Chapter 34 - 1945 Joe, Henry & Stanley as the Atomic Bombs were dropped

Chapter 34 Version 1

1945

 “It’s a bet that you can’t lose!” Joe was told by a sailor in his unit on Okinawa on August 1, 1945.

“Something big is going down soon. Either nobody is talking or nobody knows just what it is but the scuttlebutt is that it is big – big enough to end the war soon. Officers are taking bets that the war will be over by the end of the month. If you take the bet and win then you are no worse off and you have some extra cash. If you take the bet and lose, then you get to go home. You can’t lose this bet.”

On July 16^th in the desert near Alamogordo New Mexico, a blinding flash preceded the sound of fury as a mushroom cloud sprouted over the desert. The test of a plutonium based atomic bomb proved that the bomb was indeed real and so the US could have a total of ten bombs ready for use against Japan by the November 1^st invasion date for the home islands of Japan. One made out of uranium and nine made of plutonium.

A few hours after the Trinity test was made near Alamagordo, The USS Indianapolis left San Francisco bound for Tinian in the Marianas Islands. The Indianapolis was delivering the components for “Little Boy” – a uranium 235 atomic bomb that contained about half the world supply of weapon grade U235. Even with a show of force of atomic bomb size, if we couldn’t prove to the Japanese that more bombs were coming, there would still be a reluctance to surrender. The delivery was made on July 26^th and the USS Indianapolis continued west into the Philippine Sea toward Leyte where Stanley and the USS Rocky Mount was undergoing an overhaul in preparation for the November 1^st landing on the Japanese mainland. The plan was that the Indianapolis would then proceed on to Okinawa to join the invasion fleet. Two days later the Indianapolis, traveling under radio silence, was hit by two torpedoes from a Japanese submarine and sunk in twelve minutes. As the character Quint was to retell the incident in the movie “Jaws”, of the 1,197 crew about 300 went down with the ship. Of the nearly 900 that survived the sinking only 317 were rescued after days of survival at sea with relentless shark attacks. It is the worst loss of life from the sinking of a single ship in US history.

A second bomb – “Fat Man” – arrived at Tinian’s North Field by air transport on July 28^th. Its high explosive triggers came a few days later on August 2^nd. While “Little Boy” was long and thin, “Fat Man” as the name implies was on the rotund side. It was a plutonium implosion design bomb destined but not originally targeted for Nagasaki. Plutonium is two elements heavier on the periodic table than uranium. Uranium shares the same naming root as the planet Uranus. Since the next element after uranium was named neptunium after Neptune, it was only logical to name the next element after the planet Pluto and so it became plutonium.

On August 5^th, Colonel Paul Tibbits’ B-29 “Enola Gay” named after his mother and  armed with “Little Boy” left North Field on Tinian and headed for Hiroshima. He was accompanied by two other B-29s, “The Great Artiste” carrying instrumentation and the later named “Necessary Evil” for photography.  After first flying over Iwo Jima and then onto Hiroshima, “Little Boy” was dropped at 8:15am Hiroshima time. The planes were over eleven miles away when the detonation occurred and the blast shook the aircraft but did no damage. On the ground, up to 80,000 people, 20,000 being soldiers, died. 70,000 more were injured. The planes returned to Tinian.

On August 6^th, President Truman informed the world of the destruction of Hiroshima and again called for the unconditional surrender of Japan. He had made a threat of utter destruction of Japan on July 26^th with his Potsdam ultimatum which was rejected by the Japanese.

On August 9^th, “Fat Man” was flown to its intended target of Kokura but the weather and smoke from bombings from the nearby city of Yawata obscured the target. Yawata had been fire bombed by 224 B-29’s a day earlier. Bombings like this were being made from Yonabaru Airfield where Joe was on Okinawa striking both the Japanese Mainland and Japanese positions in China. After three bombing runs were made with “Fat Man”, air defense over Kokura were getting too close and the alternate target, Nagasaki was bombed instead. Estimates vary of the dead but estimates range from 39,000 to 80,000. Low on fuel due to a mechanical problem with an auxiliary fuel tank, the B-29 was flown to Yontan Airfield on Okinawa. There was a successful high-speed emergency landing at Yontan with engines shuttling down due to lack of fuel. 

