The Final Storm - Jeff Shaara [226]
“Tail gunner! See anything?”
“Not yet … oh …”
The cockpit suddenly filled with a soft glow, and Tibbets felt his heart racing, felt a tingling sensation, had a sudden metallic taste in his mouth, thought, what the hell? He fought the distraction, kept his eyes on the panel, straightened the flight of the plane, glanced to the side, the blue sky changing to pink and purple, engulfing the plane, bathing the cockpit in eerie light. In the tail Sergeant Caron stared through the welder’s glasses, tried to make out any detail, blinded by the light of ten suns, and he pushed the buttons on the camera, again and again.
31. HAMISHITA
NORTHERN OUTSKIRTS OF HIROSHIMA
AUGUST 6, 1945, 8:15 A.M. (LOCAL TIME)
Through the long night he had slept close to his wife, the tragedy of her trip to Tokyo hard on both of them. For more than a week she had sought out missing relatives, learning that two were confirmed dead, others not heard from at all. The refugees from the great city had been fleeing the destruction there for weeks, seeking refuge in the countryside, some with family, some homeless, traveling anywhere they could find food and shelter. Her return the evening before had brought a flood of tears, triggered mainly by the sight of her husband in his surgical gown, his hands thick with blood. The tears had been unusual, the product of so many days sifting through wreckage, the impromptu need for a nurse for some injured stranger. It had been nothing different from what she had seen before, and yet the magnitude of it had seemed to overwhelm her, the outpouring of her emotions triggered by little more than her husband with blood on his hands. He had tried to soothe her with words that belied his appearance, that he was the fortunate one, they both were, healers, in a place where so much was needed. On this one night he had to concede that the healing was not as helpful as it might have been. More often he spent his time in the clinic ministering to the injured, whether soldier or civilian, usually some wound from the collapse of a building, a direct hit from an American bomb. But there had been no bombing raids on the city for the past two days, and she had arrived just as Hamishita had completed an emergency cesarean on a pregnant woman. What should have been a small glimmer of light in a dark world had instead been a tragedy all its own. The baby was stillborn, the mother barely surviving. As a trained nurse, his wife had seen as much blood and as much tragedy as he had, but the death of the baby was one more knife in her emotions, one more weight for a woman who had struggled through too much of her own.
As quickly as possible, he had closed the clinic for the night, changing from the surgical garb, removing any sign of the sadness of his own day. They had eaten an evening meal in silence and candlelight. It had been common for some time, all of Hiroshima blacked out, logical precautions against an American raid. With the darkness swallowing the city and everything around them, she had pulled him to the bed, a woman who needed the secure arms of her husband. He had obliged her, had kept himself awake while he tried vainly to soothe her tears. His last thoughts were of the morning, that he would make some effort to find some flowers, something cheerful, to wake her to color and light and a smile. But his own exhaustion was overwhelming, and when he woke, it was to daylight. The shock of that had pulled