As Los Alamos raced to complete Little Boy and test Fat Man, and while officials debated where and how to use the atomic bomb, Paul Tibbets and the 509th prepared to go to war. In April 1945, frustrated by the “endless hassling” as the Los Alamos team debated how best to build the Trinity bomb and ruminated over whether it would even work, Tibbets decided to “get moving,” as he later explained. “A load of responsibility had been thrown on my shoulders and I decided to exercise the authority that went with it.”1 Without any orders to do so, Tibbets transmitted the secret codeword that triggered the command to ship the 509th overseas. Groves called Tibbets to Washington, reprimanded him, and then quietly and privately acknowledged that Tibbets had “got us moving.”
The destination of the 509th was Tinian, now the base for the Twenty-First Bomber Command. In February, Parson’s deputy, Commander Ashworth, had flown to the Marianas to deliver a letter from Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King to Admiral Chester L. Nimitz, the commander of the Pacific Fleet. After a long and hot 48-hour flight to Guam, Ashworth arrived soaked in sweat with a “disheveled uniform.” Underneath his shirt was a money belt in which Ashworth had concealed the letter. Called into Nimitz’s office, Ashworth waited until the admiral’s aide left and then “unbuttoned the jacket of my more or less disheveled looking khaki uniform, unbuttoned my shirt and removed from around my waist the fairly well-soaked money belt that contained the letter, all to the amusement of the admiral.”2
The letter was to the point:
It is expected that a new weapon will be ready in August of this year for use against Japan by the 20th Air Force. The Officer, Commander Frederick L. Ashworth, USN, bearing this letter will give you enough details so that you can make the necessary plans for the proper support of the operations. By the personal direction of the President, everything pertaining to this development is covered by the highest order of secrecy, and there should be no disclosure by you beyond one other officer, who must be suitably cautioned. I desire that you make available to Commander Ashworth such intelligence data as applies to the utilization of the new weapon.3
After delivering the letter and securing Nimitz’s support, Ashworth evaluated Guam and then flew to Tinian. Project Alberta’s team had armed him with a checklist of questions to make sure the advance base in the Marianas would suit their needs. He was to assess weather, terrain, the base’s layout and facilities, the ease of transportation, and issues such as the presence of malaria, fungus, and the “amount of ground strafing and bombing.”4 After rejecting Guam as the advance base for the 509th, Ashworth was satisfied that Tinian would work, largely because it was closer by a hundred miles, which could make a critical difference in a fuel-strapped, heavily loaded B-29, and it had existing runways 8,500ft long. Returning to Los Alamos, Ashworth reported back to Parsons and attended a meeting with Oppenheimer and Tibbets to confirm the choice. A detachment of 51 (later increased to 54) Los Alamos scientists and technicians volunteered to go to Tinian and work under Ashworth to assemble and handle the bombs, including loading and flying on the missions as the atomic weaponeers. Officially designated the 1st Technical Service Detachment, they were instead known as the “Destination Team.”
The advance base’s location was a secret and until the team was dispatched, all they knew it as was the “destination,” which became the codename for Tinian. When Tibbets made his unilateral decision to jump-start getting his planes and pilots into the Pacific, Project Alberta began preparations to transport the Destination Team. To move the 509th, Tibbets had to both fly in the planes and send men and supplies by ship. The first shipment of material and men left Wendover at the end of April. The majority of Tibbets’ crews arrived at Seattle by rail and were loaded into the waiting Army troop transport SS Cape Victory on May 6.
Meanwhile the advance air echelon of the 509th, including Tibbets, flew via California and Hawaii, arriving at Tinian’s North Field on May 18. Cape Victory arrived on May 29. The remainder of the B-29s and their crews landed at Tinian on June 11. The next three months, Tibbets later recalled, “were among the most frenzied of my military career” as the 509th moved into its advance base, isolated from the rest of the B-29 crews of the Twenty-First, and began training. Among the issues confronting the 509th was friction between Tibbets and his men with other airmen who were excluded, because of security, from knowing just what the 509th was to do, and resentful of their autonomy and special status. The 509th, apparently, did not do much to counter any resentment. LeMay, although himself privy to the atomic secret, later complained, “The men of the 509th – according to the 509th – were something special. They were the second coming of Christ, and they thought they were supposed to have everything.”5
“Taunts and jibes,” Tibbets noted, followed the 509th as they trained, with a response from some in the 509th that they were there to “win the war.” The next salvo was a mimeographed poem, sent around the Twenty-First Bomber Command (and to the 509th) entitled “Nobody Knows”:
Into the air the secret rose,
Where they’re going, nobody knows.
