OneManGang
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To fall into the hands of the Japanese during World War II was to enter a world of biblical horrors. One of the first to escape and tell his tale was a Col. William Dyess who survived the Bataan Death March. His story horrified subscribers to The Readers Digest in 1944.
In China the Japanese established a medical experimental command known simply as Unit 431. Unit 431 plumbed depths of depravity that beggar description. Germ-warfare experiments were carried out using entire Chinese villages as subjects. Individual Chinese were dissected ALIVE and conscious. Weapons effects were tested by shooting bullets or shell fragments into living humans then dissecting the wounds as the patient writhed in pain.
On Chichi Jima, captured American airmen were beheaded AND EATEN. Navy flyboy Lt. George H. W. Bush narrowly escaped this fate when he was rescued by an American submarine literally under the guns of the Japanese after being shot down during a raid over that island.
Among many of those who survived such horrors there was no question as to the use of the atomic bomb.
They questioned why it was stopped.
Elsewhere literally millions of young Americans were practicing for the invasion of Japan. There wasn't going to be just one invasion. Three separate operations were scheduled, operation OLYMPIC, the invasion of Kyushu was scheduled for October, 1945 and the follow-up invasion of Honshu on the Tokyo Plain, operation CORONET, finally advance planning was underway for an as-yet unnamed operation against the northern island of Hokkaido should that be necessary.
Operation OLYMPIC would consist of landing by three Marine and six Army divisions. Based on the casualty rate for the recent invasion of Okinawa, casualty estimates ranged as high as 456,000 with some 100,000 killed or mortally wounded. Okinawa is a fraction of the size of Kyushu.
Everyone knew that the Japanese homeland would be a tough nut to crack. Also to be considered were the 5,000 Japanese warplanes available for Kaimkaze attacks against the invasion force. Less than half that number had sunk 38 ships and seriously damaged over three hundred more, killing some 5,000 sailors and wounding about the same number. Oh, and it was about a two-hour flight from Kyushu to Okinawa. The Kamikazes thrown against the OLYMPIC fleet would have a flight time measured in minutes.
President Harry Truman was in Postsdam, Germany meeting with Churchill and Stalin to decide the fate of post-war Europe and plot strategy for the war with Japan, In the background, decisions were reached as to when and how the atomic bomb would be used. There was never any doubt it would be used.
In the aftermath of the bombings and during the Cold War to follow, many would hint that the bomb was used to intimidate the Russians more than to defeat the Japanese. While there were some in the American delegation who had thought that (mainly Jimmy Byrnes), Truman was not one of them, nor were Marshall, Stimson, Churchill or his successor, Clement Atlee. Also some revisionists have seized on a petition drawn up by Leo Szilard urging caution in employing the new weapon. Upon reading the petition, it becomes obvious that Szilard was arguing that the Japanese be warned of the impending use of the bomb, not arguing against its use.
Truman revealed his true feelings in a letter to his wife, "Ill say that well end the war a year sooner now, and think of the kids who wont be killed! Thats the important thing."1
During World War I, Truman had seen front-line combat as an artillery battery commander. He knew wherefrom he spoke.
As to the decision itself, Lt. George Elsey who was in the Office of Naval Intelligence and assigned to the Map Room that traveled with the president and kept him current on military affairs around the world wrote, Truman made no decision because there was no decision to be made. He could no more have stopped it than a train moving down a track Its all well and good to come along later and say the bomb was a horrible thing. The whole ****** war was a horrible thing.2
Speaking later of the decision Truman said, "The final decision of where and when to use the atomic bomb was up to me. I regarded the bomb as a military weapon and never had any doubt that it should be used. The top military advisors to the President recommended its use, and when I asked Churchill he unhesitatingly told me that he favored the use of the atomic bomb if it might aid to end the war."3
On the afternoon of 5 August, a B-29 named Enola Gay had been backed over a pit containing the first operational nuclear weapon, code-named Little Boy.
Little Boy used a different process from the later weapon used at Nagasaki. The nature of U-235 it used was such that if a sufficient amount (about 15 lbs) of it were brought together, an explosion would ensue. A simpler design could be used. In the Little Boy design, two masses of U-235 were separated by a six-foot cannon barrel salvaged from a 5 naval gun. The smaller mass would be fired down the gun tube into the larger mass and a critical mass would form. On both weapons, proximity radars would precisely measure the distance from the ground, and at about 1900 feet the fuses would fire.
