The Day the World Went Nuclear Read online

  But surrender is still not an option for Hirohito.

  Instead, he clings to the belief that his military leaders will be able to fight off an invasion of the homeland. New airplanes are being built. Twenty-nine new army divisions are being formed. Tanks and artillery are being stockpiled for the crucial battle.

  Hirohito, on the white horse, returns after reviewing his troops, 1937. The Imperial Palace is behind the wall. [Mary Evans Picture Library]

  The Japanese have been preparing defenses and massing troops on Kyushu since early in 1945. An estimated 300,000 troops are gathered around the beachheads in anticipation of the American invasion. Despite heavy aerial bombardment, Japan’s factories, staffed by Japanese laborers and Allied POWs, are still functioning and capable of building new weapons of war.

  Japan has not capitulated to another nation in more than two thousand years.

  Emperor Hirohito has the power to change all that.

  He refuses.

  Hirohito’s nation is certainly defeated. The emperor’s subjects are bleeding and destitute; their land is aflame. But Hirohito is not even contemplating surrender to the hated Americans.

  However, unbeknownst to the emperor, a force more powerful than any he has ever experienced is about to be unleashed.

  “If we hold out long enough in this war,” Hirohito believes, “then we may be able to win.”

  CHAPTER 16

  OKINAWA ISLAND, JAPAN

  June 23, 1945

  THE BATTLE OF OKINAWA is finally won. Due to its proximity to Japan, the island now becomes the staging point for the invasion.

  Fighting has raged for eighty-two days. More than twelve thousand Americans are dead or missing. Of the nearly two hundred thousand Americans who came ashore, one-third have been either killed or wounded.

  CHAPTER 17

  JORNADA DEL MUERTO DESERT NEW MEXICO

  July 16, 1945 • 1:00 A.M.

  ROBERT OPPENHEIMER PACES, a mug of coffee in one hand and a hand-rolled cigarette in the other. Sunday night has become Monday morning. His face is lined, his every movement betraying extreme tension. A hard rain hammers the tin roof above him. Outside this mess hall, lightning crackles and thirty-mile-per-hour winds lash the former cattle ranch now known simply as base camp.

  In less than three hours, the A-bomb test, code named Trinity, is due to take place ten miles from where Oppenheimer now fidgets. Five armed guards stand watch at the base of the tower containing Oppenheimer’s precious gadget, making sure that absolutely no one touches or meddles with the explosive. These soldiers will remain there until thirty minutes before the detonation, then get into jeeps and drive away as quickly as possible. Since a weapon like this has never been exploded before, not even a great scientific mind like Oppenheimer knows how big or far-ranging the blast will be.

  But there can be no test unless this storm ends. It is anticipated that the bomb will release deadly radioactive particles into the air. Scientists have long known that these waste products of a nuclear reaction are hazardous to human life. High winds would carry them across the desert to urban areas, and rain would intensify the damage by saturating the ground with radioactive fallout. Rough weather would also prohibit observation aircraft from taking off. And on a very practical level, rain might ruin the electrical connections necessary for the bomb’s detonation.

  Robert Oppenheimer (second from left) oversees the final assembly of the gadget inside a tent at the base of the Trinity tower. [Los Alamos National Laboratory]

  The gadget is readied for lifting to the top of the tower. [Los Alamos National Laboratory]

  Throughout the night, Oppenheimer has tried to calm himself. He ignored suggestions that he go to his tent and sleep, instead remaining in the dining hall. At first, he attempted to sit still and read a book of poetry, but that has proven impossible. Cigarettes and black coffee are his only solace right now.

  Robert Oppenheimer has the power to create a literal hell on earth. But he has no authority over the heavens. This annoys him greatly.

  General Groves appears out of the gale. The Manhattan Project’s chief executive is adamantly opposed to a postponement, despite the weather. The general’s motives are less scientific than political: right now, halfway around the world in a small town outside Berlin known as Potsdam, President Harry Truman is attending a summit with Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. A successful, on-time detonation of the A-bomb at 4:00 A.M. will be immediately relayed to Truman, who can then share the news about the dawn of the nuclear era over lunch with his fellow world leaders. To the seventy-year-old Churchill, this will come as a triumph, for he has known about the Manhattan Project all along.

