The Project
The bomb had been evolving for over six years. It began with a discovery made in the laboratories of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin. In the fall of 1938, just before Europe went into the convulsions of another war, two scientists, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, repeated an experiment first tried in 1934 by an Italian, Enrico Fermi. The results of bombarding a piece of uranium metal with neutrons led them to conclude that the nucleus of the metal had split into two lighter elements and that a portion of the enormous energy required to hold it together had been released.
They reported their findings to a colleague, Lise Meitner, who had been involved with their preliminary experiments but had recently been forced to leave Germany because she was a Jew. She communicated the startling theory to her friend Niels Bohr, a Danish pioneer in physics, who urged further experiments to validate the conclusions.
It was Bohr who brought the news to the United States. Shortly after he came to New York from Copenhagen in January 1939, he received a telegram from Lise Meitner’s nephew reporting that the theory she had described to him had been confirmed by further tests. The atom had indeed been split. Bohr then went to the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and shared the information with scientific colleagues there; he later published a report on it in the magazine Physical Review.
As Adolf Hitler plunged the world into war, knowledgeable men realized the ramifications of the discovery. Because of the fantastic energy potential involved, it was now theoretically possible to produce a weapon which could alter the course of history. It was unthinkable that such a power should fall into the hands of a dictator.
On October 11, 1939, Franklin Roosevelt entertained an old friend, Alexander Sachs, a director of the Lehman Corporation, an influential economist and a friend to scientists. Sachs came to the White House with a terribly important message contained in a letter he began to read:
Sir:
Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard, which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the near future. Certain aspects of the situation which has arisen seem to call for watchfulness and if necessary, quick action on the part of the Administration.… It may become possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium, by which vast amounts of power and large quantities of new radium-like elements would be generated.… It is conceivable—though much less certain—that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed.…
The letter was signed by Albert Einstein.
Though impressed, Roosevelt seemed preoccupied with other things, He broke off the discussion, but asked Sachs to come back again the next day for breakfast.
The economist returned on Columbus Day to renew the assault. Well aware of the President’s personality, he had decided on a different tactic in presenting the “atomic” plea.
Sachs told Roosevelt a story. He brought the President back to the year 1805 when Napoleon hungered to invade England but lacked the means to navigate the English Channel. An American inventor, Robert Fulton, came to the dictator and proposed building a fleet of steamboats which could easily make the crossing. Napoleon considered the idea for just a few moments, then threw Fulton out as an idiot.
Alexander Sachs paused in his story, then asked Franklin Roosevelt the crucial question: How might the history of the world have been altered if Napoleon had listened to this inventor?
Roosevelt got the point immediately. He looked up at his friend. “Alex,” he said, “what you are after is to see that the Nazis don’t blow us up.” To his secretary, “Pa” Watson, Roosevelt added, “This requires action.”
Accordingly, Roosevelt formed a committee to explore the potential of the uranium atom. He installed Lyman Briggs, a Government scientist, as its head, and Commander Gilbert Hoover and Colonel Keith Adamson as members. The greatest scientific brains in America became involved in the race to build the bomb before Germany could achieve it—among them, James B. Conant, Harvard’s lean, sober president; Ernest Lawrence, brilliant, aggressive leader of the University of California Science Laboratories; Enrico Fermi, whose earlier work was the basis for so much that followed; Leo Szilard, a Hungarian physicist; Kenneth Bainbridge, a Harvard professor recently returned from observing similar efforts in Britain; Arthur and Karl Compton, genius brothers, Karl the President of M.I.T. and Arthur chairman of the Physics Department at the University of Chicago. The work of these men was coordinated into the Office of Scientific Research and Development under the direction of Dr. Vannevar Bush. This office was also to take under its wing Roosevelt’s original Uranium Committee. From then on, the project had direct access to the President for guidance and money.
Almost two years to the day after Alexander Sachs first approached the Chief Executive with Einstein’s letter, Dr. Bush met with Roosevelt and Vice-President Wallace and outlined the latest findings. He told them that British physicists were confident that they had determined the approximate amount of uranium needed to make a bomb. He gave the President the tentative cost for a production plant needed to concentrate the metal and an estimate of the time needed actually to achieve a weapon. Together, Roosevelt, Wallace and Bush conferred on the urgency of moving the program past the theoretical stage. They discussed military policy, the probable state of German research, and even the problems associated with postwar control of the new power. Franklin Roosevelt agreed that work on the bomb must be expedited and told Bush that money could be made available from secret funds within the governmental budget. Vannevar Bush left the White House knowing that he and his colleagues must proceed with all possible haste toward making certain that an atomic bomb could in fact be produced.
