It was the dawn of the atomic age and Pullman residents were reeling. One of their neighbors had just made history. Some were telling his mother he would likely get to meet the president.
On Aug. 9, 1945, co-pilot Fred Olivi and 12 other crew members of the Bockscar B-29 Superfortress detonated the “Fat Man” plutonium bomb over Nagasaki. The bombing killed around 80,000 Japanese people. More died later.
This was three days after the Enola Gay dropped a uranium bomb on Hiroshima, killing 150,000.
On Aug. 14, Olivi and other Bockscar crew members were dispatched on another bombing mission. Using a different plane, they dropped Torpex-loaded “pumpkin” bombs on Koromo.
On August 15, 1945, Japan surrendered to the United States, and World War II ended.
Olivi never got to meet the president, but the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio, credits the 100-foot-long Bockscar as, “The aircraft that ended World War II.”
The museum also maintains a display devoted to Olivi, which features his goggles, distinguished flying cross, pistol and gloves.
During the war protests of the 1960s, Olivi received threatening phone calls and letters. Throughout his life, he was often pressed to explain his actions.
“He (Olivi) was unapologetic. He’d been briefed as to what would happen if the U.S. launched a land assault on Tokyo,” said Paul Petraitis, a historian and long-time Pullman resident.
The U.S. military anticipated 1 million casualties, far more than the atomic bombings.
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Like most WWII veterans, Olivi is long gone. He died in 2004.
The quartermaster of Calumet City VFW Post 8141, where Olivi had been a member, did not respond to interview requests regarding Olivi or the anniversary of the bombing, but Nadine Dennis, quartermaster of the Major Charles L. Hunt VFW Post 2024 in Pullman, did.
“Some people don’t understand,” she said. “It was the U.S. government. He (Olivi) was just an actor following orders. He was serving his country. And from what I’ve read in history, the Japanese would have kept going. Many more people would have died.”
Whether on the wrong or right side of history, as a 23-year-old second lieutenant and the youngest member of the crew, Olivi appreciated the historical significance of the Bockscar mission. He kept a journal. And he spent until the wee hours of the morning after the bombing, gleaning information from the flight log.
Years later, with the help of his wife, Carole McVey, an executive assistant who grew up in Roseland, Olivi published a personal account of the mission. The couple met at Pullman Technical High School — now Gwendolyn Brooks Preparatory Academy — and attended senior prom together.
Olivi sold and gave away almost all 5,500 copies of “Decision at Nagasaki: The Mission That Almost Failed.” He also made numerous presentations to local schools and community groups.
The book conveys tense moments leading up to release of the Fat Man bomb.
The Bockscar crew were forced to fly the Bockscar above a perilous thunderstorm. Their orders included having to rendezvous with a plane carrying a photographer. To gain visibility, they had to change the original target location from Kokura to Nagasaki.
Bombardier Kermit Beahan released the bomb over Nagasaki at 11:58 a.m., not far from a Mitsubishi plant. In a strange twist, Aug. 9 was Beahan’s birthday.
Olivi was one a few people to ever witness the formation of an atomic cloud from the air. To protect his vision, he wore welders’ goggles.
“This plume of smoke I’m seeing is hard to explain,” Olivi wrote later. “A great white mass of flame is seething within the white mushroom shaped cloud. It has a pinkish, salmon color. The base is black and is breaking a little way down from the mushroom.”
Delays caused the Bockscar to run short on gas. With engines conking out, the crew made an emergency landing in Okinawa instead of Tinian Island, their original return destination.
After the war, Olivi signed on for more time with the U.S. Army Air Corps. When asked to give up flying to take on intelligence duties, he requested a discharge from active duty and signed on with the Air Corps Reserve.
Still in his 20s, he returned to Pullman to live with his mother. Not wanting to resume work in “the Pullman shops,” he applied for work as a commercial pilot out of Midway. With 1,500 hours of flying time, he was competing against veterans with more than 5,000 hours.
The call-back he was hoping for never came. He went into business with a friend but soon realized selling candy didn’t suit him.
At Pullman Tech, Olivi had learned to read blueprints and gained valuable math skills. He was hired as a draftsman for the bridge division of Chicago’s department of public works.
Studying on his own, he took the Civil Service exam and qualified as a Civil Engineer II. He went on to obtain level IV certification and manage the city’s bridge operations.
Olivi had no children. He and his wife settled in Beverly Woods, but they maintained close ties with Pullman.
They supported the Historic Pullman Foundation, both as volunteers and by attending fundraiser dinners, said Cindy McMahon, foundation treasurer and former president. “They were sweet people,” she said.
Like many called to do extraordinary things, he was the son of immigrants and came from humble beginnings.
Olivi’s mother operated a basement-level restaurant out of their home on the 11100 block of South Langley. Its double doors opened to a below-street-level courtyard.
“It was Pullman’s little Italian restaurant,” Petraitis said. “It was lovely.”
Olivi’s brother, Emil J. Olivi, a local dentist, commissioned an artist to paint images of Pullman, including their mother seated at her home-operated restaurant.
“E.J. also served in World War II, in Burma as a member of the Navy’s dental corps,” said Linda Fuetz, who worked as a receptionist for Emil Olivi’s dental office. “The brothers were good people and believed in serving their country.”
The painting of the Olivis’ childhood home and others by Howard Casey occupy a wall at the Pullman Welcoming House, 605 E. State Street, where volunteers for the Bielenberg Historic Pullman House Foundation give talks and tours about the Pullman neighborhood’s beginnings as a planned industrial town.
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Susan DeGrane is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.