The World War II Chronicles Read online

  At 7:45, the cloud cover broke and someone pointed out an island dead ahead. It was Yakoshima, the rendezvous point. Near it part of the air-sea rescue team was on duty. A Dumbo Catalina patrolled idly. A Super Dumbo B-29 droned in a wide circle. Two submarines cut through the sea.

  Several minutes later Crew 15 silently monitored a coded message. The weather plane at the alternate target, Nagasaki, reported: “Hazy, clearing rapidly, two-tenths cloud coverage, wind 250 degrees at 50 knots.” Sweeney smiled in satisfaction. Earlier he had received similar good news from the primary area around Kokura. The weather over Japan seemed almost perfect. Sweeney moved the B-29 toward the southwest tip of Yakoshima.

  Sergeant Ray Gallagher sat looking out his scanner window. He had been preoccupied and apprehensive during the long journey. He imagined each cloud to be a fighter waiting to strike. He thought of his family in Chicago and tried to connect them with what he was doing on this day. It was impossible. Just a few feet away from him lay a monstrous black weapon which would soon snuff out thousands of lives. Ray Gallagher’s reverie ended as he saw another B-29 coming out of the clouds behind him. At 8:09 A.M. Japanese time, Bock’s Car and The Great Artiste made their rendezvous.

  In the second plane, pilot Fred Bock sat talking to a small, gray-haired man occupying the copilot’s position. William Laurence was a New York Times reporter who was riding on his first combat mission. Laurence’s job was unique. He was aboard to record the greatest story any journalist had ever been permitted to witness. His copy would be read around the world. Less than a month before, Laurence, again uniquely privileged, had stood on the New Mexico desert and watched as the atomic age began. Now he sat in the front end of a B-29 on its way to the heartland of the enemy. As the instrument plane came up to Yakoshima, he and Fred Bock were discussing the writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas and Plato. In front of them, the shape of Number 77, carrying the Fat Man, emerged from the clouds. Laurence left the ordered world of logic to put on a flak suit and survival belt.

  Ralph Curry, the radio operator, and Len Godfrey, the navigator, helped him as he struggled into the cumbersome equipment. Dressed in the paraphernalia of war, Bill Laurence returned to his seat to gaze at the strike ship looming directly ahead of him.

  The two planes began to circle the southwest corner of Yakoshima, while waiting for Major Hopkins’ camera plane to appear. Minutes went by as the B-29’s dallied over the tiny spot of land. Tempers began to flare in Bock’s Car as the crew thought of the gas problem growing more acute with each lost moment.

  Hopkins was actually in the area but at a higher altitude and over another point. Instead of lingering over the southwest portion of Yakoshima, he made a huge circle which encompassed islands to the northeast of the rendezvous area. John Cantlon, copilot in the camera plane, thought visual sighting of the other ships was made once but he could not be sure. At that great height, it was virtually impossible for any of the three planes to see each other unless they made a precise rendezvous.

  In the lead ship, Chuck Sweeney grew increasingly concerned. On board the missing craft were two British scientists, Dr. William Penney and Group Captain Cheshire, acting as observers for His Majesty’s Government. Also, Hopkins had the cameras needed to record the explosion of the Fat Man. Sweeney was in a quandary.

  The Major circled and circled and, after forty minutes, gave up the vigil. He waggled his wings at Fred Bock, who closed in to the right and followed Bock’s Car toward Kyushu where Kokura, the primary target, basked in the summer sun. Nagasaki, the alternate, was enjoying the same pleasant morning.

  The radar scope in Bock’s Car locked onto Kokura before the crew could actually see it. Kermit Beahan, gazing into the rubber eyepiece of the bombsight, waited for the city to appear. The bomb bay doors opened and a sustained humming signal, signifying that the bomb was ready for release, sounded through the ship. Most members of the crew put on their arc welder’s glasses with special Polaroid lenses designed to protect their eyes from the bomb’s glare.

  Beahan’s aiming point was the enormous arsenal which was supplying arms to the Japanese Army. He picked up the city in his sight now and waited for the factory to pass under him. He saw the river that flowed by it, he saw the streets and buildings of Kokura, but the arsenal never came into view. A mixture of industrial haze and smoke from a nearby fire hid the one thing in Kokura that mattered at that moment. Beahan shouted, “No drop.” Sweeney spoke to the crew: “Relax. We’re going around again.”