Two months later, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States’ entry into the war, Roosevelt released emergency monies into the bomb program. Thousands of men were recruited for a unit officially known as the Manhattan Engineering District, later called the Manhattan Project. The Project included a vast building program necessary to the manufacture of bomb ingredients. General Leslie Groves, a forty-six-year-old West Point engineer who had recently played a key role in the construction of the massive Pentagon, was chosen as coordinator of this building program. Blunt and unreasonable in his demands, Groves had acquired a reputation for being difficult. At his first meeting with Dr. Bush, he got off to a bad start. Unfortunately, Bush had not been informed about Groves’ new status and quickly resented the general’s probing questions. Groves was dumbfounded by the scientist’s lack of cooperation and left the office wondering exactly what had gone wrong. Bush in turn telephoned and tried to find out just what Groves’ position was in the hierarchy. When he was told that the general would oversee the operation of plant facilities, he expressed strong doubts about Groves’ ability to work with people. He said, “I’m afraid we’re all in the soup.”
Despite this memorable first confrontation between the two men, they managed to work out an excellent relationship based on mutual respect for each other’s abilities. A committee of four, including Bush, Conant, General William Styer and Admiral William Purnell, sat in judgment of Groves during the next three years as he guided the Manhattan Project toward its elusive goal. The four found General Leslie Groves a remarkable man, as they watched him proceed with the formidable task of creating a new industrial complex across the American landscape.
Research and production were centered at three remote places: Los Alamos, New Mexico; Oak Ridge, Tennessee; and Hanford, Washington. In Los Alamos the workable weapon was to be designed under the supervision of Julius Robert Oppenheimer, a shy, frail scholar, a theoretical physicist. Oppenheimer was a man versed in Oriental literature, an aesthete who abhorred the violence of war. In his earlier life, he had associated with various Communist organizations, contributed to left-wing groups, and been intimate with many “fellow travelers”—in his time, completely predictable in an academic community espousing the utopia being preached by Moscow. When he first became involved in the security-ridden life of the Manhattan Project, his past produced violent opposition to his appointment. At this point, General Groves personally insisted that Oppenheimer be cleared immediately as “essential to the project.” Oppenheimer went on to prove beyond doubt Groves’ wisdom in selecting and championing him.
At Oak Ridge, a sprawling complex in the isolated mountains of Tennessee, the task was to pry the highly fissionable U-235 from U-238, the predominant isotope in natural uranium. Two separation methods, gaseous diffusion and electromagnetic, were employed to extract the vital material. Mammoth buildings were erected in two valleys for the purpose of collecting this rare metal that could be measured in thimblefuls. Thousands of men and women labored at their assigned duties in a contest against time. Most of them were as ignorant of the final purpose as mystified local onlookers. No product emerged from an assembly line. No trucks carried off goods. The only tangible evidence of achievement was the two huge cities of brick created for the scientists.
At Hanford, in the scrubland of eastern Washington, another sprawling factory complex was constructed. There, the most amazing part of the atomic quest was enacted. Inside windowless buildings, a man-made element was separated from uranium by chemical means. Plutonium was produced.
In the spring of 1940, Drs. Edwin M. McMillan and Philip H. Abelson had identified a new element in their laboratory at Berkeley. Neptunium, element 93, was born through the emission of an electron by U-239, which in turn had been produced by the capture of a neutron by U-238, an isotope in natural uranium. The scientific report of the discovery stressed that another element, 94, was undoubtedly present, since neptunium “had been observed to emit an electron.” The new force was too minute to detect.
When the work of Abelson and McMillan was interrupted by other duties, Dr. Glenn Seaborg, another researcher at Berkeley, had asked to continue the job of finding the elusive element. On March 1, 1941, he, Dr. Joseph Kennedy, Arthur Wahl and Dr. Emilio Segré bombarded one kilogram of uranium with neutrons. The experiment lasted six days. Suddenly the uranium was turned into neptunium and then metamorphosed into the exciting discovery, element 94, plutonium.
