The Day the World Went Nuclear Read online

  “Let ’em walk,” barked the navy officer in charge of directing the traffic moving on and off Red Beach when he heard that MacArthur wanted to land on a special dock. As “beachmaster,” the officer has supreme authority over the landing zone; not even the great Douglas MacArthur receives special treatment.

  It is forty paces from the landing craft to shore. MacArthur glares at the impertinent young officer as he wades through the water. His personal photographer, Captain Gaetano Faillace, captures the moment for posterity, even as Japanese snipers high up in the palm trees could very well be taking aim at the general standing tall in the surf.

  Once on land, MacArthur is handed a microphone. His words will broadcast throughout the country.

  “People of the Philippines,” he proclaims, “I have returned!”

  In his excitement, the normally imperturbable general’s hands shake.

  Soon after, General Douglas MacArthur turns around and wades back to his landing craft, which quickly returns him to the shelter and safety of the USS Nashville.

  * * *

  Douglas MacArthur well knows that this landing in the Philippines is a vital step toward the eventual invasion of Japan. Though plans are still in the conceptual phase, and such an assault is at least a year away, it promises to be the greatest amphibious landing in history. It is expected that hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, marines, pilots, and sailors will take part, on a scale dwarfing the D-Day landing in Normandy. The cost will be extreme—the combined loss of life is expected to approach one million people. As the most revered general in the Pacific, MacArthur will most assuredly be called upon to lead this devastating invasion.

  Hawaii, July 27, 1944: President Franklin D. Roosevelt discusses plans for the war in the Pacific with his two Pacific commanders, General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Chester Nimitz, and his chief of staff, Admiral William D. Leahy (with pointer). [National Archives]

  General Douglas MacArthur’s hopes for easy victories on the way to the invasion of Japan will be dashed by a determined enemy, poor strategic planning, and something new: the kamikaze—Japanese suicide pilots dropping out of the sky to sink American ships by deliberately crashing their planes into them.

  CHAPTER 3

  IMPERIAL PALACE TOKYO, JAPAN

  November 24, 1944

  BEFORE HE EATS LUNCH WITHIN his lavish Tokyo palace, Emperor Hirohito does not give thanks to a god—he is a god. This five-foot-five, shy, nearsighted forty-three-year-old is considered to be a descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu, a Shinto religious deity. Today he is paying particular attention to the battle for the Philippine island of Leyte, which he has ordered his commander, General Tomoyuki Yamashita, to hold at all costs. The emperor has allowed his prime minister, the former army intelligence officer Kuniaki Koiso, to publicly compare Leyte to a momentous samurai victory of the sixteenth century.

  The prime minister’s public proclamations are bluster. He is aware that the Philippines may indeed fall, but he will do anything to prevent the Americans from conquering Japan. The United States would first have to take the key islands of Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and perhaps Formosa, so the Japanese have at least a year to prepare. For the past three months, a campaign has been under way to arm every citizen of Japan. Military training is now mandatory in all schools and places of employment. The nation’s air defense network is being upgraded to prevent attack by American bombers, like the one that struck an airplane factory today. And Hirohito himself is involved in the development of “sure victory weapons,” a form of unconventional warfare against which the Americans will be powerless.

  Hirohito has approved the launching of hydrogen balloons carrying antipersonnel bombs that will waft skyward from Japan five miles up into the jet stream, which will whisk them five thousand miles across the Pacific to America. There, the explosives will detonate in cities and towns, surprising an American public that thinks it is safe from attack. In this way, the people of the United States will see for themselves that Japan will never be defeated.

  These bombs will fall from the sky as if hurled down by the hand of a vengeful god. From his vast castle in the middle of Tokyo, Emperor Hirohito’s divine power will shock the barbaric Americans. Of this, the emperor is certain.

  The balloon bombs will indeed be launched. Most do not reach America, and those that do inflict little damage.

  CHAPTER 4

  YALTA, CRIMEA SOVIET UNION

  February 9, 1945

  THE MAN WITH SIXTY-TWO DAYS to live is being steamrolled.

