The Ballad of Adam Bombed
THE BALLAD OF ADAM BOMBED
In 1913, H.G. Wells unleashed world devastation.
200 cities were ruined by atomic superweapons.
200 cities were ruined in his novel The World Set Free.
And Leo Szilard began his dream in 1933.
Leo Szilard, Hungarian, on a London street corner,
waiting for the light to change, dreamed of a new world order.
Leo Szilard, physicist, envisioned a new world order
of atomic power but the atom had not been severed.
Leo Szilard, scientist, obsessed with chain reactions,
called on Earnest Rutherford and confessed his ambition.
“Atoms can’t be split,” said the discoverer of the nucleus.
“Atomic energy is a myth. Get out of my office.”
Leo Szilard, world-class dreamer, followed Rutherford’s order.
Distrusting all authority, he looked for something better.
Leo Szilard, world-class thinker, needed just one element
that neutrons could split but nothing at all had developed.
Leo Szilard tinkered and patented his own chain reaction.
Nothing else developed. He took his dream across the ocean
to the United States of America. In 1938
Otto Hahn in Berlin split uranium and sealed Earth’s fate.
Otto Hahn had severed the atom. Lise Meitner told Frisch.
Otto Frisch called it fission and told Bohr that the atom’s split.
Neils Bohr was flabbergasted, “What fools we have all truly been.”
He rushed to America. The revolution had begun.
Nuclear revolution spread ‘cross to America’s shore.
Neils Bohr joyfully told Fermi when he met him in New York.
Neils Bohr played Paul Revere and hurried away to Washington
and told a group of scientists of Hahn’s earth-shaking findings.
Leo Szilard, top researcher, now living in Manhattan,
told Lewis Strauss, the financier, about nuclear fission.
Nuclear fission became adopted by America.
From Columbia to Cal spread a view of utopia.
From Columbia to Cal nuclear family quickly spread.
Oppenheimer joined it and became feverish in his head.
The fever caused delirium. Hallucinations then flew
about nuclear bombs and the great destruction they could do.
Leo Szilard knew but he still needed a chain reaction
He went to Enrico Fermi to make a plan of action.
Fermi said it wouldn’t work, said no to a chain reaction.
Leo decided to pursue another course of action.
Leo borrowed two thousand dollars for an experiment.
March 1939, he witnessed a mind-changing event.
In his new laboratory at Columbia’s Pupin,
Szilard and Zinn created history and a chain reaction.
They created a chain reaction and Enrico recanted.
They thought up a bold, new plan for government to finance them.
They needed government to back them. It was a race with time.
If Germany armed the atom, Hitler would drop the first bomb.
The government’s main concern was new power for submarines.
Bohr thought atomic bombs would cost much more than anyone dreamed.
Szilard and Teller and Wigner, three wisemen from Budapest,
convinced Doctor Albert Einstein to write to the President.
In October, letter in hand, Mr. Sachs, economist,
went to see Franklin Roosevelt about nuclear crisis.
Sachs informed the President of the nuclear dilemma.
Franklin agreed. The Uranium Committee was set up.
Lyman Briggs was a bureaucrat in charge of the Committee.
Leo asked for six thousand dollars. Briggs got him the money.
Six thousand wasn’t much but it was more than they had before.
No one could know two billion would buy the bomb to end world war.
The bomb that would end world war would not come until ’45.
Hitler’s panzer corps charged fast and outflanked the Maginot Line.
Wigner resigned from the project. Szilard was sadly convinced
Hitler and Germany’s Nazi Wehrmacht were going to win.
Lyman Briggs was a patriot. He controlled the Committee.
No strangers would set its fate. He cast them out for security.
The summer of 1940, Vannevar Bush from Carnegie
took direct control of the government’s science activities.
Vannevar Bush, a shrewd operator, was a man of scope.
Columbia got forty thousand and Leo got new hope.
Leo was put on the payroll as the bomb project revived.
Vannevar Bush was skeptical a bomb could be built in time.
Bush was pessimistic even though he heard of Peierls and Frisch,
two scientists in England who declared the bomb could be built.
They needed two years and ten kilograms of uranium.
England could not handle it. Oliphant went to see Lawrence.
Ernest Lawrence at Berkeley, inventor of the cyclotron,
agreed with Marcus Oliphant and went to Arthur Compton.