Twenty-two days later, the same scientists bombarded one-half microgram of plutonium with slow neutrons. They were jubilant on finding that it split its atoms just like uranium U-235. Man had manufactured his first element in nature’s periodic table. Instead of depending on the rare uranium U-235, he could now produce practically limitless quantities of fissionable material. When the Manhattan Project got under way, scientists realized that, in plutonium, the United States had the ingredient to manufacture a bomb in time to alter the balance of power. The major problem was to build the facilities to create it.
On December 2, 1942, scientist Enrico Fermi supervised the first self-sustaining, chain-reacting atomic pile. It had been built on a squash court at the University of Chicago. Later that day, Arthur H. Compton telephoned his friend James Conant at Harvard and said, “Jim, you’ll be interested to know that the Italian navigator has just landed in the New World.” Conant asked whether the natives were friendly. Compton assured him that they were.
At Hanford, several plants rose up on the south bank of the Columbia River. Inside them, there was no sound, only an eerie silence that belied the incredible drama going on behind thick, lead-shielded walls. No human eye witnessed the strange alchemy. Through a complicated system of control panels, metal moved through various stages to the final process. Huge atomic piles, the first atomic power plants on earth, generated cosmic fires as microscopic amounts of plutonium were created. Here at Hanford, man reached a summit of intellectual and utilitarian attainment as the material for the bomb was prepared.
Satisfied with the progress of his industrial facilities, General Groves put into motion the next phase of the Manhattan Project: Operation Silver Plate, leading ultimately to the bomb drop itself. From bases scattered around the world men were summoned to a secret installation in the Utah desert—fifteen hundred of them by the end of September 1944. Wendover Field, code-named Kingman or W-47, was a desolate oasis, only 125 miles west of Salt Lake City but a light year away from civilization. It was a sinkhole, a dusty, hot scar in a bleak, forbidding landscape.
Commander Fred Ashworth, a weapons specialist who would help to field-test the new bomb and who was to supervise ballistics design improvements at Wendover, first saw the base on a Sunday afternoon and was appalled. Since he would be commuting between Los Alamos and Wendover, he requested that his family be allowed to live in New Mexico rather than endure the hardships at the new airfield.
Personnel at Wendover included military specialists of all kinds. They formed the newly created 509th Composite Group. As group commander, Colonel Paul Tibbets, twenty-nine years old, was responsible for perfecting the ability of the 509th to carry out the mission flawlessly.
Tibbets’ credentials were impressive. He was one of the first pilots to fly a B-17 over Europe when the Luftwaffe still dominated the air. Decorated several times, he eventually returned to the United States to lead modification work on a new bomber, the B-29, just then beginning to come off the assembly line. In the summer of 1944, an urgent telephone call ordered him to report to General Uzal Ent in Colorado Springs. There Tibbets met Captain William Parsons, chief of weapons development under Oppenheimer at Los Alamos, and Dr. Norman Ramsey, a Harvard professor and a specialist in bomb development. The three men briefed him on the job the Government wanted him to do—a job that required him to train the newly formed 509th Composite Group to drop the product of billions of dollars of research monies on an unnamed target at an unannounced date.
In the summer of 1944, Tibbets reported at Wendover, and quickly arranged for some of his old flying companions to join him and become key members of the 393rd Bombardment Squadron. This was the section of the 509th to be entrusted with the actual delivery of the weapon. Among Tibbet’s friends were Major Tom Ferebee, a mustachioed bombardier who had been with him during the trying days in England, and Dutch Van Kirk who had navigated for him over Europe. Others were called upon because of their work with Tibbets on the B-29 modification program in the United States: Bob Lewis, an excellent pilot, and Major Chuck Sweeney, who had probably flown the B-29 more than anyone else. Earlier in the summer Sweeney had been stationed at Grand Island, Nebraska, to train pilots in handling the new bomber—among them, General Curtis Lemay, who later commanded the initial super-bomber effort in the Pacific. Sweeney was a cherubic-faced, heavyset Irishman from Boston, a man of great ability and personal charm who quickly attracted the affection and respect of those who worked under him. Under the direction of Colonel Tibbets, Major Sweeney was to train one of the crews: Number 15.
