The Day the World Went Nuclear Page 5
Of course, such an enormous explosion and burst of light did not go unnoticed. Answering inquiries, the military responds that an ammunition dump at Alamogordo Army Air Field had caught fire.
However, those who can tell the difference between a simple explosion and an earthshaking bang of epic proportions find this difficult to believe. In New Mexico and Texas, newspapers immediately publish stories speculating about what happened. As far away as California, radio broadcasts wonder about the strange events in the New Mexico desert. News spreads up the coast to the state of Washington, where employees at the Hanford Engineer Works quickly deduce that an A-bomb has been detonated. Like Los Alamos, Hanford is a top secret Manhattan Project facility, charged with manufacturing plutonium, a vital ingredient in a nuclear explosion.
CHAPTER 21
BERLIN, GERMANY
July 16, 1945 • 4:00 P.M.
HARRY TRUMAN LOOKS OUT over a most amazing sight: the entire American Second Armored Division standing in formation, awaiting his review. Soldiers, half-tracks, and battle-tested Sherman tanks line the German autobahn just outside Berlin, the olive-drab uniforms of American soldiers stretching as far as the eye can see.
He now plans to spend the afternoon exploring bombed-out Berlin. But first, the president will enjoy the great privilege of reviewing his conquering army. An old soldier himself, Truman clambers out of his presidential limousine and stands atop a half-track where the crowd can see him.
As the vehicle drives slowly past the troops, Truman is overwhelmed at this display of power. The Second is said to be the largest armored division on earth, a force that has seen action in North Africa, Sicily, Normandy, and the Battle of the Bulge. It was the first American unit to enter Berlin after the German surrender two months ago.
Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, U.S. President Harry S. Truman, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill at the Potsdam conference, July 17, 1945. [National Archives]
Yet as President Harry Truman looks down into the faces of these brave men—many of them just a year out of high school—he knows that the Second Armored’s war may not be over. Already, one million men comprising thirty divisions are making their way around the world to fight the Japanese. It might be only a matter of weeks until the men of the Second board troop ships heading for the Pacific.
That is, unless Harry Truman can find another way to persuade the Japanese to accept unconditional surrender.
* * *
At almost 8:00 P.M., more than six hours after the Trinity detonation, Secretary of War Henry Stimson hands Truman a coded telegram announcing its success. “Operated on this morning. Diagnosis not yet complete but results seem satisfactory and already exceed expectations.”
Harry Truman’s reaction to the news is guarded, pending specifics about the breadth of the blast. In truth, the president is a mere observer of whatever comes next with the A-bomb. He came to the party late, years after FDR foresaw the potential for a nuclear weapon and approved the Manhattan Project. A former World War I artillery officer, Truman sees the bomb as a weapon of war, one with far greater killing capacity than a tank or a missile, but a conventional weapon nonetheless. While he realizes the war’s equation has changed in his favor, he does not yet grasp that Trinity is not just a bomb test but also a split-second explosion that has changed the future of mankind. From this day forward, any nation, no matter how small, in possession of a nuclear device can unleash the bowels of hell any time it wishes.
As for sharing the news about Trinity with Joseph Stalin, wherever he might be, that can wait.
CHAPTER 22
KURE, JAPAN
July 16, 1945
THIS PORT CITY IS IN RUINS. Three weeks ago, 162 American B-29 bombers laid siege to Kure, sinking two submarines still under construction and heavily damaging another. Another bombing followed two weeks ago.
Now, American B-29s have begun dropping mines across the entrance to Japan’s great ports, closing every harbor on the Pacific and a great number on the Sea of Japan. The mine campaign will effectively isolate the nation from the rest of the world.