Arthur Compton, nobel winner, at the University of Chicago
feared Hitler would rule the world if the Nazis ruled the atom.
Then Nazi tanks in June ’41 rolled all the way to Moscow.
Europe was in Hitler’s reach. The bomb grew up in Chicago.
Arthur Compton, dean of science, morally opposed to war,
agreed with Ernest Lawrence, “We must build the bomb here.”
In October, Vannevar Bush met with President Roosevelt.
He asked for the bomb go-ahead. A bright green light was given.
December 6, Compton and Lawrence met Bush in his office.
Compton got bomb design; Lawrence uranium production.
The next day, December 7, Lawrence hurried back to work.
Japanese planes swooped down; rained destruction on Pearl Harbor.
One month later in January, Szilard was in Chicago
with Fermi, Wigner and hundreds to unleash atomic power.
Oppenheimer in California was assigned to answer questions:
How much fission material? How efficient the reaction?
What would be the bomb impact? What would the bomb look like?
All summer long in ’42, Oppie’s crew worked in an attic.
Oppenhiemer’s theoreticians contemplated the explosion
when Edward Teller relayed his fears of human extinction.
“The atomic heat might set fire to the nitrogen in the air
The entire planet would then burst into a funeral pyre.”
Hearing this, Oppenheimer called a halt to further thinking.
If atom bombs would end the world, he would end their tinkering.
He wouldn’t be responsible for the destruction of mankind.
Bethe researched Teller’s figures and he found he was out of line.
Arthur Compton in November made his chain-reacting pile
directly under Stagg Stadium on Chicago’s south side.
Chicago Pile Number 1 near 57th and Ellis
was built on the squash courts by school kids and scientists.
Three-hundred-and-fifty-seven tons and sixteen-feet high,
the Szilard–Fermi reactor pile was reaching a critical time.
December 2, physicist Weil withdrew the cadmium rod.
Foot by foot and foot by foot the pile began to react.
A cheer went up all around. A bottle of wine was drained.
Fermi ordered the pile secured. Compton phoned Washington.
Conant, Bush’s assistant, listened to Compton’s coded words.
“The Italian navigator landed safe and happy in the new world.”
Everybody was safe and happy. Leo shook Fermi’s hand.
“Welcome to the atomic age – a black mark against mankind.
This day will go down in history as a tragedy for Earth.
This day, our greatest triumph, will lead to our worst curse.”
Vannevar Bush had his scientists and a chain-reacting pile.
He needed an organizer and builder to make things roll.
Colonel Groves was an engineer, head of military construction.
Lieutenant General Somervell assigned him to destruction.
Lieutenant General Somervell assigned him to one object.
Groves became a general and head of The Manhattan Project.
Leslie Groves was a sonofabitch known for getting things done.
That day he talked to Nichols and found they had no uranium.
Kenneth Nichols the very next day, wearing civilian clothes,
went to a New York Belgian firm and bought twelve hundred tons.
Twelve hundred tons of ore at one dollar and sixty cents a pound
was more than two million bucks. The project was gaining ground.
In the beginning of September, Groves had assumed command
and by the end of that month Oak Ridge had a nuclear plant.
Uranium production was sent to the state of Tennessee
for five-hundred-million dollars and eighty-five-thousand employees.
General Groves was in charge now and things really began to move
till he went to Arthur Compton and his staff of twelve hundred.
Twelve hundred scientists couldn’t give the General an answer
of how much fission material an atomic bomb required.
At Berkeley, Groves’ military mind hit a similar barrier.
The scientific mind moved too slow. War demanded faster.
The cyclotron made uranium just thirty-percent pure.
Having only a few micrograms, Groves demanded more.
Groves went to Oppenheimer, a scientist who impressed him.
Oppie wanted a laboratory to work out the explosion,
a laboratory to design the bomb, to build it and to test it
for use against the enemy in time to end the conflict.
They met again in November on a train eastbound from Chicago
and agreed to find a test ground for their bomb laboratory.
By the end of the month the project had found a final home
in the foothills of Los Alamos – birthplace of the atom bomb.
Three thousand construction workers moved in by the year’s end.
Roosevelt hurried to start. He handed out 400 million.
Groves figured 1945 would bring the bomb they’d be making.
But would they beat the Germans? Groves had no way of knowing.