At 7:09 am local time the air raid sirens in Hiroshima went off. Overhead the Straight Flush droned along at 32,000 unconcerned and unmolested. The Japanese air force was being preserved for use as kamikazes against the expected American invasion forces and Japanese anti-aircraft guns couldnt accurately shoot that high. It was a bright summer day with scattered clouds. At 7:25 Enola Gay received a coded message from Straight Flush, Advice: bomb primary.
Hiroshima it was.
Hiroshima was a spread-out city centered on five large islands of a river delta. At the apex of one of the central islands is a landmark: the Aioi Bridge. The bridge is notable for its T shape. Bombardier Tom Ferebee, upon seeing it in recon photos proclaimed it The perfect AP (Aiming Point). Ten miles out Ferebee looked through his bombsight and said Okay, Ive got the bridge. 90 seconds from bomb release, Tibbets turned over control of the plane to Ferebee and his bombsight.
At 8:14:17 local time Ferebee tripped a toggle switch sending a tone through the crews headphones indicating 60 seconds to drop. At 8:15:17 Little Boy dropped free.
Pilot Colonel Paul Tibbets immediately put Enola Gay into a 155-degree turn and a 60-degree bank to clear the target area. At 8:16 Hiroshima time, the gun fired, a small mass of U-235 shot down the cannon tube and as the two masses came together, a critical mass formed and released its energy.
Just as the physicists said it would.
A brilliant blue flash filled the planes, and an estimated 75,000 people on the ground simply ceased to exist.
The rest of the mission proceeded normally and Tibbets and the Enola Gay returned to Tinian.
Elsewhere in Hiroshima ten people left their shadows on the Yorozuyo Bridge. Their bodies were vaporized.
Still the military leaders of Japan would not countenance surrender. They directed the Foreign Minister to continue courting the Russians to explore any opportunities for a negotiated settlement. Their meetings were fruitless, Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov was non-committal.
On August 8th another B-29, Bocks Car, was backed over the pit on Tinian and the plutonium bomb, nicknamed Fat Man was winched into the bomb bay. Maj. Chuck Sweeney was tapped to fly this mission.
After takeoff, it was discovered that a fuel pump had failed and 700 gallons of gas were not usable. The mission could have been scrubbed at that point but Sweeney decided to continue on, drop the bomb, and then land on Okinawa. Later, weather planes found the primary target, Kokura, socked in with clouds. Sweeney tried several times to find a hole in the cloud banks but couldnt. Bocks Car proceeded to Nagasaki. Nagasaki was not much better and Sweeney was just about to make a radar-guided run when Bombardier Kermit Beahan spotted a hole in the clouds and found an Aim Point two miles north of the briefed one.
Sixty seconds later, 1890 feet over the Mitsubishi Torpedo Factory (in another irony this factory had produced the modified aerial torpedoes for the Pearl Harbor attack) the radar altimeter on Fat Man signaled the detonators to fire and a brilliant blue flash lit the sky over Nagasaki.
Shortly thereafter, Emperor Hirohito ordered his government to end the war. He took to the radio airwaves to inform the Japanese people. In his message to the Japanese people, the Emperor puts the lie to all those revisionists of late who maintained that the use of the atomic bomb was not the deciding factor in Japans surrender and that it was employed more to cow the Russians than the Japanese. According to Hirohito: the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japans advantage, while the general trends of the world have turned against her interest. Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, it would not only result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but it would also lead to the total extinction of human civilization.5
On 2 September 1945, the representatives of the Empire of Japan signed the documents for unconditional surrender on the deck of the battleship USS Missouri anchored in Tokyo Bay. The ceremony was not without some drama.
MacArthur made a short speech. Then with Gen. Jonathan Wainwright, USA, who had surrendered the Phillipines and British General Sir Arthur Percival, who had surrendered at Singapore, flanking him, directed the Japanese to sign at the places indicated.
Japanese Foreign Minister Shigemitsu had problems figuring out where to sign. MacArthur told his Chief of Staff, Sutherland, show them where to sign. The pugnacious Admiral Bill Halsey chafed at the delay and thought to himself, Sign, damn you! Sign!
By 9:25 all had signed and MacArthur ended the ceremony, Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it always. The proceedings are now closed. The Japanese, as they departed, were given customary honors befitting their positions, a symbolic gesture that they were no longer enemies.
It was over.
To a man, every soldier, sailor, Marine or airman waiting to invade Japan had one thought, "Thank God for the Atomic Bomb."