Tomorrow they’ll return again,
But we’ll never know where they’ve been.
Don’t ask us about results or such,
Unless you want to get in Dutch.
But take it from one who is sure of the score,
The 509th is winning the war.
When the other groups are ready to go,
We have a program on the whole damned show.
And when Halsey’s Fifth shells Nippon’s shore,
Why, shucks, we hear about it the day before.
And MacArthur and Doolittle give out in advance,
But with this new bunch we haven’t a chance.
We should have been home a month or more,
For the 509th is winning the war.6
Undaunted, the 509th went about their training, starting with what Tibbets termed routine orientation flights and dropping conventional bombs on enemy-occupied islands, including the Imperial Japanese Navy base at Truk, as well as Rota, Marcus, and Guguan. On July 20, the 509th went to Japan for the first time, flying a series of missions to familiarize themselves with the route and terrain, and to practice with explosive-filled “pumpkins” that they dropped on Japanese cities. In 12 separate combat missions between July 20 and the 29th, the 509th’s sorties of ten aircraft (except for eight planes on the 29th) hit Toyama, Ogaki, Shimoda, Yokkaichi, Fukushima, Niihama, Yaizu, Ube, Kobe, Tokyo, Otsu, Tsugawa, Maizuru, Taira, Osaka, Hamamatsu, Wakayama, Koriyama, Hitachi, Kashiawzaki, and Mushashino with “pumpkins” dropped from 30,000ft. According to Tibbets, one of the pilots, Major Claude E. Eatherly and the crew of B-29 44-27301 “Straight Flush,” flew into Tokyo, could not see their targets because of cloud cover, and dropped a bomb by radar on the Imperial Palace. It missed and hit the already ruined Marunouchi railway station near the palace. Eatherly, an excellent pilot but prone to stunts, escaped punishment for trying to bomb a forbidden target, but after the war he caused Tibbets and the 509th much grief when, following his arrest and imprisonment on charges of forgery and breaking and entering, he proclaimed he was committing what he termed “petty crimes” to publicize his guilt for his role in the atomic attacks. Until his death in 1978, Eatherly was a controversial and tragic figure.
The shipment of the Destination Team’s equipment and facilities was scheduled to arrive at Tinian around June 20, and an “advance party” of four representatives from Project Alberta were sent out on June 17 to meet the shipment. One of them was Harlow W. Russ, a former aeronautical engineer from Lockheed who had joined the project in 1944 to work on the bomb casings. The success of the Trinity test was an uncertainty, but Parsons told Russ before he left that regardless of Trinity’s results, Little Boy “would be used in combat and would be used in advance of any Fat Man mission” and that it needed to be ready for use before August 1.7
The advance party arrived at Tinian on June 23 to find the bomb assembly and loading facilities 80 percent complete and, as Russ discovered in a briefing, that some 500 Japanese survivors of the battle for Tinian were holed up and hiding on the island. The Little Boy facilities were completed on July 1, and between July 3 and 5 the advance party supervised the transfer and unpacking of the Little Boy assembly equipment. The Fat Man area was completed on July 7, and by the 9th, the Fat Man equipment was in place. Trinity was still a week away, and Tinian was ready for the arrival of the Destination Team and the bombs. With the completion of the Fat Man area, the 509th was at last ready to begin “pumpkin” missions, as the loading pits for hoisting the large bombs into the B-29s had been completed along with the rest of the compound. The pits were necessary because the 5ft-diameter bombs could not fit under the 3ft clearance of a B-29 when it was parked.
After Trinity, the rest of the Destination Team arrived at Tinian, as the focus of the Manhattan Project shifted to the island. By the end of July the Little Boy and Fat Man teams, the project leaders, Parsons and Ramsey, and two military observers, Groves’s deputy Brigadier General Farrell and Admiral William R. Purnell, were ready. Tibbets and the 509th continued their practice bombing runs over Japan and the Destination Team worked with the 509th to assemble, load, and drop test models of the two atomic bombs as training exercises.
