The World

The Bomb had been in the making for forty years.^* In 1943, at Quebec, FDR and Churchill merged their countries’ nuclear research into the Manhattan Project based at Los Alamos in New Mexico. Now as Stalin arrived to visit Truman (finding him ‘neither educated nor clever’), neither man mentioned the test. ‘I didn’t know then,’ said Stalin, ‘at least not from the Americans.’ He had known since 1942, informed by Soviet spies. Until the explosion neither Stalin nor Truman could conceive of Trinity’s world-shattering significance. Learning from their spies about Trinity and knowing that their agents had secured uranium from Nazi laboratories near Berlin, Stalin and Beria twice discussed how to react if Truman informed him; they agreed to ‘pretend not to understand’.

On 24 July at Potsdam, Churchill attacked Stalin for his aggressive actions in Romania. ‘An iron fence,’ he said, trying out the phrase that would become the Iron Curtain, ‘has come down.’

‘Fairy tales,’ replied Stalin, getting to his feet. Truman hurried after him; Churchill, pre-warned, watched.

‘The USA,’ said Truman, ‘has tested a new bomb of extraordinary destructive power.’

Not a muscle moved in Stalin’s face. After the fanatical Japanese resistance on Okinawa and the expectation that attacking Japan itself could cost 268,000 American dead, Truman planned to use the new weapon against Japan.

‘A new bomb!’ said Stalin. ‘Of extraordinary power. Probably decisive on the Japanese! What a bit of luck!’ Back in Ludendorff’s house, Stalin briefed his henchmen that Britain and America ‘are hoping we aren’t able to develop the Bomb ourselves, but that’s not going happen’. Stalin had already put Beria in charge of the nuclear project, but now this was ‘Task No. 1’. The race to catch up was on.

On 6 August a B-29 bomber named Enola Gay, after the mother of its pilot Colonel Paul Tibbets, took off from Tinian, Mariana Islands, and flew six hours to Hiroshima where at 8.15 a.m. it dropped the first atomic bomb, Little Boy, on Hiroshima. Only three of

Enola Gay’s crew knew they were dropping the device. ‘It was hard to believe what we saw,’ said Tibbets. ‘My God!’ gasped the crew. On the ground, 100,000 were killed instantly, 100,000 horribly burned, survivors experiencing a flash, a boom, then a firestorm that ravaged the city as black radioactive rain fell in a new vision of hell on earth.

Hirohito was shaken but did not immediately surrender; he procrastinated, seemingly more shocked two days later when Stalin invaded Manchuria. At dawn on 9 August, another American B-29 – Bockscar – dropped Fat Man on Nagasaki as Hirohito was meeting his generals to discuss negotiations, insisting that if divine kokutai

was not preserved he would fight on. Within two days, the Bombs convinced him to accept unconditional surrender; the hawkish war minister, General Anami, reluctantly agreed. The emperor planned a speech to the people. The speech, recorded by radio technicians, contained the greatest understatement in history: ‘The war,’ said Hirohito, ‘has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage.’ His ‘jewel-voice’ was faint, so he had to record it again. Before it could be broadcast, officers, encouraged by Anami, attacked the palace in a bid to seize the recording. They killed the commander of the Imperial Guards, but failed to find it and committed suicide. Next day, General Anami himself committed ritual disembowelment, leaving a note: ‘I – with my death – humbly apologize to the emperor for the great crime.’ And at noon the Japanese heard their tenno for the first time. ‘Our people believed too much in the imperial country,’ Hirohito wrote to his eleven-year-old son, Crown Prince Akihito, who was staying outside Tokyo for his safety. ‘Our military men knew how to advance not retreat. If we’d fought on, we’d have been unable to protect the three imperial regalia [mirror, sword, jewel] and more of our countrymen would have had to die. Repressing my emotions, I tried to save the seed of the nation.’

On 30 August, General MacArthur arrived in Tokyo, charged by Truman with preserving Japanese stability, while trying the militarists for war crimes. Tojo was executed, but MacArthur then decided to keep Hirohito, undoubtedly guilty too, by recasting him as a non-divine constitutional monarch.