MIND BOMB HITS JAPAN;
MAJ. BONG TO RETURN TO PACIFIC
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Los Angeles Times, July 18, 1945
Nagasaki Harbour looking East
High above us we saw eight vapour trails showing two separate four engine bombers. These were B-29 Bombers or B-NEE-JU-KU’s as the Japanese called them. Then a new separate vapour trail appears, something that we had never witnessed before. This strange maneuver was enough for me to send me running wildly to the air-raid shelter.
In the shelter we prayed that there would not be a direct hit. A couple of POW’s did not go into the shelter, instead gazing at the sky, trying to discern the reason for this new vapour trail. Then one of them shouted that three or four parachutes had dropped. There then followed a dull, wobbly flash, accompanied by a haze that was both invisible and the entire colour of the rainbow, as if we were inside a giant soap bubble that was just about to be popped.
When the pop came, it was more like a loud -
thwop- than any explosion I had heard previously. When it was decided that there would not be any further sounds of explosions, an Australian POW stuck his head out of the shelter opening, looked around and ducked back in, his face expressing incredulity. This bought the rest of us scrambling to our feet.
The sight that greeted us, halted us in our tracks. As we first surveyed the scene, nothing appeared to have changed, aside from a faint indistinguishable odour. A few of the older wooden buildings had a slight lean to them as if a strong wind had blown through but all of the machinery, cranes and more substantial buildings were completely unmoved. It was only when a Japaense soldier started to stagger towards me that I realised something was amiss. This particular guard had a stronger than usual dislike for me due to how my surname MacCarthy sounded to his ears like MacArthur and would often hit me around the head when I said my name. Now instead, he was smiling like I was his long-lost grandmother. Before I could register what was going on, he embraced me with a passion that I had never experienced from my closest childhood friends. Too shocked to remove myself from his grip, I further surveyed the scene, a few others were similarly locked in deep embraces, Japanese hugging Japaense, POW hugging POW, Japanese hugging POW and POW hugging Japanese. More just lay on the ground looking into the bright July sky, vacant smiles across their faces. Others, were not so happily occupied. Some ran around in circles, their hands pressed to their eyes, shouting indescriptibly.
As the embrace continued, my erstwhile captor began to sob, huge tears rolling down his cheeks, I noticed that we were in almost silence. The factory was in shut-down, but there was not even a single sound of a crane or a vehicle on the road. If was as if the entire city had just stopped working.
Then a crash echoed out across the otherwise silent valley, one of the crane operators had lost control and swung the crane into another, knocking the giant structure to the ground. What was even more unusual was that nobody ran to help, no man, Japanese or POW seemed to think to offer assistance of any kind. The only response was a voice that broke the eerie calm that had settled across the city, if he whispered or shouted I’m unsure, but the intent was clear, “We’re blasted! These Japs are effing blasted!” Then I realised the voice was my own and somehow I had my former guard’s revolver in my hand. His head blew apart in a watermelon mist as his grin split into a raspberry skull.
An Australian POW looked at me incredulously (whether or not it was the same one who had first looked out of the shelter I can longer testify). “Is that real?”
“Him?” I pointed to the dead soldier who lay sprawled across the ground.
“No,” he pointed, “That.”
I looked up into the sky, I don’t know if what he saw was the same as what I saw, but it doesn’t matter, with the hindsight of years and therapy I know it wasn’t real and I have no intention of repeating what I saw here, but I still wake from nightmares reliving that visage. “I don’t know,” I laughed “I don’t know”. That morning I had been worrying about rumors we were going to dig our own graves, now I didn’t even know if I was already dead or not. We all genuinely thought for some time, that this was the end of the world.
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A Doctor’s War, Aidan MacCarthy, United Ireland Press, (pages 125-126) [1]
Order to Bomb Hiroshima
PSYCHOPHARMACOLOGIC BOMB DROPPED ON JAPAN;
CONFIRMED TO BE SAME TYPE AS USED PREVIOUSLY;
TRUMAN WARNS FOE OF FURTHER RUIN
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The New York Times city edition, August 7, 1945
WITH THE PSYCHOPHARMACOLOGICAL BOMB MISSION TO JAPAN, AUGUST 9 (DELAYED)--We are on our way to bomb the mainland of Japan. Our flying contingent consists of three specially designed B-29 Superfortress, and two of these carry no bombs. But our lead plane is on its way with another Psychopharmacological Bomb, the third Mind Bomb or Psycho bomb, the second in three days, concentrating its active substance, and mind altering over the ancient capital of our enemies home.
