WHAT HIGH SCHOOL TEXTBOOKS
DON’T TEACH
By Don A. Farrell, Author of Tinian and The Bomb
High school textbooks teach that the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were flown to Japan by B-29 Superfortresses based on Tinian in the Mariana Islands. They do not recognize that the bombs were actually assembled on Tinian under combat conditions, not at the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico.
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n January 19, 1945, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, Director of the Los Alamos Laboratory, advised Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves, Commanding General, Manhattan Project, on the status of the atom bombs. Oppenheimer’s very brief note only stated, “Aug. 1 for L.B [Little Boy] and 1- F. M. [Fat Man]; Sept. for 2 or 3 F.M.; October for 3 F. M…” Based on that prediction, General Groves sent Commander Fred Ashworth, USN, to the Marianas in early February to pick a site for the assembly and delivery of the bombs. He chose Tinian because it was 100 miles closer to Japan than Guam, and Saipan was overcrowded with the 73rd Bombardment Wing, already flying missions to Japan. Thus, Tinian became “Papacy.”
Meanwhile, Captain William Stirling “Deke” Parsons, USN, an ordnance specialist, assumed the position of Deputy Director, Los Alamos Laboratory. His job was to design a bomb mechanism incorporating all the gadgets the scientists had created, one that could be dropped from an airplane. Having created a proximity fuse for the Navy’s 5” antiaircraft guns and tested it in combat in the Southwest Pacific Area, Parsons knew what had to be done to move the Project to the front, successfully. Besides planning the deployment, he also oversaw the manufacture of bomb parts at various factories across America and coordinated shipments to a central packaging warehouse in San Francisco Bay.
Groves then sent his colleague in the Army Corps of Engineers, Colonel Elmer E. Kirkpatrick, Jr. to Tinian to oversee the construction of the necessary Manhattan Project facilities; an ordnance area with technical labs for subassemblies, three bomb assembly buildings, and two bomb loading pits, without telling anyone in the Marianas why, except Nimitz. Why three assembly buildings?
Commander Ashworth and four men from the Project Alberta assembly teams arrived on Tinian on June 27 and began organizing the bomb parts that had already arrived in Quonset Huts in the 1st Ordnance technical area. There were enough to make fifty bombs, some of which would be used to make final test drops just off Tinian’s northwest coast. Why fifty?
REMEMBRANCE FALL 2020
Three atom bomb assembly buildings had been completed. Little Boy test bombs and
the active bomb would be assembled in building number one. Fat Man would be assembled in number three, the furthest north. After Little Boy was dropped on August 6, Assembly Building #1 was cleaned and restructured to handle the far different Fat Man bombs. After Fat Man was dropped on August 9, work immediately began on another. On the 12th, Truman decided no more bombs would be dropped without his signed order. General Carl Spaatz, Commander, U.S. Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific, and now stationed at Guam, recommended the next bomb be dropped in the burnt out section of Tokyo, so that Hirohito and his military clique could watch the show from the Palace. Fortunately, on August 10 Hirohito took command and ordered acceptance of the Potsdam Ultimatum, unconditional surrender, with the retention of Japan’s traditional imperial system, kokutai, his only request. Had Japan not surrendered, would there have been a third bomb, a fourth, a fifth, as many as necessary? No-one will ever know.