  President Franklin Roosevelt sits in the pale Russian sunlight, a black cape draped around his shoulders.

  Seated on FDR’s left is Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin. To Roosevelt’s right sits the portly, constantly chatting British prime minister, Winston Churchill.

  It is morning in Crimea, and the Big Three are wrapping up their meetings at the Black Sea resort of Yalta. Clearly, it is Stalin who has emerged from this conference as the big winner.

  The end of the war in Europe is now in sight. American and British troops have just thwarted Nazi Germany’s last great offensive at the Battle of the Bulge. Led by aggressive American General George S. Patton and his British counterpart, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, Allied forces are now preparing to invade the German fatherland.

  The conference table at Yalta, February 4, 1945. [National Archives]

  In the east, Soviet troops have already captured vast swaths of former Nazi real estate, including Poland and Hungary. In this way, American, British, and Soviet troops are squeezing tight the vise that will soon crush Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. In fact, Soviet troops are now just forty miles from Berlin.

  The purpose of the Yalta conference has been to define the shape of the postwar world. But even before the conference began on February 4, Joseph Stalin tilted the odds in his favor, beginning with the location. Claiming that his health did not permit travel, Stalin insisted upon meeting in this Soviet city. The truth is, Stalin feels fine—he is simply afraid to fly.

  British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin pose during the Yalta conference, February 9, 1945. [National Archives]

  Meanwhile, a visibly declining Roosevelt traveled six thousand miles by ship and aircraft, then endured an eight-hour car ride to attend the conference. His villa room is bugged, and the servants in his quarters are Soviet spies, meaning that FDR can never completely relax because he knows his every movement is being watched.

  That is as Stalin designed it.

  The brutal dictator well knows that if he gets what he wants from Roosevelt and Churchill at this conference, he will rule almost half the Northern Hemisphere. Stalin’s goals are straightforward: return the Soviet Union to the same size and shape as the nineteenth-century Russian empire. He now controls most of the expanse between the Baltic Sea and the Pacific, and the ambitious dictator has no intention of giving up any captured territory.

  Yet there is one significant part of the former empire that Russian troops do not yet occupy: Japanese-held Manchuria, in northern China. So when Roosevelt requests that Stalin enter the war against Japan, the president plays right into the dictator’s hands. Stalin agrees to fight Japan, but only after demanding that Roosevelt acquiesce to Soviet designs on Manchuria.

  The Japanese and the Russians last waged war over this territory during a nineteen-month conflict beginning in 1904. Then, it was Japan that emerged triumphant, sowing the seeds for Emperor Hirohito’s expansionist policies.

  Soon, Stalin will have his revenge.

  * * *

  Franklin Roosevelt waits patiently for Yalta’s ceremonial photographs to be completed. Churchill’s Great Britain is the biggest loser of the conference and is emerging as a nation impoverished by war; Britain’s colonies are sure to seek independence at war’s end. Roosevelt is content in the knowledge that the United States will remain a superpower and that the war-ravaged countries will be divided principal
ly between American and Soviet influences. Roosevelt has no problem with this; he likes Joseph Stalin and believes he can trust him. There is no reason the two great nations shouldn’t work well together.

  The stress and strain of Yalta are taking an enormous physical toll on Roosevelt. Though younger than Joseph Stalin by a little more than three years, FDR looks a decade older. The photographers capture the shadows beneath the president’s eyes and the tight set of his jaw. He came into the week tired and will return to the White House exhausted. After arduous days of haggling with Stalin, the president knows that the six-thousand-mile return journey will be painful.

  Inside the sixty-three-year-old Roosevelt’s chest, his enlarged heart labors to beat.

  CHAPTER 5

  MANILA HOTEL MANILA, PHILIPPINES

  February 22, 1945

  BACK IN MANILA, DOUGLAS MACARTHUR turns to leave his burned-out former apartment, escorted by soldiers from the U.S. Army’s Thirty-Seventh Division. Their machine-gun barrels are still hot after the firefight that cleared the Japanese from the Manila Hotel. Beyond the hotel walls, the raging battle for this once-beautiful city has turned into urban combat, a rarity in the Pacific theater. Three U.S. Army divisions comprising thirty-five thousand men battle a combined group of seventeen thousand Japanese sailors, marines, and soldiers.