  The plane wheeled about to approach Kokura from another angle. Abe Spitzer felt increasingly nervous as he thought of the Japanese antiaircraft batteries stationed below, in what he knew was the most heavily defended sector of the Empire. Just to the west were the steel mills of Yawata, a prime target in previous raids. Heavy guns formed a belt around its industrial complex.

  Bock’s Car thundered in again, the bomb bay doors open, the Fat Man poised in the open bay. The humming signal sounded. Fred Ashworth watched the black box which showed that the bomb mechanisms were in order. Again Kermit Beahan’s face was fast to the rubber eyepiece.

  The city flowed beneath. The river next to the arsenal emerged clearly in the sight, but the arsenal remained hidden. No drop. Beahan was following orders to the letter. Since he could not see the one specific building that served as the aiming point, he took no chances.

  As the plane turned once more to come in from still another angle, Ray Gallagher looked down to watch orange mines bobbing in the sea. Jim Van Pelt saw a stadium close to the arsenal and hastened to point it out to Beahan. The stadium was not the aiming point, Beahan said, and therefore he could not sight on it.

  John Kuharek agonized over the fuel supply. The delay at Yakoshima, and now at Kokura, had compounded a dangerous situation. Kuharek knew that Bock’s Car had no chance of getting back to Iwo Jima.

  On the final approach, Spitzer was wishing that they would get the hell out of there and go to Nagasaki. When Ed Buckley spoke to him, Spitzer told him to shut up. He was thinking of the guns around Yawata.

  By now those guns were following Bock’s Car closely, gauging its height and speed. The B-29’s had lingered too long. In Kokura itself more and more people paused momentarily in the streets to watch the planes whose actions were unusual for reconnaissance aircraft. Civilians began to crowd into shelters as the specks in the sky hovered over them.

  As Sweeney brought his B-29 across the target for the third time, Beahan again bent to his task. The humming of the tone signal sounded in his ears as he looked carefully for the arsenal. Jake Beser, watching his frequency band closely, noticed signs of activity on the Japanese fighter-director circuits. Someone was coming up to meet them. Gallagher was thinking to himself, “God, let’s get in and get out of here.”

  Beahan saw the streets and the river glide under his gaze. He never saw the arsenal. It was still shrouded in a smoky haze.

  Pappy Dehart called Sweeney on the intercom. “Major, we’re getting flak. It’s short but the altitude is perfect.” “Roger, Pappy,” Sweeney said. “Major, the flak is coming in closer.” Sweeney answered, “Roger.” Pappy Dehart then said, “Major, this damned flak is right on the tail and coming closer all the time.” Sweeney answered, “Forget it, Pappy. We’re on a bomb run.”

  As Beahan shouted “No drop” once again, Pappy Dehart spoke into the intercom: “Fighters below. Coming up.” John Kuharek told Sweeney, “Fuel getting very low.”

  In the second plane, the Times reporter noticed black puffs mingling with the fleecy cumulus clouds. A novice at war, Laurence did not immediately recognize the signs of flak. At least fifteen shells burst near the two planes before he understood their significance. His eyes fastened on the small black book in which he was writing notes about the mission. Then, suddenly, he went to Sergeant Ralph Curry, the radio operator, and said: “Here, son, take this book. If anything should happen to me, give it to the first American officer you see when you get back.” Over Curry’s reassurances, he add
ed: “If we have to bail out, you’ll probably survive a landing in the ocean better than I can. Be sure and tell the officer that this is the last story Bill Laurence ever wrote.” Curry took the book. Laurence looked out at the puff balls in the sky and cursed loudly at the possibility of missing the greatest news-beat in history.

  In Bock’s Car, Chuck Sweeney made up his mind. After talking with Beahan and Ashworth, he knew that it was foolish to stay over Kokura any longer. Several fighter planes were trying to climb to the great height of the B-29’s while antiaircraft fire came closer by the minute.

  He waggled his wings to Fred Bock and turned away from the city. Abe Spitzer, who had been muttering “How about Nagasaki?” found his prayers answered. Bock’s Car droned away with the Fat Man still secured in its belly, leaving the people on the ground below alive—and annoyed at the two planes that had come to spy on them.

