Hibakusha Series

Morris Jeppson is pictured in an interview with the Mainichi at his home in Las Vegas. (Mainichi)

The following are excerpts from a recent Mainichi interview with Morris Jeppson, 87, one of two surviving members of the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress bomber that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. The interview, conducted at Jeppson's home in Las Vegas, also contains comments from Jeppson's wife, Molly. (Interviewed by Takayasu Ogura, Mainichi New York Correspondent)

Mainichi: How did you join the U.S. military?

Jeppson: I was about 19 years old. There was a world war going on, so I enlisted in the Air Force, hoping I could be a pilot.

Mainichi: You wanted to be a pilot?

J: Well yes. Actually that was not my career objective. I wanted to be a physicist. And I ended up becoming a physicist but flying in World War II was a small section of life so I enlisted in the Air Force to become a flyer, but I ended up becoming more of a physicist.

Mainichi: What kind of role did you take during the Hiroshima mission?

J: Well, I was trained for that role -- at Harvard and MIT in electronics, (and) at MIT in radar engineering -- and there were four small radars built into these bombs. There was an antenna for one of them, and there were four of them. They were very simple -- all they detected was firing an electronic signal to the ground which bounced back up and measured the time delay, and that measured the height of this bomb as it was falling above ground.

So my role -- six of us ended up from the Harvard and MIT electronic schools, Air Force schools. We were hired by Los Alamos to work with the Air Force on the fusing -- the radar fusing and all other stuff that was built in the bomb.

I was a weapon test officer and we worked with Los Alamos in the Air Force. I was in the Air Force during the evolution of the electronics fusing system of the bomb. And then I was chosen to fly the Hiroshima mission and it was still experimental, so I was to test the electronics on the bomb during the flight to Hiroshima. If there was a problem with the electronics, I reported the problem to this man (and) he told the pilot of the airplane to take the bomb back. In fact, I was instructed to tell him to take the bomb back to (the Pacific island of) Tinian if it wasn't working right.

Mainichi: When were you informed you would be assigned to be part of the Hiroshima mission?

J: Well, that's a very good question. There were six of us who went through this training program at Harvard and MIT. At that time, we didn't know we were going to be assigned this program. But the six of us -- when we got to this program and went over to the airbase in Utah -- we were all trained to do the same job.

Of those six -- I think it was the day before -- we had a lieutenant, the first lieutenant in the Air Force assigned to oversee our little group of six. It turns out he was a security man, and he was to monitor our group to make sure we didn't make any mistakes. He didn't know electronics or anything, but it was a security matter.

The day before the mission, this security man said OK, we've narrowed it down to two of you. We'll flip a coin and figure out which one of you is going to fly the Hiroshima mission. And so, he flipped a coin, and they said, "Jeppson, you're flying on a security mission."

Mainichi: Like that?

J: Yeah.

Molly: Just like that.

J: He said it's got to be one of you two people. Anyway I ended up on the airplane. Not that I wanted to be. August 5. The day before Hiroshima.

Mainichi: Just a day before Hiroshima?

J: Several of us were trained to do this job. But --

M: But you were chosen.

Mainichi: Just a day before the bombing.

J: Yes. Now if I'd been sick, the other guy would have got on.

M: It was just luck. He (Jeppson) took a separate flight with (J. Robert) Oppenheimer (Scientific Director of the "Manhattan Project" to develop the first atom bomb) one time down to Southern California and Los Alamos. On the plane, he talked to Oppenheimer about how he wanted to be a physicist and everything. So I think Oppenheimer had something to do with him being chosen for this particular flight.

J: Whether or not they flipped the coin, evidently --

M: That's what they told him -- that they flipped the coin -- but he doesn't know.

J: But four of the six people that were trained this way lived in this tent. They wanted us separate from the 509th (composite group), where there were 1,500 people, and we were not supposed to talk to the other crew members anywhere, anytime about what we were doing.

M: They were in the middle of the airfield, which was a long way out. There was barbwire around the whole thing, and they were in a building there and they were not allowed to talk to anybody else on the air base, because they were working on this. Nobody else knew about it.

J: This was in Utah.

Mainichi: When did you move to Tinian Island?

J: In June, 1945.

Mainichi: At that time you were trained?

J: We were all trained and ready to go. Yes. Flying missions just like Hiroshima.

Mainichi: During that time, did you want to be chosen as a crew member of Enola Gay?

J: I've never heard that question before; that's a good one. I knew this was to be a uranium bomb -- a super bomb.

M: Because he was a physicist and he looked in the library at Los Alamos and figured it out. But he didn't say a word to anybody because they would have gotten after him and kicked him out. So he just kept it in his head.

Mainichi: You knew that this would be a nuclear bomb?

J: Most people in the 509th knew it was going to be a super powerful weapon, but they weren't supposed to know it was uranium. I'd figured out that it was a uranium bomb. People have asked, "Didn't it make you nervous -- having worked with one of these on the Hiroshima flight?" The answer is, "No, it's just the same kind of flight we'd done before."

