Censorship and Candor: Reactions to Hiroshima and Nagasaki

This essay was published in The Concord Review in 2019.

Newspapers celebrated after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945. “Atom Bomb Rocks Japs.” “Jap Seaport Went Up in Smoke and Flame.” “Hiroshima is Wiped Out!” read just a few of the celebratory headlines.[1] The bomb, nicknamed Little Boy, exploded above a hospital in the center of the city with the force of 12,500 tons of TNT, even though only 1 of its 64 kilograms of uranium-235 underwent fission. The blast and firestorm alone killed approximately eighty thousand Japanese civilians. Three days later, a second atomic bomb, dropped on the city of Nagasaki, killed forty thousand more residents. This doesn’t include the tens of thousands killed by radiation poisoning.[2]

From 1945-51, fear of international and domestic criticism of its decision to drop the bombs prompted the United States to censor reports of Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s destruction. This military penchant for secrecy allowed occupation authorities to repress journalistic accounts of radiation sickness, silence Japanese survivors, and destroy dispatches being sent to newspapers. Examining initial reception of the bombings reveals that the lack of available information about the Japanese experience that this censorship produced, coupled with racist and vengeful American media coverage, fundamentally shaped the early nuclear debate. One-sided reporting convinced most of the American public that the bombings were justified, and the minority who opposed the bombing did so out of moral principle rather than out of horror at what the bombs had done. In Japan, the censorship made it impossible for survivors to dictate their stories or receive proper care. Criticism began to take flight only when unauthorized reporters revealed the extent of the damage to the public, and it strengthened after the end of censorship and occupation in 1951.

 

The Decision to Drop the Bombs

From the American perspective, WWII started in 1941, when the Japanese bombed the U.S. naval base on Pearl Harbor. Japan believed it could stun the US with a surprise attack, then win a Pacific war and conquer islands currently controlled by the Allies. The attack plunged the United States into WWII in the Pacific, and with Germany’s declaration of war four days later, in Europe as well. Japan went on to invade the Philippines, Hong Kong, Bataan, and the Dutch East Indies. The empire didn’t suffer its first defeat until the 1942 Battle of Coral Sea, and later that year, the country lost four of its best aircraft carriers in the Battle of Midway. After five months of bloody fighting at Guadalcanal on the Solomon Islands, the Japanese troops withdrew. The U.S. began to close in on Japan by island-hopping, liberating Guam and invading the Mariana Islands. The first attacks on Japanese soil were the 1944 air raids of Okinawa and the 1945 invasion of Iwo Jima, followed by devastating fire-bombing of Japanese cities. In 1945, Germany surrendered unconditionally, ending the war in Europe and depriving Japan of its greatest ally. Japan did not back down even after the 1945 Potsdam declaration, which threatened that unless it surrendered, the country would face "prompt and utter destruction.”[3]

Atomic bombs, the weapons that brought “utter destruction” to Japan, were originally intended to end the war in Europe. Construction of these weapons by the top-secret Manhattan Project began in 1940, after a group of American scientists became concerned over nuclear-weapons research being conducted in Nazi Germany. In New Mexico, scientists experimented with uranium-235 and plutonium to create the first workable atomic bomb, but Germany surrendered before the bomb could be completed. The first successful test, Trinity, was conducted in July of 1945. Searching for a quick way to end the Pacific war, many army commanders agreed that atomic bombs should be used on Japan.

Several military leaders advocated for non-nuclear tactics. Some wanted to continue firebombing Japan, while strategists such as General George Marshall advocated for a massive direct invasion of the southern Japanese island Kyushu in late 1945.[4] But President Truman worried about the high casualty rate of a flat-out invasion and opted to use the Manhattan Project bombs on Japan, considering the bomb a more humanitarian gesture.[5] Truman wrote in his diary on July 25: “This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10. I have told the Sec. of War to use it so that military objectives are the target and not women and children.”[6]

         But where to drop them? Manhattan Project leader General Leslie Groves provided guidelines for the selection of targets, wanting cities untouched by previous air raids and large enough to determine the power of the bomb. (In a sense, those earlier attacks were just trial runs for the deadliest weapon known to mankind.) Hiroshima, a city of considerable military importance, was chosen as the first target. Originally, the second target was Kyoto, but Secretary of War Henry Stimson removed the city from the list because of its cultural importance as the old capital of Japan.[7] Next on the list were Kokura, Yokohama, and Niigata. Nagasaki was added later—it wasn’t ideal for bombing because of its mountainous terrain, but it was a prominent shipbuilding center. Nagasaki ended up being bombed because cloud cover made it difficult to target the other cities, leading to the Japanese term “Kokura luck.”[8] On August 6, the B-29 Superfortress bomber Enola Gay took off from Iwo Jima to deliver Little Boy to Hiroshima, and three days later, the Bockscar dropped Fat Man on Nagasaki.[9]

