The Day the World Went Nuclear Read online

  U.S. Army General Joseph W. Stilwell (left) talks with Army Air Forces Major General Curtis E. LeMay at a B-29 base in China, October 11, 1944. [Library of Congress]

  As the heat rises, updrafts reach thousands of feet high, bringing the smell of burning human flesh to the nostrils of the American pilots. Many planes return to their home base with their fuselages coated in soot.

  Soon fire consumes sixteen square miles of Tokyo. Hospitals, homes, temples, train stations, bus depots, convents, theaters, fire stations, workers’ hostels, and schools are destroyed. From the safety of the Imperial Palace, which the Americans have specifically chosen not to bomb, Emperor Hirohito beholds a red glow across the horizon, turning darkest night into day.

  Trapped inside walls of flame that throw off unimaginably high temperatures, citizens see their clothes spontaneously burst into flames. Debris flies through the air, striking people dead at random. City canals boil. Dead bodies bob in the rivers. Charred corpses litter the ground, many still burning.

  At 3:00 A.M. the bombing stops.

  As dawn rises over Tokyo, one-fourth of the city has been destroyed. One hundred thousand people are dead; forty thousand people are badly burned but alive. One million Japanese are homeless. Of the 279 B-29s that carried out the bombings, just fourteen planes were lost, mainly due to engine failures.

  General LeMay’s stated goal for this mission was that the bombing would shorten the war by wiping Tokyo “right off the map.”

  CHAPTER 7

  TOKYO, JAPAN

  March 18, 1945

  EMPEROR HIROHITO TOURS the burned-out portions of Tokyo. His caravan of vehicles and his own maroon Rolls-Royce carry the official chrysanthemum crest, signifying that a gyoko—a blessed visitation—is taking place. He comes upon exhausted citizens pawing through rubble, searching for some fragment of their former lives. Upon seeing his vehicles, instead of adopting a subservient stance, the people glare. Hirohito does not engage his subjects, nor does his facial expression display sorrow or regret. Despite the war weariness so evident among Tokyo’s citizens, Japan’s elite will send an emissary to Hirohito two days later, imploring him not to surrender. It is their belief that the Japanese people will become used to the bombings and grow closer together in the process.

  Crown Prince Hirohito arrives at the Military Officers’ Training Office in Tokyo, 1925. He became emperor the next year. [Mary Evans Picture Library]

  In the weeks that follow, Japanese citizens lose sleep during more nighttime bombing attacks, leaving them exhausted and distraught. There is a rise in absenteeism in factories and a slowing of the nation’s war production.

  Yet the Japanese still will not surrender. Not even when General LeMay follows the firebombing in the cities of Nagoya, Osaka, and Kobe with an attack on Kawasaki.

  Instead, schools in Japan close. As a sign that the nation will fight to the bitter end, all but the youngest students are put to work producing food or munitions; some are even taught how to be air-raid wardens.

  But that won’t be necessary. After weeks of major “burn jobs,” the firebombing of Japan becomes more sporadic. There are two reasons: First, LeMay’s pilots are exhausted. And second, after dropping thirteen million M-69s on Japan, the Twenty-First Bomber Command has run out of firebombs.

  CHAPTER 8

  ROOM H-128 CAPITOL BUILDING WASHINGTON, D.C.

  April 12, 1945 • 5:00 P.M.

  A LIGHT RAIN FALLS ON the nation’s capital as Vice President Harry Truman strides into a high-ceilinged room, thirsty for a drink. Even after a long day presiding over the Senate, Truman appears dapper and polished.

  “Harry, Steve Early wants you to call him right away,” his host, House Speaker Sam Rayburn, says the instant Truman steps through the door.

  Truman picks up the phone and dials National 1414, the number for the White House. Truman has not been vice president long enough to have penetrated FDR’s inner circle, and calls from the White House are rare. So even though the president is at his Warm Springs, Georgia, hideaway, recuperating from the long journey back from Yalta, Truman is quick to answer the message from the president’s longtime press secretary, in case something important is required of him. So far, that has not been the case.

