Beser confined himself to a few words for posterity. “It’s pretty terrific. What a relief it worked.”
Nelson, Shumard, and Duzenbury used such words as “just awesome,” “unbelievable,” “stunning,” and “shattering” to try to convey what they saw. Stiborik thought, “This is the end of the war.” Ferebee and Parsons were too busy preparing the strike report to record their impressions.
In the tail, Caron took photographs that would be used around the world.
The Enola Gay completed its first circle around the stricken city.
3
Second Lieutenant Matsuo Yasuzawa emerged from the communications center and saw the bombers as three specks in the smoke-filled sky. “Humiliated and furious” they had not yet been attacked by fighters or antiaircraft fire, he determined to go after them.
Weaving his way past burning fuel trucks and aircraft, he ran toward the “99 Superior Trainer” he had landed in Hiroshima less than one hour before. Every plane he passed was severely damaged.
The airfield was over two miles from the epicenter, and the force of the explosion was largely spent by the time it struck the base. Even so, hardly a window was left intact, and many of the buildings had suffered structural damage.
Yasuzawa reached his plane panting, out of breath, and shook his head in wonderment.
The plane was bent like a banana.
It had been broadside to the shock wave, which had blown out all the glass along one side of the cockpit and reshaped the fuselage into a shallow “C.” The tail was swung ten degrees off true, and the nose was similarly bent.
Yasuzawa climbed into the cockpit and pressed the starter button. The engine kicked and, incredibly, spluttered into life.
Then, Yasuzawa saw a sight that made him shudder. Coming onto the airfield was the vanguard of a procession of “living corpses.” Bleeding and blackened, their skin hanging in shreds, their hair scorched to the roots, the first survivors were seeking sanctuary. Many were totally naked, their clothes burned from their bodies. Some of the women carried babies.
Horrified, Yasuzawa looked away. There was now a new thought in his mind: he had to get out and report what had happened to Hiroshima.
He taxied his plane slowly to the runway, revved the engine, and released the brakes. When he pulled back the stick, the bent trainer sidled uncertainly into the air. Yasuzawa held it about three feet off the ground for a moment, then touched down again.
Now confident the plane would fly, he taxied back to the other end of the runway and prepared for takeoff.
4
Aboard the Enola Gay, Nelson had already sent word that the mission was a success. Now Parsons handed him a second message that, when decoded, would tell General Farrell, waiting anxiously in the 509th’s operations room on Tinian, the news he had been waiting hours to hear.
CLEAR CUT. SUCCESSFUL IN ALL RESPECTS. VISIBLE EFFECTS GREATER THAN ALAMOGORDO. CONDITIONS NORMAL IN AIRPLANE FOLLOWING DELIVERY. PROCEEDING TO BASE.
After a third and final circle around Hiroshima, Tibbets put the Enola Gay on course for Tinian. The Great Artiste and No. 91 formed up behind, and the three bombers headed down the “Hirohito Highway” for home.
5
Second Lieutenant Yasuzawa was about to take off when out of the murk stumbled the officer he had earlier flown to Hiroshima. When he saw that Yasuzawa intended to take off, he insisted on going as well. The pilot pointed to the precarious state of the plane, but the major would not be put off. He climbed into the seat behind Yasuzawa.
With both men leaning hard to the left, sheltering behind what little glass remained on that side of the cockpit, the misshapen trainer moved, crablike, down the runway. Almost at the end, Yasuzawa pulled back the stick, and the plane skewed into the air.
Over Hiroshima Harbor, he turned back toward the city and the smoke. He knew that if he made one false move on the controls, “the plane would flip over, and that would be the end.”
As he climbed, the wind howled through the open cockpit. Yasuzawa, concentrating on keeping his distorted plane in the air, was conscious only of “a thick haze, dust and smoke and flames.”
At two thousand feet, he leveled out to do what Tibbets had done fifteen times higher—circle the city to estimate the damage. But where the Enola Gay had remained well clear of the cloud, Yasuzawa was now flying in and out of the pall, unaware of the risk to which he was subjecting himself and his passenger.
After about five minutes’ reconnaissance, the intrepid pilot put the crippled plane on course for his Kyushu air base, one hundred miles away.
There, after completing one of the most unusual flights in the history of aviation, he would exchange his extraordinary-looking aircraft for a transport plane, and spend the rest of the day ferrying survivors out of Hiroshima.
6
At 10:30 A.M., when mess officer Charles Perry heard that the strike was a success, he turned to his cooks and shouted, “The party’s on!”
The 509th’s kitchens became the center of activity as Perry masterminded a celebration to mark the victors’ return.
His staff prepared hundreds of pies for a pie-eating contest, cooled scores of crates of beer and lemonade, made thousands of hot dogs, sliced beef and salami for open sandwiches, mixed potato and fruit salads.
Satisfied that the “biggest blowout” Tinian had ever known was safely under way, Perry sat down at a typewriter and prepared a program to mark the occasion. It read:
7
Captain Mitsuo Fuchida, leader of the attack on Pearl Harbor and now flying toward Hiroshima in his navy bomber, wondered what force had created the strange cloud hovering over the city.