Crew 15 was formed in the fall of 1944. The navigator was Jim Van Pelt, a handsome, sensitive West Virginian who had washed out as a pilot but was graduated from Navigation School in September of 1942. He had become friends with Tom Ferebee at a dice table at Ardmore, Oklahoma, and it was through Ferebee that he came to Wendover. At his suggestion, Kermit Beahan also came from Ardmore with him. Beahan was a bombardier, a tremendously efficient technician known to his fellow airmen as “The Great Artiste.” He was a Texas boy, an authentic hero from the skies of Europe where he had been shot down several times and on one occasion had saved a tail gunner’s Me by administering oxygen during a raid.
Captain Don Albury was another B-29 pilot whose superb flying skills were obvious to Tibbets and Sweeney. This native of Miami, Florida, was called by some of his contemporaries the “most competent twenty-five-year-old” they had ever known. The father of one child, Albury was especially popular with the enlisted men, who continually brought their problems to him.
Lieutenant Fred Olivi served as copilot or third pilot on the crew. A bulky Italian boy of twenty-three from Chicago, he neither smoked nor drank and was therefore the object of much good-natured ribbing from his fellow officers.
There were five enlisted men in the crew. Master Sergeant John Kuharek was the only Regular Army man on board, a veteran of fourteen years’ service and an extremely competent engineer. The radio operator was Sergeant Abe Spitzer, born in the Bronx and an old-timer of thirty-five. The gunner and assistant engineer was Sergeant Ray Gallagher, the youngest of the group at twenty-three. Sergeant Pappy Dehart, the tail gunner, was a sad-eyed Texan who passionately hated the army and loved farming but performed his duties competently and without complaint. Sergeant Ed Buckley operated the radar along with Van Pelt. He also doubled as mechanic, radio operator and general handyman.
The 509th Group held the highest priority rating in the matter of securing the necessary tools for the task ahead. Fourteen new B-29’s disappeared from the rolls of various Air Force installations. Generals who raised loud voices in complaint at the transfers from their squadrons were silenced by phone. The top Air Force man in Washington, General Hap Arnold, had given the word that there was good reason for the action.
Under Tibbets’ direction a number of plane crews initiated curious flights out over the western part of the United States. Each aircraft took one large, bulbous bomb aloft, always to an altitude of more than thirty thousand feet. Bombardiers released them over painted white circles on the desert floor. Immediately the planes turned sharply at a 60-degree angle, then came around in an arc of 156½ degrees.
Toward the end of the training period, dummy weapons were filled with high explosives. At all times the bomb drops were photographed from bomb bays and other planes in order to record the efficiency of each bomb’s external configuration. (Wendover’s personnel included twenty-seven scientists working on the ballistics phase of the superweapon.) Although Crew 15 constantly speculated on the purpose of the unvarying method of attack and maneuver, no one ever guessed at the purpose of the special training.
Security regulations at Wendover were stringent to an extreme. Special agents followed men on leave into neighboring cities and eavesdropped on their conversations. One high-ranking officer who revealed too much information in a casual meeting at another Air Force base returned to Wendover to find his bags packed and his orders for transfer processed. He spent the rest of the war near the Arctic Circle. A few men of the 509th were gradually made aware of the nature of the project. Chuck Sweeney was driven into the desert one day and told of it. But the vast majority remained uninformed.
By January 1945, most of the 509th Group had moved to Cuba for two months as part of a plan to train the unit as a completely self-sustaining entity capable of moving by itself over a long distance. There, crews were also able to practice radar bombing over water areas as preparation for the eventual move to the Pacific.
The base they would occupy in the Mariana Islands had already been chosen by Commander Fred Ashworth of the Navy, who, in February, had gone to Guam to see Admiral Chester Nimitz. In a money belt the commander carried a letter signed by Admiral Ernest King, Chief of Naval Operations, which revealed the story of the atomic bomb and gave Ashworth the highest priority. Nimitz had been curious about the new unit detailed to come into his area, but Ashworth’s arrival ended his confusion.
The commander then chose the northwest corner of Tinian as headquarters for the 509th Group. Several factors weighed heavily in making his decision: the Seabees were transforming the coral table into an unshakable aircraft carrier; Tinian was one hundred miles closer to Japan than Guam, and the great weight of the bomb might make that shorter distance crucial to the success of the flights; Tinian also had better harbor facilities.