 

The Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 

The cold-blooded American perspective on the bombs as military tests gravely understated their devastating effects on the ground. In Hiroshima, doctor Michihiko Hachiya was relaxing in his garden when suddenly he witnessed a blinding flash of light and was thrown to the ground. “A profound weakness overcame me, so I stopped to regain my strength,” he wrote in his diary. “To my surprise I discovered that I was completely naked.... Our home was gone; we were wounded and needed treatment.”[10] Survivor Toyofumi Ogura saw a vast sea of smoking rubble and debris, with a few concrete buildings rising like pale tombstones. “Almost everyone was either sitting on the ground, eyes cast downward, or standing around gazing vacantly over the devastation,” she recalls. “It was as if they had lost all feeling and grown indifferent to the world around them.”[11]

         Ogura, who was a few miles from the epicenter, journeyed toward Hiroshima searching for her two children. Along the way, she found hundreds of bodies virtually cremated on the spot. Others were more fortunate—partially shielded from the blast by a wall or door, they suffered only burns or broken bones. The injured called out to Ogura, asking for water or directions. She recounted the gruesome wounds some sustained: “People with skin peeled cleanly off their backs reminded me of carcasses you see hanging in butcher shops.”[12] Ogura described the victims she encountered as resembling fragments of living organisms, “motivated not by any personal desire to seek refuge but by some vast, tenacious ‘life force’ that transcended individual will.”[13]

         The day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and invaded Manchuria with more than one million soldiers to Japan’s 700,000.[14] News of the invasion was shared with the Japanese public, along with reassurance that troops were fighting back bravely. However, per an eyewitness account, “it was clear that the Japanese army was on the defensive and that it was fighting a losing battle.”[15]

Three days later, on August 9, the second A-bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. The destruction it caused mirrored that in Hiroshima, but because of the city’s topography, the blast killed fewer people.[16] Nagasaki survivor Sakue Shimohira and her younger sister watched their mother crumble to ash. Out of grief, Shimohira’s sister later killed herself by jumping in front of a train. Through these harrowing experiences, Shimohira realized that “there are two kinds of courage. The courage to live, and the courage to die. My sister had the courage to die. Me? I had the courage to live.”[17] Japanese doctor Tatsuichiro Akizuki survived the Nagasaki bombing, but his hospital was all but destroyed. The victims’ clothing had vaporized in the blast, leaving them naked, and “they groaned as if they had travelled from the depths of hell.”[18] He described the contradiction between the events on the ground and United States reports: “As families shed tears, clasped each other by the hand, overjoyed at finding each other only slightly hurt and free from burns, top American scientists were convinced that no life could possibly exist at the epicenter for seventy-five years to come.”[19] These testimonies, a handful among thousands, offer a small glimpse into the extent of Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s ruin, a perspective not heard by the American public for many years.

The devastation of the atomic bombs and the Soviet Union’s invasion shocked the Imperial Cabinet and prompted a conference on August 9 to discuss surrender. Surprisingly, Emperor Hirohito advocated surrender, but under the condition that the Kokutai—sovereignty of the Emperor and his cabinet—be preserved.[20] The Allies initially refused that promise; on August 12, they replied, “The ultimate form of government of Japan shall, in accordance with the Potsdam Declaration, be established by the freely expressed will of the Japanese people.”[21] After deliberation with his cabinet, Hirohito decided to surrender unconditionally. On August 15, Radio Tokyo broadcast a phonograph record of Hirohito’s surrender speech to the public. In primarily Shinto Japan, the emperor was divine. For many Japanese citizens, hearing Hirohito’s voice for the first time meant more than just losing a war, it meant losing faith in a god.[22] Filmmaker Akira Kurosawa remembered that, upon hearing the announcement in Japan, many people were cheerful. “I don’t know if this represents Japanese adaptability or Japanese imbecility,” he wrote.[23]

 

