The Confession of Many Strangers
from
The Best American Short Plays 1997–1998
place
The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C., August 1995.
[Light up on a chair over on its side. After a beat, we see the PILOT strut proudly onto the stage. He is wearing full military dress with medals including the distinguished service cross.]
PILOT [] My . . . Enola Gay.
[Turns to see spectators in the museum looking at the Enola Gay.]
Glad to see some patriotic folks here. That’s right. I’m the pilot. The one who flew her over Hiroshima. The uniform’s the same, a little tight under the arms, but that’s about all. Come on, stand a little closer. It’s all right to gawk at the Enola. She’s named after my mother. Yah, my mother.
[A beat.]
Quite a smooth nose on her. And slim. Gently curved tail section. Two wings like bosoms.
[A beat.]
It never bothers me that people know Mom’s name and not mine. She did all the work. Raised me. Gave me faith to fly.
[To museum spectator.]
I know it will surprise you, but that historic mission was so ordinary it was almost boring. Except . . . except . . . after the bomb dropped. Then things changed. The Enola took shock waves slamming us from nine miles away. I thought we were hit. It was like a huge giant had slapped us with a two-by-four. All we could do was hold on. I didn’t know if the windows of our pressurized cabin would blow. On top of that, we got an “echo wave” coming off the first blast. We were rocking like there was artillery coming at us from everywhere. For one split second, I thought the atmosphere had exploded. Remember, we didn’t exactly know what to expect. We’d never dropped an A-bomb from a plane—the test bomb at Trinity was dropped from a tower. We were all working in the dark.
[A beat.]
I’ll tell you straight out, when just a few people knew what I did that day, right after I got back, I felt in control. Because I could go and have a beer and talk to each one of those people and tell them how I saved a lot of lives. Now . . . what I did is everybody’s story. People just think and say whatever they want about me. I’m here to give you the truth.
[He turns the chair over and sits on it. He takes a blank sheet of paper out of his pocket and makes an airplane. He sails the paper plane out into the audience.]
I was supposed to be a doctor. But being up next to somebody . . . getting so close you could see their cells . . . that felt kinda disrespectful. I like distance. There’s dignity in seeing the long view. You don’t get the warts. What I do I wanna do at least 10,000 feet up.
[A beat.]
I read somewhere that I supposedly learned to fly when I was five. On the knee of an old farmer who took me up in his homemade crate. Hell, how stupid can you get? Five! I didn’t fly till I was ten.
[To the audience.]
You see, I had just met Earl Ebberly over in Paw Paw, Illinois. Earl had himself an old biplane called Wilma with wooden propellers and an open cockpit. The lift-strut on the Wilma was a headboard from his mother’s bed.
[A beat.]
Earl let me do little jobs for him like picking up oil rags. One day he let me sit in the open cockpit just so I could get the feel of things. Earl saw me smiling and posing like somebody out of Battle Aces, and that’s when he said he had this contract with the Army to test tropical chocolate bars by dropping them over state fairs and racetracks to see how they’d hold up. And he needed somebody to do the dropping while he did the flying. Was I interested?
[A beat.]
Was I interested!
[To the audience.]
Instead of going to school where we were studying “percents,” I left a note for the teacher. “Dear Miss Tidewalker, have gone flying.”
[A beat.]
Flying was pretty primitive in those days. Earl made a flight line on the ground with the twig from a spruce tree. He lined up some flour sacks on two sides for the runway. And then he just picked up that plane by the tail and pulled it along behind him and came right up to where I was standing. And I thought then and there . . . nothing . . . nothing in this whole world could be more grand than . . .
[He drags the chair by the back across the stage.]
. . . walking across a dirt patch in the middle of Illinois pulling your own airplane behind you.
[A beat.]
That first day Earl and me went up, we took off into low, broken cloud layers with a clear blue sky. I could smell gasoline. Oil was lashing back all over us. The air pounded my face, but I just put out my arms
[He does this.]
and let the wind blow them back like I was part of that plane.
[To the audience.]
Each candy bar was attached to a little parachute. I’d lean over real careful and take two handfuls of them candy bars and make a precision aim . . . and I swear they all floated down smooth and straight right on target.
[To EARL.]
Earl, what if you get sick or pass out or something up here. What will I do?
[Speaking as EARL.]
Kid, lean on the stick and pump hard on the rudder pedals. If you don’t have any hands left to drop the candy, do a slow roll all the way over and let them just fall out.
[To EARL.]
Sure, Earl, guess I can do that.
[To the audience.]
We flew over fairs, rodeos, firemen, picnics, and baseball games. Even over a pig-calling contest in Shabbona, Illinois.
[In the airplane dropping candy bars.]
Look at everybody run to get our chocolate bars, Earl. They’re laughing. Pushing and shoving. Screaming. Okay . . . okay . . . more coming. These . . . are going . . . right over the Tilt-a-Whirl.
[He drops more candy bars. To the audience.]
Earl taught me to fly. Course I learned to fly officially when I enlisted and became a second looie in the Army Air Corps.
[A beat.]
I guess everybody remembers where they were when they heard about Pearl Harbor. I was at a party at the Officers Club. A good buddy and his wife invited a single woman friend of theirs to make a foursome. I had dated off and on over the years, but one look at Jenny, and I knew it was serious.
[A beat.]