Heisenberg, nobel laureate, who was once a student of Bohr,
directed Berlin’s Institute and he explained the bomb to Speer.
“A bomb the size of a pineapple could flatten a major city.
America could have it in two years. We can’t match their ability.”
The Japanese and the Russians had nuclear projects of their own –
Nishina at Riken Institute; Kurchatov in the Russian zone.
They reached the same conclusion as Werner in Berlin.
“America will build the bomb first. We’re just too far behind.”
Meanwhile Oppenheimer, now director of Los Alamos,
rushed around the country recruiting the best scientists.
Robert Wilson at Princeton and his whole team of forty
came west to Magic Mountain and joined the nuclear family.
The best brains were signed up. But many had reservations.
They worried about the military mind and its limitations.
Groves and Oppenhiemer eased their fears and apprehensions.
They wouldn’t be wearing uniforms and wouldn’t be saluting.
Leo Szilard would not come. He and Oppie weren’t simpatico.
He said the isolation at Los Alamos would drive them loco.
Wilson and Manley were not worried about isolation.
The chaos at the mesa was their chief preoccupation.
The Project needed more planning. Oppie was indecisive.
They cornered him in Berkeley and pleaded for directives.
Oppenheimer on March 15, in pork-pie hat and crumpled suit,
roamed all over Los Alamos and brought order to the site.
Barrack-style laboratories rose up in a fenced-in area.
April 15 the complex was set . Business began on the mesa.
Fifty scientists assembled for three days of intense briefings.
Robert Serber of Berkeley laid out their many problems:
Uranium from Tennessee, plutoniuim from Washington,
two years to make fission stuff for a nuclear explosion.
Uranium behavior was unknown. No one had seen plutonium.
The scientists would forge ahead on theory and calculations.
The Oak Ridge plant began in August and it kept breaking down.
Its uranium, fifteen-percent pure, would make just one bomb.
Just one bomb would not win the war. So in Hanford’s wilderness
forty-five thousand workers hurried the plant to completion.
To detonate fission material for an atomic explosion
the bomb might use a gun or it might use an implosion.
Neddermeyer worked on implosion since it was his idea.
According to Johnny von Neumann it used less material.
Early in ’44, imminent disaster appeared to come.
The gun-method detonation would foil a plutonian bomb.
Compton turned pale in Chicago when Oppie told him the news.
Conant got worried in D.C.; had important talks with Groves.
The mesa morale was slipping. Oppenheimer changed the team.
Implosion was given priority. War demanded speed.
Von Neumann and Peierls made lenses needed for implosion.
Dick Feynman and new computers coped with the calculations.
Kisty, an explosives expert, was hired to test implosion.
He couldn’t make progress. His failures caused much emotion.
Oppie’s weight dropped too quickly. He chain-smoked cigarettes.
He couldn’t sleep. He took seconal. He continued to fret.
Neils Bohr, hopeful morale booster, appeared at Magic Mountain.
To former students and associates things seemed less forbidding.
Bohr had the power to uplift – a father to the group.
The Great Dane was given an office. He helped everyone cope.
Bohr’s role would take him away to meet with the nation’s leaders.
He wanted world bomb control and peace through the atom’s features.
He went to D.C. to see Supreme Court Justice Frankfurter
who went to see the President about the bomb’s world future.
Roosevelt agreed with Frankfurter. He shared Bohr’s humanism.
But Churchill would never stand for it. He hated communism.
Future policy for the bomb took a back seat to invasion.
In June ’44, the Allies launched the world’s greatest invasion.
The Allied invasion of Normandy became an Allied triumph.
Allied armies burst from the beaches and liberated Paris.
Roosevelt beamed when he met Bohr again in his office.
He shared Bohr’s peaceful vision and would talk to Winston.
Roosevelt and Churchill met in Hyde Park in September.
Winston turned him against Bohr. He thought Bohr was a danger.
Franklin never saw Bohr again. But he talked with Vannevar Bush
about a test and dropping the bomb or threatening its use.
Late that winter in ’44, Germany launched an offensive
to keep the Allies from attack. The Battle of the Bulge began.
The battle raged into ’45. The President wasn’t well.
The Allied armies just survived. Hitler’s last chance had failed.
A few months later Henry Stimson, Secretary of War,
went to see the President. The bomb was set for summer.
