General Groves coughed lightly to get attention. Although a belligerent and highly confident man, he was outranked and somewhat awed by the people in the room. "Mr. President, gentlemen, I presume you will want a continuation of our atomic bombings?"
Truman nodded. Destroying Hiroshima and Nagasaki had almost brought the Japs to their knees; perhaps more bombs would succeed where the first two had not. It had been Truman's decision and his alone to use the little-understood weapon against the Japanese. He had made the decision hoping to save lives, American lives, and now that decision again confronted him.
As before, Truman did not hesitate. "Do that. When can we atomize another city?"
Groves paused. "Not immediately, sir. It will be at least two weeks before we will have the materials in place at Tinian to assemble another bomb. We are beginning production of the bombs at our facility in Hanford, Washington, but the pace will be slow. We estimate that we can make at least one a month, with a strong possibility of accelerating that pace once we learn more about the process."
Truman mused out loud, "Two weeks. Well, I daresay we can't roll them off an assembly line like Ford does cars." It brought a small, bitter chuckle from the others, even from the dour Leahy, who was vehemently opposed to using the bomb.
Just two days prior, Ford had begun the production of civilian vehicles at a plant in New Jersey, and the other carmakers were lusting to follow. Even without the surrender of Japan, the United States was starting to ease back into a less restrictive economy.
"We might have had a bomb ready a couple of days sooner," Groves continued, "but, with peace so likely, we canceled the planned shipment of fissionable material to Tinian. No need, we thought."
Truman rose and the others did as well. It was a gesture of respect for his new rank that still surprised him. "All right, we have a war to win and I have an announcement to make to the world. I'm afraid our people are going to take this as yet another example of Jap duplicity, and I can't say as I blame them. This is going to make the real ending of the war just that much more brutal and bloody to achieve."
Truman returned quickly to his office. Even without taking into consideration what the fanatics were causing to be inflicted on the civilians of Japan, the thought of sending still more young men to die in battle had almost caused him to weep. He had been so hopeful that the shocks of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, along with the Russians' declaration of war and subsequent invasion of Manchuria, would have caused even the most radical Jap to see the light. It was a horrible responsibility, and he silently cursed Roosevelt for dying and thrusting it upon him.
Japan was not the only problem of immense magnitude that he and the United States had to deal with. The war had ended in Europe, but not the killing, as the oppressed took savage revenge on their oppressors or, sometimes, just the weak. Poles had massacred several hundreds of Jews who had survived the concentration camps and who had tried to reclaim their possessions from Polish squatters. What to do with the Jews, along with the millions of other refugees, was an enormously complex problem.
General Eisenhower had just informed him that the "breadbaskets" of Europe had not produced much in the way of crops this year, and since those lands were now in Russian zones, what grain that would be harvested would be heading for the Soviet Union. Along with feeding England and France, the United States was going to have to find enough foodstuffs for Germany and other countries.
Russia was also on the march in Asia. Stalin was openly supporting the Chinese Communists under Mao Tse-tung in their war against the Nationalists, who, however corrupt and incompetent, were allies of the United States. Russian armies were driving the Japanese armies from Manchuria and Korea, and it looked as if those lands would come under Soviet control. Any hopes that the American possession of nuclear weapons would deter Stalin's ambitions had been dashed.
Last, but hardly least, was the question of the U.S. economy. The country had been on a total war footing for years, and there was a real need to begin boosting the production of civilian goods and integrating millions of returning servicemen into the fragile economy. This had to be done carefully to prevent a return to the Great Depression. After twelve years of economic pain and ruin, there were those who felt that a depressed economy and great numbers of unemployed might be the normal state of capitalism for the twentieth century. Truman fervently wanted to prove them wrong.
At least, Truman thought with some satisfaction, the Widow Roosevelt had finally moved out of the White House and returned to her Hyde Park residence in New York. His wife, Bess, and his daughter, Margaret, were only a few steps away, and their presence was a great comfort to him. He was surprised to find that the Roosevelts, who'd lived in the White House since 1933, had never truly considered it their home and had allowed it to fall into neglect and disrepair. Bess had been appalled at the filth.
Harry Truman grinned. Bess would take care of that little problem. All he had to do was end this damned war.
Chapter 3
P-47 fighter pilot Dennis Chambers had been shot down over northern Kyushu in May 1945. The twenty-six-year-old Army Air Corps captain had endured harsh interrogations from his captors, during which, in accordance with new air force policy, he told them everything he knew rather than resist until the information was pulled from him, piece by bloody piece. Like many downed airmen, he fabricated wild stories that seemed to satisfy the Japs rather than the bland truth that he didn't really know much at all about grand strategy.
Routine beatings left him bloody but not badly hurt, and then he was taken to the prison camp just outside the port city of Nagasaki.
Dennis was left counting his advantages. First, he understood a smattering of Japanese, courtesy of an immigrant houseboy his parents had employed. He gradually picked up enough from his captors to be reasonably fluent, which he kept secret.
A couple of his friends were beaten to death for minor infractions, and he'd watched in horror as one man was beheaded for some unintended insult to a guard. At least that kind of death would have been swift. All too often, punishment consisted of having rations reduced, and since the rations were already below subsistence level, that meant lingering death by painful starvation.
Although bruised and cut, he still had his health, and being a small man a little under average height and build, he didn't require much in the way of food to keep him going. Early in his captivity, Chambers realized that he could stomach eating anything if it meant surviving, and he made a point of digging up worms and eating insects to supplement the small balls of rice the Japanese provided.
This only delayed the inevitable. He was a lean man, and when he did lose weight, it came from muscle and not from any fat. He soon felt himself wasting away and knew that he would soon look just like the others. Men who'd been POWs longer than him looked like corpses, skeletal and covered with ulcerating sores. Several suffered from infections of the scrotum that caused the sac to balloon up several times larger than it should be. Dennis could only guess at their agony.
Chambers tried not to torture himself by thinking about his wife and his home the way so many of the other POWs did. Whenever an unbidden thought did break through his defenses, he blocked it out.
Despite his privations and bleak future, he didn't contemplate escape. After all, where the hell would he go? A white man in the middle of Japan would stick out like a sore thumb. If he tried and was caught, the punishment would be savage and fatal. He and his buddies talked it over. They would wait.