  When the two bombers had left the target area, Bock’s plane momentarily drifted out of Sweeney’s line of vision. Sweeney spoke into his intercom: “Where’s Bock?” Inadvertently, he had thrown the radio command switch open, and his voice carried over a wide area, breaking radio silence. Suddenly the men in both planes were startled to hear Hopkins from the missing camera plane: “Chuck, where the hell are you?” Sweeney chose not to protract the radio violation. Without answering, he closed the command switch. The third plane stayed lost.

  Sweeney had enough problems of his own. Sergeant Kuharek gave a reading on the gasoline supply which caused Sweeney to moan “Jesus!” He announced that he must turn directly over the fighter fields of Kyushu to make a run on Nagasaki. He could not afford the extra fuel it would take to skirt the east coast before crossing west over the mainland.

  Ashworth, in complete agreement with this move, sat before his black box trying to figure ahead to the situation at Nagasaki. What if Bock’s Car ran into trouble there? He had to have ready an alternate plan. The thought of bombing Tokyo flashed quickly through his mind. There had been frequent discussion at Tinian about dropping an atomic bomb on Tokyo, thereby completing the destruction of that city and destroying the Government and the Emperor. He tried to dismiss the thought. Aside from the gas problem, the idea of making such a drastic move without express orders was staggering. The Fat Man rode on toward its secondary target.

  At that moment, one city was reprieved, and another substituted. But to the population of Nagasaki, danger seemed remote. The morning was mild. The city pulsed with a steady hum while 200,000 people worked as usual. Bicycles and military vehicles clogged downtown streets. Children chased dragonflies in the park. There had been an air-raid warning earlier, but at 8:30 A.M., the single American weather plane had passed over, and the city had reverted to a standby status. Despite this, two thousand people still remained in the caves which served as shelters, unaware that others had already gone back to work. Overhead, banks of puffy clouds moved in to momentarily obscure the sun and etch fleeting shadows on the sidewalk.

  Ninety percent of the labor force in the city worked in the Urakami Valley on the northwest side of town. Here, surrounded on both sides by low-lying ridges, the Mitsubishi complex of war plants manufactured torpedoes and small arms for the armed forces of the Empire. On this day, they were operating at full capacity, though scarcity of materials promised to cut production schedules in the coming weeks. The workers in the plants knew the war was going badly, but they kept hoping for the miracle that would save the country from defeat. Plans were already being made to counter the expected American invasion of their island. Civilians were being told that they must fight in the streets and in the hills to defend the homeland. There seemed no other choice.

  One man in Nagasaki that morning was preoccupied with a sobering problem. Just the day before, Prefectural Governor Nagano had met with municipal officials to discuss the startling news from Hiroshima. His guest of honor had been Takejiro Nishioka, publisher of the Minyu, a local paper. Nishioka had come from that doomed city, where he had suffered burns and radiation exposure. He wanted to warn everyone of the awesome effects of the atomic explosion and to suggest countermeasures for the inhabitants of Nagasaki. The city officials had listened attentively as the publisher described the brilliant light and the following blast and heat. Nishioka’s recommendations included placing the people in mass shelters at the approach of any single plane. Failing that, he had stressed that everyone should fall to the ground or behind any kind of cover if the white light burst over them.

  Governor Nagano, troubled deeply by the publisher’s recital of the facts of Hiroshima, planned a major indoctrination program for his constituents in the next week. This morning he initiated the necessary paper work for the project.

  Over on the right-hand side of the Urakami Valley, hundreds of people had massed in the huge church on the bluff. Nagasaki was the center of Catholicism in Japan. Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception was the largest Roman Catholic cathedral in the Far East. It had been built by parishioners as a memorial to the centuries-old quest for religious freedom by converts to the teachings of Saint Francis Xavier, who visited the area in 1549. Persecuted for three centuries by the rulers of Japan, the Catholics had been left in peace after the American, Matthew Perry, forced the reigning Shogun to recognize their right to freedom of worship in 1853. On this Thursday morning they had come to make confessions in preparation for the Feast Day of the Assumption.