Back in the United States, the Manhattan Engineering District was moving at an accelerated pace during the spring of 1945. The plants at Oak Ridge and Hanford were operating. U-235 and plutonium were being produced in small quantities. As two designs for the bomb became finalized each was given a nickname. The narrow uranium bomb was called “Thin Man” for Roosevelt, as opposed to the bulbous plutonium bomb which was named “Fat Man” after Churchill. Choice of these nicknames was more than casual. It was believed that if messages concerning Thin Man and Fat Man were monitored, the eavesdropper would assume that the names actually referred to Roosevelt and Churchill. In its final stage, the gun barrel of the Thin Man was shortened, and it was thereafter known as “Little Boy.”
Theoretical tests left little doubt that the uranium bomb would work. Little Boy would not need to be tested before the actual detonation over Japan. The problem at the moment was to provide enough U-235 to explode the weapon.
The plutonium bomb, however, still had to be test fired. No one was completely sure that Fat Man would detonate. In the desert of New Mexico, scientists planned to set up a tower to hold a device containing a tiny amount of the metal for testing.
In March 1945, the 509th returned from Cuba to practice again over the western part of the United States. Cameras recorded each free fall of the tear-shaped bombs to make sure of the design. Chuck Sweeney and Don Albury wheeled their B-29 over in fast turns as before. They flew the ship for great distances while Jim Van Pelt obtained extensive experience navigating the plane alone.
In the spring, the 509th began to leave its desolate home. Eight hundred men sailed out of Seattle in May and the advance air echelon left shortly afterward.
Though the war in Europe ended on May 8, fighting in the Pacific was becoming increasingly brutal. The 509th Group now embarking for Tinian from the West Coast hopefully would bring that conflict to an abrupt end. But Harry Truman would face a grave decision because of what the 509th was training to accomplish.
On June 18, at a meeting in Washington, D.C., President Truman had talked with his military and civilian advisers:
TRUMAN: |
As I understand it, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, after weighing all the possibilities of the situation and considering all possible alternative plans, are still of the unanimous opinion that the Kyushu operation [invasion of Japan] is the best solution under the circumstances. |
ANSWER: |
That is correct. |
TRUMAN: |
Mr. Stimson, what is your opinion? |
STIMSON: |
I agree that there is no other choice.… I do think that there is a large submerged class in Japan who do not favor the present war and whose full opinion and influence have not yet been felt.… I feel something should be done to arouse them and to develop any possible influence they might have before it becomes necessary to come to grips with them. |
Truman asked Admiral William Leahy for his views:
As the meeting was adjourned, Truman asked John McCloy, Assistant Secretary of War, to add his comments before leaving. McCloy said that all the talk of invading Japan struck him as rather “fantastic.” The secretary asked, “Why not use the atomic bomb?”
The meeting was once more called to order and McCloy’s remark was discussed. Truman listened intently as the men at the table argued the merits of first warning the Japanese to surrender and then using the new weapon if the enemy ignored the ultimatum. The dialogue broke down because of one basic truth. No one in the room knew whether the device being readied in New Mexico would actually work. Without that knowledge, strategy was pointless. Truman again affirmed his approval of the invasion of Kyushu.
Crew 15 lingered at Wendover until late in June. Sweeney, now commanding officer of the 393rd Squadron, was issued a new plane, serial number AC 44-27353, a highly modified B-29 incorporating the latest improvements. Besides fuel injection engines, the plane had reversible pitch propellers, which acted as brakes on landing. These would save the lives of the entire crew one day.
On June 21, Chuck Sweeney took his men out of Utah for the last time. He flew them to Hawaii for a few hours in the sun and surf. On the next morning he had the B-29 blessed by a Catholic priest before taking off to the southwest. On June 27, Sweeney brought the huge silver plane down on the runway of North Field at Tinian.
There, the Seabees had performed a miracle. The island had changed markedly since Fred Ashworth first visited it in February. Hundreds of B-29’s sat at hardstands in row after gleaming row. Wide asphalt roads were laid out to correspond with the street plan of New York City. There was a Broadway, a Forty-second Street and an Eighth Avenue. The 509th made its home in upper Manhattan.
Tinian was a white coral rock. It was also a lush tropical island on which the Japanese had cultivated a thriving sugar cane business. Natives from Korea and Okinawa had been brought to the island to labor in the fields and mills. Now some of them hid in the hills too frightened to surrender. With Japanese soldiers, they sometimes raided the garbage cans at North Field in order to stay alive. The men of the 509th tried to ignore the possibility of being killed by one of these scavengers as they entered their final training.