The first tests used Little Boy models numbered L-1, L-2, and L-5 to test fusing and firing systems. Those drops were made on July 23, 24, and 25 respectively. The next test, with model L-6, was a “dry-run” with a complete and active Little Boy missing only its sub-critical components. The test also involved landing, unloading, and loading the bomb at recently conquered Iwo Jima, where an alternative facility had been built as a back-up. The L-6 test took place between July 29 and 31st, as the bomb was flown to and from Iwo Jima and twice unloaded and loaded in an exchange between two B-29s, one flying as a stand-by, to train the crews in a transfer should the aircraft carrying the nuclear-armed Little Boy be unable to complete the mission and have to abort. The bomb was then dropped into the sea off Tinian and detonated. The Project Alberta team and the 509th were ready to take the atomic bomb into combat.
The cruiser USS Indianapolis (CA-35), photographed by Major Harley G. Toomey, Jr., USAF, as it left Tinian after delivering the components for “Little Boy,” c. July 26, 1945. Four days later, the Japanese submarine I-58 torpedoed and sank Indianapolis, killing most of the crew. (US Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph)
On the day of the Trinity test, July 16, the U-235 pre-assemblies and the projectile that would be fired inside Little Boy to detonate the bomb were loaded onto the cruiser USS Indianapolis at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco. The cruiser also carried a 10,000lb crate loaded with the inert parts “for a complete gun type bomb.”8 The projectile was carried in a lead cylinder inside a steel container known as the “bucket” that traveled padlocked to the steel deck of a ship’s cabin. On the 26th, three C-54s from Tibbets’ “Green Hornet” planes flew out of Kirtland Air Field in New Mexico with the U-235 target rings that the projectile would fire into. After long flights to the west coast, Hawaii, Johnston Island, and Kwajalein, they landed at Tinian on July 28. Also on the 28th, the Japanese government rejected the Potsdam Declaration’s demand for an unconditional surrender.
Fat Man’s plutonium core and initiator also came by plane, landing on the 28th. The high-explosive pre-assemblies of Fat Man, shipped from Kirtland the same day, arrived at Tinian on August 2. Fat Man test drops began on July 29, and on August 1 Fat Man test unit F13 was dropped. The next unit, F18, was completed by August 4 and the 509th dropped it the following day. With the arrival of the high-explosive sub-assemblies, the team prepared model F33 for a full dry-run test and detonation, but the test did not take place until after the first combat mission with Little Boy.
The order to drop the bomb was issued on July 25 by General Thomas Handy, acting Chief of Staff, authorizing the 509th to “deliver its first special bomb as soon as weather will permit visual bombing” after August 3 against one of four targets – Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata, and Nagasaki.9 The final assembly of the combat Little Boy, L-11, was completed on July 31. The team was ready to go, but bad weather over Japan delayed the mission until August 6.
Tibbets, previously kept out of the skies over Japan because he was too valuable to lose, had decided, with the approval of his superiors, to command the mission and fly the B-29 that would drop the bomb. He borrowed aircraft 44-86292, a B-29 ordinarily flown by Robert Lewis. For the mission, Lewis joined Tibbets in the cockpit. Tibbets also replaced the bombardier and navigator with two officers he had earlier handpicked for the 509th, Thomas Ferebee and Theodore “Dutch” van Kirk, both of whom had flown with Tibbets’ B-17 crew earlier in the war. The final crew of the Hiroshima mission was Tibbets, Lewis, Van Kirk, Ferebee, Parsons, who flew as the bomb commander or “weaponeer,” flight engineer Wyatt Duzenbury, assistant engineer Robert Shumard, radio operator Richard Nelson, radar operator Joseph Stiborik, tail gunner George Caron, electronic counter-measures officer Jacob Beser, and electronics test officer and assistant weaponeer Morris Jeppson.