M: It was just a job.

Mainichi: So all of your crew members felt so, too -- that the Hiroshima mission would be just the same kind of mission?

J: No. (They knew) that it would be a super powerful explosive, but not that it would be a nuclear explosive. Nobody had heard about nuclear. But I knew it.

Mainichi: You knew it because you were a physicist?

J: Yes. This man certainly knew it -- (weaponeer William Sterling) Parsons, who flew on the mission. He was in charge of this bomb. And my boss, of course, knew it. And this man was an official historian of the Manhattan Project, so he was out there to kind of oversee it, and he had the exclusive right to the story.

M: But nobody told anybody else.

J: He didn't know it was a nuclear explosive. I don't believe he did. But I'm not sure.

Mainichi: In this tent, nobody talked about uranium bombings?

J: Not uranium. They talked about the bomb and the electronics. But remember we had this Air Force guy overseeing us and if we'd been talking about Uranium 235, even he wasn't supposed to know what it was, but he would have found out that we were not authorized to talk about it. Security was incredibly tight.

Mainichi: But of course (Enola Gay pilot) Mr. (Paul) Tibbets knew?

J: Tibbets knew.

Mainichi: How about Robert Lewis, co-pilot?

J: No, he didn't know.

Mainichi: He didn't know this was a uranium bomb?

J: No, he wouldn't know that.

M: Nobody knew, really.

J: He knew it was going to be a super powerful bomb, but he didn't know it was going to be nuclear.

Mainichi: How about the bombardier?

J: (Thomas) Ferebee? He didn't know. He knew it had to be a very powerful bomb; otherwise he wouldn't have detonated it up high above the ground. If it had been detonated -- let's say the plane was flying at a low altitude like all of these hundreds of B-29s -- it would have destroyed the B-29 because they normally flew at six or seven thousand feet. This one flew at 30,000 feet. So the blast was like a shockwave -- it was a shockwave, but it didn't damage the airplane.

If it had been lower down, where they normally flew missions like this, the plane would not have survived.

Mainichi: There was a very famous photo of a big mushroom cloud. Who took the photo from the Enola Gay?

J: There was one gunner on the plane, the tail gunner. Why they left a tail gunner and took all the rest of the guns off, I don't know. But somebody gave him a camera, and he took the picture that you see.

M: After they dropped the bomb, Colonel Tibbets said he turned the plane really fast because he had to turn around and get away.

J: He didn't want to be above the bomb when the cloud came up.

Mainichi: So he had to --

J: Yeah. Get out of the way. So by the time the explosion took place, I think the airplane was 11 miles away, but I don't know for sure.

Mainichi: So your mission to Hiroshima involved only one airplane, the Enola Gay, not several?

J: Well, actually there were three that went to Hiroshima. First of all, early in the morning, they sent three weather reconnaissance planes to check out three different targets -- Hiroshima being one, Kokura, was another one, and Nagasaki was the third one. The weather planes reported that Hiroshima was open for bombing and then there were three active planes that flew over Hiroshima.

They were flying alongside, together at 30,000 feet. The third one was a photo monitor. This is an interesting story. The man that had the gear -- a nice camera to take pictures of this event -- he forgot his parachute, and they wouldn't let him on the airplane. They wouldn't let him on the third airplane. So he just flew with no assignment.

M: And no pictures. There were no other pictures of the bomb going off.

J: Except the one the tail gunner took.

Mainichi: He (the photographer) failed to take photos?

M: He failed.

J: He failed. Yeah. His part of the mission didn't work. And he was very agitated because he said "I don't need a parachute; what good is a parachute when you're at 30,000 feet?" If the plane blew up at 30,000 feet, even with a parachute, you don't survive.

M: But you were the only one who put on a parachute in your plane; nobody else did.

J: All of the crew, when they got onboard the airplane, the nine members, and (radar specialist Jacob) Beser, dumped their parachutes in a pile -- they are nice comfortable things -- so Captain Parsons sat on the pile of the parachutes. He was right behind me, and I was monitoring the electronics, and I was to tell him if there was something wrong, but here is this big-time guy sitting on a pile of parachutes -- that's OK.

Mainichi: Who pushed the button of the bomb?

J: The bombardier over the bomb bay, Ferebee.

M: He's dead.

Mainichi: Just before the bombing, you were informed that you are going to be a member of Enola Gay. So you were told about the mission Aug. 4?

J: Probably either the 4th or 5th. I am not really sure.

Mainichi: How did you feel?

J: I've faced that question before, and I don't recall anything about it, other than it was to be a mission identical (to other missions) -- and I'd never flown on combat missions in Germany or in Japan or in any place.

Mainichi: Never?

J: No, I've never flown any combat missions. I only flew one. Only one.

(To be continued)