On This Date: The Hours Before the First Atomic Attack, 1945

Hiroshima has less than a day to live.

Every year at this time I trace the final three weeks leading to the first use of the atomic bomb against two cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in August 1945, with close up probes of individual days. In this way the fateful, and in my view, tragic decisions made by President Truman, his advisers, and others, can be judged more clearly in "real time." As some know, this is a subject that I have explored in hundreds of articles, and in four books, since 1984, and now in an award-winning film “The Atomic Bowl” that started streaming on PBS.org and PBS apps this week (you can easily watch it via links here), plus a companion book.

Yesterday, Mother Jones published my new piece derived from research for the film and book, and it is a concise and I think powerful reflection.

Today’s report below for August 5, 1945.

August 5, 1945:

—Hiroshima remains the primary target, with Kokura #2 and Nagasaki third. The aiming point was directly over the city, not the military base or industrial quarter, guaranteeing the deaths of tens of thousands of women and children. The surrounding hills, it was known to the target committee, would provide a desirable "focusing effect" that would kill more.

—There is some evidence that Los Alamos director J. Robert Oppenheimer thought the bombing would be carried out at night with more adults and children at home and not out in the open, thereby not killing quite as many.

—Pilot Paul Tibbets formally named the lead plane in the mission, #82, after his mother, Enola Gay. A B-29 that would take photos on the mission would be named, wait for it, Necessary Evil.

—Also on Tinian, Little Boy is ready to go, awaiting word on weather, with General Curtis LeMay to make the call. At 3:30 p.m., in an air-conditioned bomb assembly hut, the five-ton bomb as loaded (gently) on to a trailer. Crew members scribbled words onto the bomb in crayon, including off-color greetings for the Japanese. Pulled by a tractor, accompanied by a convoy of jeeps and other vehicles, the new weapon arrives at the North Field and is lowered into the bomb pit.

--The bomb is still not armed. The man who would do, before takeoff, according to plan, was Parsons. But he had other ideas, fearing that the extra-heavy B-29 might crash on takeoff and taking with it “half the island.” He asked if he could arm the bomb in flight, and spent a few hours—on a hot and muggy August day—practicing before getting the okay.

—Pilot Tibbets tries to nap, without much success. Then, in the assembly hall just before midnight, he tells the crew, that the new bomb was “very powerful” but he did not mention the words “nuclear,” “atomic’ or “radiation.” He calls forward a Protestant chaplain who delivers a prayer he’d written for this occasion on the back of an envelope. It asks God to “to be with those who brave the heights of Thy heaven and who carry the battle to our enemies.”

— The Soviets are two days from declaring war on Japan and marching across Manchuria. Recall that Truman had just written in diary "Fini Japs" when the Soviets would declare war, even without the Bomb. (Many historians now believe it was the Soviet declaration of war, more than the atomic bombing, that was the decisive factor in Japan's surrender.)

—Halfway around the world from Tinian, on board the ship Augusta steaming home for the USA after the Potsdam meeting, President Truman relaxes. His announcement on the bombing--calling the large city merely a "military base"--has already been written. Truman’s order to use the bomb had simply stated that it could be used any time after August 1 so he had nothing to do but watch and wait.

The order included the directive to use a second bomb, as well, without a built-in pause to gauge the results of the first and the Japanese response—even though the Japanese were expected, by Truman and others, to push surrender feelers, even without the bomb, with Russia’s entry into the war on August 7.

Greg Mitchell is the author of more than a dozen books and now writer/director of award-winning films aired via PBS, including the new “The Atomic Bowl” and “Atomic Cover-up” (both streaming there). You can still subscribe to this newsletter for FREE. Sustain this newsletter by ordering the companion book to “The Atomic Bowl.”