Reactions to the Bombs

Aside from scientists and special reporters, virtually no one in America knew about the bombs before they were dropped. On August 6, sixteen hours after Hiroshima, a White House press release and recorded message from President Truman announced use of the atomic bomb to the American public. “The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold,” Truman stated, preemptively justifying its use. He described the Manhattan Project and the capabilities of the new weapon: “It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe.” The press release ended with a plea for surrender and world peace. [24] On August 15, radio stations announced the Japanese surrender. After the initial shock, Americans took the atomic bomb in stride, reveling in the end of WWII. Once surrender was announced, two million rejoicing New Yorkers jammed Times Square for a day of fervent celebration. Comedians tried to find humor in the bombing—a radio newscaster joked that Hiroshima looked like “Ebbets Field after a game between the Giants and the Dodgers.” The bomb was also a marketing tool, used to sell the Washington Press Club’s “Atomic Cocktail” and a jewelry company’s atomic-inspired pin and earring. In the famous 1947 pop song “Atomic Bomb Baby,” the bomb became a metaphor for sexual arousal.[25]

Early criticism of the decision to drop the bombs was primarily based on reports about the atom bomb’s capabilities and future implications, but this criticism was a minority viewpoint—only 10% of the American public disapproved of using atomic weapons in 1945.[26] A few days after the war’s end, Fred Eastman of the Chicago Theological Seminary spoke out against the decision to use the nuclear weapons. “A single atomic bomb slaughters tens of thousands of children and their mothers and fathers. Newspapers and radio acclaim it a great victory,” he wrote. “Victory for what?”[27] Albert Einstein sternly opposed the dropping of the atomic bombs. Both a theoretical physicist and a committed pacifist, Einstein knew that the atomic bomb posed a “dreadful danger for all mankind.” He explained that an international arms race would ultimately lead to universal destruction. “To kill in war time,” Einstein claimed, “is in no ways better than common murder.”[28] Even J. Robert Oppenheimer, wartime head of the laboratory which crafted the atomic bombs, remarked that the Trinity test brought the Bhagavad Gita to mind: “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."[29]

But the primary response to the atomic bombings was clouded by prejudice. In early August racist, vengeful justifications dominated the American media. “Nip propagandists” protesting the atomic bomb should recall who started the war, argued the Los Angeles Times on August 8. “The Jap must choose,” declared Newsweek on August 13, “between surrender and annihilation.” Anti-Japanese prejudice was so prevalent during the Pacific war that a popular American scientific magazine could publish a short entry in 1945 titled “Why Americans Hate Japs More than Nazis” without backlash. The relocation and incarceration of 120,000 Japanese-Americans during the war contributed greatly to the rampant racism.[30] The Los Angeles Times used a reptilian metaphor to distinguish between “true” Americans and Japanese-Americans: “A viper is nonetheless a viper wherever the egg is hatched—so a Japanese American, born of Japanese parents, grows up to be a Japanese not an American.”[31] Along with newspaper articles, anti-Japanese political cartoons began to circulate. The August 7 issue of the Philadelphia Inquirer featured an apelike brute staring in dumb wonder as the atomic bomb exploded ahead, emphasizing the popular view of Japanese savagery and barbarity.[32]

This pervasive racism prompted the question: would the U.S. have used atomic weapons against a European country? The African-American community played a key part in the criticism. A few weeks after Hiroshima, NAACP leader W.E.B. DuBois described Japan as “the greatest colored nation which has risen to leadership in modern times” and speculated that her defeat would slow the advance of dark-skinned peoples everywhere. Under the pen name “Simple,” poet Langston Hughes wrote a scathing commentary in a Chicago Defender column. “They just did not want to use [the bombs] on white folks. Germans is white,” Simple wrote. “So they wait until the war is over in Europe to try them out on colored folks. Japs is colored.”[33]

 

American Occupation and Censorship

At first, only certain elites in Tokyo and those who suffered the bombs’ effects knew about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It wasn’t until August 15 that the wider Japanese public learned about Truman’s statement and the destruction the atomic bombs caused from leaflets dropped by American planes. Many Japanese citizens were shocked when they heard. Some were angry at the United States for the atomic weapons, while others, such as Ogura, felt guilt: “We have no one but ourselves to blame for the fact that we allowed our military to stay in power and that we submitted to their authority. We have to accept the dropping of the bomb in expiation of these sins.”[34] Many simply felt relieved that the war was over, such as Dr. Akizuki: “I would rather surrender than suffer any more from these new bombs.”[35] The variety of responses to the announcement show the range of conflicting emotions the survivors grappled with.