Yontan had been the site of the Giretsu Raid less than three months before with the Japanese targeting Henry’s VMF-533 Marine night fighter squadron. Yontan was also about ten miles from Yonabaru where Joe was located. A second larger Japanese Giretsu special forces attack on Okinawa airfields was scheduled for Aug 18th.

The Japanese wrestled with the terms of the surrender but it was clear that the US had more than one bomb. The Japanese had their own scientists working on an atomic bomb project so they knew what the technology was. They were also reporting that people were dying from radiation sickness. The US response was that they were misreading the effects of high heat exposure and this was just Japanese propaganda. Finally on Aug 14^th, the Emperor of Japan decided to accept the unconditional surrender terms and a prerecorded address would be broadcast on Aug 15^th. The night of the 14^th/15^th, a group of military officers staged an attempted coup to destroy the surrender recording. Failing to find the recording, the leaders of the coup killed themselves.

General Douglas MacArthur, now in Manila, was assigned the task of accepting the surrender and organizing the occupation of Japan. He required a surrender delegation made up of both civilian and military officials to come to Manila for instructions on receiving the occupations forces and make preparations for the formal surrender signing. The delegation would include members of all of the branches of the Japanese military. On Aug 19^th, a sixteen-man delegation flying in two unarmed Japanese Betty bombers that were painted white with green crosses where the red rising sun insignia had been. The planes took off from Japan and headed for Ie Shima. They first traveled westward to avoid any contact with Japanese fighters who had orders to shoot down all planes returning to Japan including Japanese planes. They then went south and were met with B-25s who guided them into Ie Shima with a thick cover of P-38 fighters overhead to avoid any incidents from Japanese aircraft that may want to derail the surrender process. The call designations of the two Japanese aircraft were Bataan 1 and Bataan 2. The significance of the call designations was not lost on either the Japanese or the Americans. Thousands of soldiers, sailors and marines lined the runway on Ie Shima as the surrender delegation’s planes landed. Henry watched as the planes made perfect landings on the white crushed coral runways. Only specified squadrons were allowed in the air as Ie Shima was designated a no fly zone including American aircraft. So none of the VMF-533’s planes were in the sky that day. The crew of the planes stayed on Ie Shima while the delegates transferred to a C-54 transport for the flight down to Manila.

Under usual circumstances, the military would never show an enemy their forces in the field. The windows of the C-54 would have been shuttered as they flew. But these were not usual circumstances. The C-54 was routed south down the slender island of Okinawa and banked so that the surrender delegation was given a good view of the other ten airfields operating on Okinawa including Yanabaru and the navy activities at Buckner Bay where Joe was stationed. On Okinawa, the Japanese strategy was to pull back into the mountains. The strategy for opposing the landings on the Japanese homeland was to be changed. Of the six thousand aircraft left in Japan, three thousand were to be used as kamikazes with the primary targets being the landing craft approaching the beaches. Joe’s training was as the motor man on a three man crew of a LCI – Landing Craft Infantry. If assigned to do that job on a November 1^st amphibious assault, Joe would certainly be in harms way.

While this was not a negotiating trip but a surrender trip, the Japanese were granted extra days to contact their far flung military units for the ceasing of hostilities. The Japanese were also granted the dignity of demobilizing their own forces under the direction and oversight of the occupying force. The delegation never met directly with MacArthur but the objective of the meeting being accomplished, they returned to Ie Shima the next day. The Bettys were refueled and left to return to Tokyo. In an unfortunate incident, the Betty with the high level dignitaries was not given quite enough fuel for the return trip. The Americans blamed it on the conversion of gallon to liter measurements. The Betty had to ditch just offshore in Japan. Fortunately, nobody was injured and the documents being carried were saved so there was no delay in the peace process.

On that same day that the surrender delegation returned to Japan, the USS Rocky Mount with Stanley aboard was reassigned as the flagship of Admiral Thomas Kincaid – Commander of the Seventh Fleet. On Sep 1^st after completing post repair trials in the Leyte Gulf, the Rocky Mount steamed to Manila where the admiral’s staff was received on board. The Rocky Mount then proceeded to Jinsen, Korea to rendezvous with Admiral Kincaid who accepted the surrender of Japanese forces in Korea on Sep 9^th in Seoul.

On Sep 2^nd, the formal signing ceremony for the Japanese surrender took place in Tokyo harbor on the USS Missouri. General MacArthur and Admiral Nimitz signed the surrender document. World War II was officially over. The boys still standing could now come home.