It is not just the heavy bombers of the Army Air Forces that are punishing Japan. Beginning six days ago, on July 10, the U.S. Navy launched a steady stream of aerial attacks by aircraft-carrier–based planes. Naval aviators are now flying hundreds of sorties a day over the Japanese mainland, destroying the nation’s shipping, railways, and limited aerial defenses. Unlike the behemoth silver B-29s that drop their payload from thousands of feet in the air, many of these planes fly so low that the Japanese people actually duck as the fighter-bombers thunder overhead. Often they can clearly see the pilots’ faces.
This illustration of Okinawa, the “Key to Japan,” whose capital, Naha, had just been captured by the Americans, was published in the Illustrated London News on May 26, 1945. [Mary Evans Picture Library]
B-29s drop incendiary bombs on Japan. As many as one thousand planes were in the air when the Allies bombed Tokyo. [Mary Evans Picture Library]
American power is slowly crushing Japan’s national morale. A cruel blow came just two days ago: eight ferries carrying coal from the island of Hokkaido to Honshu were sunk, with great loss of life. This leaves Japan with few large vessels to transport coal from the mines of Hokkaido to the Japanese factories that rely on it for power to run their machinery. Without factories, there can be no bombs, guns, planes, or tanks to fuel the Japanese war effort.
Yet even if the factories could find another energy source, production is all but finished. Industrial leaders are now informing Japan’s military leaders that they can produce weaponry “for just a few days more” for lack of raw material.
The psychological toll on the Japanese people is also a liability, yet they represent the nation’s last chance for a proper defense of the homeland. Hungry, homeless, and increasingly humiliated, the populace is now being ordered to adopt the suicidal Ketsu-Go strategy—that is, all Japanese men, women, and children will fight to the death.
For some Japanese soldiers in the distant battlefields of Asia, it is too late for Ketsu-Go. They see for themselves that the tide of war has turned. For the first time ever, many Japanese have begun to surrender—mainly because their weapons have been destroyed.
“From May onwards prisoners in a terrible state came in daily, many of them armed with nothing more dangerous than bamboo spears, and trembling with a mixture of malaria and humiliation,” one British soldier in Burma will report.
The Japanese war effort is almost on life support.
Japanese prisoners of war are searched by American soldiers. This photo was likely taken in the Philippines. [Library of Congress]
CHAPTER 23
POTSDAM, GERMANY
July 25, 1945 • Late evening
PRESIDENT HARRY TRUMAN IS HOMESICK. On the road for almost two weeks, he has maintained his normal routine of rising early and enjoying a breakfast of oatmeal, orange juice, toast, and milk. Yet he misses his wife, Bess, and the things that make a home a home, like his favorite White House dinner of chicken and dumplings. But right now food is not on Truman’s mind. He is immersed in his journal, penning his notes on the Potsdam conference. The reports of Trinity’s power have disturbed him, allowing the president to see at last that America possesses an unparalleled weapon of war.
“We have discovered the most terrible formula in the history of the world,” Truman writes. “It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era, after Noah and his fabulous Ark.”
The words flow quickly onto the page, but each is chosen with care. For good or bad, Truman knows that history will long judge this journal entry. It was only yesterday that he authorized the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan.
After conferring with his military advisers and with Winston Churchill in Potsdam just before noon on July 24, 1945, Truman has allowed the process to move forward. It was a fairly easy decision, despite the objections of some nuclear scientists at Los Alamos and even General Dwight
Eisenhower, Truman’s top commander in Europe, who believes that Japan is close to surrendering. In the end, Truman came to the conclusion that an invasion would cost too many American lives.
“The final decision of where and when to use the atomic bomb was up to me. Let there be no mistake about it,” Truman will later write, but the truth is that the decision was made long ago by Franklin Roosevelt, who had no qualms whatsoever about the prospect of using the atomic bomb. FDR was so fed up with the death and destruction in Europe and the Pacific that he had little hesitation in authorizing the two-billion-dollar Manhattan Project.