Bomb policy had to be made. Groves wanted it kept secret.
Bush and Conant sought world control. Roosevelt should decide it.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt never made up his mind.
Stimson never saw him again. April 12, Roosevelt died.
April 12, Roosevelt died. Bomb policy was undecided.
April 12, Harry Truman became America’s new President.
Truman wasn’t Roosevelt, the smiling father figure
who took the nation by the hand and led them out of danger.
Truman lacked experience in the nation’s foreign affairs.
But the sign on his desk was plain to all, “The buck stops here.”
At 7:09 p.m., Truman was sworn in as President.
After a cabinet meeting, Stimson told him of the Project.
Should the bomb be used on Japan? When and where were important.
The answers to these questions of state would be made by Truman.
Alternative to using the bomb was invasion of Japan.
General Marshall predicted casualities of a million.
Stimson and Groves met Truman again to discuss policy.
World control would be difficult; monopoly – unreality
Groves informed the President of the schedule of the Project.
In July at Alamogordo an implosion bomb would be tested.
In August, Little Boy would be ready – a uranium gun-type bomb.
Fat Man, an implosion type, would be ready that same month.
A special Air Force unit was in training to drop the bomb.
Truman was eager to end the war. Invasion would be dumb.
He thought FDR would have used the bomb to save soldiers’ lives.
Truman wished to use the bomb. The alternative was suicide.
Leo Szilard, atomic prophet, had changed his atomic mind.
Once ardent for the atom bomb, he now became a dove.
He feared using atomic bombs would lead to a race with death.
An atomic world war would start. Atom bombs would bring man’s end.
Leo Szilard, humanitarian, wanted to see the President.
The atom bomb threatened mankind. The crisis had no precedent.
President Truman did not have the time. James Byrne got the task.
Byrnes didn’t agree with Leo. Scientists should stay in their labs.
The Interim Committee was the new bomb policy group.
Oppenheimer was on it. Leo gave him his heartfelt view.
Oppenheimer was for the bomb. He wanted to use it
to justify to Congress the two-billion-dollar Project.
The pioneers of the atom bomb felt a conflict in their conscience.
Was it morally right to build the bomb and use it on Japan?
They were heroes of the age. They were dedicated to science.
They lent their minds and souls to the bomb. There was no turning back.
Many of the scientists wanted a peaceful demonstration.
Who could tell if that would work. Japan might ignore one.
Young men were dying daily. What good were spiritual values.
The morality of ending war demanded the bomb be used.
May 2, 1945, the Russian forces conquered Berlin.
The need to make Japan surrender became the war’s stated end.
November 12 was the date for the invasion of Japan
but the Interim Committee was discussing the atom bomb.
Compton, Conant, Bush, Lawrence, Groves, Stimson, Byrnes and
Oppenheimer vetoed a demonstration as a foolish, impractical effort.
The bomb would be dropped without warning for the maximum effect.
Japan’s unconditional surrender was the goal of the Project.
A surprise attack against Japan to shock then into surrender?
Leo Szilard, pacifist, demanded they reconsider.
Leo Szilard would use the bomb to make the world disarm.
Loe Szilard hoped to keep the Earth from mankind’s future harm.
Leo Szilard’s hopes no longer mattered. Bomb policy was set.
Japan would lose two cities. War’s horror is what she’d get.
Japan would get comeuppance for attacking Pearl Harbor.
Japan would surrender or Japan would no longer be there.
Paul Tibbets, fighter pilot, was the best the Air Force had.
General Arnold, Air Force boss, gave Tibbets a new command.
The 509th Composite at Wendover Field in Utah
trained to drop a brand new bomb from their B-29 aircraft.
May 9 at Martin bomber plant in Omaha, Nebraska,
Tibbets checked out B-29s for the very best craft.
The foreman pointed out one plane. “This one’s for you,” he jabbed.
Tibbets gave it his mother’s name and called it Enola Gay.
Tinian in the Marianas became the group’s forward base.
Tibbets ‘ bomber crews flew out in May. Tibbets would fly out late.
The Target Committee was set to choose which cities he would bomb.
Japan’s atomic death sentence would be made in Washington.
General Groves wanted Kyoto for its religious fame.
Japan’s ancient capital, Kyoto was a holy name.
Secretary Stimson disapproved – too many temples and shrines.