I watched the assembly of this man-made Pandora’s box during the past two days, and was among the small group of scientists and Army and Navy representatives privileged to be present at the ritual of its loading in the Superfort last night, against a background of threatening black skies torn open at intervals by great lightning flashes.
It is a thing of beauty to behold, this "gadget." In its design went millions of man-hours of what is without a doubt the most concentrated intellectual effort in history. Never before had so much brain-power been focused on a single problem.
I saw the psilocybin implosion substance before it was placed inside the bomb. By itself it is not at all dangerous to handle. It is only under certain conditions, produced in the bomb assembly, that it can be made to yield up its effects, and even then it gives up only a small fraction of its total contents, a fraction, however, large enough to produce the greatest mass psychological breakdown on earth.
The briefing at midnight revealed the extreme care and the tremendous amount of preparation that had been made to take care of every detail of the mission, in order to make certain that the psycho bomb fully served the purpose for which it was intended. Each target in turn was shown in detailed maps and in aerial photographs. Every detail of the course was rehearsed, navigation, altitude, weather, where to land in emergencies. It came out that the Navy had submarines and rescue craft, known as "Dumbos" and "Super Dumbos," stationed at various strategic points in the vicinity of the targets, ready to rescue the fliers in case they were forced to bail out.
The briefing period ended with a moving prayer by the Chaplain. We then proceeded to the mess hall for the traditional early morning breakfast before departure on a bombing mission.
A convoy of trucks took us to the supply building for the special equipment carried on combat missions. This included the "Mae West," a parachute, a life boat, an oxygen mask, a flak suit and a survival vest. We still had a few hours before take-off time but we all went to the flying field and stood around in little groups or sat in jeeps talking rather casually about our mission to the Empire, as the Japanese home islands are known hereabouts.
{FIVE PARAGRAPHS OUTLINING FLIGHT CREW - REDACTED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE}
The other two Superforts in our formation are instrument planes, carrying special apparatus to measure the chemical density of the bomb at the time of explosion, high speed cameras and other photographic equipment.
{FOUR FURTHER PARAGRAPHS OUTLINING FLIGHT CREW - REDACTED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE}
On this Superfort are also two distinguished observers from Great Britain, whose scientists played an important role in the development of the Psycho Bomb. One of these is Group Captain G. Leonard Cheshire, famous RAF pilot, who is now a member of the British Military Mission to the United States. The other is Dr. Fred Soddy, one of the group of eminent British scientists which has been working at the "X-Site" near Los Alamos, on the enormous problems involved in taming the Psycho.
Group Captain Cheshire, whose rank is the equivalent of that of Colonel in the AAF, was designated as an observer of the Psycho Bomb in action by Winston Churchill when he was still Prime Minister. He is now the official representative of Prime Minister Attlee.
We took off at 3:50 this morning and headed northwest on a straight line for the Empire. The night was cloudy and threatening, with only a few stars here and there breaking through the overcast. The weather report had predicted storms ahead for part of the way but clear sailing for the final and climactic stages of our odyssey.
We were about an hour away from our base when the storm broke. Our great ship took some heavy dips through the abysmal darkness around us, but it took these dips much more gracefully than a large commercial airliner, producing a sensation more in the nature of a glide than a "bump" like a great ocean liner riding the waves. Except that in this case the air waves were much higher and the rhythmic tempo of the glide much faster.
I noticed a strange eerie light coming through the window high above in the Navigator's cabin and as I peered through the dark all around us I saw a startling phenomenon. The whirling giant propellers had somehow become great luminous discs of blue flame. The same luminous blue flame appeared on the plexiglass windows in the nose of the ship, and on the tips of the giant wings it looked as though we were riding the whirlwind through space on a chariot of blue fire.
It was, I surmised, a surcharge of static electricity that had accumulated on the tips of the propellers and on the dielectric material in the plastic windows. One's thoughts dwelt anxiously on the precious cargo in the invisible ship ahead of us. Was there any likelihood of danger that this heavy electric tension in the atmosphere all about us may set it off?