Nonetheless, Truman is the one man in the world with the power to stop the bombing of Japan, and he chooses not to do so. He issues no verbal or written order to announce his decision. Truman does nothing more than get out of the way; what will happen, will happen. It is a rare display of passive behavior by a man so prone to action, but his thinking is clear.
It is late in the night as Truman continues his journal entry in Potsdam: “This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target, not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop this terrible bomb on the old Capitol or the new.”
President Truman’s motorcade drives past units of the Second Armored Division on the autobahn between Potsdam and Berlin, Germany. President Truman is in the area to attend the Potsdam conference. [National Archives]
The last meeting of the Potsdam conference. President Truman, wearing glasses, is on the right side of the photograph; Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, in a white uniform, is at the top. Newly elected British Prime Minister Clement Attlee, who replaced Winston Churchill, sits at the lower left, five chairs over from both Truman and Stalin. [National Archives]
The decision to spare the modern capital of Tokyo and the nearby port of Yokohama, along with the ancient capital of Kyoto, has made it almost inevitable that Hiroshima will be attacked first. The waterfront city of 350,000 has not once been firebombed, making it a prime unscathed target. Many of its residents are Japanese soldiers and marines; the port itself is one of the nation’s largest military supply depots. Truman’s insistence on military targets makes Hiroshima a natural bull’s-eye for the bomb that has just reached the island of Tinian and is being unloaded from the USS Indianapolis at this very moment.
And with Truman’s refusal to destroy Kyoto, the city of Nagasaki is added to the target list in its place.
“The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement asking the Japs to surrender and save lives,” Truman writes. “I’m sure they will not do that, but we will have given them the chance. It is certainly a good thing for the world that Hitler’s crowd or Stalin’s did not discover this atomic bomb. It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful.”
Truman’s concern about Stalin is very real. The Soviet Union’s approach to the shape of the postwar world is to relentlessly demand more control over territories it has seized in Europe. The United States’ position is to oppose Soviet expansion.
The Soviets now have more than one million men on the Manchurian border, poised to attack Japanese occupying forces. The presence of such a large force in China means that the Soviets will soon want a considerable say in the future of Asia. It is a tiresome negotiation, yet Truman has stood up to the Soviets time and again, refusing to allow Stalin to occupy more territory.
The ornate great hall of the Cecilienhof Palace is sweltering. For reasons of decorum, the president will not remove his double-breasted suit coat or even loosen his bow tie. Throughout the afternoon, fifteen leaders and diplomats sit around the ten-foot-wide circular conference table, with Joseph Stalin to Truman’s far right.
This summit marks the first time Truman and Stalin have met in person. Over the course of the negotiations, the president has been uncowed by the Soviet leader, who prefers to wear a military uniform and answers most questions with a simple grunt. This habit amuses Truman, even though he is well aware of Stalin’s barbarity.
Shortly before 5:00 P.M. the meeting ends. At the conclusion of a long afternoon around the bargaining table, Truman rises from his seat and walks five chairs to his right, where Stalin stands to stretch his legs. Casually, so as not to alarm the Soviet leader, Truman quietly informs Stalin that the United States has “a new weapon of unusual destructive force.”
Stalin pauses, then speaks through his interpreter: “I am glad to hear it. I hope you will make good use of it against the Japanese,” the Soviet dictator says—and makes his exit.
Almost immediately, Truman is confronted by Churchill, who is confused. The men can’t believe Stalin is so indifferent.
In fact, Joseph Stalin is panicked. He is a man for whom total power is everything, and the idea that his military might could be diminished is intolerable. Joseph Stalin has murdered millions of his own citizens and has allowed his troops to loot and pillage Germany and Eastern Europe. His goal is to dominate the world. He is terrified that this new weapon will shift the balance of power in favor of the Americans.
After leaving the great hall of Cecilienhof Palace, Stalin quickly dictates a telegram to the scientists at work on Russia’s own nuclear program: “Hurry with the job.”
CHAPTER 24
MANILA CITY HALL MANILA, PHILIPPINES
July 30, 1945 • 3:15 P.M.
