Truman feared "an Okinawa, from one end of Japan to the other." The Japanese were expected to resist ferociously, and American casualties would be enormous. More than a million men would be involved. Landing beaches had been designated, and named after cars and car parts - Cadillac, Chevrolet, Gearshift and others. The most recent, the battle for the Japanese island of Okinawa, had ended six weeks earlier, after two months and the deaths of 12,000 Americans and 100,000 Japanese.Īnd American units were already training for a massive invasion of the Japanese home islands of Kyushu and Honshu - in Operation Olympic, set for November 1945, and Operation Coronet, planned for March 1946, according to the historians Norman Polmar and Thomas B. Grim engagements at places like Guadalcanal, Tarawa, and Iwo Jima became legendary. Battles went on for months and were often fought hand-to-hand, with rifles, knives and flame throwers. One air battle was so lopsided in favor of the Americans that it was called a turkey shoot. Japanese suicide pilots crashed their planes into American vessels. Huge ships went to the bottom with their crews. Naval and air battles had been sudden, brief and deadly.
The fighting on land, at sea and in the air had been savage. At the time of the Hiroshima bombing, average of 5,000 were still dying each week. More than 100,000 American soldiers, sailors and Marines had already been killed in the Pacific since Japan's attack on the U.S. This week, commemorations are scheduled across the country, with socially distanced candlelight vigils and the tolling of bells, and because of the covid-19, ceremonies and remembrances have moved online. It would be the start of a frightful era of weapons that could defy control and menace civilization.īut as "Dimples Eight Two" picked up speed that morning, its mission was born of its time: deliver a blow that the United States hoped might finally end the global butchery of World War II. Tens of thousands more would die the same way at Nagasaki a few days later, and the world would subsequently be hearing about megatons, mutual assured destruction, proliferation, nuclear winter, meltdowns and dirty bombs. It was an important enemy military site with a wartime population about 280,000, according to the historians Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts.Īlmost half of them were about to be incinerated, crushed, and irradiated by the crude atomic weapon named "Little Boy" that the Enola Gay carried. Two other B-29s, the "Great Artiste" and "Necessary Evil," were supposed to go along to take pictures and record data.įifteen hundred miles to the north-northwest, under a waning crescent moon, lay a 400-year-old Japanese city most Americans probably had never heard of but whose name was about to be etched into the pages of history. Would it end in the obliteration of Hiroshima? Would the overweight airplane with the crazy call sign even get off the runway? Would the crew have need for the cyanide? Would it end in disaster for the crew in Japan? Eight downed American airmen had been beheaded by the Japanese a few weeks before.
13, the world's first atomic attack, would go. 6, 1945, 75 years ago Thursday, no one was sure how Special Bombing Mission No. Tibbets Jr., 30, had handpicked the airplane on the assembly line in Nebraska three months before and had just had his mother's name, "Enola Gay," painted in black letters on the nose.Īs the plane rumbled down the airstrip at over 100 mph, he had his lucky cigarette case with him in one pocket, and a box containing 12 cyanide capsules in another. "Dimples Eight Two" weighed 150,000 pounds, and with fuel for the long flight to Hiroshima, 12 men on board, and a five-ton uranium bomb in the bay, the B-29 was 15,000 pounds overweight.