  For Stalin, however, the news is meant to shock and deter. America’s possession of an atomic bomb will be a vivid warning to the Soviet leader that he will be the weaker partner in any future U.S.-Soviet negotiations.

  The 4:00 A.M. detonation time has been chosen because secrecy is still vital to the success of the Manhattan Project. Potential observers will be sleeping as white light turns the pitch-black desert night into sudden daytime, if only for an instant.

  Groves, who is just as nervous as Oppenheimer, has managed only a few hours of fitful sleep in his own nearby tent. He is now up for the night.

  The two men confer. They agree that passing the hours in the base camp dining hall is no way to prepare for the testing of a nuclear bomb. So they step into the darkness and drive four miles closer to the bomb site. At the half-buried command post known as South Shelter, a small group of technicians and scientists vital to the detonation make last-minute adjustments. There Oppenheimer and Groves reluctantly agree to postpone the Trinity explosion.

  But only by an hour.

  * * *

  But the Trinity detonation in New Mexico has to be postponed once again. The blast is now scheduled for 5:30 A.M. With the summer storm passing, to the immense relief of Oppenheimer and Groves, it appears there will be no further delays. Groves leaves Oppenheimer at the control dugout, preferring to drive back to the relative safety of base camp. If the blast is as enormous as some fear, there is no telling whether the control dugout will be consumed or not.

  At precisely 5:00 A.M., ground zero for Trinity is evacuated. The five soldiers standing guard at the base of the one-hundred-foot tower containing the bomb quickly hustle to their jeeps and race southwest toward base camp. They must drive aggressively over the rough desert roads if they are to arrive before the detonation. In the event of engine trouble, the guards will have a thirty-minute head start on the explosion. “I was sure that they would not walk slowly,” General Groves will later write with wry understatement.

  In the event that the guards are still in the open when the A-bomb goes off, they have been told to lie facedown on the ground with their feet toward the explosion. They are not to open their eyes or look at the light in any way, for it has been predicted that the flash will be so brilliant as to blind them.

  By 5:05 A.M.—zero minus twenty-five minutes until the detonation—the storm’s violent winds have died down to a calm breeze. A light drizzle speckles the desert sand. The cloud cover is still too thick to see many stars, which will certainly hamper the observation planes.

  Oppenheimer leaves the safety of the control dugout’s thick concrete walls. He steps into the fragrant predawn air and stands alone. It has been agreed that base camp is the only place where observers can stand in the open to witness the blast, but Oppenheimer plans to ignore that mandate.

  There are two other bunkers just like the control dugout, each situated six miles from the blast site. Both have been covered with dirt to absorb the blast force. Teams of scientists stand ready in these bunkers to analyze the amount of energy released by the explosion and determine whether the bomb detonates in a symmetrical manner.

  That is, if the A-bomb explodes at all.

  A few days ago, a practice test of the electronic circuitry to spark the detonation failed mis
erably. Oppenheimer’s engineers have promised him there will be no problem this morning. Nevertheless, Oppenheimer has made a friendly wager of ten dollars with a physical chemistry engineer, betting that Trinity will fail to detonate.

  Before engineers were sure the gadget would explode, they planned to put it into this 214-ton shell to contain any plutonium fallout. When they were more confident, they left “Jumbo” hanging 800 yards from Ground Zero. It survived the atomic explosion, although its tower collapsed. [Los Alamos National Laboratory]

  The desert air smells of sagebrush. Morning’s first rays of sunshine are lighting the horizon. Trinity’s test site here in the Jornada del Muerto is a flat patch of desert eighteen by twenty-four miles wide. Oppenheimer stares out across that broad expanse, his stomach aching from anxiety and too many cups of coffee. In the distance, he can clearly see the brightly lit tower containing his gadget. He cannot see the bomb itself, but he knows that it is a sphere ten feet across, wrapped in a tight coil of wiring. Oppenheimer himself oversaw the moment twelve hours ago when the bomb was hoisted from ground level to the top of the tower.

