarks, and the briefing broke up in stunned silence.

Unpleasant duty

Lieutenant Shuntaro Hida was 28 years old. He had taken up his new post as a medical officer at the Hiroshima Military Hospital in 1944. Back then the progress of the war had appeared favourable. However, since the beginning of 1945 he and his colleagues had felt a growing unease about the prospects for the future of their country, despite continuous government reports of victories. His patients were witness to the battles that Japan had fought, and lost. He knew that many large Japanese cities had been heavily bombed by American forces, although, despite the frequent sighting of B-29s in the skies above Hiroshima, his city had so far been spared.

He had spent the last three months stationed at Hesaka village, near the mountain about four miles north of Hiroshima, building an underground shelter for the central hospital. On completion of this task, he and about 300 soldiers were recalled to Hiroshima on 5 August. When he arrived back at the hospital around 8:00pm there was nobody available to give him new orders, but he was asked by the duty officer to wait upon some senior medical officers who planned to stay the night, using the hospital as though it were a hotel. Hida served dinner in the X-ray room.

It was an unpleasant duty. When he was sure all his guests were drunk with
sake
, he got drunk himself.

He was woken in the middle of the night by an old farmer from Hesaka village. Hida had previously treated the farmer’s granddaughter, who was suffering from heart disease. The granddaughter had fallen ill once more, and the farmer was desperate for Hida to go back with him and treat her again.

Hida remembered little of the journey, on the back of the farmer’s bicycle, still very drunk, strapped to the farmer around the waist to prevent him falling off.

Enola Gay

Tibbets chose the plane that he would fly. This was Victor 82, normally piloted by Robert Lewis. For luck, and much to Lewis’ annoyance, Tibbets had named the B-29 for his mother,
Enola Gay.
A final briefing was held at midnight on 5–6 August. A Protestant chaplain spoke a prayer.

The
Enola Gay
began take-off at 2:45am on 6 August. Little Boy was squeezed tightly in the bomb-bay. The plane was almost seven tons overweight, and carrying a completely untried, though unarmed, four-ton weapon that looked like ‘an elongated trash can with fins’. Tibbets, his co-pilot Lewis casting him nervous glances, chewed up all the available runway and lifted the plane gracefully into the air.

The flight to Japan’s home islands passed without incident. Parsons armed the bomb at 7:30am, and advised Tibbets that it was now ‘final’. At 8:15am the weather plane over Hiroshima reported light cloud. Tibbets announced that they were heading for the primary target, and climbed to 31,000 feet. Flying over Kyushu, they encountered no Japanese fighters or anti-aircraft fire.

Tibbets’ bombardier, Major Thomas Ferebee, had chosen his aiming point. This was the Aioi Bridge, a T-shaped bridge at a fork in the Ohta River in central Hiroshima. The bomb bay doors opened. On Ferebee’s signal, the radio operator gave a warning to the other B-29s, a continuous, low-pitched tone indicating fifteen seconds to release. Lewis scribbled in his log: ‘There will be a short intermission while we bomb our target.’

The radio tone ended. The bomb was gone. The
Enola Gay
jumped. Tibbets took manual control and made his turn. He pulled on the welder’s goggles only to find they were useless – he could see nothing through them at all.

He cast the goggles aside, as a bright light filled the plane.

Numberless ranks of living dead

Hida woke on the morning of 6 August. He was attending to the young girl when he noticed another B-29 high up in the sky. He thought little more about it, and turned his attention back to his patient.

At that moment, a dazzling flash struck my face and penetrated my eye. Violent heat blew against my face and both arms … In an instant, I crept on the mat, covering my face with both my hands by instinct, and tried to flee outside by creeping. ‘Fire!’, I expected, but saw only the blue sky between my fingers. The tips of the leaves on the porch did not move one inch. It was entirely quiet.