I was pretty cocky then. We were out on the dance floor. Sammy Kaye was playing something smooth but with a swing. “Why Don’t We Do This More Often.”
[He does the two-step and sings. Then to JENNY.]
Courting a girl is like being on a runway—ready for flight.
[He does a little motion with his right hands to twirl her around as he sings. Then:]
First, you’re clear for takeoff with a flower.
[He gives JENNY a flower. To JENNY.]
Next . . . dinner and dancing, honey. That will taxi us out. One kiss. Gets us up 5,000 feet. A little lover’s quarrel. That brings on a stall. Hug and make up, baby. Engagement ring. Landed.
[He takes her into a large dip. Coming up from the dip. To the audience.]
Jenny just went back to the table and kind of moved closer to my buddy’s wife and got real quiet. Being so young and innocent, I figured she was awed by it all. She asked to go home early, and I took her back. I could feel the strong glare of the porch light her parents left on.
[To JENNY.]
Jenny, I’m a man who wants to know where he’s at all the time. What’s my altitude?
[To the audience.]
And she said: “Check your attitude not your altitude.” She went in, slammed the door shut, and snapped off the porch light.
[A beat.]
It was like being in thunderheads that you can’t fly around or above. I walked back slowly to the car. I don’t know why I turned on the radio. Maybe I needed to hear something besides my own heart pounding. Suddenly, H. V. Kaltenborn’s voice was announcing that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.
[A beat.]
My God. We’re at war!
[To JENNY. He pounds on the seat of the chair.]
Jenny! You got to come out! Right now! We’re at war. The Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor and they’re headed straight for us. I have to take care of you, honey. I have to take care of your folks. And mine. And all of America.
[To the audience]
That’s the way we all felt when we heard about Pearl. I won’t lie to you and say we weren’t scared. ’Cause we were. Some people were glad. I know that’s a strange thing to say. But the war suddenly shook all the loose pieces together in this country. We weren’t drifting anymore. There was a unity now. War gave us a common cause, and that was exciting.
[A beat.]
Jenny and I were married one month later.
[To museum spectator.]
What was that? Am I still a “hawk”? What school do you go to, kid? University of Denver? Well, Denver, we didn’t have words like that in those days. I only knew of one conscientious objector during the whole war. They put him in the same detention camp in Oregon where that actor Lew Ayres was sent. Everybody wanted to get in on the fight. You’d see long lines in front of court houses and recruiting offices all across the country. There was a man in Moline who was nearly blind and even he joined up—memorized all the Army’s eye charts and nearly made it through basic training. And don’t forget Pearl Harbor! It was a massacre. Sunken ships, burned hangars, aircraft hulks everywhere. The ground was littered with body parts. The only way the Army could handle the dead was in a mass burial. American women were each given a grave number and a Hawaiian lei. That’s all they had left of their husbands, their boyfriends, their sons.
[A beat.]
You young people today never had to sit through blackouts in your own living room not knowing if your hometown would go up in flames.
[To audience.]
The Army was throwing every available kid at me. Farm boys who had their heads full of glory and John Wayne movies and nothing else. I trained young pilots day after day. I had this one guy who flew over Florida and said: “That’s not Florida—it ain’t purple.” Florida’s purple on our official Army map. That’s what I was dealing with. . . .
[To audience.]
I’m not squeamish. Being a small-town boy, I’ve helped our neighboring farmers birth a lot of cattle. Once I struggled inside a cow for hours trying to pull out her dead calf. Working up to my elbows like that—inside her—I never had to see the mother’s eyes. But you come to terms with how you deal with death, especially if you’re in the military. I believe a soldier like me is honorably anonymous. Or at least, that’s the way it should be. My personal name doesn’t matter. What do we know of the ordinary foot soldier in the Civil War or of the lonely infantryman in the trenches of WWI. I’m proud of being the pilot who dropped the bomb over Hiroshima, but I can hardly remember that man. I go to the library and see my name in the history books, and all I’m looking at is a couple of words strung together.
[To the audience.]
I’ll tell you a secret about flying. I guess it’s one of those “contradictions” of theory that Oppenheimer always liked to tell me about.
[A beat.]
All the wrong things make you a pilot. The wrong weather, the wrong takeoff, the wrong landing speed. We live by the mistakes that can kill us. Our task is to turn misfortune into dreams. Everybody and everything since the beginning of time: the Chinese, the Greeks. You see it carved on caves and walls—winged bulls, winged lions, men with wings strapped on them. Everybody wants the dream. The Wright Brothers—they were just tinkering. With 12 seconds . . . 40 yards . . . they changed the world. What would those bicycle makers think now? ’Cause the sky is not a place where you can live. The atmosphere is just a trick. Every time I take off, I fly into something worse. All flight consists of feeling the astonishment of air after leaving the ordinary things of land.
[A beat.]
I first learned something secret and powerful might be going on after lunch with an old school buddy of mine, Curt. ’Cause at the University of Chicago where he was teaching, something about atoms was going on under the bleachers of old Stagg Field.
[A beat.]
That the first time I ever heard of a chain reaction.
[A beat.]
Jenny was very pregnant about this time. We were both having trouble sleeping at night. I was worrying about the air war getting bloodier in Europe. We’d drink lots of cocoa—cocoa wasn’t rationed—and play Tommy Dorsey records.
[To audience.]
When Jimmy was born we gave him Orville for a middle name.