Security had dictated that this group be isolated from the other fighting units based on Tinian. Surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards, the men of the secret outfit endured mounting criticism from airmen flying to Japan every week and losing their friends to Japanese fire.
Occasionally one plane from the 509th went out over the ocean on a long distance familiarization mission against an enemy-held island. It carried a single orange high-explosive bomb, dubbed “Pumpkin,” which was dropped and detonated in the air above the target. Some of the men in the planes wondered openly whether the Pumpkin was the only reason for all the specialized training in the past year. They hoped not.
In the meantime, the airmen on Tinian acquainted themselves with their new home. They swam, kibitzed at card games, drank beer, read, did the things that men do with time on their hands. Kermit Beahan managed to persuade Fred Olivi to take his first drink. The results were disastrous and Olivi spent several days in bed. Tom Ferebee constructed a “professional” dice table and gamblers stayed at it for eight hours at a time. The men had movies nightly; the officers could buy a fifth of liquor a week at $1.30 a bottle.
Mostly they wondered among themselves when the big mission would come. Few were aware of the tension building around them.
On July 16, as Crew 15 dawdled in front of their Quonset huts or swam in the ocean, the experimental plutonium bomb had exploded in the New Mexican desert. In an appalling burst of heat, man had liberated that very energy which, through eons of time, lights the stars.
Three men had lain face down as the white light engulfed them. Leslie Groves, Vannevar Bush and James B. Conant had looked at each other and silently clasped hands as they beheld their creation born of urgent dreams and grown to terrifying reality in seconds.
In Potsdam, Germany, Secretary of War Henry Stimson received the following dispatch from his assistant in Washington:
SECRETARY OF WAR FROM HARRISON
DOCTOR HAS JUST RETURNED MOST ENTHUSIASTIC AND CONFIDENT THAT THE LITTLE BOY IS AS HUSKY AS HIS BIG BROTHER. THE LIGHT IN HIS EYES DISCERNIBLE FROM HERE TO HIGHHOLD AND I COULD HAVE HEARD HIS SCREAMS FROM HERE TO MY FARM.
Highhold was Stimson’s summer place on Long Island, 250 miles from Washington; Harrison’s farm was fifty miles away in Virginia.
Stimson was elated. Though he had continually wrestled with the moral implications of the weapon, he never wavered from his determination to end the war with it, if necessary. In writing to his wife after the New Mexico test explosion, he said he had just had “good news from my baby at home.” On the morning of July 17 he told the good news to President Truman in the “Little White House” at Babelsburg outside Potsdam, and urged that the Japanese be duly warned of the utter destruction that awaited them if they continued the war.
Success of the plutonium bomb test and the power potential it established produced a marked change in American attitudes. Prime Minister Churchill later noted that from July 17 on, Truman, the novice in Big Three meetings, seemed to lose any feelings of inferiority he might have possessed in the company of Stalin and himself. As their meetings continued, when the Russian leader balked at certain proposals, Truman would cut him short and show an aggressiveness which Churchill found “stimulating.”
One of the major items on the agenda at Potsdam had been the inclusion of Russia as a belligerent in the Pacific war at the earliest possible moment. By agreement at Yalta, Stalin was committed to entering the war within three months after the end of hostilities in Europe. With the deadline only a few weeks away, General George Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, wanted Russian troops to invade Manchuria so that Japanese soldiers would be drawn off from the Home Islands. As of July 16, the need for Soviet help in Asia completely evaporated. The war could be won without it.
President Truman knew this. Already disenchanted with Stalin, he wanted no part of a Red claim that their armies had broken the back of Japanese resistance. Nor did he relish the prospect of coping with Stalin’s intrigues in newly liberated lands on the Asia mainland. Nevertheless, he realized there was no way to keep the Soviets out of the war if they wanted to honor the letter of the agreement at Yalta and attack Japan in August. He merely stopped pressing for their pledge and awaited developments in the coming weeks. The cynical round of talks at Potsdam continued.
On July 20, OSS chief Allen Dulles arrived at Potsdam with an important message. He told Secretary Stimson that a Swedish banker, Per Jacobbson, had approached him as a go-between for Japanese officials working at the International Trade Bank in Switzerland. The Japanese wanted to work out peace terms with Dulles and then act on them back in Tokyo. Like Commander Fujimura, they hoped to convince their own Government to agree to end the war immediately. Dulles was particularly interested in this overture because he respected Jacobbson’s reputation and trusted in his motives.