During one of his interviews with Paul Tibbets, the writer Bob Green asked him if he thought of the people who died at Hiroshima. Tibbets answered for the entire World War II generation. Please try to understand this, Tibbets said. Its not an easy thing to hear but please listen. There is no morality in warfare. You kill children. You kill women. You kill old men. You dont seek them out, but they die. Thats what happens in war.5
Years later, a small boy put it all in perspective, (Lamar) Steiger's own father had been stationed with the Army in California toward the end of World War II, he said, 'They were practicing hitting beaches in California, They were going to be sent to Japan for the land invasion.'
The little boy (Lamar's son Eli) came back from the table, where he had said something to Tibbets.
'What did you tell him?' Steiger said.
'I thanked him for saving Daddy Don's life,' the child said.7
Notes:
1David McCullough, Truman. Simon & Schuster, 2000. pg 440.
2Ibid, pg 442
3Ibid, pg 442
4John Toland, The Rising Sun. Random House, 1970, pg 993.
5 Ibid, pg 1037
6Bob Greene, Duty: A Father, His Son, and the Man Who Won the War. Harper Collins, 2000, pg 20
7Greene, pg 258
Birdsall, Steve, Saga of the Superfortress. New York: Doubleday, 1980.
Bradley, James, Flyboys: A True Story of Courage. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 2003
Feiffer, George, Tennozan: The Battle of Okinawa and the Atomic Bomb. New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1992.
Frank, Richard B., Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire. New York: Random House, 1999.
Greene, Bob, Duty: A Father, His Son, and the Man Who Won the War. New York: William Morrow, 2000.
Groueff, Stephane, Manhattan Project: The Untold Story of the Making of the Atomic Bomb. New York: Bantam Books, 1968.
Jablonski, Edward, Airwar. New York: Doubleday, 1971.
McCullough, David, Truman. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.
Mee, Charles E., Meeting at Potsdam. New York: M. Evans and Co., 1975
Morison, Rear Adm. Samuel Eliot, Victory in the Pacific: History of United States Naval Operation in World War II, Vol. 14 Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1960.
Rhodes, Richard, The Making of the Atomic Bomb. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986.
Tibbets, Paul W., Return of the Enola Gay. Columbus, OH: Mid-Coast Marketing, 1998.
Toland, John, The Rising Sun : The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire 1939-1945. New York: Random House, 1970.
Truman, Harry S., Year of Decisions: Memoirs by Harry S. Truman (Vol. 1). Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1955.
General Douglas MacArthur signs the Instrument of Surrender. (National Archives)
In China the Japanese established a medical experimental command known simply as Unit 431. Unit 431 plumbed depths of depravity that beggar description. Germ-warfare experiments were carried out using entire Chinese villages as subjects. Individual Chinese were dissected ALIVE and conscious. Weapons effects were tested by shooting bullets or shell fragments into living humans then dissecting the wounds as the patient writhed in pain.
On Chichi Jima, captured American airmen were beheaded AND EATEN. Navy flyboy Lt. George H. W. Bush narrowly escaped this fate when he was rescued by an American submarine literally under the guns of the Japanese after being shot down during a raid over that island.
Among many of those who survived such horrors there was no question as to the use of the atomic bomb.
They questioned why it was stopped.
Elsewhere literally millions of young Americans were practicing for the invasion of Japan. There wasn't going to be just one invasion. Three separate operations were scheduled, operation OLYMPIC, the invasion of Kyushu was scheduled for October, 1945 and the follow-up invasion of Honshu on the Tokyo Plain, operation CORONET, finally advance planning was underway for an as-yet unnamed operation against the northern island of Hokkaido should that be necessary.
Operation OLYMPIC would consist of landing by three Marine and six Army divisions. Based on the casualty rate for the recent invasion of Okinawa, casualty estimates ranged as high as 456,000 with some 100,000 killed or mortally wounded. Okinawa is a fraction of the size of Kyushu.
Everyone knew that the Japanese homeland would be a tough nut to crack. Also to be considered were the 5,000 Japanese warplanes available for Kaimkaze attacks against the invasion force. Less than half that number had sunk 38 ships and seriously damaged over three hundred more, killing some 5,000 sailors and wounding about the same number. Oh, and it was about a two-hour flight from Kyushu to Okinawa. The Kamikazes thrown against the OLYMPIC fleet would have a flight time measured in minutes.
President Harry Truman was in Postsdam, Germany meeting with Churchill and Stalin to decide the fate of post-war Europe and plot strategy for the war with Japan, In the background, decisions were reached as to when and how the atomic bomb would be used. There was never any doubt it would be used.
