Tibbets had tried to explain that he was by nature “a loner”; he had not added what many of his officers knew: that he really was happy only when he was flying.
His preoccupation with work carried over to his choice of Christmas presents for his small sons. Paul, Jr., and baby Gene both received models of B-17s. There had been a run on the toy bombers at the PX.
This morning the children found several B-17s in their stockings—presents from Lewis, van Kirk, Ferebee, and Beser.
Breakfast over, the Tibbets family went to the morning service at the base church.
Chaplain William Downey greeted his commander warmly. He could not remember when Tibbets had last attended church. Once, shortly after he had arrived on the base, Tibbets had told him that “when I pray I go directly to God without a middleman.”
Downey had not been offended; he knew many men like that. He respected their views. And in doing so, the chaplain had earned respect for himself. Articulate and refreshingly earthy, Captain Downey was the ideal spiritual adviser for the high-living 509th. He wasn’t shocked by their escapades. Though he wasn’t much older than many of the men he cared for, he somehow gave the impression of being a tolerant, worldly-wise man, ready to have a drink, crack a joke, be a “regular guy,” without ever losing his dignity.
Even Beser, normally critical of all organized religion, thought Downey was a “helluva sky pilot. If he hadn’t been a Lutheran, he would have been a fine rabbi.”
By noon on Christmas, the officers’ club was full of officers and their wives.
Paul and Lucie Tibbets held gracious court; for the moment, their private tensions and troubles were put aside. Tibbets reminisced with Ferebee and van Kirk about Europe, and wondered how London was shaping up to the “Bob Hopes”—the nickname of the flying bombs raining down on the British capital—“You bob out of the way and hope they miss you.”
Before long, a number of the officers were happily crocked and gathered around the club radio singing carols along with Bing Crosby in Hollywood.
The singing was followed by a newscast which brought them sharply back to reality. American troops in Europe were trying desperately to repel a surprise German counterattack that was to become the overture to the Battle of the Bulge. German troops in GI uniforms were creating confusion in the American lines. The news from the Pacific was encouraging: the Japanese homeland was beginning to feel the weight of American bombs.
Lucie Tibbets whispered the hope of any wife. “Honey, maybe you won’t have to go after all.”
18
The end of the year was hectic for Groves. His days stretched well beyond their regular fifteen hours; the box of candy he kept in his office safe with the atom secrets needed frequent replenishing. Steadily munching his way through chocolates, Groves issued orders that would eventually change warfare.
He sent for Tibbets on December 28. From a beginning of wariness on both sides, their relationship had passed through several phases to the present state of acceptance by Groves of Tibbets. The project chief found the flier could be as flinty as he was; he learned not to tamper with Tibbets’s judgments on flying matters.
The top-secret notes of their conversation show how far he now trusted the 509th’s commander.
Tibbets gave June 15, 1945, as the date he would be ready to deliver an atomic strike.
Groves accepted this without demur; the question was then raised “as to what the weather conditions would be over Tokyo between June 15th and 15 July.”
It was the first time the Japanese capital had been openly spoken of as a target for atomic attack.
But there might be a weather problem. The notes recorded that “rain could be expected rather frequently [over Tokyo] up to August 15 [1945]. It is not desirable that missions be made in rain.”
Apart from weather considerations, Groves set out the governing factors in target selection:
The targets chosen should be places the bombing of which would most adversely affect the will of the Japanese people to continue the war. Beyond that, they should be military in nature, consisting either of important headquarters or troop concentrations, or centers of production of military equipment and supplies. To enable us to assess accurately the effects of the bomb, the targets should not have been previously damaged by air attacks. It is also desirable that the first target be of such size that the damage would be confined within it, so that we could more definitely determine the power of the bomb.
Groves doubted if Tokyo would meet all these requirements. The likelihood was that the city would be heavily bombed in the coming months with conventional weapons.
Personally, he favored Kyoto as a target. Kyoto was the ancient capital of Japan, a “historical city and one that was of great religious significance to the Japanese.” With an estimated population of a million, Kyoto, Grove reasoned, “like any city of that size in Japan must be involved in a tremendous amount of war work.” Therefore, it would be a legitimate target.
Further, he found Kyoto was “large enough to ensure that the damage from the bomb would run out within the city, which would give us a firm understanding of its destructive power.”
At a meeting in Oppenheimer’s office at Los Alamos on December 19, Groves had decided the gun-type firing mechanism of the uranium bomb was so reliable it need not be tested before it was used on the enemy. However, the more complicated mechanism in the plutonium bomb would need proving. That was to be done at the Alamogordo firing range in the New Mexico desert on a date still to be decided.
Alone in his office on December 30, Groves decided to take a momentous step. He wrote a memo to General George C. Marshall, chief of staff.
It is now reasonably certain that our operations plans should be based on the gun-type bomb, which, it is estimated, will produce the equivalent of a ten thousand ton TNT explosion. The first bomb, without previous full scale test, which we do not believe will be necessary, should be ready about 1 August, 1945.
Groves had committed the Manhattan Project to a date.
19
A sailor carefully erased the legend I.58 from the conning tower of the submarine and painted the flag of the kikusui immediately above the Rising Sun emblem. The kikusui was the battle standard of the ancient warrior Masashige, who had fought against overwhelming odds, knowing he had no chance to survive.
With the kikusui flag gleaming wetly in the winter sunlight, Commander Hashimoto completed the transformation of his submarine by ordering a seaman to raise the boat’s new war banner, Masashige’s hiriho kenten, meaning “God’s will.”
Banner and flag signified that the submarine was now a human torpedo carrier, the latest weapon devised by the Imperial Japanese Navy. The human torpedoes, or kaitens, were the underwater counterpart of the kamikaze.
Since January 1943 at the top-secret Base P, an island in Hiroshima Bay just south of Kure, the navy had been experimenting with the use of human torpedoes, projectiles which could be launched from a mother craft and steered by volunteers toward an enemy ship. The navy hoped these weapons would offset the increasing losses they were experiencing, and help halt the American advance on Japan.
Hashimoto’s submarine had been chosen to be one of the flag carriers for Operation Kaiten. To accommodate the weapons, workmen had removed the housing for the reconnaissance plane the submarine sometimes carried, its catapult, and its deck gun. That made room on the boat’s deck for six kaitens.