Japan wouldn’t suffer much disgrace. Hiroshima was assigned.
Hiroshima lay in southern Japan untouched by the wrath of war.
Japan’s seventh largest city – death stood waiting at her door.
Death stood waiting at her door. Little Boy was death knell’s name.
The world’s first uranium bomb would bring her nuclear shame.
The first place to feel the flame of nuclear devastation
was given the name Trinity at Alamogordo Air Base.
Many miles south of Los Alamos, this heavily guarded site
Monday morning, July 16, would endure nuclear might.
Oppenheimer was skin and bones, coughing and exhausted.
Groves flew in Isadore Rabi for his steadying effect.
Oppenheimer was frantic. Failure was all he foresaw.
No one had worked with plutonium. Sunday it came by car.
Thirteen and one-half pounds of plutonium formed the bomb’s core.
Two identical spheres of metal would be joined together as one.
Eight scientists under Bacher’s control handled the metal spheres.
One wrong move – radiation death! Louis Slotin made them one.
Kistiakowsky that afternoon at the one-hundred-foot test tower
informed the scientists he was set. The assembly would take the core.
Carried by litter to Bacher’s car, it was driven to the site
where it was raised by manual hoist and lowered till it fit tight.
Then foot by foot that afternoon the bomb went up the tower.
It made it to the top where it dangled in windy weather.
The next day, Sunday, Groves arrived. Everyone there was nervous.
The weather changed. It started to rain. Perhaps they’d scrub the test.
At midnight Groves met Oppenheimer. Postponement was discussed.
The rain was coming straight down. The tower was shrouded in mist.
Rabi predicted catastrophe. Windshift would spread the fallout.
Radioactive disaster meant postponement untll they dried out.
Only the deadline was delayed. The weathermen expected
a lull in the windy, rainy storm between five and six o’clock.
At three a.m. the cloud cover broke. The rain at last ended.
Groves and Oppie set a new time. 5:30 the bomb would drop.
Groves drove twenty miles northwest to watch from Campania Hill
with Conant, Bush and the scientists their atomic dream fulfilled.
They lay on the ground facing away from the tower at the site.
At 5:29 a huge fireball ignited the darkened sky.
For over a hundred miles around night turned into brilliant day
and warmed the faces of everyone – a great atomic display.
The scientists were shaking hands, laughing like happy children.
They slapped each other on the back. They’d finished their grand plan.
Rabi was thrilled and got gooseflesh and worried about humanity.
Oppenheimer was strutting around filled with a brand-new energy.
Groves phoned his office at 5:55 to tell his assistant the facts.
O’Leary rushed to the Pentagon to inform Stimson at Potsdam.
Expectations had been exceeded. Fallout had spread too far.
Radioactive clouds hit Vaughn one hundred twelve miles to the north.
At Los Alamos that night euphoria was everywhere.
But Robert Wilson was concerned. “A terrible thing we’ve bared.”
A terrible thing was surely bared. Klaus Fuchs then told the Russians.
All along he’d spied for them. He’d sent them priceless equations.
That Saturday, June 2, Klaus Fuchs drove quickly to Santa Fe
and gave away state secrets that soon would trigger the arms race.
While the scientists were at Trinity, Truman was at Potsdam
meeting with Stalin and Chruchill to discuss their joint war plans.
There Truman issued his ultimatum – Japan must surrender at once!
Stalin learned of a brand-new weapon. Japan was almost done.
Then late July, Groves cabled Truman at the conference in Potsdam.
“We’re ready to drop the atom bomb in August at your command.”
Groves was given the go-ahead to drop all the bombs he had.
Japan refused surrender. Truman wanted the war to end.
July 26, the Indianoplis dropped anchor off Tinian Harbor.
Her top-secret cargo was welded to the deck of the cruiser.
Tinian, the world’s largest airbase, housed a thousand bombers.
The 509th was impatient for top-secret orders.
Deke Parsons, a Navy Captain, the bomb project’s ordnance chief,
came to Tinian with the core to give Little Boy its teeth.
Major Ferebee, the bombardier, and Tibbets went to Guam
to talk with General Curtis Lemay on the atom bomb.
Hiroshima was the target – no war-prisoner camp there.
The aiming point was Aioi Bridge, t-shaped near city center.
Special Bombing Mission Thirteen, war’s first atomic attack,
would happen August 6th. Nagasaki was an alternate.
