Customer Reviews

Shockwave: Countdown to Hiroshima

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I am in absolute awe of Stephen Walker's ability to tell a story. His descriptive eloquence flows from one page to another, profoundly unveiling in first-person detail that chain of events that brought a decisive end to World War II. Even though Hiroshima took place years before my birth, through Walker's words, I felt as though I had been given a rare privilege - that of peering into the hearts and minds of those who lived and were forever changed by it. Thank you, Stephen Walker, for bringing to life a time wrought with catastrophic death as well as victory. Only now can I begin to imagine the feelings and fears of the men and women touched by the Manhattan Project.

"Shockwave" is a riveting book, made all the more powerful because the story is told from the dual perspectives of the Americans who dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and the citizens of Japan who suffered its effects.

The story begins on August 5, 1945 in the Shukkein Garden of Hiroshima, as two lovers part company. The narrative flashes back to the deserts of New Mexico, where the first atomic bomb was detonated on July 15, 1945. In tense, tight chapters, Walker carries the tale forward day by day, week by week, as the Americans move the bomb inexorably toward Hiroshima: the plane flights out of New Mexico, the mysterious loading of materials aboard the ill-fated USS Indianapolis, the bizarre training of aircrews who had no clear idea of what they would drop on Japan, the assembly of the first bomb on Tinian, the delicate procedure by which the bomb was armed in flight.

The Americans in the book are driven by their determination to end the war quickly, their resolve strengthed by the thousands of young Americans killed and maimed in four years of brutal fighting. On the other side of the tale are the citizens of Hiroshima, who go about their lives in war-torn Japan. They have no inkling at all of the fate that awaits them, but they are determined to defend their homeland to the bitter end. With the grim certainty of tragedy, the two sides collide in one horrific moment in which tens of thousands of Japanese are instantly killed and tens of thousands more begin the long and painful process of dying.

It is impossible not to be moved by this book. Walker brings the events to life with a series of gripping vigenettes: the young scientist who spent the night atop the first atomic bomb in New Mexico, wondering whether it would be detonated prematurely by an electrical storm; the officer who had to arm the bomb in a delicate seven-step procedure and whose brother had lost his face fighting the Japanese; the politicans who were determined to drop the bomb after spending so much of the taxpayers' money to build it; the lovers who never saw each other again after the bomb fell; and the Japanese leaders who refused to surrender even after Hiroshima had been destroyed.

If Hollywood ever gets out of the habit of making movies about comic book characters and seventies sitcoms, perhaps it could make a movie from this book--the story is compact, the characters are compelling, and the climax is as dramatic as it gets. In the meantime, read "Shockwave"--I wasn't able to put it down.

"Shockwave" is historical storytelling at its finest. Stephen Walker transports us back to the summer of 1945, when the country's $2 billion+ investment in nuclear weaponry - and its gambit to shorten the war - faced its decisive moment of truth.

Walker recounts the extraordinary secrecy that cloaked the Manhattan Project - military personnel thought to be security risks were summarily dispatched to guard duty in Alaska -- and the enormous pressures on men like Oppenheimer and General Groves to make it succeed. Oppenheimer was so pessimistic that he was actually betting that the New Mexico test firing would fail, and, at one point, was banned from the testing site so that his negative energy would not affect other scientists. We see an emboldened Pres. Truman at Potsdam "bossing around" a phlegmatic Stalin, who knew more about the U.S.'s "secret" weapon than he let on thanks to the espionage of the notorious Klaus Fuchs. Japan foreign ministry peace overtures through the Soviets run into a diplomatic cul de sac when Truman insists on unconditional surrender, and Stalin opts instead to declare war on Japan and stream his forces into Manchuria.

Despite the protestations of some in the scientific community - including Leo Szilard, "the father of the bomb" - Truman and his advisors never doubt their decision to target a Japanese population center - without warning or demonstration. (Only War Secretary Stimson has some qualms, but he doesn't express them very forcefully.) It's just "not a decision to worry about," Truman says, famously.

Certainly, Paul Tibbets and the Enola Gay crew don't have any reservations about the mission they're asked to perform. And Walker captures their harrowing, tension-filled ride from Tinian Island to Hiroshima in vivid detail. Given the weight of their payload, it's not certain Enola Gay will even make it off the ground, let alone survive a scamper across the Pacific or the sprouting, six-mile-high mushroom cloud.