On the evening of August 4, Parsons watched in horror as the evening combat sorties of the Twenty-First’s bombers lifted off on another mission to Japan. Four B-29s in a row had failed to lift off and crashed into a flaming mass of wreckage at the end of the runway. Accidents like this were not uncommon, and in the morning, as word came that the weather was lifting and the atomic mission would take off on the 6th, Parsons spoke with Brigadier General Farrell, worried that if the B-29 carrying Little Boy crashed, “there is the danger of an atomic explosion and we may lose this end of the island, if not the whole of Tinian with every blessed thing and person on it.”10 To avoid that, Parsons proposed that he do the final assembly of the bomb in flight, a procedure he had himself rejected earlier.
Farrell asked Parsons if he had tried the procedure, and was told no, “but I’ve got all day to try it.” The Destination Team loaded Little Boy onto its trailer, and drove it out to the bomb pit. Surrounded by a security screen, the bomb was lowered into the pit on a hydraulic lift. Aircraft 44-86292, now painted with the name of Colonel Tibbets’ mother, “Enola Gay,” was towed into position over the pit. The bomb crew then slowly raised the bomb into the plane’s bomb bay. According to Harlow Russ, “by shortly after noon Little Boy had been loaded into the bomb bay, secured, and all the pullout wires were attached to their hooks in the airplane.”11 With the partially assembled bomb in place, Parsons crawled into the aircraft’s crowded interior and began to practice inserting the final components, cutting his bare hands on exposed metal as he sweltered in the hot sun. However, when he finally emerged from the plane two hours later, soaked in sweat, hands bloody and covered in the graphite that lubricated the moving parts inside the bomb, Parsons was confident that he could complete Little Boy once the plane was in the air and on the way to Japan.
The planes would take off in the predawn darkness. That evening, after a normal preflight briefing after mess, Tibbets could not sleep. He played blackjack with a few of his officers until 11:00hrs, when he, Parsons, and Ramsey assembled the men of the flight crews that would fly the combat mission for a final briefing. Until then, none of the men of the 509th knew exactly what their secret weapon was. Tibbets started the briefing with a dramatic statement:
Tonight is the night that we have all been waiting for. Our long months of training are to be put to the test. We will soon know if we have been successful or failed. Upon our efforts tonight it is possible that history will be made. We are going on a mission to drop a bomb different from any you have ever seen or heard about. This bomb contains a destructive force equivalent to twenty thousand tons of TNT.12
After pausing, Tibbets resumed with a discussion of the tactics and the plan for the mission. Parsons and Ramsey spoke, with Parsons talking about the Trinity test and warning the men to shield their eyes from the flash. After the briefing ended, the crews went to the mess hall for a pre-flight breakfast before heading out to the runway.
Seven B-29s stood by. Three of them were weather reconnaissance planes – “Straight Flush” commanded by Major Eatherly would fly to Hiroshima, “Jabit III” commanded by Major John A. Wilson would fly to Kokura, and “Full House” commanded by Major Ralph A. Taylor would fly to Nagasaki. The three planes rumbled off the runway at 01:45hrs and started for Japan. Four other planes stood by, with “Enola Gay” bathed in lights and surrounded by photographers and cameramen.
The historic occasion of the flight was not lost on the military, and for over 20 minutes the plane and crew were filmed until Tibbets called a halt and started pre-flight preparations. Joining “Enola Gay” on the runway were the planes “The Great Artiste” commanded by Major Charles W. Sweeney, “Necessary Evil” commanded by Captain George W. Marquardt, and “Top Secret” commanded by Captain Charles F. McKnight. “The Great Artiste” carried instruments to measure the blast. The crew of “Necessary Evil” was to observe and photograph the attack, and “Top Secret” was the “strike spare,” the plane that would fly as far as Iwo Jima and stand by to take Little Boy to Japan if “Enola Gay” developed problems and had to abort the mission. Despite the US government’s quest for post-attack publicity, New York Times reporter William L. Laurence, on a secret wartime assignment to the Manhattan Project, was too late to fly on the mission as planned, because he had just arrived on Tinian.
