Bomb (24 page)

“Stalin had a tremendous blow up,” recalled one top official, “losing his temper, banging his fists on the table and stamping his feet.” He had known the American bomb was coming, of course. But reports of its devastating power shocked him.

“Hiroshima has shaken the whole world!” he shouted to his advisors. “The balance has been destroyed.” Stalin wanted his own atomic bomb—and he wanted it quickly. “Provide us with atomic weapons in the shortest possible time. It will remove a great danger from us.”

Stalin called Igor Kurchatov to his office and chewed him out for not
demanding
the resources he needed to move more swiftly.

“So much is destroyed, so many people perished,” said Kurchatov. “The country is on starvation rations and everything is in shortage.”

Yes, Stalin admitted, thousands of Soviet towns and factories lay in ruins. More than twenty million people had been killed in the war with Germany. But that wouldn't stop the Soviet Union from building an atomic bomb.

“If the baby doesn't cry, the mother doesn't know what he needs,” Stalin lectured Kurchatov. “Ask for anything you need. There will be no refusals!”

And just to make sure Kurchatov and his team understood what was at stake, Stalin placed his head of secret police, Lavrenti Beria, in charge of the bomb project. Beria was to be Stalin's Leslie Groves—but with additional powers.

“One gesture of Beria,” said a Soviet scientist, “was sufficient to make any of us disappear.”

*   *   *

T
HE FIRST REPORTS
to reach the Japanese capital of Tokyo were panicked and sketchy. Some kind of catastrophe had occurred at Hiroshima, but no one knew the details. Government officials tried to contact the army command center in Hiroshima. There was no response.

Then came Truman's announcement that the Americans had dropped an atomic bomb. And the next morning a telegram from southern Japan reached Tokyo: “The whole city of Hiroshima was destroyed instantly by a single bomb.”

General Torashiro Kawabe immediately sent an officer to the lab of Yoshio Nishina, Japan's top atomic physicist. When the war began, the government had put Nishina in charge of fission bomb research in Japan. But the country never made building the bomb a high priority.

Now, the moment Nishina walked into Kawabe's office, the general demanded, “Could you build an atom bomb in six months? In favorable circumstances we might be able to hold out that long.”

Nishina shook his head. “Under present conditions six years would not be long enough. In any case we have no uranium.”

Kawabe then asked if there was any defense against the bomb.

“Shoot down every hostile aircraft that appears over Japan,” said Nishina.

Both knew that was impossible.

Government and military leaders gathered to discuss the next question: Was it time to accept the Potsdam Declaration—and unconditional surrender?

Yes, urged foreign minister Shigenori Togo, because America's atomic bomb “drastically alters the whole military situation.”

“Such a move is uncalled for,” countered Korechika Anami, the war minister. “Furthermore, we do not yet know if the bomb was atomic.”

General Seizo Arisue, the army's chief of intelligence, was sent to investigate. As Arisue's plane circled above what appeared to be a smoking, ash-gray desert, the pilot pointed down.

“Sir,” he said, “this is supposed to be Hiroshima. What should we do?”

“Land,” Arisue said.

The moment he stepped out of the plane, Arisue was hit by the horrible stench of burning flesh. It would take time to compile official statistics, but he could see that the city was gone. Of the 76,000 buildings that had stood two days before, 70,000 were completely destroyed. About 70,000 people were dead already. Over 100,000 more would die of wounds, burns, and radiation poisoning.

Yoshio Nishina toured Hiroshima on August 8. “I decided at a glance,” he later said, “that nothing but an atomic bomb could have created such devastation.”

That same day, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan, eager to grab a piece of the dying empire. And still, the debate continued in Tokyo. Political leaders urged surrender. Military leaders refused.

*   *   *

I
N
T
RUMAN'S OFFICE
in the White House, Secretary of War Stimson handed the president photographs of the ruins of Hiroshima, taken by American planes. Truman studied the pictures. “He mentioned the terrible responsibility that such destruction placed upon us,” Stimson remembered.

“We ought to proceed with Japan in a way which will produce as quickly as possible her surrender,” Stimson told the president.