Still, the reader cannot help but be moved by Walker's graphic accounts of Hiroshima's widespread devastation, and the heart-rending experiences of a local populace caught completely unaware. A doctor called out of the city on a post-midnight emergency is one of the few medical professionals to survive (his medical center lost 85% of its nurses and doctors). An adolescent girl perseveres only through the good graces of her teacher, while a young conscript returns home to collect the bones of his wife and infant daughter.

Sixty years on from the event, "Shockwave" had me spellbound from cover to cover - an enthralling, captivating, engrossing read.

This is a superb narrative history of three weeks in the summer of 1945 that culminate in the atom bomb destroying Hiroshima and what ensued immediately thereafter. It is impossible to talk about this event without reflecting on the reporting by John Hersey, but Stephen Walker has done something a bit larger. Not only has he read broadly the various histories (including Hersey) written about that time, he takes us through the conference at Yalta, the politics Washington D. C., what was happening at Los Alamos, at Tinian Island, in the war rooms in Tokyo, and what a few of the citizens in Hiroshima were doing to get through the hard times of the war. We also get to ride on the plane with the crew of the Enola Gay and the other planes that were part of that mission.

By admitting that I was afraid of that this book was going to be a criticism of the way America ended the war in the Pacific, I also admit that I believe the bombing was a necessary and important act. However, my beliefs are not important in this review. What I want to tell you is that the author does a superb job of reporting how different people viewed the events without tipping his own hand. It would be easy for any reader to project his own beliefs on his writing, but it is hard to say definitively what Mr. Walker believes about August 6, 1945.

I was afraid he would not include the spying that went on for the Soviets at Los Alamos. He does include Klaus Fuchs, but not David Greenglass or Ted Hall. This is probably a good choice because it would divert from the main narrative. The main point is that Stalin knew about the bomb at the Yalta conference and that Truman and Churchill did not know that Stalin already knew.

The discussion of peace efforts of the Japanese reaching out to the Soviets and some of the views in the administration in Washington about using the bomb might lead the reader to believe that Mr. Walker believes that there were other better choices than dropping the bomb. Maybe the author believes that. I don't know. However, the author does note other voices that claim that dropping those bombs saved lives. Not only American lives, but Japanese lives as well. He is clear that the Soviets had begun their invasion of Manchuria. Mr. Walker is also very clear that Hiroshima and every other major Japanese city would have been part of the fire bombing campaign that had already burned Tokyo and other Japanese cities killing many hundreds of thousands.

The author also notes the suffering that Americans endured during the Bataan Death March, during the taking of Iwo Jima and other islands in the Pacific campaign, let alone Pearl Harbor. He is careful to not make the Japanese into innocents.

I particularly enjoyed the material the author had from Japanese survivors of the blast and how he weaves their lives and accounts into this story. It does humanize those who died and suffered in Hiroshima. It is clear that it was a city rather than the military base Truman claimed in his first statement on the matter. I also did not know that a couple of dozen American POWs were killed in the bombing. Some were killed in the blast and others murdered by outraged citizens after the bombing. It is one of those sad collateral events of the war that could not and should not have stopped the bombing, but is still important to note and remember.

This is a book I hope everyone will read and think about. It is not a simple matter no matter how you come down on the bombing itself. War is an awful thing, but if it is to be waged there are awful consequences for so many. Is it better to wage it harshly and brutally so that it is short with victory in view? Or is it better to use it as a wedge to a political solution however the compromise has to be made? Or is it something else?

Mr. Walker doesn't decide for you and that is one of the strengths of this fine book.

This is an immensely thrilling and terrifying work of historical research by Walker, and is indispensable for anyone interested in the history of World War II, the Cold War, or the arms race. Here Walker has compiled previously known historical evidence with modern-day interviews and new research to create an extremely concise and suspenseful countdown to the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and its aftermath in both the physical and psychic senses. Perhaps Walker's most rewarding coverage features some regular citizens of Hiroshima who survived the bombing and were able to give chilling accounts of Japanese society during the war and the shocking horrors of the bomb blast. We also learn about the characters of the American servicemen, researchers, and politicians involved in the cataclysm, and in a quite refreshing fashion, Walker mostly avoids political pronouncements on the merits off the atomic bomb strategy. He doesn't take sides on the vast philosophical and military issues behind the bomb, and manages to pay homage to all arguments as he focuses on the human side of the destruction. And best of all, Walker's chronology is astonishingly precise, and gets down to the minute and even the second – one chapter is titled "Forty-Five Seconds Before Zero" and this indicates both the level of detail and the suspense in Walker's research. This true story is a far more enthralling, nail-biting, and white-knuckled read than any work of fiction. [~doomsdayer520~]