At 02:27hrs Tibbets taxied up onto the runway. Revving his engines, he began a long roll forward using “every inch of the runway” to help ensure that Parsons’ fears of a crash were not realized.13 “Enola Gay” lifted off at 02:45hrs and began to climb on a north-northwest heading of 338 degrees. Ten minutes later, “Enola Gay” passed Saipan at 4,700ft, at a speed of 247mph. Parsons and Jeppson climbed into the bomb bay 15 minutes into the flight, and there, with Jeppson reading off the checklist, Parsons delicately and expertly once again performed the final assembly of Little Boy; according to Parsons’ log of the mission, at 03:15hrs. The final task was the insertion of a safety feature – “safe/arm plugs.” Three green plugs with handles, inserted into connectors on the bomb, disabled the arming and firing circuits. With the bomb prepared, Parsons and Jeppson returned to the weaponeers’ station in the forward compartment to monitor the bomb during the flight.
“Enola Gay” and the other B-29s rendezvoused at Iwo Jima at 05:55hrs. Tibbets circled to allow the other planes to gather in formation for the final leg to Japan. “Top Secret” landed on the island to wait for the next few hours. As the sun rose in the sky, at 06:07hrs the strike force was now on its final heading, flying northwest on a 322–325-degree course at 9,700ft. They were headed directly for the southern tip of Shikoku, where the primary target, the city of Hiroshima, lay. An hour ahead of them, the weather reconnaissance planes were just approaching Japan. At 07:30hrs, as “Enola Gay” grew closer, Jeppson climbed back into the bomb bay to switch out the safe/arm plugs, and Parsons turned to Tibbets to let him know that the bomb was now ready. With that, at 07:41hrs Tibbets began to climb to 31,600ft.
Worried by the appearance of clouds as they approached Japan, Tibbets relaxed when a coded radio report from “Straight Flush” came in at 08:30hrs to report that despite some clouds, Hiroshima was clear. The primary target could be bombed visually, as Tibbets’ orders specified. Notifying the crew by intercom, Tibbets flew over Shikoku and began the final run across the Iyo Sea toward Hiroshima. The plan of attack called for the bombing to take place at 09:15hrs Tinian time. At 09:06hrs, Hiroshima appeared on the horizon and Tibbets made his way to the initial point, a navigational spot where he turned the B-29 to the west. Flying at 264 degrees, “Enola Gay” was now on the bombing run. Tibbets had expected to run against the wind to assist the bombardier, but a 10mph crosswind was blowing. Ferebee, however, “was an old hand at dropping bombs,”14 and began to scan the ground below with his Norden bomb sight, looking for the aiming point, Hiroshima’s Aioi Bridge.
One of the planning aspects of the 509th missions to Japan had been flying in small numbers of one, two, or three aircraft at a time. The Japanese, used to larger swarms of bombers, had not seen these flights as a threat, particularly since a number of the missions had been reconnaissance flights. As a result, anti-aircraft and interceptors were not present. On the ground below, the citizens of Hiroshima had woken to another hot summer day and a morning alarm as Eatherly’s plane had passed over ahead on its weather reconnaissance. No bombs had fallen, and the Japanese, used to the strange visits of “B-san,” had returned to their morning tasks when “Enola Gay” appeared. It was 08:14hrs, Hiroshima time.
At 31,060ft above the city, Ferebee activated a high-pitched radio tone that warned the other planes that the bomb would drop in 60 seconds. As crew slid darkened goggles on to protect their eyes, the tone counted down. When it stopped, the pneumatic bomb bay doors swung open, and Little Boy fell from “Enola Gay” at 08:15:17hrs local time. It fell carrying slogans and notations left by the bomb assembly team and the crew, including one note for the “boys of the Indianapolis.” Returning to sea after delivering the Little Boy components to Tinian, Indianapolis was approximately 600 miles off Guam on July 30 when the submarine I-58 intercepted the cruiser. A spread of torpedoes hit Indianapolis and sent her to the bottom. The sinking took most of the crew to the bottom; in all, more than 880 men lost their lives, many after they had drifted for days on the open water until sharks, sun, and the sea took their deadly toll.