[He cradles his infant son in his arms and talks to him.]
Jimmy Orville, your daddy is going to ease out all the turbulence in your life.
[He sings a lullaby to his infant son that is part “Air Force Song” and “All Through the Night.” Singing softly.]
Off we go
into the wild blue yonder . . . all through the night.
Pilot angels
God will lend thee,
all through the night.
Flying high into the sun love alone
my watch is keeping all through the night.
[To the audience.]
Jenny couldn’t buy diapers since all the cotton was going for bandages. That left cutting up some of my old white shirts. But before she had a chance to cut up all of them, I got orders to fly General Eisenhower to Africa. It was 1942.
[A beat.]
The day I met Ike to fly him out on a B-17, the weather was a solid wall of muck. Not a spot of reality anywhere. Ike was on his way to open the new front in North Africa.
[He sits in the chair now piloting IKE.]
Sir. There’s so much soup out there, even the birds are on foot.
[To the audience.]
Silence.
[To IKE.]
Sir. It’s so thick out there, you can’t even read the Burma Shave signs.
[To the audience.]
Silence.
[A beat.]
Suddenly, we skulked into some bright sunlight. The General relaxed and began chanting:
[IKE chanting.]
No German likes the spacious sky when our B-l7s happen by. Burma Shave.
[To the audience.]
And I answered the man who was to be president of the United States.
[To IKE.]
Into the sky lickety-split! It’s a Messerschmitt SPLAT wasn’t it.
Burma Shave.
Sir.
[To the audience.]
We laughed and ate Nabisco cookies Jenny had packed for us and Ike said to me:
[IKE speaking.]
Colonel, mom Eisenhower just made Mother of the Year in Kansas. Greatest award I ever received in my life. Better than making general.
[PILOT speaking.]
Sir . . .
[IKE speaking.]
It broke mother Eisenhower’s heart when I went to West Point. She’s a pacifist, you know.
[PILOT speaking.]
General Eisenhower, sir . . .
[IKE speaking.]
Over the years, I told her: Mom, don’t be sorry, your son Ike is a pacifist lots of times.
[PILOT speaking.]
General Eisenhower, sir, we just got us an escort of ten American planes. We’re about to land on African soil.
[To the audience.]
That was the last time I was ever to pilot the B-17 as a chauffeur.
[A beat.]
I prepared Jenny for my new combat orders. Then had to tell Mom.
[To MOM.]
Mom, will you sit down? I don’t want any eggs. I just came by to tell you . . . I got my combat orders. Probably at the end of this month. Germany. I just want you to know . . . I’m a good pilot. I learned self-reliance and bravery from you. Watching you pull a hot pie from the oven with your bare hands.
[A beat.]
Remember what that gypsy told you at the Mendota State Fair? That right. Your son’s never going to come to any harm in an airplane!
[Repeating to himself.]
I’m never going to come to any harm in an airplane.
[He sits straight in the chair at the controls of his plane. To audience.]
Combat! I was leading the formation in Red Gremlin with my favorite crew. Tail gunner, Cleve “Boo” Beckahazy, was a Bing Crosby fan and I could hear him singing as usual.
[TAIL GUNNER singing.]
I can’t take this tension boo boo boo . . . it too much boo boo boo to mention. I can’t boo boo boo. . . .
[To TAIL GUNNER.]
Pilot to tail gunner. Over. You know another song? Out.
[TAIL GUNNER singing.]
God boo boo boo bless A-mer-a-ca. boo boo boo. . . .
[To the audience.]
As Boo sang, the steady drone of the engines gave him some loud harmony.
[To TAIL GUNNER.] Pilot to tail gunner. Over. Cut the screeching, Boo. We’re approaching Germany. Out.
[To audience.]
Three miles up sun, I could see the Messerschmitts. My wingman hadn’t seen them. He was a kid of twenty right out of flight school. Now they were on us.
[To crew.]
Break! Break! Enemy off the port wing, firing. After him . . . yah, we’re closing in . . . that a way . . . fire! Fire! We torched him! He’s rolling . . . showing belly . . . look, you can see the Black Cross on his tail.
[To the audience.]
Then I saw the canopy open and the German pilot hit the silk. His parachute floated right by our cockpit . . . so close I could see two little rivers of blood pouring from his mouth and down on his jacket. I’d done most of my military training banging away at shapeless black silhouettes on the rifle range. I never visualized my target as having eyes, nose, and mouth.
[A beat.]
Suddenly the Kraut put one finger lengthwise under his nose in a Hitler mustache. His way of telling us that the Fuhrer was escaping. Wounded but alive. That’s when I took my logbook pencil and held it out from my mouth like a cigarette holder—like victorious old Roosevelt. My crew cheered, but the Kraut didn’t see me. He was falling gently and silently below us while his plane streamed black smoke and went straight to the ground, flaming. Sometimes after those aerial dogfights, I’d have nightmares. Once, I dreamed a black horse was kicking the hell out of my machine. Nightmares have no meaning. They’re senseless. Those things always go away, finally, if you don’t make a big deal out of them.
[A beat.]
I was called to Washington and then to Wendover on the Nevada border to begin my B-29 assignment. A test pilot and IO technicians had just crashed in a B-29 test flight. The project was in chaos.
[To crew.]
I’m damn sick and tired of you guys griping about the B-29 and refusing to join her crews.