  Harry S. Truman and his wife, Bess Wallace Truman (right), and daughter, Margaret Truman, arrive at the White House on the day Franklin Roosevelt is inaugurated for his fourth term, January 20, 1945. [National Archives]

  “This is the V.P.,” Truman says at the sound of Early’s voice.

  Early gets to the point. “Come to the White House as quickly and quietly as you can.”

  “Jesus Christ and General Jackson,” Truman exclaims, replacing the phone. “I’m wanted at the White House right away.”

  By 5:25 P.M., the vice president’s car is parked beneath the north portico of the White House. Truman steps out and is escorted inside by two ushers. One takes his hat while the other guides him to a small, oak-paneled elevator. Nothing is said. Truman still has no idea why he has been summoned. Stepping out from the elevator on the second floor, he is surprised to see Eleanor Roosevelt and her daughter, Anna, wearing black dresses. Truman’s relationship with the first lady has been strained, so she would never summon him for social reasons, let alone invite him up to her personal study.

  Quickly, Truman realizes why he has been summoned.

  “Harry,” the first lady tells him, “the president is dead.”

  Her voice is calm, for she has known more than an hour.

  “Is there anything I can do for you?” Truman asks Eleanor as the truth sinks in.

  The first lady looks directly at the new president. “Is there anything we can do for you? For you are the one in trouble now.”

  * * *

  The time is 7:09 P.M.

  A stunned Harry S. Truman holds in his left hand a red-edged Bible and raises his right. His wife and daughter, nine cabinet members, six congressional leaders, several members of the White House staff, and a handful of reporters are crammed into the Cabinet Room. Everyone is standing. A portrait of Woodrow Wilson, one of Truman’s favorite presidents, overlooks the proceedings as Chief Justice Harlan Fiske Stone of the U.S. Supreme Court recites the oath of office. “I, Harry Shipp Truman,” begins Stone.

  Truman has the presence of mind to correct him. “I, Harry S. Truman,” he replies.

  The oath continues.

  Outside the Cabinet Room, a small army of reporters and photographers has gathered in the West Wing. News of Roosevelt’s death has already flashed around the world, drawing a crowd of thousands to stand vigil in front of the White House.

  “So help me God,” Stone adds at the end of the oath of office.

  “So help me God,” replies President Harry S. Truman.

  Harlan Stone, chief justice of the Supreme Court, administers the oath of office to Harry S. Truman on April 12, 1945. [Harry S. Truman Library]

  CHAPTER 9

  OVAL OFFICE THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON, D.C.

  April 25, 1945

  PRESIDENT TRUMAN IS BRIEFED on the top secret news that the United States will soon test an atomic bomb. “Within four months,” begins the report brought to Truman in the Oval Office, “we shall in all probability have completed the most terrible weapon ever known in human history, one bomb of which could destroy a whole city.”

  If successful, this weapon could end the Pacific war, though at great loss of life to civilians. Hundreds of thousands, if not more than a million, Japanese citizens may die.

  Truman knows that an alternative is the wholesale invasion of Japan. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers are expected to perish if the attack is authorized.

  President Truman gives his first address to Congress, April 16, 1945. [Harry S. Truman Library]

  The invasion of Japan, however, might be unnecessary if the A-bomb is ready.

  The final decision about dropping the bomb will be made solely by Truman, though at this point he is not sure what the A-bomb really i
s.

  But Truman wants the loss of American lives to be kept to a minimum. To do that, Japan must be crushed.

  CHAPTER 10

  LOS ALAMOS, NEW MEXICO

  April 22, 1945 • 5:00 P.M.

  THE GENIUS PHYSICIST OF Los Alamos is celebrating his forty-first birthday. Sipping on a dry gin martini, Robert Oppenheimer moves from conversation to conversation in the living room of his 1,200-square-foot stone-and-wood cottage. The air smells like pipe tobacco. His guests are physicists, chemists, and Nobel Prize winners, their accents British, American, and European.

