The Final Storm (60 page)

T
he lunch had not settled well in his stomach, and the long walk to his home had passed with more than one quick jaunt into the brush. All along the road, there had been many people, all on foot, going about their business with a kind of sad urgency, not quite the raucous enthusiasm for the fight that Field Marshal Hata had seemed to believe bathed every corner of the island. But in the fields Hamishita had been surprised to see assemblies, civilians gathered into formations, just as Hata had described. Not far from his clinic he had passed by a schoolyard, stopped, curious, watching a group of women, a hundred or more, young and old, standing in rows, attentive to the instructions from a soldier. Most carried bamboo poles, sharpened into spears; others held farm implements. But they obeyed the drills with increasing precision, while to one side another soldier called out the chants, the cheers, infusing them with the same astounding spirit Hamishita had heard from the old commander. He had seen children as well, a long column marching down the road past him, grim-faced boys mostly, holding broomsticks and tree limbs up on their shoulders, mimicking the march of riflemen. As he drew closer to his clinic, he had seen familiar faces, a group of old men, listening to a raucous lecture from another soldier, an officer Hamishita had treated in his clinic. The sounds of the mobilization seemed to grow in every crossroads, through every field, the great mission assigned to Field Marshal Hata taking place in every corner of the island, all across the city. Hamishita
watched it all, slowed his journey home to absorb what Hata had driven into him, the pure and simple inevitability of what would happen when the Americans came.

He was close to the clinic, his attention suddenly drawn by low thunder. He turned, knew it was another bombing raid, the sounds rising up from south of the city. There are many factories there, he thought. The Americans have no lack of targets. The question rose in his mind now, as it had for many weeks. The Americans bring their bombers with perfect regularity, and yet I have never seen a response from the Imperial Air Force. The anti-aircraft fire is there, always, and sometimes, as today, the gunners are fortunate. He thought of a book he had read, translated from German, a gift from a friend who had traveled to Europe at the start of the war there. He had been fascinated by the exploits of the man they called the Red Baron, had read many stories of the other great aces who flew in the first Great War. We have men like that, surely. The government tells us of great victories in the air, of so many enemy planes shot out of the sky. Finally I saw it for myself, those bombers. And that was truly glorious, watching those huge machines break into pieces, fire and smoke. And parachutes. But we fire so much ammunition from the ground, and so much is wasted, so little success. Where are the Zeroes? It has been so long since they flew past here, great flocks roaring overhead, flying out to meet the enemy in some other place. Am I not supposed to think about this? Am I not supposed to wonder if the war has come to Japan because we have no way to prevent that? There was so much cheering about our conquests, all the islands, the great lands, the Philippines, China, Australia, even America. It was all to be part of the emperor’s great destiny. Why has that changed? The Americans have driven our empire back to us, and my friend tells me it is all part of his plan. Hata says we are inviting them into our parlor. But would it not be better if we could destroy them in some far-distant place? Must our cities suffer, the old and the sick, too many for me to care for? He tells me my job now is to return the wounded to the fight. How many wounded will that be? How long will the fight last?

He had thought often of Tokyo, the horrific ravages of the firebombing that had destroyed so much of the grand city. His wife had gone there often, was there now, seeking out relatives, caring for the injured, a task that by all accounts had grown obscenely difficult. Years ago they taught us to fight the fires with buckets, he thought, long lines of citizens hauling water by hand. It seemed like the right thing to do, preparing us, organizing
us to deal with a burning building, or a block of homes. But a
city
? Tokyo was a firestorm, and the men with buckets were swept away like so many pieces of straw in a bonfire. The government did not tell us that. I only know because my wife was there to see it. Officially, that disaster never happened. How many people were lost … unofficially? How much of what we are told is simply wrong? Hata is my friend, and he chose to share his thoughts with me. I should be honored by that. He is an important man, respected, even by the emperor. He surely knows what he is talking about. He surely knows what is best for us. He would not lie to me. Certainly
he
believes what he says. Can I?

He moved to the door of the clinic now, saw no one waiting for him, a relief. He hesitated, still felt the discomfort in his belly, his stomach in one great knot.