In the aftermath of the bombings and during the Cold War to follow, many would hint that the bomb was used to intimidate the Russians more than to defeat the Japanese. While there were some in the American delegation who had thought that (mainly Jimmy Byrnes), Truman was not one of them, nor were Marshall, Stimson, Churchill or his successor, Clement Atlee. Also some revisionists have seized on a petition drawn up by Leo Szilard urging caution in employing the new weapon. Upon reading the petition, it becomes obvious that Szilard was arguing that the Japanese be warned of the impending use of the bomb, not arguing against its use.
Truman revealed his true feelings in a letter to his wife, "Ill say that well end the war a year sooner now, and think of the kids who wont be killed! Thats the important thing."1
During World War I, Truman had seen front-line combat as an artillery battery commander. He knew wherefrom he spoke.
As to the decision itself, Lt. George Elsey who was in the Office of Naval Intelligence and assigned to the Map Room that traveled with the president and kept him current on military affairs around the world wrote, Truman made no decision because there was no decision to be made. He could no more have stopped it than a train moving down a track Its all well and good to come along later and say the bomb was a horrible thing. The whole ****** war was a horrible thing.2
Speaking later of the decision Truman said, "The final decision of where and when to use the atomic bomb was up to me. I regarded the bomb as a military weapon and never had any doubt that it should be used. The top military advisors to the President recommended its use, and when I asked Churchill he unhesitatingly told me that he favored the use of the atomic bomb if it might aid to end the war."3
On the afternoon of 5 August, a B-29 named Enola Gay had been backed over a pit containing the first operational nuclear weapon, code-named Little Boy.
Little Boy used a different process from the later weapon used at Nagasaki. The nature of U-235 it used was such that if a sufficient amount (about 15 lbs) of it were brought together, an explosion would ensue. A simpler design could be used. In the Little Boy design, two masses of U-235 were separated by a six-foot cannon barrel salvaged from a 5 naval gun. The smaller mass would be fired down the gun tube into the larger mass and a critical mass would form. On both weapons, proximity radars would precisely measure the distance from the ground, and at about 1900 feet the fuses would fire.
At 7:09 am local time the air raid sirens in Hiroshima went off. Overhead the Straight Flush droned along at 32,000 unconcerned and unmolested. The Japanese air force was being preserved for use as kamikazes against the expected American invasion forces and Japanese anti-aircraft guns couldnt accurately shoot that high. It was a bright summer day with scattered clouds. At 7:25 Enola Gay received a coded message from Straight Flush, Advice: bomb primary.
Hiroshima it was.
Hiroshima was a spread-out city centered on five large islands of a river delta. At the apex of one of the central islands is a landmark: the Aioi Bridge. The bridge is notable for its T shape. Bombardier Tom Ferebee, upon seeing it in recon photos proclaimed it The perfect AP (Aiming Point). Ten miles out Ferebee looked through his bombsight and said Okay, Ive got the bridge. 90 seconds from bomb release, Tibbets turned over control of the plane to Ferebee and his bombsight.
At 8:14:17 local time Ferebee tripped a toggle switch sending a tone through the crews headphones indicating 60 seconds to drop. At 8:15:17 Little Boy dropped free.
Pilot Colonel Paul Tibbets immediately put Enola Gay into a 155-degree turn and a 60-degree bank to clear the target area. At 8:16 Hiroshima time, the gun fired, a small mass of U-235 shot down the cannon tube and as the two masses came together, a critical mass formed and released its energy.
Just as the physicists said it would.
A brilliant blue flash filled the planes, and an estimated 75,000 people on the ground simply ceased to exist.
The rest of the mission proceeded normally and Tibbets and the Enola Gay returned to Tinian.
Elsewhere in Hiroshima ten people left their shadows on the Yorozuyo Bridge. Their bodies were vaporized.
Still the military leaders of Japan would not countenance surrender. They directed the Foreign Minister to continue courting the Russians to explore any opportunities for a negotiated settlement. Their meetings were fruitless, Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov was non-committal.
On August 8th another B-29, Bocks Car, was backed over the pit on Tinian and the plutonium bomb, nicknamed Fat Man was winched into the bomb bay. Maj. Chuck Sweeney was tapped to fly this mission.
After takeoff, it was discovered that a fuel pump had failed and 700 gallons of gas were not usable. The mission could have been scrubbed at that point but Sweeney decided to continue on, drop the bomb, and then land on Okinawa. Later, weather planes found the primary target, Kokura, socked in with clouds. Sweeney tried several times to find a hole in the cloud banks but couldnt. Bocks Car proceeded to Nagasaki. Nagasaki was not much better and Sweeney was just about to make a radar-guided run when Bombardier Kermit Beahan spotted a hole in the clouds and found an Aim Point two miles north of the briefed one.