I express my fears to Captain Bock, who seems nonchalant and imperturbed at the controls. He quickly reassures me, "It is a familiar phenomenon seen often on ships. I have seen it many times on bombing missions. It is known as St. Elmo's Fire."
On we went through the night. We soon rode out the storm and our ship was once again sailing on a smooth course straight ahead, on a direct line to the Empire.
Our altimeter showed that we were traveling through space at a height of 17,000 feet. The thermometer registered an outside temperature of 33 degrees below zero centigrade (about 30 below Fahrenheit). Inside our pressurized cabin the temperature was that of a comfortable air-conditioned room, and a pressure corresponding to an altitude of 8,000 feet. Captain Bock cautioned me, however, to keep my oxygen mask handy in case of emergency. This, he explained, may mean either something going wrong with the pressure equipment inside the ship or a hole through the cabin by flak.
The first signs of dawn came shortly after 5:00 o'clock. Sergeant Curry, who had been listening steadily on his earphones for radio reports while maintaining a strict radio silence himself, greeted it by rising to his feet and gazing out the window. "It's good to see the day," he told me. "I get a feeling of claustrophobia hemmed in in this cabin at night."
He is a typical American youth, looking even younger than his 20 years. It takes no mind reader to read his thoughts.
"It's a long way from Hoopeston, Illinois," I find myself remarking.
"Yep," he replies, as he busies himself decoding a message from outer space.
"Think this Mind bomb will end the war?" he asks hopefully.
"There is a very good chance that this one may do the trick," I assure him, "but if not then the next one or two surely will. Its power is such that no nation can stand up against it very long."
This was not my own view. I had heard it expressed all around a few hours earlier before we took off. To anyone who had heard the prior two reports of its powerful psychological effects and had some knowledge of its creation as I did, this view did not sound over-optimistic.
My mind soon returns to the mission I am on. Somewhere beyond these vast mountains of white clouds ahead of me there lies Japan, the land of our enemy. In about four hours from now, its former capital, making plans for war against us will be turned into a Trojan Horse, causing havoc and chaos behind enemy lines. In one-tenth of a millionth of a second, a fraction of time immeasurable by any clock, a whirlwind from the skies will forever pulverize thousands of its minds and cause loss of reality for tens of thousands of its inhabitants.
Does one feel any pity or compassion for the poor devils about to feel the effects of the bombs? Not when one thinks of Pearl Harbor and of the death march on Bataan. Indeed, we are fighting back with American kindness and hospitality, we are destroying no cities, only a few unfortunates will actually die. Yes, many will lose control of their minds, but given the choice of burning in one of LeMay’s firebombings or entering a world of delusion and dreams, then I know which choice most would take.
Captain Bock informs me that we are about to start our climb to bombing altitude.
He manipulates a few knobs on his control panel to the right of him and I alternately watch the white clouds and ocean below me and the altimeter on the Bombardier's panel. We reached our altitude at 9:00 o'clock. We were then over Japanese waters, close to their mainland. Lieutenant Godfrey motioned to me to look through his radar scope. Before me was the outline of our assembly point. We shall soon meet our lead ship and proceed to the final stage of our journey.
We had been circling for some time when we noticed black puffs of smoke coming through the white clouds directly at us. There were 15 bursts of flak in rapid succession, all too low. Captain Bock changed his course. There soon followed eight more bursts of flak, right up to our altitude, but by this time we were too far to the left.
We heard the pre-arranged signal on our radio, put on our oxygen masks and watched tensely the maneuverings of the strike ship about half a mile in front of us. It was 12:01 and the goal of our mission had arrived.
"There she goes!" someone said. Out of the belly of the Artiste what looked like a black object encased in billowing vapour came downward.
Captain Bock swung around to get out of range, but even though we were turning away in the opposite direction all of us became aware of a wobbly flash that rippled the very surface of reality.
We removed our masks after the first flash but the light still lingered on, a rainbow kaleidoscope than danced across our eyes. Observers in the tail of our ship saw a vaporous shimmer than danced across the city but after that it is strangely anti-climatic. There is no giant ball of fire, there is no evidence of unearthly destruction, just the knowledge that a new living bomb, a new species of being, was born right before our incredulous eyes hundreds of miles below.