The surrender and American occupation of Japan brought rapid change and the assumed promise of medical assistance, but for survivors, the Americans failed to keep those promises. The official ceremony of Japan’s surrender took place on board the American battleship Missouri on September 2, which was named V-J (Victory over Japan) Day, and marked the beginning of the U.S. occupation of Japan. The United States denied relief to the victims for many reasons: to aid survivors would be to acknowledge that the use of the bombs had been immoral, and to offer support to atomic victims might have led to claims for compensation from victims of conventional fire-bombing. For occupation officials, victims were essentially guinea pigs for the ABCC (Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission) to collect data on the long-term biological effects of atomic bombs. Lewis Weed, founder of the ABCC, agreed that a “detailed and long-range study of the biological and medical effects upon the human being” was of “the utmost importance to the United States and mankind in general.”[36] In fact, the Japanese government didn’t support atomic-bomb survivors until after occupation ended in 1952, so first responders depended largely on local resources.[37] Akizuki, who met American officials while attending to his ruined hospital in Nagasaki, was at first impressed with Allied forces, describing them as “especially considerate.” However, the Americans lacked suitable medicine and eventually ignored the victims altogether: “After the visit, our wretched hospital slipped from the minds of those who came to investigate the damage done by the atomic bomb.”[38] The treatment of Japanese under occupation is evidence of a common pattern: the U.S. sought to study the bombs’ effects and keep criticism at bay while ignoring the suffering of Japanese survivors.

Months after the bombings, thousands of seemingly healthy survivors began to fall ill and die. This perplexing epidemic was later attributed to radiation poisoning. Dr. Akizuki noted that the disease followed a geological pattern: people died in order of their distance from the hypocenter. He called this phenomenon “concentric circles of death.” Some of the symptoms he noticed in diseased patients included nausea, lethargy, loss of hair, bloody excrement, mulberry spots on the skin, and bleeding gums.[39] Radiation caused the birth mortality rate within a quarter mile of the hypocenter in Nagasaki to skyrocket to 43%.[40] Victims of radiation poisoning, including mentally and physically disabled infants, came to be known as hibakusha ("atomic bomb-affected people"). By the early 1950s, cancer rates for hibakusha soared, along with liver, blood, and skin diseases. Thirty years after the war, high leukemia rates persisted. Even today, sons and daughters of hibakusha face obstacles in marriage if their families’ medical histories are discovered.[41]

To avoid domestic and international criticism for the brutality of the bomb, the United States censored virtually all reports of the devastation beginning in 1945. The War Department sent a confidential memo to media companies demanding that all accounts be preapproved before publishing. In Japan, occupation authorities renounced or repressed early journalistic accounts about the horrible consequences of radiation sickness. Japanese film footage was confiscated and estimates of fatalities were decisively conservative. The censors also silenced hibakusha, who couldn’t grieve in public, share experiences through the written word, or receive public counsel and support. American censorship of the hibakusha perspective, along with ostracism from Japanese society, meant that the victims were stigmatized and shunned in the aftermath of the bombings.[42] As Sakue Shimohira recalls, “People said that we had some kind of contagious disease. No one would come near us.”[43]

Life was one of many government-censored publications that glazed over Japanese suffering to focus on the manufacture, deployment, and future of the atomic bombs. One article from August 20 blared the racist headline: “War’s Ending: Atomic Bomb and Soviet Entry Bring Jap Surrender Offer.” The article featured full-page images of the mushroom clouds, saying: “When the atomic bomb came, strategic bombing of the enemy by the B-29s of the U.S. had already ripped the guts out of Japan’s greatest cities.” An editorial added that the bombing was inevitable—since every stage in bomb innovation was a step toward Hiroshima—concluding, “The thing for us to fear today is not the atom but the nature of man.” Such publications fostered the growth of anti-Japanese sentiment and justified U.S. actions while distracting the American public from more sensitive issues. [44]

 

The First Reporters

Some journalists were granted permission to report on the bombs, but only on the condition that they report favorably. William Leonard Laurence was paid by the U.S. government to write A-bomb articles for The New York Times that the War Department approved. Laurence was given unprecedented access; he visited the Trinity test sites in New Mexico, and even witnessed the bombing of Nagasaki firsthand from a B-29.[45] Laurence’s assignment was to record the final steps in the development of atomic weapons from an insider’s perspective, and once the bombs were used, to report the event in language that the public could grasp. Laurence gave the New York Times exclusive knowledge of the atomic bombs long before they were used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Laurence didn’t report Japanese casualties and had little sympathy for the victims, writing in one of his articles, “Does one feel any pity or compassion for the poor devils about to die? Not when one thinks of Pearl Harbor and of the Death March on Bataan.”[46] Laurence won the 1946 Pulitzer Prize for Reporting, showing that his “eyewitness accounts” of the bombing, viewed from a plane, were valued more highly than the reports of journalists on the ground.[47]

