He hears an American yelling, “No. Don’t jump. Don’t jump.” The loudspeakers are louder here. McGill pops up and sees the point. He knows that just past his line of vision is a cliff, a sheer drop to the Pacific and the rocks below. Civilians are crowded here together. They are surrendering. Maybe Saipan’s taken. Maybe McGill can go back to his ship. He needs a shower. His clothes are sticking to him as the blood dries. His hair has caked into clumps. Whose blood? He stands on shuddering knees (he’s been crawling a long time) and hustles to a rock, maybe six feet. He leans against it and looks back at the field of bodies he has just traveled. Amazing. No one back home will believe him. A grenade explodes twenty feet to his right and the ground quakes. He inches around to the other side of the rock.
Families. Mothers with children. Fathers. The war is over, thinks McGill. Go home. And they go, not running, but stepping over the edge of the cliff. A mother holds her fat baby and buries her face in the snug skin of the baby’s neck. That’s nice, thinks McGill. Then she jumps. Over the cliff. But they’re all doing that. All jumping. An old man raises his hands in protest. Maybe he knows more, but there’s a Jap soldier there with his bayonet — no more bullets. He urges the old man to jump too. And he does. McGill crawls forward on his stomach to where the land begins to drop. There is a shattered stump of palm. McGill hides behind it. Here he can no longer see the people jumping, but he can see the water. There’s that yelling again, “Don’t jump. Oh God. Please don’t jump.” And the loudspeakers. Japanese. On the rocks there are bodies. Children float face down in the sea. A baby is crying somewhere, but McGill can’t see it. The wailing stops and McGill strains his ears hoping to find that beautiful desperate crying again. On the rock is a woman combing her long black hair. Mermaid. Weird. She slips off the rock into the water. She disappears. More people jump. McGill can’t hear them hit the water because he can’t hear anymore. Something about that baby. He shakes his head. No sound. Just people falling, streaking by, their shadows briefly on the water — a hole — then into the hole the girls and babies fall. And then nothing. The ground is shaking beneath his feet from the pounding mortar. He can feel that shaking. He can feel that.
On July 19, U.S. marines invade Guam and on July 24 invade Tinian. The American capture of the Marianas is completed on August 8, 1944. And what of the Marianas? What now? Tinian is the stage for the end of the war.
The date is August 6, 1945. Colonel Tibbets is the pilot. The plane is the Enola Gay, named after Tibbets’s mother. The bomb is Little Boy, nestled deep in her belly. At 2:45 A.M. the B-29 superfortress roars up the runway. The plane is freed from the earth ascending at a steep rate, climbing higher and higher, flying to that height at which the earth reveals itself to be points, coordinates, gray elevations, and glossy blue depths. From this great height, who can see man? Who can remember what it is to navigate the streets in the early morning, to cook breakfast, to dress one’s children? Who can hear the broom sweeping the front doorstep or the woman in the next room brushing her hair? Who can hear the crack of eggs against the side of the pan, the sputter of oil?
On the streets of Hiroshima people are moving. Moving. Moving. Packing their belongings onto handcarts, and the wheels sing out on the streets. They are secreting their most precious belongings away from the bombs. They are listening for the sirens, which howl, then are silenced, then howl again. They are walking their children to the parade ground and then home. They are tearing down houses, plank by plank, to clear fire lanes should the bombing come to peaceful Hiroshima. They are bundling letters of dead husbands, departed sons. They are bundling letters from the Japanese army that say “Akihiro died an honorable death in Singapore,” or Guadalcanal or Manchuria or Burma. Mothers are wrapping babies in padded clothing despite the heat, because they must do something to protect their children. Mothers are yelling at their children to stop playing in the street when there is supposed to be an air raid — the biggest yet. What sound reaches the pilots and crew?
Who does not want the war to end? Does Hirohito wish to spend another spring as prisoner of his generals? Do the generals wish to keep fighting? No. They only want to win. How many more must die? What can be done?
Let us all put down our weapons.
At the count of three, we will all put down our weapons. Everyone is listening. The Enola Gay roars over Hiroshima.
“On glasses,” says Tibbets.
And the bombardier, Major Ferebree, takes his position in the plexiglass nose of the aircraft. He fixes the Aioi Bridge in his cross-wires and locks his bombsight. Now it is automatic. In fifteen seconds the bomb bay doors will open and the glowing uranium egg — the sun’s surface contained in a steel shell — will drop to earth.
At the count of fifteen, we will all put down our weapons. There’s nothing left but to count. And we start. But it is already fourteen seconds. No, twelve. We must all put down our weapons. Ten. The bomb bay doors will open. Seven. We must all put down our weapons. It is time to stop. We are all ready to stop. At the count of three, we will all put down our weapons.