He opened the clinic door, caught the smell of disinfectants, comforting somehow. The front office was empty, and he glanced at the small clock on the desk, after seven, knew that his assistant had gone home. He thought of the young woman’s family, her husband in the army, missing for months now, her child barely walking. What will
she
do when the Americans come? Will she stand and face them with a bamboo stick in her hand, while her child stands behind her gripping her skirt? Is that how
their
war will end? There is one certainty, he thought. If the Americans land here, we shall see for ourselves what this war will do to our
people
. Is that not as important as all this talk of empire? Surely the Americans will bring guns and tanks and great pieces of artillery, and their planes will lead the way. And if Field Marshal Hata is to be believed, we should stand proudly and face death with pride that we have fought for the emperor, that merely by the act, we have preserved the empire. I wish I found comfort from that.

He stood in the darkening room, heard talk from beyond the inner door, patients and his staff, the suffering and those who did what they could to ease it. Outside, a new chorus of rumbling began, more bombers, far away, another target, more deaths, one more day in a war he was simply supposed to accept.

H
EADQUARTERS
, 509
TH
C
OMPOSITE
G
ROUP
, T
INIAN
A
UGUST
3, 1945

T
he thundering impact rattled the Quonset hut, and Tibbets flinched, felt the jarring blast rolling through the offices, his coffee cup spilling, a photograph on the far wall tumbling to the concrete floor. He pulled himself up quickly from the chair, rushed outside, saw the others there already, the darkness giving way to a bright orange glow to the north, the last flames of a great fireball.

“What happened?”

Ferebee responded, the bombardier staring fixed at the sight.

“Never made it past the end of the runway. You could hear the engine fail, sputtering like hell. They never had a chance.”

He saw flashing red lights in the distance, fire trucks and ambulances, the emergency vehicles that waited close to the runways for every mission.

“Damn. The thing just lit up?”

Ferebee nodded, the others standing silently, still staring out to where the B-29 had erupted into fire. More of the crews gathered, and one of the others, the tail gunner, Caron, said, “Fuel ignited. Something had to bust up a fuel line, maybe in the wing. If the prop came off …”

Ferebee interrupted him.

“Nope. That kind of fire came from the bomb load. Incendiaries. I heard about the mission. It was just like last night. That’s mostly all they’re using now. General LeMay likes his bonfires.”

Tibbets didn’t like the talk, felt the gloom, the edginess spreading through all of them.

“Leave it be. That’s not us, and it’s not our problem. Those birds are old and beat to hell. We don’t have that problem. Remember that.”

In the darkness, another voice, familiar, the newest member of the crew to arrive on Tinian.

“That’s right. Don’t give it a second thought. As many hours as those planes have logged, it’s a wonder more of ’em don’t come apart. But we won’t have anything to worry about.”

Tibbets moved closer to the man, said, “Not now, Deak. Save it for the briefing.”

To the others, Tibbets knew it was one more hint of mystery, this new man arriving along with the C-54s that brought part of the
special cargo
that sat now under intensely heavy security nearby. Tibbets put his hand on the man’s shoulder, said, “My quarters. Let’s have a chat.”

They moved through darkness, away from the others, and Tibbets glanced out toward the guards, ever present, silhouetted against the lights from the distant runways. The sirens had grown quiet, little for any rescue worker to do, the wrecked B-29 likely no more than a pile of ash, along with its crew. The crashes were too common, and he knew that Ferebee was right, that the incendiary bombs meant that a plane’s failure, whether from a fuel leak or impact with the ground, could produce a spectacular disaster. The crashes were common during the day as well, but those were the return flights, the planes wounded by anti-aircraft fire, or more likely, mechanical failure. Some of those never made it at all, adding to the casualty counts of those flight crews lost at sea, or the fortunate, rescued by the navy’s flying boats or submarines. Some were more fortunate still, finding the landing strips on Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

He led the new man into the Quonset hut, to his own office, then past, to his quarters, where the pipe tobacco waited, along with a bottle of bourbon, a gift from General LeMay. The door was locked, and Tibbets pulled the key from his pocket, pulled it open, allowed the man to move inside, then closed the door behind both of them. Tibbets locked the door again, motioned to a small metal chair.