  Inside the control dugout, Oppenheimer’s scientists are behaving in an almost giddy fashion, some slathering on sunscreen in anticipation of the explosion’s bright light, others laying down bets as to whether or not the bomb will light the clouds on fire.

  Yet no one, not even Robert Oppenheimer, knows exactly what will happen.

  An announcement over a nearby loudspeaker breaks the desert silence: “Zero minus twenty minutes.”

  Robert Oppenheimer gazes at his bomb and waits.

  CHAPTER 18

  JORNADA DEL MUERTO DESERT NEW MEXICO

  July 16, 1945 • 5:25 A.M.

  AT BASE CAMP, GENERAL Leslie Groves lies in one of the small trenches bulldozed into the earth for blast protection. The time is zero minus five minutes—or 5:25 A.M. All around him, scientists press their faces into the earth. Each clutches a small piece of Lincoln Super Visibility welder’s glass, specially designed to protect the eyes from extremely bright light. At the sound of the blast they will be allowed to roll over, sit up, and witness the world’s first atomic bomb explosion. Groves, ever nervous, finds the quiet to be intense. “I thought only of what I would do if, when the countdown got to zero, nothing happened,” he later admits.

  Four miles closer to the impending blast, Robert Oppenheimer feels time slow down. The sensation is torturous. So much rides on the events of these next five minutes. “Lord,” he says aloud, having temporarily stepped back into the control room, “these affairs are hard on the heart.”

  Brigadier General Thomas F. Farrell, Groves’s deputy, cannot help but notice Oppenheimer’s anguish. “Dr. Oppenheimer, on whom had rested a very heavy burden, grew tenser as the last seconds ticked off. He could barely breathe. He held on to a post to steady himself. For the last few seconds he stared directly ahead.”

  With two minutes to go, a flare is launched to inform one and all that the explosion is near. Oppenheimer once again steps outside the control bunker and lies facedown on the ground.

  At thirty seconds to detonation, the console in the control dugout lights up bright red as electrical impulses begin flooding into the bomb. There is still a small chance that the explosion might be scrubbed, but only in the event of electrical difficulties.

  At ten seconds, a loud gong echoes through the control dugout as a last reminder for every man to steel himself for what is about to happen.

  Chicago physicist Sam Allison, the voice of the control dugout, counts down the final seconds. “Three … two … one … NOW!”

  A tremendous light fills the sky, a brightness so intense that those who see it will talk about it for the rest of their lives. “The light of the first flash penetrated and came up from the ground through one’s lids,” one observer will remember. “When one first looked up, one saw the fireball, and then almost immediately afterwards, the unearthly hovering cloud.”

  That cloud is purple, radiating heat that can be felt miles away. “It was like opening a hot oven with the sun coming out like a sunrise,” in the words of another observer at base camp.

  One hundred seconds later, an enormous boom erupts as a shock wave follows the explosion: “About like the crack of a five-inch anti-aircraft gun at a hundred yards,” in the eyes of a watching ballistics expert. The explosion is so powerful that more than 180 miles away, in Silver City, New Mexico, two large plate-glass windows shatter.

  At the control dugout, the blast bowls over George Kistiakowsky, the man with whom Oppenheimer made a bet that the bomb would not detonate.

  “You owe me ten dollars,” he screams to Oppenheimer, who is suddenly lighthearted and relaxed.

  “I’ll never forget his walk,” one scientist will remember of Oppenheimer after the blast. “His walk was like … this kind of strut.

  “He had done it.”

  Oppenheimer’s euphoria and relief cannot be measured. He is cognizant of the A-bomb’s wider implications. He is already haunted by what he saw today, calling it “terrifying,” but at the same time recognizes the good in what he has accomplished.

  As he later tells a reporter, “Lots of boys not grown up yet will owe their life to it.”