Just then I saw a great fire ring floating in the sky of Hiroshima, as if a giant ring lay over the city. In a moment, a mass of deep white cloud grew out in the centre of the ring. It grew quickly, extending itself more and more in the centre of the red ring. At the same time, a long black cloud appeared spreading over the entire width of the city, spread along the side of the hill and began to surge over the valley of Ohta toward the Hesaka village, enveloping all woods, groves, rice fields, farms and houses. It was an enormous blast storm rolling up the mud and sand of the city. The delay of only several seconds after the monumental flash and heat-rays permitted me to observe the whole aspect of the black tidal wave.

I saw the roof of the primary school below the farmer’s house stripped easily by the cloud of dust. My whole body suddenly flew up in the air before I could guard myself. The shutters and screens flew up around me as if they were scrap paper. The heavy straw-thatched roof of the farmer’s house was blown through and was lifted up with the ceiling, and the next moment the blue sky was seen through the newly formed hole. I flew ten metres through two rooms, shutting my eyes and bending my back, and was thrown against the big Buddhist altar at the inner part of the room. The huge roof and large quantity of mud tumbled down with a terrible sound upon my body. I felt some pain here and there, but there was not time to take heed. I crept outside,
groping to find my way. My eyes, ears, nose and even my mouth were filled with mud.

Checking first to make sure the young girl was still alive, Hida then borrowed the farmer’s bicycle and headed back towards the city along the banks of the Ohta River. On the road he was confronted with the first of a long procession of nightmarish visions.

It was anything but ‘a man’. The strange figure came up to me little by little, unsteady on its feet. It surely seemed like a man form but was wholly naked, bloody and covered with mud. The body was completely swollen. Many pieces of ragged cloth hung down from its bare breast and waist. The hands were held before the breasts with palms turned down. Water drops dripped from all the tips of the rags. Indeed, it was human skin which I thought was ragged cloth, and the water drops were human blood. I couldn’t distinguish between male and female or soldier or citizen. It had a curious large head, swollen eyelids and big projected lips grew as if they formed half of its face. There was no hair on its burned head. I stepped backwards in spite of myself. Surely this strange thing was a ‘man’. But it was a mass of burnt flesh hanging like rawhide, and it was covered with blood and mud.

The figure fell to the ground and convulsed. Hida tried to find a pulse but the vital signs were gone. He turned and was now confronted by more burnt and bloody survivors. Numberless ranks of living dead, staggering, on their knees, crawling on all fours.

Legacy of the bomb

The
Enola Gay
dropped the Little Boy U-235 bomb on Hiroshima at 9:15am (8:15am local time) on 6 August 1945. It exploded 43 seconds later, 1,900 feet above the city, with a yield of 12,500 tons of TNT equivalent. Ferebee missed his aiming point by 550 feet. The temperature at the burst point reached 60 million degrees, about four times the temperature at the
sun’s core. Those caught within a half-mile of the blast zone were carbonised in a fraction of a second. Some were simply evaporated, the only evidence of their previous existence being the shadow they had cast as they were overwhelmed by the thermal flash.

After the flash, there came the Shockwave. It thrust outwards from the hypocentre – the point on the ground immediately below the burst point – at 10,000 feet per second and with a force of seven tons per square metre. In an instant it destroyed 60,000 buildings. Skin blistered by the flash was torn loose by the shockwave, left to dangle like ragged clothing.

The flash and the shockwave killed between 70,000 and 80,000 people.

Many did not die straight away. At the hastily organised field hospital in Hesaka, Hida watched as every day the most badly burned and mutilated survivors died. After a week, those who were not expected to live had died, and the remaining survivors began to show signs of recovery. Until one of the nurses noticed that her patients had suddenly developed a high fever.

We ran up in a hurry. The patients sweated like a waterfall, and their tonsils became necrotic. While we were confused by the severity and violence of their symptoms, they began to bleed from their mucous membranes and soon spat a quantity of blood.

The doctors suspected typhoid or dysentery. But it was neither. These were the first symptoms of the radiation poisoning that was to kill at least another 60,000 people before the end of the year.

All those kids

Confusion reigned. Little Boy had been too successful. A single bomb had in one instant reduced an entire city to ruins, its infrastructure so badly damaged that it took over a day for word to get back to Tokyo.