“Take a seat.”

Captain Deak Parsons had been involved with the Manhattan Project from its earliest days, and some had said he was more qualified than General Groves to run the entire affair. He had spent most of the past month at Los Alamos, had witnessed the test explosion of the first bomb, but his role on the primary mission was something brand-new. The bomb’s largest mechanism, the cannon that would drive the two pieces of the uranium together, the very act that would produce the atomic explosion, had to rely on the simplest of devices. The cannon was, after all, a cannon, and cannons were no more sophisticated than the explosive charges that made them fire a projectile, any projectile. Every artillery piece required a loader, even if that piece was centered inside the casing of the atomic bomb. Here the man who would load the cannon had been given the official title of
Weaponeer and Ordnance Officer
. Unlike the rest of Tibbets’s crew, the man chosen for this job was navy, a captain, William Parsons. Everyone who knew him well knew him as Deak. And those who knew the hierarchy of the crew assembled at Tinian knew that Parsons was also
Commander of the Bomb
. If there was any doubt what that meant, no one had asked.

Parsons was forty-four, older than Tibbets by nearly fifteen years, and was one of the first men involved with the Manhattan Project that Tibbets actually met face-to-face. Whatever technical questions Tibbets or anyone else had about the bomb, Parsons knew the answers. With most of the physicists remaining stateside, Parsons was the one man Tibbets would need close to him throughout the entire mission. That meant that Deak Parsons would be aboard the B-29 when the actual mission began.

“Anything wrong, Paul?”

Tibbets poured from the bottle, handed one shot glass to Parsons, sat back in his own chair.

“I hate the crashes.” He paused. “Well, hell, everybody hates crashes. But, dammit, every time my crews see a bird go up in flames, it has to dig their doubts a little deeper. I don’t need any little speeches from you explaining all the technical reasons a B-29 can come apart. When the time comes, I’ll have enough to keep me busy without my crew sweating out the takeoff.”

“I’ve got news for you, Paul. I’m sweating out the takeoff right now. Anyone with a brain ought to be sweating it out. You know what will happen if we don’t clear the ground?”

“Yeah. The mission is scrubbed.”

“The whole damn island will be scrubbed. Every tree, every building, every B-29, every crewman. General Groves and I have been debating
something for weeks now, and he’s sticking to his guns. But I’m sticking to mine. Groves says that most of the physicists want the bomb assembled completely before it goes into the belly of your plane. They’re concerned that every little bow should be tied, every screw tightened, before the bomb is handed off to air jockeys. General Groves has to listen to that, but I don’t.” Parsons lowered his head, said slowly, “I’ll mention this in detail at the briefing if you want me to. The flight crew has to know exactly what I’ll be doing to the bomb. Once the secret’s out, there’s no reason to keep anything quiet.”

“Agreed. That will only happen when we’re airborne.”

“I understand that, Paul. But first, we have to
get
airborne. You know damn well that if we go down on takeoff, there are a number of things that can happen, none of them good. But the only way the bomb will ignite is if the two halves of the uranium collide. A crash won’t guarantee that. But even without a crash, there are other possible problems. The bomb is going to be wired with two dozen circuits, every kind of sensor, monitoring every electrical signal, every battery … well, hell, you know all that. Point is, there’s one system I’m not too happy with.”

Tibbets leaned forward, the bourbon forgotten.

“What system?”

“The charges that fire the cannon. We’ve built in a duplication, two separate cordite charges. Obviously, if the cannon fails, so does the bomb. The redundancy is designed to cut the odds of the cannon’s failure in half, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

“But if there is a short circuit, or the bomb jostles in some unexpected way, if turbulence on takeoff tosses the thing back and forth, any of that … there’s always the chance that one of those cordite charges could be fired accidentally. If we crash-land, a fire in any one of the electrical circuits could ignite the cordite and fire the cannon. If that happens,
we
will be the least of anyone’s worries. But I can’t see the sense in risking this whole damn island, and several thousand men.”