Sixty seconds later, 1890 feet over the Mitsubishi Torpedo Factory (in another irony this factory had produced the modified aerial torpedoes for the Pearl Harbor attack) the radar altimeter on Fat Man signaled the detonators to fire and a brilliant blue flash lit the sky over Nagasaki.
Shortly thereafter, Emperor Hirohito ordered his government to end the war. He took to the radio airwaves to inform the Japanese people. In his message to the Japanese people, the Emperor puts the lie to all those revisionists of late who maintained that the use of the atomic bomb was not the deciding factor in Japans surrender and that it was employed more to cow the Russians than the Japanese. According to Hirohito: the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japans advantage, while the general trends of the world have turned against her interest. Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, it would not only result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but it would also lead to the total extinction of human civilization.5
On 2 September 1945, the representatives of the Empire of Japan signed the documents for unconditional surrender on the deck of the battleship USS Missouri anchored in Tokyo Bay. The ceremony was not without some drama.
MacArthur made a short speech. Then with Gen. Jonathan Wainwright, USA, who had surrendered the Phillipines and British General Sir Arthur Percival, who had surrendered at Singapore, flanking him, directed the Japanese to sign at the places indicated.
Japanese Foreign Minister Shigemitsu had problems figuring out where to sign. MacArthur told his Chief of Staff, Sutherland, show them where to sign. The pugnacious Admiral Bill Halsey chafed at the delay and thought to himself, Sign, damn you! Sign!
By 9:25 all had signed and MacArthur ended the ceremony, Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it always. The proceedings are now closed. The Japanese, as they departed, were given customary honors befitting their positions, a symbolic gesture that they were no longer enemies.
It was over.
To a man, every soldier, sailor, Marine or airman waiting to invade Japan had one thought, "Thank God for the Atomic Bomb."
During one of his interviews with Paul Tibbets, the writer Bob Green asked him if he thought of the people who died at Hiroshima. Tibbets answered for the entire World War II generation. Please try to understand this, Tibbets said. Its not an easy thing to hear but please listen. There is no morality in warfare. You kill children. You kill women. You kill old men. You dont seek them out, but they die. Thats what happens in war.5
Years later, a small boy put it all in perspective, (Lamar) Steiger's own father had been stationed with the Army in California toward the end of World War II, he said, 'They were practicing hitting beaches in California, They were going to be sent to Japan for the land invasion.'
The little boy (Lamar's son Eli) came back from the table, where he had said something to Tibbets.
'What did you tell him?' Steiger said.
'I thanked him for saving Daddy Don's life,' the child said.7
Notes:
1David McCullough, Truman. Simon & Schuster, 2000. pg 440.
2Ibid, pg 442
3Ibid, pg 442
4John Toland, The Rising Sun. Random House, 1970, pg 993.
5 Ibid, pg 1037
6Bob Greene, Duty: A Father, His Son, and the Man Who Won the War. Harper Collins, 2000, pg 20
7Greene, pg 258
Suggested Reading:
Birdsall, Steve, Saga of the Superfortress. New York: Doubleday, 1980.
Bradley, James, Flyboys: A True Story of Courage. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 2003
Feiffer, George, Tennozan: The Battle of Okinawa and the Atomic Bomb. New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1992.
Frank, Richard B., Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire. New York: Random House, 1999.
Greene, Bob, Duty: A Father, His Son, and the Man Who Won the War. New York: William Morrow, 2000.
Groueff, Stephane, Manhattan Project: The Untold Story of the Making of the Atomic Bomb. New York: Bantam Books, 1968.
Jablonski, Edward, Airwar. New York: Doubleday, 1971.
McCullough, David, Truman. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.
Mee, Charles E., Meeting at Potsdam. New York: M. Evans and Co., 1975
Morison, Rear Adm. Samuel Eliot, Victory in the Pacific: History of United States Naval Operation in World War II, Vol. 14 Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1960.
Rhodes, Richard, The Making of the Atomic Bomb. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986.
Tibbets, Paul W., Return of the Enola Gay. Columbus, OH: Mid-Coast Marketing, 1998.
Toland, John, The Rising Sun : The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire 1939-1945. New York: Random House, 1970.
Truman, Harry S., Year of Decisions: Memoirs by Harry S. Truman (Vol. 1). Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1955.
General Douglas MacArthur signs the Instrument of Surrender. (National Archives)
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