Photo of Me In Kokura 1952

Bernard Pyron

"On the morning of August 9th, 1945, a B-29 bomber left the island of Tinian intending to drop an atomic bomb on the city of Kokura, the location of one of the largest arsenals still standing in Japan. On arriving at the target, the plane found it obscured by clouds. It turned south and went to its secondary target: Nagasaki. "
"Supposedly, some in Japan still refer to the "luck of Kokura" in reference to this time in which some bad weather saved the lives of tens of thousands of people there. But what really happened that morning? Was it bad weather, or something else, that obscured, and thus saved, Kokura? "

"The Kokura/Nagasaki mission (dubbed CENTERBOARD II), as with the Hiroshima mission before it (CENTERBOARD I), did not involve the bomber flying on its lonesome to the target, as is sometimes imagined. There were a total of six planes involved in the mission, all B-29 bombers. One of them was the strike plane that carried the Fat Man implosion bomb (Bockscar).1 Two other planes (The Great Artiste and Big Stink) were instrument and observation planes."
"At 9:50am, the pilot of Bockscar, Charles Sweeney, gave up and continued on to Kokura, having waited some 30 minutes longer than he was supposed to. At 10:44am, they arrived at Kokura. The flight log records that "Target was obscured by heavy ground haze and smoke." A crew member of Bockscar rated it as "7/10 clouds coverage – Bomb must be dropped visually but I don't think our chances are very good."2
"Three bombing runs on Kokura were attempted, but "at no time was the aiming point seen," as the flight log recorded. Visual bombing had been made a mandatory requirement (they did not trust the accuracy of radar-assisted bombing), so this made Kokura a failed mission. Since Bockscar had limited fuel, Sweeney decided to continue on to the secondary target, Nagasaki. They arrived at Nagasaki at 11:50am, which they also found obscured by smoke and clouds, to the degree that they made the target approach entirely by radar. Right at the last possible moment, the clouds parted just enough for the bombardier to site the target and drop the bomb. (It missed the intended target by a significant margin.) Bockscar circled the target once and then, at 12:05pm, took off for Okinawa, and from there, after refueling, Tinian."
"The bare fact is that Kokura didn't get bombed and Nagasaki did. "
Kokura was the city on Kyushu, the southern island of Japan, where I went for R and R - Rest and Relaxation - from Korea in 1952. I do not remember of hearing this story that Kokura was the target for an atomic bomb.
Photo here : Me On R and R In Kokura, 1952. I am wearing a regular Army uniform, which the Air Force allowed us to wear then. I did not like the Air Force Blue dress uniform. I was with Hiroko Yamada who took this photo. Her address was 4 Chome Katano Honmachi, Kokura, Kyushu,.