As Little Boy fell, Tibbets sharply turned the plane 155 degrees and dived 1,700ft to pick up enough speed to throw the plane beyond the deadly zone of the blast. At the same time, “The Great Artiste” dropped three instrumentation packages to monitor the effects of the bomb and radio them back to the scientists on board. Forty-five seconds later, at 08:16:02hrs, radar-activated switches fired the U-235 plug inside the bomb into the target rings and Little Boy detonated 1,903ft above the Aioi Bridge. Ferebee would later joke that he was 13ft off target. From high above, observers saw a “little pin-point of light, purplish-red” that grew into a giant ball of fire. In the cockpit, Tibbets recalled “everything just turned white in front of me.”15 Seconds later, the shock wave, racing at 1,100ft per second, hit the plane. Tailgunner Caron watched it speed through the sky, its leading edge visible as the heated shock front condensed moisture in the air. Tibbets kept the plane level, and then a second shock wave hit. When it passed, Tibbets keyed the intercom and told the crew, “Fellows, you have just dropped the first atomic bomb in history.” In his log, co-pilot Lewis wrote, “My God!”16
On the ground, the bright flash and the intense heat of the detonation killed, burned, blinded, and maimed as neutrons and gamma particles raced out as deadly radiation. Fifty percent of a nuclear explosion is blast force, with 15 percent radiation and 35 percent thermal effect. Almost everything within a half-mile radius of the hypocenter, or ground zero, was incinerated. Those who survived within that circle of death were shielded from the heat, but even then most died within a day from blast or radiation injuries. More than a mile from the blast, Catholic priest John A. Siemes, a German living in Hiroshima, described the blast from his novitiate window. The sky:
is filled by a garish light which resembles the magnesium light used in photography, and I am conscious of a wave of heat. I jump to the window to find out the cause of this remarkable phenomenon, but I see nothing more than that brilliant yellow light. As I make for the door, it doesn’t occur to me that the light might have something to do with enemy planes. On the way from the window, I hear a moderately loud explosion which seems to come from a distance and, at the same time, the windows are broken in with a loud crash. There has been an interval of perhaps ten seconds since the flash of light. I am sprayed by fragments of glass.17
Other survivors, their stories memorialized in the 1945 bestselling account of the attack, Hiroshima, by John Hersey, told of a blinding light, of sudden heat and pressure, and of buildings collapsing on top of or around them.
The flat terrain of the city, the fact that the bomb exploded slightly northwest of the center of Hiroshima, and the largely wooden character of the city’s construction meant that the 15-kiloton blast of Little Boy devastated Hiroshima. Described as Japan’s seventh largest city before the war, with a population of 340,000, Hiroshima, according to the United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS), was the principal administrative and commercial center of southwestern Japan, and headquarters of the Second Army and the Chugoku Regional Army: “it was one of the most important military command stations … site of one of the largest military supply depots, and the foremost military shipping point for both troops and supplies … during the war new plants were built that increased its [industrial] significance.”18
Hiroshima atomic damage and casualties, August 6, 1945. This map is based on the US Stategic Bombing Survey’s map (1946). (Artist Info)
The attack immediately killed or injured 60 percent of Hiroshima’s population; in time, over 100,000 would die from the effects of the atomic bomb. Radiation sickness, appearing anywhere from immediately to weeks after the blast, would linger. And its effects would last for the lifetime of the survivors.
Nearly 70 percent of the city’s buildings were destroyed. The several thousand degrees of heat caused by the fireball, which only lasted for a fraction of a second, nonetheless started fires as far away as 13,700ft from ground zero and burned the unprotected skin of people as far away as 13,000ft. The blast’s shock wave, traveling at the speed of sound, imploded wooden structures, gutted buildings, and toppled brick and concrete walls with a peak overpressure of 5psi for a radius of over a mile. Everything within a 2-mile radius was destroyed or seriously damaged. The bomb’s result was a smashed city of kindling, with splintered buildings, filled with the dead and dying, that quickly burst into flame as toppled cooking stoves, downed electrical wires, and those fireball fires not snuffed out by the blast were fanned into a maelstrom.