  At the Nagasaki Medical College, Dr. Shirabe, a surgeon, finished a lecture to his students. In a second-floor room, Dr. Tsuneo tried to forget the horror of the destruction at Hiroshima, which he had witnessed at first hand. Tsuneo had miraculously escaped serious injury in the holocaust and had hurried back to his school to recuperate.

  At the Urakami railroad station, the baggage master prepared to go out to the platform to unload an incoming train. His assistant, Aiko Tagawa, a girl of twenty, worked inside the cavernous room, sorting various articles. The clock on the wall registered 10:55 A.M.

  North of the station, a man stood at the base of a water tower at the Mitsubishi factory and gazed through a pair of binoculars toward the east. As the sound of loud motors broke into the lazy morning, air-raid sirens began to shrill. The man with the binoculars picked up a plane heading toward Nagasaki.

  Bock’s Car was in serious trouble. The B-29 was facing a deteriorating fuel situation and might not be able to reach even Okinawa after dropping over Nagasaki. There was barely enough gas for one pass over the city before heading for safety. Any further delay would mean crash landing in Japan or dumping the atomic bomb into the ocean.

  Sweeney told Spitzer to radio the air-sea rescue team off southern Kyushu to alert it to the possibility of ditching. Spitzer called out several times, but was unable to get an answer. Crew 15 was very tense by now. The strain of flying over the Japanese islands for so long was wearing down their nerves. So was the awesome weapon that continued to lie in the belly of the plane. The mission was a nightmare, a terrible joke being played on them. First the reserve gas problem, then the missed rendezvous, then the haze at Kokura. Nothing had gone right.

  The nightmare intensified as the plane came near Nagasaki. The two-tenths cloud cover reported by the weather plane at 7:48 A.M. had changed by now to an apparent nine-tenths. In the past three hours a front had moved in across the East China Sea and nearly blanketed the city.

  Sweeney called for Ashworth and came right to the point: “We have enough gas for one pass over Nagasaki. Just one pass. Otherwise we won’t make it to Okinawa. How about dropping it by radar?”

  It was a question Ashworth had been dreading. He was under explicit orders from Washington not to unleash the bomb unless the bombardier could actually see the target through the cross hairs. Because of that directive, Kermit Beahan had three times refrained from dropping the Fat Man over Kokura. Now Chuck Sweeney was mentioning the unmentionable.

  Ashworth hesitated, then said firmly, “No.”

  Sweeney kept talking. “I’ll guarantee we come within a thousa
nd feet of the target, and that’s better than dropping it in the ocean. I’m sure the radar will work right.”

  Hearing this, navigator Van Pelt shuddered. It would be his responsibility to bring the bomb over the aiming point by radar, and he did not share Sweeney’s confidence.

  Ashworth knew that his would be the final decision. If he vetoed Sweeney’s suggestion, the Fat Man would probably have to be jettisoned in the ocean. Tokyo was officially out of bounds, there was no other worthwhile target within range, and he had no right to drop it on any other center of population. One city, Niigata, had originally been on the approved list of target cities, but had since been removed because it was too far from Tinian. And it was now too far from Bock’s Car to be used as a dubious alternate.

  Ashworth said, “Chuck, let me think about it for a moment.” He walked back to his position and made a last analysis of the dilemma. To dump the bomb into the ocean would be a waste of the entire Manhattan Project effort. To attempt to bring the bomb all the way to Okinawa could result in disaster, since its weight increased fuel consumption. Yet it would be so simple for him to obey his orders to the letter and not take the chance of bombing by radar.

  Ashworth balanced the scales. Knowing he was disobeying orders from above, he returned to Sweeney and said, “Go ahead and drop it by radar, if you can’t do it visually.” In that instant, Nagasaki began to die.

  On Tinian, officials were thoroughly alarmed. No word had come from Sweeney after Kokura. General Tom Farrell went to lunch deeply troubled. When he emerged, a message was handed to him from Hopkins’ wandering camera plane. It read: “Has Number 77 aborted?” General Farrell threw up on the floor.

  Van Pelt and Buckley went to work on the radar. Nagasaki already showed on the scope as a light blue center surrounded by a darker background, with the water and the mountains around the city showing still darker. It was a difficult area to track and pinpoint. They asked Ashworth to verify their reading. He checked the scope and confirmed that it was, in fact, the outline of Nagasaki.