Truman issued a press release in which he declared that the Americans had used an atomic bomb, a bomb which harnessed the basic power of the universe. But even now the militarists were in denial. Japan had had a small atomic research effort of its own, under the leadership of physicist
Yoshio Nishina, but attempts to separate U-235 using gaseous diffusion methods had been unsuccessful. Japan’s military leaders understood that the production of fissionable materials for an atomic bomb was extremely difficult, if not impossible. Some argued that, whatever had been dropped on Hiroshima, it had not been an atomic bomb. Toyoda argued that even if the Americans had succeeded in making atomic bombs, they surely couldn’t have too many of these weapons in their arsenal. And public opinion would prevent further use of any bombs they might possess.

On 8 August Sato renewed his efforts to persuade the Soviet Union to act as mediator, only to be told by Molotov that the Soviets had declared war on Japan and hostilities would commence the next day. One hour after midnight, Soviet troops poured across the Manchurian border and attacked Japanese positions.

The Big Six met at 10:30am local time on 9 August. They remained deadlocked. Both the Supreme Council and the cabinet were evenly divided. The militarists argued that the entry into the conflict of the Soviet Union did not invalidate
Ketsu Go.
Anami, Umeda and Toyoda pushed for concessions: there should be no occupation of the home islands, Japan should manage its own disarmament and deal with its own war criminals. Togo now argued that they should accept the Potsdam Declaration, provided they could secure assurances concerning the fate of the Emperor. Suzuki and Yonai agreed.

As the debate raged in Tokyo, Major Charles Sweeney piloted the B-29
Bock’s Car
carrying the Fat Man plutonium bomb over his primary target, Kokura Arsenal. But, although the weather plane had reported favourable conditions over the target, it was found to be obscured by haze and smoke from an earlier attack on a nearby city. Now attracting the attentions of fighters and bursts of anti-aircraft fire, and running low on fuel, Sweeney turned to his secondary target, Nagasaki, rather than bring the bomb back to Tinian or ditch it in the ocean. A brief hole in the cloud cover over Nagasaki gave the bombardier just enough time to do his job.

The Fat Man bomb was dropped on Nagasaki at 12:02pm, 11:02am local time. It exploded 1,650 feet above the city with a yield of about 22,000
tons of TNT equivalent. The steep hills surrounding the city helped to confine the explosion and reduce its impact, but 70,000 died in the blast.

The Big Six were still vacillating when news of the attack on Nagasaki reached them. Later that day Emperor Hirohito finally intervened to end the stalemate and force a decision on the terms of Japan’s surrender. A formal offer of surrender was submitted to Washington via neutral Switzerland and Sweden on 10 August. In essence, it reflected the terms of the Potsdam Declaration except for one important caveat, that the declaration ‘does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a sovereign ruler’.

On the surface, this appeared to be the concession that Stimson had earlier recommended, and Truman now seemed ready to accept it. But Byrnes was not. The vague wording reflected the views of the nationalist president of the Privy Council Kiichiro Hiranuma, in effect reaffirming the theocratic powers of the Emperor as a ‘living god’, above the rule of manmade law. So what, precisely, were the ‘prerogatives’ of the Emperor? Did they allow an imperial veto over any Allied decisions regarding occupation and reform in post-war Japan? Why agree to such a concession now, Byrnes argued, after the atomic bombs and the Soviet Union’s entry into the war had effectively beaten the Japanese into submission?

At Truman’s suggestion, Byrnes drafted a response. He was forthright, but left interpretation sufficiently open to suggest that the Japanese could determine the future role of the Emperor for themselves. ‘From the moment of surrender,’ he wrote, ‘the authority of the Emperor and the Japanese Government to rule the state shall be subject to the supreme commander of the Allied powers, who will take such steps as he deems proper to effectuate the surrender terms.’

Although Groves was preparing a third atomic bomb for delivery to Tinian, in readiness for use after 17 August, Truman had lost his appetite for atomic carnage. ‘Truman said he had given orders to stop atomic bombing. He said the thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible. He didn’t like the idea of killing, as he said, “all those kids”.’