THE MOST POWERFUL MAN in the Pacific has no idea that the atomic bomb is operational and that massive destruction is just days away.
At the Potsdam conference, President Truman’s military advisers now know about Trinity, as do Britain’s and the Soviet Union’s top generals.
In Germany, General Dwight Eisenhower, commander of all Allied forces in Europe, was informed of the nuclear weapon’s success over dinner one week ago. “They told me they were going to drop it on the Japanese,” Eisenhower will later state. “I was against it on two counts. First, the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hate to see our country being the first to use such a weapon.”
But General Douglas MacArthur, a man who has served under eight presidents, who has been awarded a Medal of Honor and commands more than one million fighting men, has been told nothing.
Even as his staff continues to prepare for the invasion of Japan, an event Douglas MacArthur believes will result in “a million casualties,” the general lives a life of leisure.
On this sweltering Monday afternoon, a delegation fills his second-floor office at command headquarters. The guests include General Counsel of the Navy H. Struve Hensel and Vice Admiral Ross T. McIntire, who until very recently served as Franklin Roosevelt’s personal physician. Their manner is deferential, befitting the respect due a commander of MacArthur’s stature. While his guests remain seated, the general paces the room and thinks out loud throughout their visit, as is his custom. MacArthur’s top staff, who admire him tremendously, sometimes mimic this behavior to add a little levity to their day.
As the thirty-minute meeting winds to a polite conclusion and the five-man delegation is ushered out the door, MacArthur has a few brief moments to reflect on the shocking news that landed on his desk yesterday: Japanese troops are pouring onto the mainland’s southern island of Kyushu, with “no end in sight.” Instead of the eighty thousand soldiers MacArthur believed would be defending the invasion beaches, he will learn that nine Japanese divisions comprising more than five hundred thousand men are now digging in on the coastline, waiting for the Americans to land. Almost all are stationed at Kyushu’s southern beaches, the site of MacArthur’s invasion, Operation Olympic.
He knows this because American forces captured Japanese codebooks during the battles for Iwo Jima and Okinawa, allowing intelligence units based in Pearl Harbor to read top secret enemy documents.
Operation Magic is the code name for the program that decrypts Japanese messages; the men who decode them call themselves magicians.
This machine deciphered the Japanese “Purple” code used to send messages to diplomats and military leaders in London, Washington, and Berlin. It took the Allies two years to break the code. [National Archives]
MacArthur is troubled. Allied forces now control most of the Pacific, but the Japanese still own much of Asia’s Pacific Rim. Their air force bases in Korea, China, and northern Japan will allow them to launch kamikaze aircraft against an invasion fleet. In addition, the Imperial Japanese Navy’s Twelfth Flotilla, based on Kyushu, has nine hundred hidden planes that will be utilized for suicide flights. Vintage wooden biplanes, invisible to American radar, are also being retrofitted for nighttime suicide attacks.
Young Japanese kamikaze pilots receive a drink at a farewell ceremony before their suicide missions, 1944. [Mary Evans Picture Library]
Just as menacing, employees at the Sasebo Naval Station near Nagasaki are working double shifts to build special suicide boats designed to ram landing craft laden with U.S. soldiers. The Japanese believe they know precisely where American troops will invade, so vast underground caves are being constructed behind the beaches and stocked with food and ammunition. All civilians are being forcibly removed from the southward-facing coastal regions so that barbed wire, artillery batteries, mines, and antitank defenses can be installed and camouflaged.
He realizes that the enemy is “changing the tactical and strategic situation sharply.” No longer will the Japanese utilize the fukkaku strategy employed on Peleliu, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, lying in wait to repel the American attack from hidden defensive bunkers. Now it is clear to MacArthur that they will defend the beaches with even more fury than the Germans showed during the D-Day landing in France. The sands of Kyushu could very well become an American graveyard.