[A beat.]
So I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to prove it to each and every one of you.
[To the audience.]
One day I just burst into the lounge of the women barracks at Eglin AAFB in Florida.
[To women in the barracks.]
You WASPs have some four-engine time? You . . . what’s your name? De-De what? Johnson. Okay, Johnson, you say you’re a radio-control pilot? Good. I’m here to get two women to check out in the B-29. Interested?
[A beat.]
You’re on. Me? Am I Charles Lindbergh? Sure, I’m Lindbergh. Who else? Dora Dougherty? Okay? If you’ve been up in an A-20, a 1,600-horsepower twin-engine attack plane, that’s good enough. Both of you be ready at 0600 tomorrow.
[A beat.]
I took De-De and Dora to Anniston, Alabama, and gave them a high-powered concentrated three-day briefing.
[To the women on each side of him as he sits in the chair that becomes the plane. He lets DE-DE pilot the aircraft.]
De-De, dear, now you need to taxi up to the runway quickly, then get it up. ’Cause, babe, these engines sometimes explode if they go through regulated warm-up time. The 29 is a sweet temperamental female, so you’re flying her woman to woman and you can think of that as an advantage. Okay . . . check above and behind to see if anybody moving in our clearance. That’s it, now . . . away we go. Easy. Skip the bumps and grinds and take it off! That it . . . up . . . up—yah. Good.
[A beat.]
Okay, now it’s Dora’s turn. Dora, sweetheart, let’s practice some stalls at 3,000 feet.
[He settles back comfortably, humming “I’ll Be Seeing You.” Suddenly, his head dives down near the floor and then sharply goes back up again. We can see that he is winded. To DORA.]
Dora, where the hell did you learn Hammerhead Stalls? You sure put some strain on the 29
[Looking at controls.]
. . . but she’s just fine.
[To audience.]
On May 20, 1943, a Superfortress B-29 now named Ladybird was approaching Tinker Field for the showdown. Crowds of men were gawking along the flight line. The whole crew of a B-17 was standing on top of the wings watching. I was on the ground watching, too. There for a few minutes, I felt lonely. That plane up there was my whole world, and now it was under the controls of two women. I was jealous.
[Looking up at the women flying the B-29.]
Okay, girls, do it right. Come on.
[A beat.]
Sure, I see you rocking your wings at me.
[He waves to their plane.]
That-a-way. Come on. Now enter the pattern. Easy. Easy. You’re pulling a sweet greased on landing.
[To audience.]
The women climbed down from the bomber, took off their helmets, and shook out their long hair. A navigator walked up to them and said: “Golly, you both are just little bitty things.” DeDe shot back: “It’s only ’cause we’re standing next to a 29 that’s three stories tall.”
[A beat.]
After that, I had no trouble signing up crews. But, unfortunately, Congressman John Rankin heard about my experiment and called the AAF headquarters yelling: “Get those women out of my airplane.” There was engine grease under their fingernails. When they did square loops and snap rolls, they were guys. But couldn’t use them.
[A beat.]
But shortly I had my own private Air Force and was working eighteen hours a day training crews. I didn’t know I was really preparing for something called the A-bomb.
[A beat.]
I met Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer at a party one spring day in 1944. Both Oppenheimer and his wife, Kitty, were heavy drinkers and the early recruitment for the Manhattan Project was usually done over cocktails. You were asked to work with him on the war effort. That’s all.
[A beat.]
When I first walked up to Oppenheimer, he handed me a martini and asked: You know how to “free pour” a Martini without a shot glass, son? Yes, Dr. Oppenheimer, I do know we’re in a life-and-death struggle with the Germans and the Japanese. I’m drinking up . . . I’m drinking up. You most certainly can count on me to be a part of any effort that cuts this whole business short. Report where? 109 East Palace Avenue. In Santa Fe.
[He holds out the glass.]
A-one Martini.
[To the audience.]
First I was sent to a special top-secret committee in the Pentagon. Two generals explained to me how I was to organize a combat force to carry a new bomb so powerful that nobody even knew what its exact force was. This bomb—estimated to be around 9,000 or 10,000 pounds—was presently being developed. The bomb bays of the B-29s under my command would have special modifications to take it on.
[To the audience.]
I made many visits to the City of Secrets in Lost Alamos where this pumpkin-shaped gimmick was being developed. It was part mountain resort and part scientific laboratory. Never in the history of the world had so many brilliant minds all come together in one place at one time. I’d leisurely walk around this shantytown of eggheads. The roads and footpaths were either mud holes or dust bowls.
[A beat.]
Nothing was ordinary in the Secret City. Infants were born with certificates listing place of birth as just Box 1663. Kids went to school with only first names. And everybody had a lot of college degrees.
[To audience.]
Late at night, I’d hear a piano. Oppenheimer was deflowering a new ditty he had composed, flooring the pedal. He could never sleep.
[A beat.]
And getting something to eat in the City of Secrets was always an event.
[To customers in a sandwich shop.]
This little shack serves hamburgers? Good.
[To waiter.] I’ll have a Coke and burger. Well done. Hold the onions.
[Looks to his fellow customers sitting beside him.]
How are the burgers here. Greasy? Sounds good. You guys always eat here? What did you say your names were? Fermi . . . Teller . . . Hans Bethe. Oh. Would you Laureates mind passing the catsup?
