After the description, Tibbets was jolted when Parsons told him that despite all the planning and testing, the scientists at Los Alamos still did not know if the uranium bomb would actually work. Tibbets remembered how “Parsons just sat there and said there was no way of being certain the weapon would go off—until it was used. He didn’t think the risk of failure was high. But it was there.”
Ever since, Tibbets had been mulling over what Parsons had told him. That, coupled with the security breaches by the three officers, made him edgy. Then, in the evening, he was called from dinner to interview a man who had checked into Wendover’s State Line Hotel. Security agents had discovered he was using a false name. For thirty minutes the man resisted Tibbets’s questions. Then one of the agents spoke. “We’re going to turn you in as a spy. Spies in this country go to the electric chair.”
The man talked. He admitted he was using an alias, in the hope of selling phony magazine subscriptions on the base. He was escorted to Salt Lake City and warned to stay out of Utah.
The episode further worried Tibbets. Inside the base, it was now an open secret that the group was going to drop “a big bomb” on Japan. Tibbets thought it was only a matter of time before there was a serious security leak.
30
Even here in Warm Springs, Georgia, President Roosevelt could not shake off the cares of war. At noon, a messenger appeared in his study with a leather pouch. The mail from Washington had arrived to intrude upon the rest that his doctors had ordered for the chief executive.
In some ways, he had reason to be cheerful. The Allies were winning. Germany was on the verge of collapse. In the Pacific, landings had been made on Okinawa by 183,000 soldiers and marines.
But already the death toll was high. This morning, as usual, the president had the latest casualty figures—6,481 Americans had died in battle during the past week, bringing the total to 196,669 American lives lost in the fight against the Axis.
He was still studying these figures when Madame Elizabeth Shoumatoff, the portrait painter, arrived.
Roosevelt was dressed, as she had requested, in a Harvard tie and a vest, neither of which he liked. He allowed her to slip his cloak over his shoulders. Its dark cloth contrasted with the curious luminosity of the president’s features. His skin had become parchmentlike, and this morning was aglow with an intense brightness that seemed to come from deep within.
Suddenly, he raised his left hand to his forehead and pressed hard against the skin. His hand fell back on his lap, and his fingers began to twitch. He dropped his cigarette and raised his right hand to massage the back of his neck. He closed his eyes and began to moan softly. Then his head slumped forward, and he slid down in his seat, limp as a puppet.
The president’s doctor arrived in moments.
At 3:35 P.M., April 12, 1945, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was pronounced clinically dead.
The free world had lost a statesman, America a leader, and the Manhattan Project, at this most crucial stage, its benefactor.
Oblivious of what had just happened in Georgia, Harry S. Truman, thirty-fourth vice-president of the United States, this afternoon acting in his capacity as president of the Senate, appeared to the assembled senators to be taking copious notes of the debate in progress. Many thought it was typical of the way Truman did things: he was a meticulous fact-gatherer.
In reality, he was writing a letter to his mother, full of chatty news. He ended with a reminder.
Turn on your radio tomorrow night at 9:30 your time and you’ll hear Harry make a Jefferson Day address to the nation. I think I’ll be on all the networks, so it ought not to be hard to get me. I will be followed by the President whom I’ll introduce.
At 4:56, the Senate recessed, and Truman dropped into Speaker Sam Rayburn’s office for a bourbon and water. He was still there when Roosevelt’s press secretary, Steve Early, telephoned and asked Truman to “please come over and come in through the main Pennsylvania Avenue entrance.”
Truman did not ask why. He assumed Roosevelt was back from Warm Springs and wanted to raise some minor point with him.
Truman was shown up to Eleanor Roosevelt’s second-floor study. She walked toward him and grasped his arm. Her voice was calm and measured. “Harry, the president is dead.”
Dumbfounded, Truman instinctively looked at his watch to remember the moment he had heard the unbelievable news. It was 5:25 P.M.
Mrs. Roosevelt spoke again. “Harry, is there anything we can do for you? You are the one in trouble now.”
She invited him to use the study telephone, and left to attend to the funeral arrangements.
At 7:00, Truman went to the Cabinet Room in the White House to be sworn in. The Cabinet watched in silence as Chief Justice Harlan Stone explained the brief ceremony to Truman.
Stone consulted a piece of paper and asked Truman to confirm that the “S” in his name stood for “Shippe.”
Truman’s twangy drawl cut through the doom-laden atmosphere. “The ‘S’ stands for nothing. It’s just an initial.”
The chief justice erased “Shippe” from the oath. An aide whispered to Stone that they still could not begin, as they did not have a Bible. They all waited in strained silence until a frantic search of the White House produced one.
At 7:09 P.M., the Bible was handed to Truman, who repeated after Stone the presidential oath of office. “I, Harry S. Truman, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Truman impulsively kissed the Bible. Then he motioned for the Cabinet to join him at the long table. He made them a promise. “It will be my effort to carry on as I believe the president would have done.”
For Truman, the new president, for all the men in the room, Franklin D. Roosevelt was still “The President.”
Truman asked Roosevelt’s Cabinet to stay on in office. But he gave a hint of things to come when he closed the meeting with another promise: “I will assume full responsibility for such decisions as have to be made.”
The Cabinet filed out. At the door, Stimson lingered. When he spoke to Truman, his voice was unsteady. “Mr. President, I must talk to you on a most urgent matter.”
Truman nodded.
“I wish to inform you about an immense project that is under way—a project looking to the development of a new explosive of almost unbelievable destructive power.”
Stimson paused.
Truman waited, but the secretary of war did not elaborate.
On the first morning of his presidency, Truman awoke at his customary hour of 6:30. This Friday the thirteenth was going to be a hot, sticky day. Then it struck him that a president of the United States did not concern himself with forecasts unless they affected important issues. Whatever the weather, he now had to run the country.
At the White House, Truman showed himself a swift decision maker. That morning he dealt quickly and surely with certain domestic issues and was briefed by members of the Cabinet.
At 2:30, James Byrnes arrived. Truman had two questions he wanted Byrnes to answer. First, would Byrnes give him a written report on the Yalta Conference? Byrnes had taken copious notes there for Roosevelt, and he immediately agreed to provide a memorandum.
The second question was more surprising. Truman began by reminding Byrnes that because of the way he had become president, there now was no vice-president. According to the Constitution, if Truman died or became seriously incapacitated and unable to remain president, the secretary of state would succeed him.