Truman agreed—but aside from dropping another bomb, what options were there?

Reword the Postdam Declaration, Stimson suggested. Tell Japanese leaders they could keep their emperor—as long as it would get them to surrender.

Not possible, Truman insisted. Ever since Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor, the United States had been demanding
unconditional
surrender. Now, after the enormous sacrifices American fighters had made, Truman felt he could not back down from that demand. Political worries played a role too. If Truman began negotiating with Japan now, it could be seen as a sign of weakness. Political opponents would attack him for flinching under pressure.

Truman decided he'd wait to hear from Japan. Until then, the atomic bombs would continue to fall.

Another day passed with no word from Tokyo.

*   *   *

“B
ACK ON
T
INIAN,
the second atomic bomb was being assembled even as the world was learning about the first,” remembered Paul Tibbets. Known as Fat Man, this was a large, round plutonium implosion bomb similar to the one tested at Trinity.

Unless Tibbets heard otherwise, his orders were to drop the bomb as soon as weather conditions permitted. “The use of a second bomb the same week,” he said, “was calculated to indicate that we had an endless supply of this super weapon for use against one Japanese city after another.”

Tibbets assigned the mission of dropping the second bomb to a pilot named Charles Sweeney. Fat Man was loaded into a B-29, and Sweeney and his crew took off and flew toward Japan early on the morning of August 9.

Sweeney reached his target, the city of Kokura, at about ten-thirty. The city was covered with clouds, invisible from the sky. Sweeney circled the plane, looking for an opening.

“Two additional runs were made, hoping that the target might be picked up after closer observation,” weaponeer Frederick Ashworth wrote in his flight log. “However, at no time was the aiming point seen.”

Japanese anti-aircraft guns opened fire on the B-29. “We had some flack bursts,” said Jacob Beser, the radar operator. “Things were getting a little hairy.”

“We'll go on to secondary target, if you agree,” announced Sweeney.

Ashworth nodded.

“Proceeding to Nagasaki.”

Fat Man exploded over the city of Nagasaki with the force of 22,000 tons of TNT. At least 40,000 people were instantly killed, and tens of thousands more fatally wounded or poisoned with radiation.

*   *   *

“P
EOPLE WERE SAYING
that Tokyo would be next,” remembered a Tokyo resident named Yukio Mishima. As he walked the streets of Japan's capital, Mishima could feel the agonizing suspense in the air; he could see it in passing faces. “It was just as though one was continuing to blow up an already bulging toy balloon, wondering, ‘Will it burst now? Will it burst now?'”

“If it had gone on any longer,” he said, “there would have been nothing to do but go mad.”

In Washington, Leslie Groves told Truman a third atomic bomb “should be ready for delivery on the first suitable weather after 17 or 18 August.”

Truman was hoping not to use it. “It is not to be released on Japan without express authority from the president,” George Marshall ordered Groves.

Japan's Big Six leaders gathered in Tokyo for an emergency meeting. Once again, the top generals resisted surrender. The desperate debate lasted late into the night before Emperor Hirohito stepped in. The emperor did not normally make policy decisions, but in times of crisis his word was final.

“I cannot endure the thought of letting my people suffer any longer,” he said. “The time has come when we must bear the unbearable.”

That ended the argument. Japan surrendered on August 15. World War II was over.

END GAME

WHILE AMERICANS CELEBRATED VICTORY,
a woman in her early thirties, with short, dark hair stepped off a train in the tiny town of Las Vegas, New Mexico. She walked to a boarding house and asked for a room, explaining to the clerk that she suffered from tuberculosis and that her doctor had told her to spend some time breathing dry desert air.

Actually, Lona Cohen was perfectly healthy. She was an experienced spy and courier for KGB agents in New York, and she was in New Mexico to meet Ted Hall.

Stalin was screaming for the bomb, and Soviet scientists still needed more information from Los Alamos—they needed final reports on how the atomic bombs had been made. A meeting had already been arranged with Hall, but Anatoly Yatzkov decided not to use Hall's friend Saville Sax as a courier. This mission was too important to trust to an amateur.