"Even blades of grass were driven into flesh." - Author Stephen Walker about the shockwave of the Hiroshima A-bomb

The world already knows the ending to Stephen Walker's book, SHOCKWAVE. But here, he brings the story of the atomic bomb up close and personal in a narrative based on eyewitness accounts of the Trinity test at White Sands, NM, on July 16, 1945, the dropping of "Little Boy" by the B-29 named the Enola Gay on Hiroshima On August 6, and the plight of Japanese survivors of the blast.

The development of humankind's ultimate weapon at Los Alamos, NM, was an ultra top secret project accomplished by an army of scientists and technicians headed by J. Robert Oppenheimer and Major General Leslie Groves, many of whom, including one who was a Soviet spy, watched in stunned awe as a nuclear device was first successfully detonated at White Sands. But perhaps no experience of the event matched that of Georgia Green:

"Fifty miles north of Ground Zero, an eighteen-year-old girl was traveling in the front seat of a car next to her brother-in-law, Joe Willis. The girl's name was Georgia Green, and Joe was driving her to an early-morning music lesson in Albuquerque ... As they passed the town of Lemitar along an empty Highway 85, a flash of extraordinary brilliance suddenly filled the landscape. Georgia grabbed her brother-in-law's arm. 'What was that?' she cried."

Georgia Green, you understand, was blind.

The story next shifts to the Pacific island of Tinian where the 509th Composite (bombing) Group commanded by Colonel Paul Tibbets, after extensive training of his command in Wendover, UT, prepares to receive, assemble, and deliver the world's first atomic weapon on one of three Japanese cities, the ultimate target to be chosen only after the mission was already in the air and twenty-five miles from the coast of Japan. For the Enola Gay's crew, the six and one-half hour flight from Tinian to Hiroshima encompassed drama and boredom:

"On (Little Boy's) upper surface were the three green safety plugs that blocked the firing signal from the fuse. For a moment (bomb technician) Jeppson stood beside the trembling bomb holding his three red plugs. He was alone in the bomb bay. Many years later the thought occurred to him: 'If I had removed the green safety plugs and then simply tossed the red ones onto the bomb-bay doors, the bomb would have been a dud and there would have been no evidence. I'm willing to believe that a dud would have forced some high-level considerations. Possibly the invasion of Japan would have happened.' In a very real sense the power to change history now rested directly with him."

"In the narrow, thirty-foot pressurized tunnel that separated the nose and the waist compartments, Jake Beser lay stretched out, his first chance to sleep in twenty-seven hours. (Tail gunner) Bob Caron, assistant engineer Robert Shumard, and radar operator Joe Stiborik took turns rolling oranges down the tunnel toward him. Finally one bounced on Beser's head, waking him up."

Walker's brilliant achievement with SHOCKWAVE is the terrible fascination and foreboding engendered in the reader as the bomb inexorably approaches its target because interspersed within the narrative are sections which focus on the lives of several unsuspecting Hiroshima residents: army physician Dr. Shuntaro Hida, press photographer Yoshito Matsushige, schoolgirl Taeko Nakamae, army corporal Toshiaki Tanaka, engineering student Sunao Tsuboi, and Special Attack Forces volunteer Isao Wada. On the evening of August 5th:

"In the stillness of the Shukkeien Garden ... Sunao Tsuboi and his lover, Reiko, lay side by side on the grass. They had entered the garden at dusk. The cool dark lake spread before them, crisscrossed by its tiny wooden bridges and miniature teahouses. The thick scent of flowers carried on the night air, like the perfume of the letters she sometimes sent him. Occasionally they heard the splash of carp ... Or perhaps the old heron had woken ... (They lay) like this together for hours on the still-warm grass, their fingers barely brushing for the very first time. She had such beautiful fingers, thin and white and delicate. For the rest of his life Sunao would always remember their touch, just as he would remember the stars shining out of the clearest, widest, emptiest sky."