  Everyone in the room has top secret security clearance, allowing each to speak freely about a topic few in the world are aware of. With Germany all but defeated, these brilliant minds are divided between those who want to see the atomic bomb dropped on Japan and those who believe it is morally wrong to destroy a country so near to surrender. Some believe that dropping the A-bomb will lead to a worldwide arms race.

  It has been six years since Franklin Roosevelt’s Oval Office meeting with Alexander Sachs and the resulting call to action for America to pursue nuclear weapons. Now, the “gadget,” as Oppenheimer calls the A-bomb, is almost ready for testing. The detonation, when it occurs, will take place two hundred miles south, in the Jornada del Muerto Desert—the Journey of the Dead Man, as the barren, windswept landscape is appropriately known. The site has been chosen because it is remote, unpopulated, and flat.

  * * *

  Here in New Mexico, after years of top secret research, the American effort has finally moved from research to production. If all goes according to plan, B-29 bombers launching from captured Pacific islands will soon drop one of Oppenheimer’s gadgets on Japan. Estimates are that the explosive force could be equal to as many as ten thousand tons of dynamite, even though the bomb will detonate almost two thousand feet above its target, never actually reaching the ground.

  But those estimates are merely a guess. No one knows the exact power of this weapon.

  It is not yet known which city or cities will be bombed, but a short list is being developed by the Target Committee to present to General Groves, military leader of the Manhattan Project. To measure the full power of the blast, the committee wants each bombing target to be previously unscathed. This means that the people of Kokura, Kyoto, Hiroshima, Yokohama, and Niigata, who have largely been left alone by the American bombers up until now, may soon be in grave danger.

  CHAPTER 11

  OKINAWA ISLAND, JAPAN

  May 8, 1945 • 4:00 P.M.

  SIX THOUSAND MILES AWAY from Los Alamos, the American marines know nothing about the A-bomb. “Adolf Hitler is dead. The Germans have surrendered,” they are told as the battle for Okinawa enters its sixth miserable week. The news quickly passes up and down the line, from foxhole to foxhole.

  To a man, the response is the same: “So what?”

  These marines are trying to survive. The worldwide war that the German führer started six years ago still rages in this corner of the globe. The invasion of Okinawa brought American forces ever closer to the Japanese mainland, but there is a high price to pay for that progress—and the marines know it.

  It will prove to be one of the bloodiest battles of the war.

  The American island-hopping strategy began with the capture of the island of Guadalcanal in 1942, which put Allied forces within thirty-five hundred miles of Tokyo. Capturing Peleliu in late 1944 put the Americans within two thousand miles. The surrender of Iwo Jima closed the distance to 750 miles. Okinawa is just half that to mainland Japan itself.

  Soldiers from the Sixth Marine Division watch the dynamite charges they planted blow up a Japanese cave shelter on Okinawa, May 1945. [National Archives]

  “We were resigned only to the fact that the Japanese would fight to total extinction on Okinawa, as they had elsewhere, and that Japan would have to be invaded with the same gruesome prospects,” Marine Corps Private Eugene Sledge will later write in his book about his experiences in the Pacific.

  The closer to Tokyo the Americans advance, the more brutal the fighting becomes. The invasion of Okinawa is already turning into the bloodiest and most costly battle U.S. forces will endure in either Europe or the Pacific.

  Unlike the coral and jungle of Peleliu, or the remote Iwo Jima with its black volcanic soil, Okinawa is a well-populated island full of farmers. Its citizenry is a mixture of Japanese and Chinese. Many have already committed suicide rather than succumb to the invaders. The verdant fields of okra and eggplant that should be carpeting the countryside have been trampled by soldiers, cratered by shells, and littered with the detritus of war: spent casings, empty food tins, burning vehicles, and, of course, dead bodies.

  Allied forces establish a beachhead on Okinawa, April 13, 1945. Vehicles and supplies are offloaded onto the beach as battleships, cruisers, and destroyers wait offshore. [National Archives]

  The rich clay soil is now mud thanks to monsoon rains. For the first time in many months, the Japanese seem to have an endless supply of ammunition and the big guns to fire it. Poncho-wearing American fighting men cower in their flooded foxholes or attack in the slop, their minds and bodies bombarded by the sound of ceaseless shelling.

