(13 of 13)
One thing Agnew and Philip Morrison do agree on: when you went to the movies on Tinian you could not hear the sound track for the rain beating on your helmet. Morrison remembers them always playing a follow-the-bouncing-ball sing-along of White Christmas--the G.I.s bellowing White Christmas all spring and summer. He also remembers the physicists preparing the necessary ingredients for ice cream, then sending the concoction up 30,000 ft. in a B-29 to freeze the stuff: a $25,000 dessert. And he remembers the bombers going on missions before Aug. 6. Sometimes the planes would be overloaded and would crash on takeoff. Great pillars of fire would rise on the beach, men burning alive inside them.
Of the original four runways on Tinian, two are still operable: wide, white, gleaming strips made of coral and asphalt, surrounded by orange flame trees bent by the mild wind toward the ocean, and green spongy hills, and the encroaching thick, tall grass. The island is nearly empty now, down from a population of 20,000 U.S. servicemen in 1945 to 800 Chamorro natives, who fish, raise goats or herd cattle. Not far from the runways stands the bombed-out shell of the Japanese officers' quarters: charred timbers, a huge bomb hole in the roof, a tree blooming through the hole. Not far from there is what looks like a fresh grave, about 10 ft. by 18 ft., in a grassed-over area that once was "Atomic Bomb Pit No. 1 ," marked by a sign that resembles a picnic-area sign in a public park. Growing on the plot are a dwarfed and twisted coconut tree and a pometia tree that looks like a stalk of grapes stripped bare. Before the plot is a stone marker shaped like a public trash can with an inscription saying that here the Bomb was loaded up into the Enola Gay on the afternoon of Aug. 5. It was Agnew's day.
"And then came the night of our mission. Our B-29s had a circle with a black arrow in it as their insignia. All the other B-29s had triangles or circles with letters of the alphabet. But the night before the mission, on Aug. 5, Tokyo Rose came on the radio and said, 'Black Arrow Squadron, we know who you are and what you are, and we are ready for you.' Early the next morning we didn't have black arrows anymore. We had triangles with letters, which I thought was chicken. But it was prudent.
"So off we went, flying near the Enola Gay all the way, all 13 hours. The weather plane had returned and reported that everything was peachy keen. A little before 8:15, the area was clear, the Enola Gay was right on target, and we were alongside, about a quarter-mile away. Then we caught the tone signal, which meant that the Bomb was armed and ready to drop. When the tone went off, that meant the Bomb was on the way down, so we dropped our measuring gauges, our own little 'bombs.' Then we saw the flash of light. And the camera was rolling. We must have been seven miles away when the shock waves hit the plane. All I remember is we sure got out of there in a hurry, which was fine by me. I just wanted to get home."