To accurately portray the emotional and physical ruin that the bombs wrought, unauthorized reporters had to sneak into Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Southern Japan was declared off-limits to journalists, save for POW camps on Kyushu. Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett, the first reporter from a Western news agency to reach Hiroshima, sent graphic details of an “atomic plague” out to the London Daily Express. Occupation officials immediately stripped Burchett of his press accreditation and his camera, which contained film with undeveloped exposures.[48] United Press reporter Leslie Nakashima entered Hiroshima by train on August 22 and reported the damage he witnessed. The United Press ran the report, but the Times cut large sections of his article, including the observation that “thousands of middle school boys and girls were accordingly victims and the number of those missing is astounding.”[49]

Prominent Chicago Daily News reporter George Weller found his reports of a mysterious disease emerging in the victims of the bombings censored by the government. From September 6 to 10, 1945, Weller stayed in Nagasaki, exploring the damaged city and sending dispatches to General Douglas MacArthur’s military censors in Tokyo. He hoped these were being cabled onward to his editors, but it appears the U.S. government destroyed the originals. He voiced his disgust for censorship: “Do you intend writing that America did something inhuman in loosing this weapon against Japan? That is what we want you to write.”[50] Weller reported that thousands of Japanese civilians were suffering from an enigmatic Disease X, saying, “[The Japanese doctors’] patients, though their skins are whole, are simply passing away under their eyes.” Weller’s son Anthony later wrote that the seemingly healthy persons who died many miles from the epicenter many days afterward were “the actual breakers of censorship, who compelled the military to allow the truth to be told.”[51] Disease X was later discovered to be radiation poisoning, whose existence the U.S. government denied. General Groves dismissed radiation reports as Japanese propaganda while sending teams to measure radiation levels to ensure the safety of U.S. troops about to enter both cities.[52]

 

Early Nuclear Debate

Most Americans, lacking information about the Japanese casualties and influenced by censored media, believed the weapons shortened the war and ultimately saved lives. In 1945, 85% of the public approved of use of the atomic bomb.[53] A related 1945 poll showed that only 4.5% of Americans thought no bombs should have been used at all, while an astonishing 22.7% thought that many more cities should have been destroyed atomically.[54] In the August 20 issue of the New Republic, Bruce Bliven claimed that despite the “humanitarian impulse” to pity the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the loss of those lives probably “saved more lives by helping to compel Japan’s fanatical rulers to capitulate.”[55] In his 1946 Atlantic article, atomic bomb scientist Karl T. Compton dismissed accusations that atomic bombs were inhuman, saying, “All war is inhuman.” He pointed out that it is hypocritical to critique nuclear weapons when the United States firebombed Japanese cities with powerful B-29 Superfortress planes months before.[56] The bombers made no distinction between military personnel and civilians; the air raids are described as one of the most barbaric killings of non-combatants in history. General Curtis LeMay stated that, had the U.S. lost the war, the planners of these air raids would have been prosecuted as war criminals.[57] Justifying the March 9 Tokyo firebombing, which killed 83,000 people, LeMay pointed out that the Japanese government employed its citizens (including children) to manufacture weaponry, thus rendering all of Japan a proper military target. LeMay also remarked that unless Japanese industry was destroyed, thousands of American lives would be lost in a flat-out invasion of Japan. “Do you want to kill Japanese, or would you rather have Americans killed?” he asked.[58] Despite causing more casualties than those in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, the air raids are often forgotten in the shadow of the flashy and publicized nuclear attacks.

Soldier Theodore White took a similar stance, recollecting that by the time of the A-bomb, the “fire bombs had already wiped out the vitality of the nation.” He felt no shame for the victims of the atomic bombings, since the Japanese had started the war in Pearl Harbor: “Revenge is a dry form of satisfaction, but the dryness was clean to my taste.”[59] Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson provided the most thorough defense in his 1947 Harper’s article “The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb,” in which he argues that the atomic bombs served their purpose as not only physical but psychological weapons. Stimson portrayed the nuclear weapons as destructive but necessary, saying they ended a war and made it wholly clear that there shouldn’t be another one. “With the release of atomic energy,” Stimson said, “man’s ability to destroy himself is nearly complete.”[60]