Dulles found Stimson a harried man, immersed in the myriad details of the conference. He showed only slight interest in Dulles’ story.
Both men were well aware of the deteriorating situation in Japan. Dulles had been able to gain access to Japanese cablegrams sent to Germany before the Nazi regime fell. Through an agent working at the German Foreign Office, he had read many dispatches sent from Tokyo to Japanese attachés in Berlin. The messages outlined the grave state of affairs in the Far East.
Stimson had read intercepted telegrams from Foreign Minister Togo to Ambassador Sato in Moscow. He and Truman had discussed the fact that the Japanese seemed to be looking for a way out, though on the basis of several conditions. The American leaders wondered whether the Japanese had other motives behind these apparent peace feelers. For in the United States, the Combined Intelligence Committee, a group which reported to Truman on enemy capabilities, had issued a study on the situation:
… In general, Japan will use all political means for avoiding complete defeat or unconditional surrender.
a. [It will] continue and even increase its attempts to secure complete political unity within the Empire …
b. Attempt to foster a belief among Japan’s enemies that the war will prove costly and long drawn out …
c. Make desperate efforts to persuade the USSR to continue her neutrality … while at the same time making every effort to sow discord between the Americans and British on one side and the Russians on the other. As the situation deteriorates still further, Japan may even make a serious attempt to use the USSR as a mediator in ending the war.
d. Put out intermittent peace feelers, in an effort to bring the war to an acceptable end, to weaken the determination of the United Nations to fight to the bitter end, or to create inter-Allied dissension.…
Japanese leaders are now playing for time in the hope that Allied war weariness, Allied disunity, or some “miracle” will present an opportunity to arrange a compromise peace.…
The Japanese believe … that unconditional surrender would be the equivalent of national extinction. There are as yet no indications that the Japanese are ready to accept such terms.…
Suspicious of Japanese intentions, buoyed up by the success of the Bomb, American statesmen could not get excited over such peripheral approaches to peace as were emanating from Switzerland. Per Jacobbson had come to Allen Dulles far too late in the game of high level diplomacy.
On Tinian, Crew 15, which had already emblazoned bombardier Kermit Beahan’s nickname, The Great Artiste, on the nose of their plane, flew two missions. One, on the twenty-first, was aborted due to engine trouble. The second trip was more successful. With a Pumpkin in the bomb bay, Chuck Sweeney piloted the B-29 to Japan and saw the bomb released over the Kobe marshaling yards. Sweeney performed the same evasive action practiced so often over the deserts of Utah and the Caribbean, then wheeled back toward the Marianas.
On the same day, Henry Stimson told his diary that the United States “didn’t need Russia anymore.”
On the twenty-fourth of July, Harry Truman had that thought in mind as he went up to Joseph Stalin and mentioned that America had developed a new weapon “of unusual destructive force.” Stalin seemed only mildly interested and did not ask for further details.
A day later, Henry Stimson went to the Cecilienhof Palace, a huge brownstone building set in gardens near the ruins of Berlin. There, he sat with Stalin amid the splendor of another age and discussed the roles of the two great powers. Stimson said that he welcomed Soviet participation in the struggle against Japan, and Stalin answered by saying that since both countries had worked so well together in the European conflict, he too was happy to share in the hardships of a joint effort against Japan. Both men knew that S-1, the atomic bomb, would be used shortly, Stimson through his official function and Stalin through his espionage channels. Yet both adhered to the formalities of diplomatic exchanges and parted in a cordial atmosphere, which ignored the basic fact that the monstrous weapon would alter the partnership irrevocably.
On both the twenty-fourth and the twenty-sixth, American military groups met with their Russian counterparts to plot details of Russian participation in the Far Eastern war. The meetings were friendly, free from friction, but perfunctory. The need for cooperation had dwindled to the point of absurdity.
In Tokyo, attention was irrevocably centered on Moscow. There, however, Ambassador Sato sensed the cold wind blowing from Potsdam. On July 20, he had wired Togo: “I recommend acceptance of virtually any terms.…”
Togo was extremely annoyed at his man in Moscow. He was also desperate for a channel leading to peace negotiations.
July 25, 1945 1900 hours
To: Sato
From: Togo
No. 944 (urgent, ambassador’s code.)