On the first Sunday after arriving in New Mexico, Lona Cohen took a three-hour bus ride to Albuquerque and walked across the University of New Mexico campus to the spot where she was to meet Hall. She'd seen a photo of him, so she knew what to look for. He wasn't there.

Trained not to wait more than five minutes, she walked back to the bus stop and returned to Las Vegas. Both Cohen and Hall had been told that if either missed the first meeting, they should try again the next Sunday, at the same time and place.

Cohen returned the following Sunday. No Hall. She came back the week after. He didn't show.

*   *   *

A
T
L
OS
A
LAMOS,
the British team of scientists began packing up to head home. Before leaving, they scheduled one last party in honor of their American hosts. Someone needed to drive to Santa Fe to pick up the liquor. Klaus Fuchs volunteered.

He drove his dented Buick through the gates and down the hill. “I stopped somewhere on the way in the desert,” he remembered, and “drove off the highway to a solitary place.”

Fuchs took out a pen and a half-written report. Sitting in his car, he quickly finished the paper, which included vital details on plutonium bomb design, as well as a technical description of the uranium bomb used at Hiroshima. He shoved the papers into an envelope and drove to the liquor store.

At about six that evening, Harry Gold was standing on the side of a small road on the outskirts of Santa Fe. When Fuchs drove up, Gold hopped into the passenger seat.

“We drove out into the mountains beyond Santa Fe,” Gold reported. He could hear the clinking of glass bottles on the backseat.

Fuchs pulled over. “He was very nervous,” Gold remembered, “and I was inwardly not too calm myself.”

“Well,” Fuchs began, his face twisted into an uneasy smile, “were you impressed?”

“More than impressed,” said Gold. “Horrified.”

Fuchs understood. The bombs had been even more devastating than he had expected. For the first time in their many meetings, Fuchs talked nonstop. He talked about the shocking site at Trinity, the chilling reports from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He just had to talk.

“He himself was rather awestricken by what had occurred,” remembered Gold, “greatly concerned by the terrible destruction which the weapon had wrought.”

They watched the sky darken, the lights come on in town. Fuchs suggested that someday, maybe, they would meet again. “Meet openly as friends,” he said, “and speak of music, and other matters, but not speak of war.”

Gold said he hoped this would happen.

Finally, Fuchs handed Gold the papers he had prepared, then Fuchs drove Gold to the bus station. They shook hands, and Gold got out. “After a period of anxious waiting,” he said, “about an hour and a half, I finally obtained a bus going back to Albuquerque.”

*   *   *

T
ED
H
ALL WAS AWARE
he'd missed meetings with the Soviet courier assigned to pick up his final report. He'd been unable to get away from his work at Los Alamos.

Finally, a month after Lona Cohen arrived in New Mexico, Hall spent a quiet Sunday morning in his office, preparing the promised papers. Knowing his lab partner, Philip Koontz, was going on a picnic that day, Hall expected to be alone. He spread top-secret bomb plans on his desk so he could refer to them as he wrote up his report.

The door swung open.

Panicking, Hall clumsily swept the papers into his desk drawer as Koontz stepped in. If the man had come over to see what Hall was doing, there would have been no possible explanation.

Hall got lucky—Koontz felt guilty that he was taking time off while his partner was spending Sunday in the office. He said a quick goodbye and ducked out.

Later that day Hall took a bus to the University of New Mexico campus. He'd been told to look for a woman with a magazine poking out of her purse. She would answer to the name “Helen.”

The woman with the magazine was there. When she spotted Hall, she walked up and introduced herself. They strolled together for a few minutes, like old friends.

Cohen quietly cautioned Hall that he was taking a huge risk in helping the Soviets. “Things might turn out pretty hot,” she said.

Hall assured Cohen he knew of the danger.

If American agents were ever on Hall's trail, Cohen said, the KGB had told her to help arrange his transport to the Soviet Union, where he'd be given a new life.

Hall said he very much hoped that would not be necessary. Then he handed his papers to Cohen and they parted.