  For MacArthur, who has long known the transient life of a military man, Manila is as close to a hometown as any place he has ever lived. He considers the city a “citadel of democracy in the East” and has been reluctant to wage all-out war to recapture it. In fact, the general initially refused to allow the aerial bombardment and bruising artillery barrages needed to dislodge the Japanese occupiers.

  This building in Manila, known as the Palace, served as General MacArthur’s headquarters. [Library of Congress]

  MacArthur is cautiously optimistic. His material possessions are gone, but his wife, Jean, and son, Arthur, are on their way to join him, and he still commands the largest army in the Pacific. Perhaps most important, MacArthur knows his military legacy remains untarnished, despite the many months it has taken to recapture the Philippines.

  A U.S. Marine approaches the edge of a shell hole on Iwo Jima to determine whether a Japanese soldier is alive or dead, February 20, 1945. He was alive and had hand grenades within reach. [National Archives]

  The same cannot be said for the people of Manila. They have lost not just their homes but also in many cases their dignity.

  The battle for Manila began almost three weeks ago, on February 3, 1945. On February 6, MacArthur prematurely declared to the press that the fighting was over, hailing “the fall of Manila.”

  That was false. Even though General Tomoyuki Yamashita had ordered Japanese forces to evacuate the city, the men left behind found their escape route blocked by American soldiers.

  These Japanese holdouts have mined the streets. Concealed snipers shoot Americans on sight. The fighting takes place from house to house, room to room. No place is safe. Even after American troops burn the Japanese alive with flamethrowers and demolish the buildings in which they are hiding, the Japanese still find a way to attack; one American patrol is suddenly assaulted by a sword-wielding Japanese soldier who slices open the point man’s skull before the Americans shoot him and his six companions dead.

  Knowing they will never win, some Japanese soldiers get drunk and then blow themselves up with hand grenades. But many more have become obsessed with brutalizing the citizens of Manila before they die. The Japanese believe their race is superior to the Filipinos. After three years of absolute authority over the city, they are unable to bear the thought that these lesser people will triumph.

  So even as they fight MacArthur’s army for control of Manila, the Japanese are systematically murdering as many innocent local residents as possible.

  Douglas MacArthur’s rationale for not allowing aerial bombardment of Manila is that the lives of innocent civilians will be endangered, yet the horrors being inflicted upon the Filipino people defy description. Instant death from a bomb might be preferable to the agonizing murders being perpetrated by the Japanese. These war crimes are heinous even by the Imperial Army’s own gruesome standards.

  In the weeks to come, from February 25 to April 9, U.S. Army officials will interrogate eyewitnesses and report on these barbaric acts in detail. Witnesses will be interviewed in hospitals, refugee camps, and their own homes. Claims of injury and dismemberment will be verified with photographs taken in the presence of U.S. Army nurses and doctors. With bureaucratic efficiency and matter-of-fact detail, these reports will permanently document the barbarity of the Japanese military during the Battle of Manila.

  CHAPTER 6

  TOKYO, JAPAN

  March 10, 1945 • 12:08 A.M.

  ANNIHILATION APPROACHES AS A HARD northwesterly gale lashes Tokyo. An attacking wave of B-29 bombers flies low over the city. The bikko, as the Japanese have nicknamed America’s most powerful aircraft, drop a small number of bombs, then make the long turn south toward the Boso Peninsula. It has been less than two hours since air-raid sirens wailed over the blacked-out city. The sound signaled the first wave of planes dropping incendiary bombs to light up the target. Tokyo has been largely untouched since the Americans began bombing Japan four months ago, so few citizens have bothered to leave their wood-and-paper homes for the safety of air-raid shelters on this clear and cold night. As the B-29s drone into the distance, the people of Tokyo feel confident enough to settle down to sleep.