Seven B-29s would take part. One plane would take photos.
Another bomber, a flying lab, would measure blast effects.
One would wait on Iwo Jima. Enola Gay might not work.
Three other planes would go ahead to send back weather reports.
Colonel Tibbets, Saturday, briefed the crews of the 509th.
Captain Parsons, Tibbet’s weaponer, described Little Boy’s might.
“The bomb that we’re going to drop is the first one of its kind.
The most destructive ever, it’s radius is three miles wide.
The bomb will burst in the air at eighteen-hundred-fifteen feet.
No one knows just what will happen but the flash will be severe.
Welders goggles must be worn. Blindness could occur.
Don’t fly through the mushroom cloud. Radioactivity’s there.”
The next day, Sunday, August 3, Little Boy went to North Field
to be loaded into Enola Gay. It weighed ten-thousand pounds.
Parsons then was to arm the bomb. He knew it would be risky.
If they crashed while taking off, they would blow up half the island.
So Parsons decided on the spot to arm the bomb on the plane.
If something went wrong in the air, the island would still be saved.
All day long in the plane’s bombbay Deke practiced arming the bomb.
His fingers greasy and bleeding, he learned to do it in time.
The early morning of August 6th, the weather planes took off.
Straight Flush headed for Hiroshima, Major Early in command.
At 2 a.m. the other crews arrived at the field’s flight line.
Surrounded by lights and cameras, pictures were snapped for all time.
2:20 a.m. work began and the crews boarded their planes.
Tibbets leaned from his cockpit window, “Cut those lights. We’re going.”
The engines started and at 2:45 Enola Gay rolled toward the sea.
She built up speed to 180 and lifted off with ease.
Captain Deke Parsons went to work. He began to arm the bomb
The bomber cruised at 4,000 feet. Grease and blood stained his hands.
Back in the plane with Little Boy, Deke Parsons worked in silence.
He put gun powder in the bomb, attached the detonator.
But Little Boy could not explode. One circuit wasn’t connected.
It was too early to finish it. They needed to know the weather.
Hiroshima was their first choice. Kokura was target two.
Nagasaki was the last one. They waited for weather clues.
The laboratory and photo planes joined Tibbets at five to five.
They flew in a V into bright sunlight. Their stomachs grew tight.
Six-thirty a.m. they neared Japan. The bomb was fully armed.
Colonel Tibbets told the crew, “We carry an atomic bomb.”
Seven-twenty-five Enola Gay got a message from Straight Flush.
“Cloud cover here less than three-tenths. Advise bomb Hiroshima.”
“It’s Hiroshima,” Tibbets declared. Parsons nodded agreement.
Ferebee in his bombardier chair took control of the plane.
At two-hundred-eighty-five miles per hour Enola Gay flew west.
Just minutes after eight o’clock Ferebee sighted the river.
The crosshairs of his Norden sight moved onto Aioi Bridge.
Major Ferebee knew it by heart. “I’ve got it,” he clearly said.
Seventeen seconds after 8:15 the bomb-bay doors swung open.
Through his legs and the open bomb-bay, he watched the bomb drop down.
Ferebee shouted, “Bombs away!” Enola Gay lurched straight up.
Enola Gay made a sharp right turn. The bomb would explode in seconds.
In 43 seconds , nothing , and then a bright light filled the plane.
A huge , round mass of air shot up. A shock wave jarred the plane.
A huge, round mass rose up again. A shock wave jarred the plane.
The plane flew off into the sky. Hiroshima lay in flames.
Caron, the plane’s tailgunner, saw the mushroom cloud come up.
Robert Lewis, bomber co-pilot, just shouted, “Look at that!”
Ferebee, bombardier, wondered if they’d all become sterile.
Tibbets spoke into his recorder. “More destruction than I thought.”
Tibbets radioed Tinian and spoke to General Farrell.
“Target has been visually bombed. We have had good results.”
Co-pilot Robert Lewis wrote the following few words down.
“MIssion Number 13 completed. My God! What have we done?”
They’d killed a city with just one bomb. Hiroshima lay in rubble.
Little Boy, missing the bridge, had exploded over Shima Hospital.
The building and everybody inside were gone in just one strike.
Dr. Shima was in the suburbs making house calls alone on his bike.