A popular opinion during the 1940s was that the bombs were fair payback for Japanese atrocities and the Japanese wouldn’t have surrendered without them, although these beliefs were obscured by hypocrisy and racism. Throughout the 1930s and 40s, savage Japanese behavior in China and Southeast Asia (such as the Nanjing Massacre, which killed 100,000 to possibly more than 300,000 Chinese civilians), as well as in the treatment of Allied prisoners, was offered as proof of the natural barbarity of the enemy. [61] But the United States was equally brutal in its treatment of Japanese soldiers.[62] The 1943 U.S. propaganda film Our Enemy—The Japanese describes Japanese soldiers as a well-trained force of fanatics who are “steeled to reckless courage by a primitive moral code.”[63] This “primitive” code is known as Bushido, the way of the samurai, loosely analogous to the concept of chivalry. As one soldier put it, “As men, it was our duty to go to war, to die, to fall like petals off a flower.”[64] Under Bushido code, many soldiers practiced gyokusai (honorable suicide attacks) and kamikaze (suicide attacks by plane) before being taken captive. Because of Japan’s history of fighting until the last man, many speculated that if it weren’t for the A-bombs, Japan would have continued to fight. “I cannot believe that, without the atomic bomb, the surrender would have come without a great deal more of costly struggle and bloodshed,” Compton insisted.[65] However, Westerners also glorified those who fought to the bitter end, and in several instances Allied leaders at the highest level, including Winston Churchill and Douglas MacArthur, ordered their commanders never to surrender. This pattern, wherein prejudice and racism clouded Japanese and American views of one another, was common during the Pacific war.[66]

The first eyewitness account of hibakusha came in the form of a New Yorker article by John Hersey titled “Hiroshima,” written a year after the bombings (although a Japanese translation wasn’t available until 1949).[67] While earlier accounts had focused on abstract and technical aspects of the blast, Hersey’s article was hauntingly personal, focusing on the compelling stories of six survivors. Professor Allan Winkler described Hersey’s article as a “tremendous splash,” an early push toward an emerging atomic opposition. “[The article] was the way many Americans really began to understand just what the bomb had done.”[68] The issue sold out within hours, prompting the American public to feel more empathy for the Japanese victims.[69]

Only after Japan signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty in 1951 did U.S. censorship begin to lift. Life published a second, “uncensored” article in 1952 detailing the destruction of the bombings. The photos showed the public the horrors of atomic weapons: a burned woman takes a sip of water shortly before dying, two homeless children wrapped in bandages are carted away, a lone tree rises out of a ruined wasteland. Now the magazine revealed that censorship had prevented it from publishing these photographs: “Pictures taken by five Japanese photographers in the first hour of terror after the blasts had been suppressed by jittery U.S. military censors through seven years of the Occupation.”[70]

In Japan, the lifting of censorship laws and end of occupation allowed hibakusha to tell their stories through interviews, books, and even comics. Survivor Keiji Nakazawa illustrated his experience in the manga series Barefoot Gen. The story is loosely autobiographical, following a young boy named Gen as he witnesses the bombing of Hiroshima and grapples with the deaths of family members. The illustrations are haunting—people walk with skin dripping off their arms, moaning for water—yet there is a certain optimism that takes focus as the characters learn to live despite the destruction. Nakazawa wanted his story to convey the preciousness of peace amidst the threat of nuclear war.[71] Along with sharing their experiences, many hibakusha became involved in the movement to ban atomic weapons, especially after fallout from the U.S. thermonuclear test on the Bikini Atoll killed the crew of a Japanese fishing boat in 1954. One campaign to ban these weapons, started by Japanese housewives, collected an astonishing thirty million signatures.[72]

 

How Hiroshima and Nagasaki are Remembered Today

Due to the end of censorship and the release of hibakusha perspectives, American opposition to the A-bomb increased over time: in a 1990 poll, 41% of the public disapproved of using atomic weapons—an upsurge from 10% disapproval in 1945.[73] In the 1950s, Americans became more demonstrably sympathetic towards hibakusha. The Saturday Review undertook a “Moral Adoptions” project to support 400 children orphaned in Hiroshima. Readers of the magazine “adopted” these children, helping build orphanages and giving the children educational training. A related project, the Hiroshima Maidens, began in 1953. The project selected 25 Japanese women who survived the bombing and sent them to America on a highly publicized journey to get reconstructive plastic surgery. Although the Hiroshima Maidens project helped hibakusha only superficially, the plastic surgery returned them, at least to a small degree, to a normal life.[74] Despite their significance, America doesn’t officially commemorate the atomic bombings. But in 2016, more than seventy years after the bombings, Barack Obama became the first sitting U.S. President to visit Hiroshima and speak out against the use of nuclear weapons.[75]