  Today, that confidence is shattered. The mournful yowl of the sirens once again floats over the city. This time, Tokyo’s residents race for concrete shelters, all too aware that a second air-raid siren is confirmation that the brutal bombardment has begun. The shelters hold just five thousand people, but hundreds of thousands desperately run through the streets—fathers, wives, children, grandparents, pregnant women. Many wear packs strapped to their backs that contain their vital possessions. Worried that they may not make it to the shelters in time, fathers instruct their families to take refuge in any place that offers concealment. They throw themselves into trenches, canals, and hastily dug holes in the ground.

  Inside the American aircraft, an adrenaline rush wipes out the monotony of the long flight to Tokyo; it has been seven hours since the Americans took off from bases on the islands of Saipan, Tinian, and Guam. Three hundred and twenty-five aircraft of the Twenty-First Bomber Command have flown fifteen hundred miles over open ocean to drop their payloads. To make room for an extra ton of bombs, each plane has been stripped of machine guns and ammunition, leaving these Superfortresses vulnerable to Japanese fighter aircraft. The pilots and navigators were shocked when informed of this decision during their briefing. The order is a calculated gamble on the part of the American commander, Major General Curtis LeMay. The thirty-eight-year-old career aviator is considered belligerent and brutal by some but is widely revered for his tactical brilliance.

  Bombs are loaded onto American B-29s on Saipan, the largest of the Mariana Islands, November 1944. [Mary Evans Picture Library]

  Few Japanese pilots can be scrambled to confront the air invaders, leaving the B-29s free to drop their ordnance with patient precision. Some Japanese aviators are afraid, unaware that the formidable armada has been stripped of the machine guns that might shoot them down. Harsh winds also give the American bombers an unexpected form of cover, distorting radio and radar signals. The Imperial Japanese Navy picked up the incoming flights more than a thousand miles out to sea, but due to a combination of the winds and a lack of communication between the navy and army, their warnings never made it to the Japanese night fighter squadrons stationed on the Kanto Plain outside Tokyo.

  * * *

  It is a holocaust. The B-29s drop special M-69 firebombs from the belly of each fuselage. These are quite different from the atomic fission bombs being developed in Los Alamos, New Mexico, but on this night they are far more deadly.

  This firebombing of Tokyo, known as Operation
Meetinghouse, is the most horrific bombing in history, worse than any other bombing of the era.

  The use of mass aerial bombardment in World War II forever alters how future conflicts will be waged. The atomic device, which will use elements like uranium in order to create a single explosion of extraordinary intensity, has yet to be tested. The M-69 firebomb used on the people of Tokyo is a twenty-inch-long steel pipe packed with the jellied gasoline known as napalm. The M-69s are bundled into clusters of thirty-eight, which are then loaded inside a finned casing and dropped from the aircraft. Two thousand feet above the ground, the casing opens, releasing the bombs and allowing them to plummet to the earth separately. Three seconds after impact, a fuse ignites a white phosphorous charge, which forces the napalm to shoot out of the three-inch-wide pipe. Slow-burning and sticky, the napalm affixes itself to clothing, hair, and skin, burning straight down to the bone.

  One M-69 is capable of starting a massive fire. One ton of M-69s will ensure complete destruction.

  In the early hours of March 10, 1945, American B-29 bombers drop 1,665 tons of M-69 napalm bombs on Tokyo.

  Forty-millimeter guns fire from the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Hornet as its planes bomb Tokyo, February 16, 1945. The men on the left are loading ammunition, and the deck is covered with expended shells. [National Archives]

  Driven by gale-force winds, fire envelops entire city blocks. Mobs of Japanese citizens race for their lives, only to be surrounded by the inferno and summarily asphyxiated as the flames suck all the oxygen from the air. Water mains are destroyed by the blaze, rendering fire hoses useless. Crews armed with water buckets are helpless to stop the carnage. Eighty firefighters and more than five hundred volunteers refuse to leave their posts and burn to death where they stand. Flames destroy ninety-six fire engines. Orange tongues of fire shoot so high from the ground that they reflect off the underbellies of the silver bombers overhead.