At 9:17 AM local time on August 6, what God had wrought was torn asunder by Man in an act of war, for justifiable reasons or not. Making his way to the city center from six kilometers out after the blast, Dr. Hida nearly collided with an object:

"He could not tell what it was. It did not look like a human being. It looked monstrous. Every part of its body was black, its arms, its head, its legs, its grotesquely swollen face. Its eyes protruded horribly like golf balls. It had no nose or hair. Its mouth gaped open like a huge hole. Its black lips were half the size of its face ... Black rags hung from its arms and torso. For a moment Hida thought these were pieces of burned clothing. Then he realized they were burned flesh ... Hundreds of shapes were coming up the hill toward him."

SHOCKWAVE contains a photo section featuring images from all points of the story, including the famous pictures of the mushroom cloud taken by Bob Caron, and a pair captured by Yoshito Matsushige, virtually the only ones depicting Hiroshima survivors on the day they encountered Armageddon.

"(President) Truman never swerved from (his decision to use the Bomb). In 1958 he wrote a letter to the Hiroshima City Council confirming that he would order the bomb to be dropped again, given similar circumstances. 'We'll send it airmail,' he is reported to have told his secretary. 'Be sure there are enough stamps on it!'"

After emerging from a forty-day coma, Sunao Tsuboi lived on to marry ten years later and father three children. At the time of this book's writing, he lived alone, a widower, in Hiroshima. How Reiko died on that fateful day remains unknown.

SHOCKWAVE is a mirror that shows humans what horrors they are capable of wreaking upon themselves. It's not pretty.

It has been a long time since I have sat down and read a book cover to cover at one sitting.
This book takes you into the lives of those that participated in the building, planning and execution of the first atomic bomb as well as those on the receiving end. You feel as if your part of history being made and you finish with a different outlook on the events that took place.

From the honorable men that were doing their jobs, to the horror the Japanese people experienced you will feel like you were there as history unfolded only to leave hoping that we never see anything like this ever happen again.

I was totally enthralled by the subject matter and writing in this critical historical book. I had planned on starting a few chapters the night I bought it, and wound up reading through until the end at 1 AM! Walker's text is riveting and never lets the reader get bored. The countdown of three weeks to August 6, 1945 is perfect in terms of describing the key players and events, and the author makes the people as real as if they were standing next to you. He entices a degree of empathy for the Japanese victims of Hiroshima without being either judgmental or maudlin, and he reveals not only the heroism of the Americans engaged from bomb development to delivery but their very human flaws. The book is perfectly tailored to delivering a maximum impact of a stunning and never surpassed horror of history and what made us the people and world we are today.

In this fine book, author Shephen Walker describes the events leading up to and the actual atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

The book starts out in the New Mexico desert on the day of the Trinity test. The Manhattan Project, in which many renowned scientists including Enrico Fermi and Albert Einstein worked, was a top-secret project in which the objective was to harness the power of the atom and bring it to critical mass in the form of a bomb. The scientists had accomplished this, and the test bomb rested on top of a metal tower in the pre-dawn darkness of New Mexico. At approximately 5:30 a.m. on July 16, 1945, a light more powerful than a thousand suns lit up the desert. The bomb worked.

Halfway around the world at Potsdam, Germany,, President Harry S. Truman was preparing to meet with Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union and Winston Churchill of England. On their agenda was the conduct of war against Japan. Up until Franklin Roosevelt's death in April of 1945, Truman had no idea about the atomic bomb. But now, he was told that the Trinity test was successful. As a result, the three Allied leaders drafted the Potsdam declaration; a call for the immediate and unconditional surrender of Japan. Many believed that Japan would balk at the idea of unconditional surrender. Unfortunately for many Japanese civilians, they were correct; Japan had no intention of surrendering unconditionally. Truman then decided to play his trump card; the atomic bomb.

There were two original bombs' "Little Boy", a uranium bomb, and "Fat Man", a plutonium bomb. "Little Boy" was ready ahead of "Fat Man", so it would be the first bomb used. A list of several potential target cities was derived, including Hiroshima, Kokura, and Nagasaki. Weather would dictate which target was bombed.