Japan’s attitude toward the bombings has changed significantly since 1945. Initially, the occupation authorities censored fatality reports and refused to aid hibakusha, who were outcast from society. But after occupation ended in 1952, shared experiences and disdain for nuclear weapons led to a widespread and nationally recognized peace movement. In the decades following the bombings, Hiroshima built public hospitals and private clinics that give free treatment to hibakusha. The city has become a spiritual center of the movement for banning nuclear weapons. Peace Memorial Park, built in the epicenter of the blast, contains a museum and monuments dedicated to those killed from the explosion. Every August 6, a service is held to remember the victims. Millions of paper cranes (a symbol of longevity and happiness) are heaped around the Children’s Peace Monument. The tradition was inspired by Sasaki Sadako, a young survivor of the bombing who folded one thousand paper cranes to fight radiation-inflicted leukemia.[76] A hibaku (atomically bombed) piano that survived Hiroshima’s blast has become an international symbol of peace. The piano has been featured in concerts around the world, including the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize Award Ceremony. The piano tuner Mitsunori Yagawa hopes that “by having the world hear the sound unchanged from 72 years ago, it will make them consider nuclear issues with more familiarity.”[77] The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is immortalized in Japan, in hopes that a nuclear attack will never happen again.[78]

 

Conclusion

Japanese and American reactions to the atomic bombings between 1945 and 1951 reveal how significant a role American censorship played in both the immediate public reception and the early debate over the morality of these actions. Military censors suppressed dispatches, photographs, and casualty reports that showed the extent of Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s ruin, while American media celebrated the end of the war. Popular magazines like Time that referred to the Japanese as “the Jap” contributed to Americans’ dangerous bias against their enemies in the Pacific, and articles by government officials persuaded most of the American public that the nuclear attacks were justified. The only opposition to the nuclear attacks at the time came from concerned pacifists, ignorant about the realities of the bombs. Meanwhile in Japan, hibakusha were ostracized by both American occupiers and Japanese society, forced to keep their experiences and grief secret. Despite the censorship, brave reporters such as Wilfred Burchett and John Hersey managed to sneak into the damaged cities and record eyewitness accounts. Once published, these harrowing descriptions of Japanese victims shocked the American public and prompted a small but growing minority to criticize the decision to drop the bombs. Lifting the censorship laws and ending occupation in 1951 allowed hibakusha to publicly share their stories and receive government aid for the first time. It also paved the way for many American news outlets to openly recognize the damage that the atomic bombs caused. The reality of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, once hidden from the public, has since opened the eyes of the world to the horrendous capabilities of nuclear weapons and become a beacon for peace.


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[1] Jack Doherty, "Atom Bomb Rocks Japs," The New York Daily News (New York City, NY), August 7, 1945; "Hiroshima is Wiped Out," The Erie Daily Times (Erie, PA), August 8, 1945, accessed June 17, 2018, http://www.goerie.com/lifestyle/20150806/70-years-ago-erie-learns-of-atomic-bomb-dropped-on-hiroshima#

[2] Michael Kort, The Columbia Guide to Hiroshima and the Bomb (Columbia University Press, 2007), 3.

[3] Ibid, 34.

[4] John Ray Skates, The Invasion of Japan: Alternative to the Bomb (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1994), 51.

[5] Kort, The Columbia Guide to Hiroshima and the Bomb, 17.

[6] Ronald Takaki, Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb (New York City, NY: Little, Brown & Company, 1995),  42.

[7] Magnus Bartlett and Robert O'Connor, Hiroshima Nagasaki: An Illustrated History, Anthology, and Guide (Sheung Wan, Hong Kong: Odyssey Publications, 2015), 212.

[8] Takaki, Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb, 42, 47.

[9] Kort, The Columbia Guide to Hiroshima and the Bomb, 2.

[10] Michihiko Hachiya, Hiroshima Diary: The Journal of a Japanese Physician, August 6-September 30, 1945 (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2011).

[11] Toyofumi Ogura, Letters From the End of the World: A Firsthand Account of the Bombing of Hiroshima, trans. Kisaburo Murakami and Shigeru Fujii (Kodansha International, 1997), 39.

[12] Ogura, Letters From the End of the World, 54.

[13] Ibid, 53.

[14] Bartlett and O'Connor, Hiroshima Nagasaki, 234.

[15] Ogura, Letters From the End of the World, 125.

[16] approximately 40,000 compared to Hiroshima’s 80,000.

[17] White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, directed by Steven Okazaki, Home Box Office, 2007, 59:15.

[18] Tatsuichiro Akizuki, Nagasaki 1945: The First Full-length Eyewitness Account of the Atomic Bomb Attack on Nagasaki (London, UK: Quartet Books, 1982), 30.

[19] Ibid, 70.

[20] Bartlett and O'Connor, Hiroshima Nagasaki, 234.

[21] James F. Byrnes and Max Grässli, "Secretary of State Byrnes' Reply to Japanese Surrender Offer," August 11, 1945, accessed June 14, 2018, https://www.ibiblio.org/pha/policy/1945/1945-08-11a.html.