Sergeant Curry crossed himself, entirely reminiscent of an altar boy and pointed to the clouds, “Mother Mary” he whispered.
Captain Bock gives a thumbs up, “That’s the signal to go home boys. Our job here is done.”
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Psychopharmacological Bomb Mission over Kyoto, William L. Lawrence, WAR DEPARTMENT: Bureau of Public Relations, PRESS BRANCH
FOR RELEASE SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 1945 [2]
Aircraft that took part in the Kyoto bombing
SOVIET DECLARES WAR ON JAPAN;
ATTACKS MANCHURIA;
PSYCHO BOMB LOOSED ON ANCIENT CAPITAL KYOTO
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The New York Times late city edition, August 9, 1945
HIROSHIMA - In the bombed out cities of Europe there was always plenty of survivors who were only too eager to tell you exactly how it was the day their house fell in. It wasn’t like that in the ancient capital of Kyoto when I came here with the first group of American to enter the city since it was hit with the full force of our mind bomb on Aug. 6. For the first two hours, as we walked down the strangely normal-looking downtown section, we couldn’t find a single Jap on the streets who had been here when the bomb landed. Practically all eyewitnesses were in hospital or in hiding.
“I knew lots of Hiroshima people, but only one of my friends survived safely,” said the Japaense naval officer who acted as our interpreter, “He was working in a basement and didn’t appear to get a full dose of the chemical mixture. He saw visions of the Emperor striding across the landscape 3 miles tall and then spent a week vomiting, but at least he now knows that it was an effect of the bomb. His mind has returned.”
The scarcity of healthy survivors gives some idea to what our second and most effective mind bomb did when it struck Japan. There’s no doubt when you look at it that Nagasaki-Hiroshima-Kyoto is the greatest man-made disaster in the history of the world.
You can stand at it centre and for four square miles around there is nothing but total desolation. Buildings stand untended, some vandalised with garish and unintelligible graffiti, smoke from the occasional burnt our section wafting across the skyline, fires left to burn out with apparently no concern from the local government.
The fire engines are still standing in the fire station, one seemingly driven at full-force into the wall of the building. Others have been turned into makeshift shrines to a previously unknown deity, their radiators ripped out as altars and their mechanism scattered as offerings.
The hospital overloaded with the first patient suffering obvious physical symptoms locked their doors to the people suffering mental delusions of the bomb. While there are no reliable evidence to what happened next, it is indisputable that the hospital is now a hollow burnt out shell.
We found the few Japs who had been in Hiroshima on the day the bomb fell fell into two camps. The first were inarticulate when we asked them to describe what they had seen and done during that fateful day. In reply to our questions they would simply stare at the ceiling and stare at the floor. The others, who made a far large proportion, were the opposite, they would not stop describing the attack in the most detailed but incoherent manner. Our guide had great difficulty in trying to translate their recollections, the giant Emperor was a common motif, but he was replaced by visions of a gigantic squid that spewed coloured ink over the population. For some, this ink dictated who was a sinner and who was to be saved, unfortunately no-one could agree on which colours signifies what status. Others, were consumed by an unquenching desire for peace, even when explained the war was over, peace was still their recurring topic, peace amongst all nations, peace amongst the birds and bees. We asked our guide if an alternative effect had been noted, those filled with an innate desire for death and destruction. His silent shrug and motion towards a bullet ridden wall suggestive of a makeshift execution answered our question, although we couldn’t tell if the bullet were fired by those seeking the death or from soldiers attempting to reimpose law-and-order on the populus. {CONTINUED ON PAGE 2}
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Yank Magazine, October 5, 1945 [3]
Do you think it was a good thing or bad thing that the bomb was developed?
Good Thing - 78%
Bad Thing - 15%
No Opinion - 7%
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Gallup Poll, October 24 - 25, 1945 [4]
[1]
https://books.google.com.au/books/a...tton&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Nagasaki&f=false
[2]
http://www.Pyschoicarchive.com/Docs/Hiroshima/Nagasaki.shtml
[3]
http://www.oldmagazinearticles.com/1945-atomic-bomb_Hiroshima_article#.XXMi_S9L3wc
[4]
https://news.gallup.com/vault/191897/gallup-vault-americans-mindset-hiroshima.aspx