  Robert Oppenheimer and General Leslie Groves look at the remains of the tower. [Los Alamos National Laboratory]

  CHAPTER 19

  HUNTER’S POINT SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

  July 16, 1945

  AT THE SAME TIME Oppenheimer’s bomb explodes in New Mexico, the men of the USS Indianapolis twelve hundred miles west in San Francisco are buzzing about the top secret cargo that has been lifted aboard before dawn. At 4:00 A.M., two army trucks pulled up to the dock; one contained a fifteen-foot crate and the other a small tube.

  Boatswain’s mate Louie DeBernardi directs the work party that now places straps around the crate so that the crane can lift it on board. Meanwhile, two sailors hoist the small cylinder onto their shoulders by running a crowbar through a small eyelet on the tube and walk the cylinder onto the Indianapolis.

  Curious crewmen gossip about what might be coming aboard. Just a few days ago, a shipment of 2,500 life jackets was loaded onto the ship—more than twice the number needed for the 1,200-man crew. While the men saw that as a routine military screw-up, this new cargo is obviously of a much more serious nature.

  Commander A. F. Birch numbers Little Boy as unit L-11 before it leaves the building where it was assembled. [National Archives]

  The crate is secured onto the hangar deck in the middle of the Indianapolis. The cylinder is brought into an empty officer’s cabin, where it is lowered onto hinged metal straps that have been welded to the floor. The hinges are closed and padlocked.

  “I didn’t think we were going to use biological warfare in this war,” remarks Captain Charles McVay III, who has been told nothing about the contents of either package. His orders are to transport the material with all due haste across the Pacific. The Indianapolis was specially chosen for her size and speed—as a heavy cruiser, she is large enough to carry the heavy package, but also much faster than vessels of greater tonnage. Yet McVay has been given very specific instructions: No one must go near them except the two Manhattan Project scientists on board and the marine guards who will stand watch day and night. If the ship should sink, these packages should be placed in a lifeboat and saved at all costs. If the Indianapolis comes under attack and is in the unlikely danger of being boarded by the enemy, McVay is to jettison everything overboard to keep it out of Japanese hands.

  McVay knows better than to ask questions.

  Four hours later, at 8:00 A.M., the Indianapolis sails from her berth at Hunter’s Point, the naval shipyard in San Francisco. By 8:36 A.M., she passes beneath the Golden Gate Bridge and then beside the Marin Headlands, out to sea. Her first stop is Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, where she will deposit the few passengers now catching a lift to the war zone.

  After that, the Indianapolis will return to sea.

>   Next stop: Tinian Island.

  Part Two

  “Destination: Hiroshima”

  CHAPTER 20

  GROUND ZERO JORNADA DEL MUERTO DESERT NEW MEXICO

  July 16, 1945

  BECAUSE OF THE SUCCESSFUL Trinity test, scientists now believe that the A-bomb material being shipped across the Pacific will produce the explosive force of nineteen thousand tons of dynamite. In addition to the atomic bomb tested in New Mexico, American scientists have built two others. One of them, called Little Boy, is now aboard the Indianapolis; the plutonium core of the other is just days away from being flown to the island of Tinian. Neither bomb is yet armed.

  Robert Oppenheimer and his crew have discovered that a great fireball will shoot to a height of over forty thousand feet, sucking up clouds of dust as it ascends. Even as the giant flames faded, northward winds in New Mexico carried radioactive dust across the desert. Alarmingly, the herds of cattle grazing just beyond the blast zone will soon suffer the loss of their hair, indicating that radiation levels around the site are a threat to human life.

  Trinitite (also referred to as Atomsite or Alamogordo glass) is thought to have been formed when soil vaporized by the atomic blast rained down as molten droplets and solidified. [National Archives]

  Back at ground zero, the steel tower on which the gadget was perched is gone, completely vaporized. There is not much of a crater; instead, the blast has traveled up and out from the ground. For a quarter-mile around the blast site, the earth is scorched black. The extreme heat has melted the sand into green glass, a material soon to be known as Trinitite.