[To the audience.]
There was always excitement at Los Alamos. It was like a summer camp. People there all considered it an adventure since they were in a place that wasn’t even supposed to exist. All mail and phone calls were censored. Visits to the outside were restricted to once a month. Residents were encouraged to cut off their families. The laboratory of the physicists on the hill was the true focal point although there were stores, movie houses, and recreation centers all around it. There was also a nineteen-piece band, a choir, an orchestra, and a radio station. The first year of its existence, out of a population of 6,000, one thousand babies were born.
[To OPPENHEIMER.]
Dr. Oppenheimer. You wanted to see me? I know you want me to wear civilian clothes when I come to Los Alamos. But why? The scientists may be nervous about military men but just who do they think is going to drop their little “pumpkin”? They’re quite willing to make it, but they don’t like to think of it being used . . . not on people, anyway. Just how the hell are we going to pull that off? And while we’re at it, those damn construction crews you got around here just dragged lumber through that stream by the lab. Now all the fish in there are dead ’cause you stirred up the mud. I was raised on a farm, Oppenheimer, and we don’t do things like that to the land. And no, I will not stop wearing my uniform!
[To audience.]
I continued my vigorous training of the B-29 crews at Wendover and the Los Alamos crowd worked night and day on their gimmick. Then one morning, I got an urgent call from Oppenheimer. We met in a deserted hangar next to my office.
[To OPPENHEIMER.]
So, some of the scientists are getting cold feet? Don’t they know Germany’s working on some kind of bomb, too? A Laureate like yourself should lay down the law . . . oh, sorry . . . ! I didn’t know you aren’t a Nobel winner . . . no . . . no, it wasn’t meant as a sarcastic slur. What’s spooking everybody? Dr. Szilard found something disturbing? How disturbing? The gimmick could explode the air or the sea? In which case the earth would go . . .
[Snaps his fingers.]
You said yourself that the calculations were safe. Congress is all for it. Truman just inherited the bomb? He sure as hell isn’t interfering with us.
[To the audience.]
Oppenheimer did finally convince the others of his calculations, and work on the bomb continued and moved forward quickly. Now it was my job to find a way to deliver the gimmick without destroying my plane and crew.
[A beat.]
How to accurately drop this bomb and quickly pull away from the explosion? My worry was the weight of the bomb and the weight of the fuel for the fourteen-hour round-trip flight. I decided to strip the 29 of all armament but the tail gun. That would save me 7,000 pounds. At 30,000 feet, we would be out of the range of any flak.
[A beat.]
I flew to Los Alamos to talk over my strategy with Oppenheimer. I landed at 0600, and he was waiting for me at the airstrip. It was chilly and he was holding out a steaming, welcoming cup of coffee.
[To OPPENHEIMER.]
Dr. Oppenheimer . . . how did you know I’d need coffee right now more than anything in the world.
[He holds out his hand to take the coffee.]
Coffee is coffee? Yes, I sure agree with that. I’ll just take it . . . the Hegelian philosophy says this cup of coffee is really beans? Sure . . . anything you say. But the Berkeleyan holds that coffee only exists as dreams exists? Well, I’d really like some of that “dream” while it’s hot. The Pragmatist says forget it’s even coffee and only remember the stirring? No, I haven’t read much Thomas Aquinas. He’s a philosopher of common sense? Coffee is coffee? Right.
[To the audience.]
I finally got Oppenheimer away from Thomas Aquinas and onto the B-29. But my coffee was cold.
[To OPPENHEIMER.]
Okay, after the bomb hits, the minimum distance my plane can be safe is at eight miles. The shock wave will come at me at about l,000 feet a second . . . the speed of sound. I think the way for me to get away from the detonation is to do a quick turn of 155 degrees as soon as my bombardier lets go. Yes . . . yes . . . it does put a heavy strain on the 29. But she can take it. How do I know? A little lady named Dora whispered it in my ear.
[A beat.]
I realize that some of the scientists are spooked. But staging a demonstration of the bomb is out of the question. Drop it on a Japanese city after everybody’s been evacuated? Are they crazy!? The Japanese would take all their people out and put in every American prisoner of war they have. What about dropping it on some deserted island? Show them our real power? What if it duds out on us! Then what? Those Japanese militarists would get worse. Who? Szilard sent a letter of protest to Truman? Who in the hell is Szilard? He first conceived the nuclear chain reaction? And now he’s backing out? He’s making a moral issue? A moral issue! When the Japanese are breathing down our necks. Let me see his letter.
[He takes the letter from OPPENHEIMER and reads it.]
“A nation which sets the precedent of using these newly liberated forces of nature for purposes of destruction may have to bear the responsibility of opening the door to an era of devastation on an unimaginable scale.” —Leo Szilard.
[To OPPENHEIMER.]
Why are people getting gun-shy all of a sudden, Dr. Oppenheimer? Well, I’m glad to know you’re one hundred percent behind this project. What? Just because you’re saying yes doesn’t mean you really mean yes. Since if you answer no, it wouldn’t be a beginning but an end to the thousand steps of thought? Is this still coffee is coffee? Got you!
[To JENNY.]
I am not ignoring you, Jenny. You know what you’re really mad about? Flying. Flying is leaving. Every time I go up, you feel I reject you. Honey, when I’m flying through the clouds, I’m not hot for anything beyond the skin of my plane. And if you can’t accept that, this marriage won’t last. And leave Jimmy out of this. My son and I do just fine.