… Navy Captain Zacharias said on the 21st that Japan had two choices: she could either accept a dictated peace after her ruin, or surrender unconditionally and enjoy the benefits of the Atlantic Charter. We would be wrong to consider such statements trick propaganda. We must admit that they are partly intended to invite us to come to their cause.… We, for our part, are desirous to inform the United States through some feasible method that, although we are unable to accept unconditional surrender under any circumstances, we have no objection to the restoration of peace on the basis of the Atlantic Charter.
As Sato read this telegram in Moscow, an American cruiser, the Indianapolis, stood in Tinian Harbor unloading components of the uranium bomb. Before Sato replied to the cable, the Allies issued the Potsdam Declaration, a last warning to the Japanese Empire.
The month-long meeting in Potsdam closed with the issuance of an ultimatum that promised the Japanese complete destruction unless they surrendered. The communiqué was dated July 26, just before Clement Attlee had been elected British Prime Minister and had arrived back in Potsdam to replace Churchill.
When the declaration was being drafted, Secretary Stimson took great pains to insist to Truman that the Japanese people be reassured of the continuation of the dynasty under Emperor Hirohito. As a student of Japanese affairs and a former resident of the Far East, Stimson fully understood the importance of the Emperor in Japanese life and feared that they would balk at any surrender terms which reflected adversely on the Ruler’s position. He knew that certain elements in the American Government were vociferous in their stand that the Emperor must go. In particular, Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt’s chief adviser, and Dean Acheson, Undersecretary of State, held apparently strong feelings against the retention of the Imperial Household.
President Truman maintained a flexible attitude toward the Emperor. Both he and Byrnes feared public opinion in the United States would reject any “appeasement” at this stage. Therefore, they felt that the question of Hirohito’s future role should be held in abeyance as a bargaining feature of any forthcoming negotiations with the Japanese. Neither was stubborn with Stimson about the issue, but they ordered the provision struck out of the Declaration of July 26.
On July 27, in Tokyo, the Japanese cabinet sat down to study the document transmitted from across the world.
Attention focused on topics related to surrender terms:
“Prompt and utter destruction” had little meaning at this point to the men in Tokyo whose nation was being destroyed daily by fire raids and who could not possibly have construed the threat to mean imminent use of an atomic bomb. The points included in the Declaration contained nothing surprising to the Japanese cabinet; the terms were what they could expect. What the Potsdam paper did not cover was what the men in Tokyo most wanted clarified: the future status of their Emperor.
Rather than make a decision on the Declaration, Japan preferred to wait for some progress in Moscow. When reporters asked Premier Suzuki for a reaction to the Allied message, he meant to tell them that the Government would “withhold comment” on it for the time being. Unfortunately, he used the word mokusatsu to describe his attitude. In Japanese, mokusatsu means “take no notice of, treat with silent contempt, ignore.” The news agencies broadcast it just that way. After the damage was done, Suzuki reinforced the meaning by repeating it two days later at a press conference. This time he had little choice because the military had demanded that the cabinet stand firm against Potsdam. The Allies were told that the ultimatum was not worthy of comment.
The blunder in Tokyo went uncorrected by any official. Foreign Minister Togo concentrated on Moscow, where his ambassador, Sato, realized that Tokyo was out of touch with reality. Sato hastened to warn Togo that “there is absolutely no necessity for him [Stalin] to go out of his way and conclude an agreement with Japan now.”
Sato was a prophet, crying vainly across the mainland of Asia to his superiors at home.
In Potsdam, Harry Truman reacted predictably to Suzuki’s “mokusatsu.” He allowed the atomic bomb mission to proceed according to schedule.
Secretary of War Stimson agreed. Noting regretfully that “we could only proceed to demonstrate that the ultimatum meant exactly what it said,” Stimson concluded that for such a purpose “the atomic bomb was an eminently suitable weapon.”
By the end of July, enough fissionable material had been transported to Tinian by plane and by ship to kill every living thing on the island. It was stored in heavily guarded Quonset huts, and scientists and weapons specialists such as Doctor Ramsey and Captain Parsons were frequently seen going in and out of the restricted buildings.
On July 31, a message was sent from Tinian to Washington: “Lemay needs eleven hours more which would be August 1, 1000 hours E.W.T.” After that the bomb would be ready to drop over Japan. Truman had insisted on giving Japan several days to reply to the surrender demand. That time was about gone.