The courtyard of the hospital lay directly beneath the blast.
Ground zero, the hypocenter, was suddenly reduced to ash.
Within 1,500 feet almost all of the people would die;
Aioi Bridge, 400 feet long, had miraculously survived.
So did three-storied Honkawa School, built of reinforced concrete.
Surrounded by a thick brick wall, its interior had been gutted.
Japanese officials hadn’t feared three planes. Tibbets had full surprise.
No one had gone to shelters. One hundred thirty thousand would die.
One hundred thirty thousand would die – half the population!
Leo Szilard had tried to stop it but Washington had overruled him.
Leo Szilard, atomic prophet, had seen the horror coming.
Hiroshima had died on August 6. Nuclear war had dawned.
President Truman was coming home on the U.S.S. Augusta.
He had just sat down to eat his lunch when he got atomic notice:
“Big bomb dropped on Hiroshima.” Truman took in a deep, deep breath,
“This is the greatest day in history. It was a complete success.”
At Los Alamos, Oppenheimer got word by phone from Leslie Groves.
“The bomb went off with a big, big bang.” Oppie looked relieved and proud.
The public address announced the news. The place was in an uproar.
Hiroshima’s end would be the beginning of the end to world war.
At Farm Hall, an estate in England, Otto Hahn learned of the drop.
The chemist who had split the atom was absolutely shocked.
“So many innocent woman and kids.” Otto Hahn became depressed.
Heisenberg, who had failed at the bomb, disbelieved the atomic blast.
At the bomber base on Tinian three shifts a day were ordered.
More atom bombs were going to fall more rapidly than scheduled.
Groves wanted to keep Japan off balance. He pushed for a drop the tenth.
The weathermen predicted bad weather . August 9, they’d drop Fat Man.
3:49 a.m. on August 9, Bock’s Car took off from Tinian.
Fat Man was armed before they left. A crash would have wrecked the island.
Kokura was the main target. Visual bombing would be tricky.
After 3 runs through thick overcast, Sweeney flew to Nagasaki.
Nagasaki was also overcast. Thick clouds filled the air.
Sweeney flew through the cloudy sky and reached the city by radar.
At the last moment the clouds broke permitting visual bombing.
One and a half mile off the aiming point, Fat Man dropped toward the city.
Nagasaki was a shipbuilding center, a big port in wartime.
44 per cent of the town was ruined. 70,000 would die.
Major Sweeney barely made it back. Bock’s Car just reached Okinawa.
With just enough gas to land, Major Sweeney brought Bock’s Car down.
Leo Szilard asked a Chicago pastor to say a special prayer
for all the people who had died because of atomic power.
Albert Einstein at his home said, “The world’s not ready for sure.”
The Committee thought 50 bombs would be used to end the war.
President Truman was disturbed about using atomic power
but Pearl Harbor and prisoners’ murders demanded he end the war.
“The only language they understand is not the language of peace.
Force is the only language you use when you’re dealing with a beast.”
American atomic factories continued their production.
More atom bombs were being made. Then quickly their shipment stopped.
Japan was thinking about surrender. Groves called a sudden halt.
Groves and Stimson were trying to figure Japan’s peaceful intent.
The Emperor was severely distressed. Two cities had been destroyed.
Hirohito called for a special meeting. All the ministers were told.
They met in the Emperor’s air-raid shelter. He stood so all could hear.
“No more will innocent people suffer. Japan will accept aurrender.”
August 15, 1945, Emperor Hirohito addressed his people.
”The unbearable will be borne by all.” Peace was his only goal.
Peace woiuld come again to Japan. Japan would fight no more.
Leo Szilard’s atomic dream had ended the world war.
Leo Szilard’s clear vision had surely ended World War II.
The Soviet Union would build the bomb. The arms race was in view.
Leo Szilard predicted a grim future of funeral pyres.
He pictured a time when militarists would set the world on fire.
Leo Szilard dreamed of a fate humanity didn’t deserve.
Leo Szilard was not too late. The world’s arms race could be curbed.
And all the beings on Planet Earth would live to see with awe
when Homo Sapiens lived in peace and all wars were outlawed.
Copyright 2007 by Larry Ziman
(All the information in this ballad comes from the book, DAY ONE, BEFORE HIROSHIMA AND AFTER, written by Peter Wyden and published by Simon and Schuster.)
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