On December 7, 1941 over 300 carrier based airplanes clearly marked with the "Rising Sun" emblem of the Japanese Empire, initiated World War II in the Pacific by an unprovoked attack on the US Naval base at Pearl Harbor. The first wave hit the American airplanes on the ground. Most were destroyed. An inbound flight of B-17 bombers stumbled on the raid and several were destroyed. Ninety four war ships lay at anchor and were attacked by dive bombers and torpedo planes. Almost all were destroyed or severely damaged. America was at war in the Pacific!

The Japanese armies followed up with irresistible drive and swept over Malay and the Philippines, then Java and finally Burma, conquering Southeast Asia in about a half a year. However, the tide turned at the naval battle of Midway in June 1942, and the Japanese began to retreat as the American forces defeated them in the various land, sea and air battles in the South Pacific. By early spring of 1945 the war was nearing the Japanese Homeland.

By the late summer of 1945 the war in Europe was over and Germany had surrendered. The war in the Pacific had been going on for almost four years and the world wanted to get it over with as soon as possible. Despite heavy losses on the ground and the destruction of their home island cities by the relentless fire bombing, the Japanese steadfast refused to surrender. An invasion of the Japanese homeland would be required and was being planned. Men and material were being assembled in the area in preparation for a November invasion. Events of the months before August 1945 confirmed to Allied leaders that the Japanese would defend their homeland just as vigorously as they had defended Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. Casualties on both sides were expected to be in the hundreds of thousands if not in the millions.

The situation changed abruptly on August 6th. It was on that day that a single B-29 bomber from the Army Air Corps' 509th Composite Group based on Tinian Island and proudly displaying the name Enola Gay on its nose, dropped the first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The explosive power of this bomb was greater than that of 2,000 B-29s flying with their maximum bomb loads. In an instant Hiroshima, a city of over 340,000 people, was obliterated. Still the Japanese refused to surrender even though they knew an invasion of their homeland was coming soon. They were hoping to get better terms if they could inflict heavy casualties on the Americans when the invasion occurred. Three days later, on August 9, another B-29 named Bock's Car dropped a second and more powerful atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki. Now the Japanese knew that the Americans were serious had more than one atomic bomb. In face of continued atomic bombing and the total destruction of their homeland, they surrendered nine days later. What had started as a day of unspeakable terror at Pearl Harbor ended with one blinding flash of light at Nagasaki!

Jacob Beser, my father, was the only man to fly as a crew member on both the Enola Gay and the Bock's Car. This book tells his story. If you are looking for an apology for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki you won't find it here. While Dad was against war in general and atomic warfare in particular, he was proud of his role in missions that ended World War II. He felt then, and felt the same way until the day he died, that what he and the other 1800 or so members of the 509th Composite Group did in August of 1945 saved the lives of millions of Allied and Japanese soldiers and civilians despite what revisionist historians would like to say. He also thought that Monday morning quarterbacking 45 years later is easy for people who didn't have to make the hard choices that had to be made in 1945 and get up on a soapbox and criticize the decisions of those whose job it was to win the war.