[To JIMMY, age three.]
Jimmy Orville, we’re planting a garden ’cause the president wants us to. Why? ’Cause everybody’s got to help out.
[A beat.]
You got that bag of potatoes your mother gave us? Good. Take them out and pick off all the eyes. Potato-eyes are seeds that will grow us more potatoes. That’s right . . . put them in the holes. Now, next to this row of potato-eyes, we’re going to plant carrot seeds. And next to the carrots—onions. The carrots are going to make the potato-eyes real strong, and the onions are going to make the potato-eyes water, and that way you and me don’t have to stand out here and throw on fertilizer or run the hose all day long.
[A beat.]
Remember, son, a garden is a wonderful thing. Saints have gardens.
[A beat.]
Now . . . what’s that on your face? . . . Just a little dirt. Hey, you’ve got yourself a “victory face.”
[To museum spectators.]
What did you say? How could I play with my little boy like that when I was getting ready to drop the bomb? I was thinking of Jimmy Orville and every American kid when I flew over Hiroshima. And for those guys sitting on ships waiting to invade Japan, too. I have never—for one moment—ever been sorry for what I did. On the contrary, I stopped the war!
[He continues his story.]
Final preparations began on Tinian. We won that island back from the Japanese, and now it was our atomic launching pad. Sometimes we called Tinian—Manhattan. We named our streets Broadway . . . Forty-second Street . . . Central Park West . . . Riverside Drive . . . I had many long briefings with the Tinian Joint Chiefs on Park Avenue.
[To the TINIAN JOINT CHIEFS.]
Sirs. I don’t think it’s a good idea to send up the Enola Gay with a large escort and fly into Japan in formation. That will just alert their military. We can’t afford to take any heavy-duty anti-aircraft fire. Not with the “pumpkin” on board.
[A beat.]
I suggest we just kinda go in alone. Like we were a reconnaissance plane.
[A beat.]
My crew and I have my breakaway maneuver well rehearsed. Heavy turbulence? Could that set off the bomb? The “pumpkin” can’t be triggered unless there’s a firing of an explosive inside it. What if the Enola cracks up during takeoff? Or catches fire? I’ve got that figured out, sirs. We make the final assembly of the bomb during flight. Can I do that? Hell, yes. We’ll get us a good ordnance man to insert one of the uranium slugs and the explosive charge into the gimmick’s casing when we’re in the air. Sure, it’ll be difficult in that cramped space. I’m not saying it’s easy. But we’ll do it.
[To the audience.]
The USS Indianapolis arrived off Tinian with the first atomic bomb. There was only one way we could load it. The bomb called “Little Boy”—covered in tarpaulin—had to be put into a hole in the ground. We taxied the plane—then jacked “Little Boy” right up into the Enola’s belly. . . . Our A-bomb was twelve feet long and 9,000 pounds.
[A beat.]
Three weather planes—Straight Flush, Full House, Jabbitt III—were to precede me by one hour and fly over the primary and secondary targets. The Great Artiste would follow and drop instruments by parachute to record the blast and measure radio activity.
[A beat.]
August 6, 12:30 a.m., 1945. We of the 509th Composite Group picked up our gear and headed for the airstrip. We were designated Special Bombing Mission #13. None of us were superstitious about that. Hell, the bad luck of 13 was for the other guys. When we got to the flight line, the Enola Gay was lustrous with all the spotlights shining on her. The press was everywhere. Enola was like a movie star at a world premiere. I had come a long way from that little town in Illinois where Mom ironed a newspaper for my kites.
[To a museum spectator.]
I don’t know why so many Americans treat me like I’m Frankenstein or something. The Japanese never do that. When I went to Asia after the war, those people didn’t run away from me, screaming. In a way, they respect me more than most of you do. I see Japanese folks here in the States; they don’t consider me any big deal. I’m just somebody who did his job. That’s all.
[A beat.]
Isn’t that a Japanese woman over there? Yah, sure it is.
[He takes a piece of paper out of his shirt pocket. He mimes making it into a paper plane.]
Little lady, come closer. Where you from? Won’t you look up at me?
[He makes as if to sail the paper plane in the air. He then hands her the plane.]
Just a plane with silent wings. Come on, don’t be shy.
[A beat as she hands him something, her face still downward.]
What are you giving me?
[He takes a paper crane from her.]
A crane?
[He pulls the crane apart like an accordion and many paper cranes unfold.]
So many cranes. For me?
[A beat.]
Won’t you give me a smile, little mama-san?
[A beat as he watches her slowly lift her face to him. He slowly backs away from her.]
Oh, God! What happened to you! What’s wrong with your face? God!
[He throws the cranes down on the floor.]
Who told you to do this? Who put you up to this? I didn’t do that to your face? Stay away from me. Stay away! All I did was stop a war. I don’t regret anything!
[He kicks the cranes away from him as if they were alive. He turns his back to the audience. After a beat, we see him stoop over at the waist, slowly. After a pause, we hear him talk into the plane interphone softly, still stooped with his back turned. To the crew of the Enola Gay.]
Men, years from now, the citizens of our great country will be watching a movie about what we do today. So . . . no cussing. No spitting. No scratching. Remain calm but alert.
[He stands and turns to the audience and faces his crew.]