In “Enola Gay,” the crew watched in horror while the city “boiled,” as Parsons described it:
The huge dust cloud covered everything. The base of the lower part of the mushroom, a mass of purplish-gray dust about three miles in diameter, was all boiling… The mushroom top was also boiling, a seething turbulent mass … it looked as though it was coming from a huge burning fire... It seemed as though the whole town got pulverized.19
Tibbets watched as fire sprang up everywhere “amidst a turbulent mass of smoke that had the appearance of bubbling hot tar... If Dante had been with us on that plane, he would have been terrified.”20
On the ground, the surviving citizens of Hiroshima were panicked, an exodus described as “aimless, even hysterical” by the USSBS,21 fleeing as the fires merged, whipped by wind, into a massive firestorm that burned out a 2-mile diameter area of the city. The horrors of the storm were described by Father Siemes:
Beneath the wreckage of the houses along the way, many have been trapped and they scream to be rescued from the oncoming flames. They must be left to their fate. The way to the place in the city to which one desires to flee is no longer open and one must make for Asano Park. Fukai does not want to go further and remains behind. He has not been heard from since. In the park, we take refuge on the bank of the river. A very violent whirlwind now begins to uproot large trees, and lifts them high into the air. As it reaches the water, a waterspout forms which is approximately 100 meters high. The violence of the storm luckily passes us by. Some distance away, however, where numerous refugees have taken shelter, many are blown into the river. Almost all who are in the vicinity have been injured and have lost relatives who have been pinned under the wreckage or who have been lost sight of during the flight. There is no help for the wounded and some die. No one pays any attention to a dead man lying nearby.22
As Hiroshima burned, the strike force turned away as the radioactive cloud from the blast swung toward them. The mushroom cloud of smoke from Hiroshima remained visible in the sky until “Enola Gay” was 363 miles away, an hour and a half after the attack. Four hours later, at 14:58hrs Tinian time, “Enola Gay” touched down on the runway it had left.
As Tibbets emerged from the plane to a crowd of some 200 military personnel, General Carl Spaatz, commander of Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific, pinned the Distinguished Service Medal on him. The other crew members, including Parsons, were awarded the Silver Star. The atomic secret was a secret no longer. Laurence was free to begin releasing his stories of the Manhattan Project and its “secret cities,” and radio broadcasts and news began to share the incredible news of the atomic bomb with the world.
President Truman, returning home from Potsdam on board the cruiser USS Augusta, had his lunch interrupted when the captain of the ship passed him a cable announcing the attack. “This is the greatest thing in history,” Truman exclaimed. “It’s time for us to get home.”23 The Japanese government released a statement that Hiroshima had been damaged, and that a “new-type of bomb” appeared to have been used, but to the amazement of Tibbets and others no indication of a Japanese surrender was mentioned. It was clear that the enemy would fight on.
At Hiroshima, the night brought no relief for the dying. Surviving doctors and nurses were overwhelmed, and the smell of death filled the air along with smoke. In the morning, on a return to downtown, Father Siemes noted that:
Where the city stood everything, as far as the eye could reach, is a waste of ashes and ruin. Only several skeletons of buildings completely burned out in the interior remain. The banks of the river are covered with dead and wounded, and the rising waters have here and there covered some of the corpses. On the broad street in the Hakushima district, naked burned cadavers are particularly numerous. Among them are the wounded who are still alive. A few have crawled under the burnt-out autos and trams. Frightfully injured forms beckon to us and then collapse.
Even with relief coming to the stricken city, Hiroshima will be a devastated ruin filled with the dying for many weeks to come.24
At Tinian, as preparations began for a second atomic strike mission, this one to carry Fat Man into combat, the United States released a warning to Japan, both in the press, on radio, and in leaflets that B-29s dropped on the country. The message was blunt:
We are in possession of the most destructive explosive ever devised by man. A single one of our newly-developed atomic bombs is actually the equivalent in explosive power to what 2,000 of our giant B-29s can carry on a single mission. This awful fact is for you to ponder and we solemnly assure you that it is grimly accurate. We have just begun to use this weapon against your homeland. If you have any doubt, make inquiry into what happened to Hiroshima when just one bomb fell on that city.25
The message then assured the Japanese that “we shall resolutely employ this bomb and all our other superior weapons” unless Japan surrenders. There was no response from the government of Japan, and so the second mission to bomb Japan with atomic weapons proceeded, as Tibbets noted, to “indicate that we had an endless supply of this superweapon” and that Japan would be annihilated under the terms of the Potsdam Declaration.26 The second attack by the 509th would take Fat Man to the port city of Nagasaki.