On the island of Tinian, Col. Paul Tibbets and his 509th bomb group had been training for this mission for months at Wendover, Utah. Tibbets, along with his hand-picked crew, was to deliver the bomb. Three weather planes flew ahead to check the weather conditions over the target cities, while two planes, one of them a flying laboratory devised to study the effects of the blast, would remain in the strike force. At approximately 2:45 a.m. Tinian time on August 6, 1945, the force took off en route to Japan. The weather planes had left about an hour ahead of the strike force and had radioed back that the weather over Hiroshima was best for bombing. The rest, as they say, is history.

Stephen Walker has written a masterpiece of militaty history. He starts with the events building up to the Trinity test, then describes the Potsdam conference and all of its implications, including the spy the Russians had in New Mexico who was relaying information about the bomb to Stalin. The events of the mission itself are the true highlight of the book. What starts out as a chapter describing the events six hours before zero continues on right down to forty five seconds before zero. These several chapters contain some of the most exciting writing that I've ever read. The reader truly feels like they are flying right along on the way to Japan.

Walker also describes the devastation that occurred after the bomb was dropped, as well as both American and Japanese reactions. Perhaps the most unbelievable piece of information I picked up from the book was the fact that the crewmembers of the Enola Gay could still see the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima at a distance of 415 miles! That is an almost unbelievable statistic.

This ranks as one of the best books I've read. Walker's research is impeccable, and his storytelling reads like a novel that you can't put down, especially the parts about the mission itself and the after-effects. I give this great book my highest recommendation. If you want information on the attack on Hiroshima, this is the place to get it.

"Shockwave" is a compelling account of the frantic and surreal three weeks that culminated in the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Walker's detailed description of the logistical nightmares, the uncertainties, and the political maneuvering that took place during this pivotal time makes for a fascinating page turner. Walker captures the terror, the conflicts, the determination, and the resourcefulness of the dozens of people involved in the Manhattan Project and its aftermath.

Using lucid and vivid prose and even occasional dry humor, Walker takes us to the Trinity Test Site at Ground Zero in the desert of New Mexico. There, J. Robert Oppenheimer and his team worked around the clock to prepare for the world's first nuclear bomb test. Would the device explode or would it prove to be a dud? If it worked, would the explosion destroy the entire state of New Mexico, or would the damage be localized? There were no definite answers, because this project was both experimental and very dangerous.

"Shockwave" also takes us inside Japan. Walker describes the beautiful city of Hiroshima before the blast, with its busy entrepreneurs, its young and hopeful lovers, its verdant gardens, and its beleaguered and starving citizens frantically building weapons for the expected American invasion. The author also explores the thinking of key Japanese leaders, including Hirohito and Togo, of President Harry Truman and his Secretary of War Henry Stimson, and even of Josef Stalin. Was the bomb dropped for the sole purpose of ending the war and avoiding a catastrophic American invasion of the Japanese mainland? Or was Truman anxious to use the bomb in order to make a statement about American might that would deter a future Soviet threat? Walker explores all of these possibilities and lets the reader decide for himself.

What brings this book to life is Walker's brilliant storytelling. He puts the reader in the tower with Harvard-trained chemist Don Horing as he baby-sits the bomb prior to the test while a thunderstorm rages around him. He places us in the desert with the observers after the world's first nuclear test. One general called it "stupendous, magnificent, and terrifying, an act of blasphemy in which puny man had dared tamper with the forces of the Almighty." We accompany Paul Tibbets in his B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, as he and his crew fly over Hiroshima and prepare to drop their deadly cargo. Finally, we are on the ground after the blast, the black radioactive rain falling to earth, the shockwave sucking up everything in its path, and the wretched victims either dying instantly or wishing that they had.

Was the use of atomic weapons against civilians justifiable? Truman and Tibbets claim never to have suffered a moment's doubt about the morality of using an atom bomb as a weapon of war on an entire city. On the other hand, Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard convinced sixty-nine of his fellow scientists to sign a petition urging the president not to drop the bomb on Japan. The petition was ignored. Walker does not take sides; rather, he provides the reader with well-researched background information and a behind-the-scenes look at the personalities of the key individuals who played a part in this terrifying drama. This riveting and unforgettable book demonstrates why the shockwave of Hiroshima is still being felt today and why it may never completely subside.