Following the Trinity explosion, the action shifted to Tinian in the Mariana Islands, some 1,300 miles southeast of Tokyo. Tinian, along with Guam and Saipan, had been captured in August of 1944 from the Japanese, and the three were being used as air bases for America’s newest long-range bomber, the B-29 Superfortress. Six runways, each two miles long and as wide as a ten-lane highway, had been constructed. Next to the runways were rows of glittering silver planes. For an hour and a half each evening at roughly fifteen-second intervals, the bombers would roll down the runway and lift off for Japan with bellies full of incendiary bombs. Leslie Groves had sent a thirty-seven-member team of civilians and military officials to Tinian to help assemble and load the atomic bombs onto specially modified B-29s. One of the people at Tinian was Don Mastick, who had been assigned the job of analyzing urine samples after his accident. The task was so revolting that one day he stormed into J. Robert Oppenheimer’s office and said, “I can’t stand what I’m doing.1 It stinks.”
What do You think about The Plutonium Files (2010)?