  “All movements,” Private Sledge will write, “were physically exhausting and utterly exasperating because of the mud” and “the ever present danger of shells even far behind the lines.”

  Sledge will note ruefully, “We tried to wisecrack and joke from time to time, but that always faded away as we grew more weary.”

  As the rain continues to pour down on Okinawa, the rest of the world waits. Pockets of war still exist in places like Borneo and China, but Okinawa is the linchpin of the final American campaign against Japan. The last great battle of World War II cannot begin until this contest is settled. In the end, five thousand of the American dead in the Battle of Okinawa are sailors killed by kamikazes. Thousands more Americans will be pulled off the line with shell shock from the prolonged Japanese artillery attacks. Japan’s Okinawa casualties will number more than a hundred thousand dead soldiers.

  CHAPTER 12

  MOSCOW, SOVIET UNION

  May 8, 1945

  IN MOSCOW, SOVIET LEADER Joseph Stalin is watching the Okinawa battle carefully. He is also making plans to transport a million men across the width of the Soviet Union once the winter snows melt. Now that the war with Nazi Germany has ended, Stalin is free to attack Japanese-held Manchuria in northern China. As American General George S. Patton has warned U.S. leaders, the Soviet dictator is America’s next great enemy. He is proving this by his ruthless stranglehold on the nations of Eastern Europe now occupied by Soviet forces. Stalin actually wants the war between America and Japan to drag on as long as possible, giving him more time to move his troops from Europe to Asia. It is becoming clear that as long as Soviet aggression remains unchecked, Stalin will expand his empire as he pleases.

  CHAPTER 13

  THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON, D.C.

  May 11, 1945

  IN WASHINGTON, PRESIDENT TRUMAN is keeping a close eye on Stalin. Unlike FDR, Truman does not trust the Soviet leader. On May 11, Truman sharply curtails the U.S. lend-lease program with the Soviets. Their reliance on American trucks and other matériel of war, which has been in effect throughout World War II, will soon come to an end. Though the United States and the Soviet Union still consider themselves allies, Harry Truman has given the first indication that America will not tolerate Stalin’s brutal global ambition.

  CHAPTER 14

  MANILA, PHILIPPINES

  GENERAL DOUGLAS MACARTHUR does not know much about the A-bomb. In Manila, which he has not left since his wife and son arrived, the general is eagerly planning the invasion of Japan. In Washington, Admiral Ernest King, chief of staff of the U.S. Navy, and General Hap Arnold, commander of the U.S. Army Air Forces, oppose an invasion, convinced that control of the sea and skies will eventually strangle the Japanese economically, making the massive loss of American life unnecessary. It is
estimated that five million American soldiers, sailors, and marines will be needed, as well as one million British troops. Casualties on both sides are projected to be astronomical.

  MacArthur disagrees with the navy and air force leaders. He believes that an island blockade will not result in unconditional surrender. He rejects the conventional notion that the Japanese are not strong enough to put up anything more than a thin defense of their homeland; they still have four million soldiers in uniform and thousands of planes hidden throughout Japan for the specific task of carrying out kamikaze bombing.

  MacArthur believes his command of the largest amphibious landing in history will be successful. He sees glory. Others see death.

  On May 11, 1945, two kamikaze planes hit the aircraft carrier USS Bunker Hill in the waters off the Japanese island of Kyushu; 372 crewmen died and 264 were injured. [National Archives]

  CHAPTER 15

  IMPERIAL PALACE TOKYO, JAPAN

  STILL LIVING INSIDE HIS palace in Tokyo, Emperor Hirohito ponders whether or not to move to a secret mountain fortress that has been prepared for his safety.

  Japan’s cities are in ruins. Hundreds of thousands are homeless. Hirohito’s Imperial Navy has been almost destroyed. The nation is starving. There is growing resentment among famished civilians over the preferential treatment given to the Japanese military, particularly in terms of food distribution. Also, the emperor has known for two months that Russia wants to “secure a voice in the future of Asia”—a diplomat’s wording for an impending invasion.