I’ll be passing out special goggles to each crew member before takeoff. Have them ready to use when I give the order.
[A beat.]
Now, let’s go have a good breakfast before we move out.
[To the audience.]
August 5. 1 a.m. Mess Sergeant Elliott Easterly had decorated the Quonset mess with cardboard pumpkins. We all took one off the wall for a good-luck charm.
[A beat.]
2 a.m. Our weather planes had already left. Eleven crew members entered the B-29 ahead of me. I was ready to hop on when Dr. Don Young pulled me aside.
[To DR. YOUNG.]
Whaddya got for me, Doc? Twelve cyanide pills? One for each of us? No pain with these, huh? You’re right . . . something goes wrong, sure as hell don’t wanna hit the silk. Guys I’ve known who got captured by the Japanese were tortured pretty bad. Especially after the fire-bombings in Tokyo. I know. I know . . . this isn’t easy for you. But, Doc, I’m planning on success. We just got a big send-off prayer from the chaplain. We’ll do the job. You’ll see.
[To the audience.]
On board, I settled into the left seat. Bob Lewis was my copilot. We had crew from all around the U.S.—New Mexico, Nevada, Texas, New Jersey, North Carolina, New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Michigan, California, and my states, Iowa and Illinois.
[Speaking from the captain’s seat of the Enola Gay.]
Crew, synchronize watches. 0230.
[A beat.]
Auxiliary power turned on.
[A beat.]
Electrical system—check. Start-up engines.
[A beat.]
All engines go.
[A beat.]
Oil pressure—check. Fuel pressure—check. Brakes set—check.
[A beat.]
Remove the wheel chocks.
[A beat.]
Great Artiste behind us—Roger. Ready to taxi out.
[He puts both thumbs up. To the audience.]
Every takeoff is different. It’s a crucial time. But now it was important beyond anything I had ever done before. With 7,000 gallons of gas and a 9,000-pound atomic bomb, we were loaded well beyond normal capacity. I was determined to remain calm. After all, hadn’t I taken off hundreds of times before? I pretended I was with old Earl Ebberly and we were winging our way to Bettendorf, Iowa, to drop candy.
[To the tower.]
Redbird six three to North Tinian Tower. Ready for takeoff on Runway Able.
[A beat.]
Cleared for takeoff. Roger.
[To crew.]
Release breaks.
[A beat.]
We’re rolling now . . . two miles of runway and we’re just gonna take it slow . . . we’re doing 50 miles an hour . . . 70 miles an hour . . . 90 . . . 120 . . . end of runway approaching. I’m holding her for 10 more miles an hour . . . I need all the power I can get for lift-off. Hold tight . . . hang on . . . we’re just about there . . . ahhhhhh—and up . . . at 140 miles per hour. Nice and smooth.
[A beat.]
Takeoff time—0245. Cameras roll.
[To the audience.]
Eight minutes airborne, and Parsons began to plug the uranium into the core of “Little Boy.”
[A beat.]
Behind us was Top Secret, the airplane that would follow us all the way to Iwo Jima in case the Enola had some kind of mechanical problem and we needed a spare plane.
[To crew on interphone.]
Hey, you guys in isolation, I’m coming back there for a little visit. Yah, I know I gotta crawl 30 feet through a stinking tunnel that’s only 20 inches wide. I don’t have the belly on me like some of you boozers. I can make it in nothing flat.
[He takes off his shirt and his shoes and socks and crawls back to them. He is in his undershirt, trousers, and barefoot.]
Coming through . . . coming through. What did I tell you? Slipped right through.
[A beat.]
Nice place you got here. Who’s got the hot chocolate? How about hitting me with a cup. Thanks.
[He drinks.]
You guys wanna guess what we have on board? You know it’s gotta be important if we were served real eggs, not powdered, for chow. Hey, don’t be afraid to speak up. All security’s off. This is it. The secret’s going to be out pretty damn quick.
[A beat.]
Well, I’ll just have to tell you. We’re carrying the first atomic bomb. Yah! How about that! No kidding. You’ll be able to see this bomb from anywhere. Even Paw Paw, Illinois, will see this one. So . . . what are you guys thinking about right now? Sitting here beside the world’s first A-incendiary?
[A beat.]
Buttermilk pancakes! That’s what you’re thinking about on the most important day of your life? I’ll tell you what I’m thinking about. I’m thinking of the word “atom.” How it’s not going to be a secret or a mystery anymore. One of the scientists—Oppenheimer—explained that a philosopher named Spinoza said a stone falling could think: “I want to fall.” I figure that bomb knows it wants to fall, too.
[He crawls back to the captain’s seat.]
Altitude 15,000 feet. Wind from the south.
[On interphone.]
Pilot to navigator, keep me posted on any changes in radar wind runs. Over.
[To copilot.]
Bob, I think I’ll just take a little catnap. Look after the automatic pilot. And wake me up when we’re ready to begin our climb over Iwo Jima.
[To the audience.]
I don’t think I really slept. At a time like that, your past comes at you in crazy little flashes. The smell of lemon oil furniture polish Mom used on holidays. The wallpaper of fading cabbage roses in the parlor. Of course I couldn’t get old man Ebberly out of my mind and how he always said I had to “watch the ground.” And . . . I thought about that last time I saw Oppie. Yah, I sometimes called Oppenheimer that like all his science buddies. I think he got to like me ’cause the first thing I said every time I saw him was—coffee is coffee. Not that I ever really understood what the hell that meant. I figure it was like our guys saying “on a wing and a prayer.” Anyway, Oppie came to Tinian that day we loaded “Little Boy” on the Enola. He watched the whole thing in silence and with a very sad face. His depression shocked me. This was supposed to be the high point of all his hard work. But all he could think about was how the bomb would throw us back into the crude stone age of reason. Because now theory had lost its core. In the final analysis, we should not understand. Science is fantasy. For an equation to be true, Oppie reasoned, it was necessary that at least on one level it had to be false. That is why physics was an art. Contradictions. “Little Boy” eliminated what couldn’t be solved. There was nothing left for him anymore.
[A beat.]
Oppenheimer’s words wouldn’t get out of my head. In some strange way I felt implicated in his depression. But I couldn’t understand why. I was doing what he wanted me to do. I was doing what they all wanted me to do . . . the scientists, Truman . . . Stimson . . . Congress . . . the dead at Pearl if they could speak for themselves.
[A beat.]
It was just beginning to get light. I broke open a little pack of Zinnia seeds Mom gave me and tossed them under my seat for luck. Everything was smooth and steady. When we came to Iwo Jima, I took the controls. Our standby plane swerved away from us and landed.
[A beat.]
We were now three hours away from our possible targets—either Hiroshima, Kokura, or Nagasaki. We were proceeding smoothly, waiting anxiously for instructions from the three weather planes. What would be our target? Oppenheimer said Hiroshima was the best because it had flat terrain that would allow the bomb to “run out.” I climbed to 30,700 feet, our bombing altitude. Orders were for a visual drop only. No radar sighting. If we suddenly got bad weather, we were to return to Tinian with Parsons disarming the bomb on the way home.
[A beat.]
People always want to know what I was thinking when I was only moments away from dropping the first A-bomb. What were my deepest, innermost thoughts? It’s hard to remember. In a sense, that man is an illusion to me. He is many illusions. Looking back, which one do I remember? I don’t wish to change the thoughts of somebody who is no longer here to defend himself. After all, who I am now is not that pilot who has disappeared into history. I was probably thinking about the flights of WWI, and how opposing pilots could lean out of their wood-and-rag planes and fire revolvers at each other. A flying surface was once as human as the flying carpet of the Arabian Nights. Now everything is precision and electronic navigation.
[A beat.]
When the target was in range, it was procedure at that time for the pilot to remove his hands from the controls and turn the ship over to the bombardier. Technically, I wasn’t even at the helm when the pneumatic bomb-bay doors opened and “Little Boy” dropped. I felt cheated. The only human experience was the explosion and the victims. The days of Earl Ebberly and the Wilma when a man hunched down inside the cockpit and let the plane get inside of him were long gone. Now, a pilot simply stepped up and climbs inside the plane. Spots used to talk about his farmer friend, Sig Mosley, who got up one morning and drove his tractor all the way to the coast, then pushed that tractor into the ocean. Said he wanted things to get back to the way they were.
[Into radio.]
Straight flush. Come in. This is Enola Gay.
[A beat.]
Y-3, B-2, C-1. Code received. Roger and out.
[A beat.]
Attention, crew.
[A beat.]
The name of our target has just been transmitted from Straight Flush.
[A beat.]
It . . . Hiroshima!
[On interphone.]
Pilot to Bombardier. What is the status of “Little Boy?” Bomb is alive. Roger.
[To crew.]
The city is coming into view. Be prepared for Initial Point, 15 miles east of target. Sighted—eight large ships in the harbor below. No flak visible.
[A beat.]
We are approaching our primary. Secure your goggles on your forehead and prepare to use them at bomb release. Do not look into the flash.
[A beat.]
All crew, if you agree, please verify by saying after me: “This . . . is Hiroshima.”
[A beat.]
Hiroshima. Check.
[A beat.]
9:15 and 17 seconds. Hiroshima time: 8:15 and 17 seconds.
[A beat.]
Bombardier, take over the aircraft.
[He holds up his hands away from the controls and moves back in his chair. A beat.]
Bomb-bay doors opening. “Little Boy” . . . falling.
[After a brief pause, he takes over the controls again.]
Prepare for breakaway dive!
[Now stripped to his trousers and sleeveless khaki undershirt and bare feet. He holds up the chair and turns it sharply to the right in the breakaway dive.]
[He speaks the following monologue while he holds the plane in the breakaway dive.]
A mushroom foams up at me in a curling mass of spiking mauve gray. Buds of raw green illuminate on every side. The earth’s history blooms and exaggerates itself into the atmosphere: Stalks of lamp black and coal tar, stems of sienna, plants of brittle skin gold . . . shimmering black leaves . . . yellow arsenic blossoms. I hear Oppie quoting Montaigne: “And if you have lived one day, you have seen everything. One day is equal to all days. There is no other light, there is no other darkness. The whole disposition of the heavens is the same.” Now Montaigne is wrong. It’s Oppenheimer’s science rotting to the knowable. Today will never be like another day. I have made another light. I have made another darkness. I’ve changed the Heavens.
[He now begins shaking from the plane’s turbulence.]
A fierce boiling red orb, five miles wide, rages towards me at a hundred million degrees. I throw the sun!