[22] A&E Television Networks, "1945: The Japanese Emperor Speaks," History.com, last modified 2009, accessed August 6, 2018, https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-japanese-emperor-speaks.

[23] Bartlett and O'Connor, Hiroshima Nagasaki, 235.

[24] Harry S. Truman, "Statement by the President of the United States," speech, August 6, 1945, Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum, accessed August 6, 2018, https://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/bomb/large/documents/index.php?documentdate=1945-08-06&documentid=59&pagenumber=1.

[25] Paul Boyer, By the Bomb's Early Light (New York City, NY: Pantheon Books, 1985), 10.

[26] David W. Moore, Majority Supports Use of Atomic Bomb on Japan in WWII, table (Washington, DC, USA: Gallup, 1945), accessed June 14, 2018, https://news.gallup.com/poll/17677/majority-supports-use-atomic-bomb-japan-wwii.aspx.

[27] Boyer, By the Bomb's Early Light, 196.

[28] Albert Einstein, "On My Participation In The Atom Bomb Project," Kaizo, September 22, 1952, accessed June 14, 2018, http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/Hiroshima/EinsteinResponse.shtml.

[29] The Decision to Drop the Bomb, produced by Fred Freed, National Broadcasting Company, 1965, accessed August 6, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAzJT3RmZ9U.

[30] Sixty-two percent of the Japanese-Americans interned were U.S. citizens.

[31] John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York City, NY: Pantheon Books, 1986), 78.

[32] Boyer, By the Bomb's Early Light, 13.

[33] Ibid, 199.

[34] Ogura, Letters From the End of the World, 121.

[35] Akizuki, Nagasaki 1945, 99.

[36] M. Susan Lindee, Suffering Made Real: American Science and the Survivors at Hiroshima (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 32.

[37] John Dower, "The Bombed: Hiroshimas and Nagasakis in Japanese Memory," Diplomatic History 19, no. 2 (1995): 282.

[38] Akizuki, Nagasaki 1945, 134.

[39] Ibid, 139.

[40] Susan Southard, "What U.S. citizens weren't told about the atomic bombing of Japan," The Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, CA), August 7, 2015, accessed June 14, 2018, http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0809-southard-atomic-bomb-survivors-20150806-story.html.

[41] White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 113:15.

[42] Dower, "The Bombed: Hiroshimas and Nagasakis in Japanese Memory," 284.

[43] White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 56:15.

[44] "War's Ending: Atomic Bomb and Soviet Entry Bring Jap Surrender Offer," Life Magazine, August 20, 1945.

[45] Jiyoon Lee, "A Veiled Truth: The U.S. Censorship of the Atomic Bomb," Duke East Asian Nexus 3, no. 1 (2011), accessed June 14, 2018, http://www.dukenex.us/a-veiled-truth-the-us-censorship-of-the-atomic-bomb.html.

[46] David W. Dunlap, "Witnessing the A-Bomb, but Forbidden to File," The New York Times (New York City, NY), August 6, 2016, accessed June 14, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/times-insider/2015/08/06/1945-witnessing-the-a-bomb-but-forbidden-to-file/.

[47] Bartlett and O'Connor, Hiroshima Nagasaki, 235.

[48] Dower, "The Bombed: Hiroshimas and Nagasakis in Japanese Memory," 281.

[49] Bartlett and O'Connor, Hiroshima Nagasaki, 237.

[50] George Weller, First Into Nagasaki: The Censored Eyewitness Dispatches on Post-atomic Japan and Its Prisoners of War (New York City, NY: Crown Publishers, 2006), 37.

[51] Ibid, 43, 247.

[52] Southard, "What U.S. citizens weren't told about the atomic bombing of Japan.”

[53] Moore, Majority Supports Use of Atomic Bomb on Japan in WWII.

[54] Elmo Roper, "The Fortune Survey," chart, in By the Bomb's Early Light, by Paul Boyer (New York City, NY: Pantheon Books, 1985), 183.

[55] Boyer, By the Bomb's Early Light, 186.

[56] Karl T. Compton, "If the Atomic Bomb Had Not Been Used: Was Japan already beaten before the August 1945 bombings?," The Atlantic, December 1946, accessed June 14, 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1946/12/if-the-atomic-bomb-had-not-been-used/376238/.

[57] The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara, directed by Errol Morris, Sony Pictures Classics, 2003, accessed June 19, 2018, https://vimeo.com/149799416.

[58]Takaki, Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb, 28.

[59] Theodore H. White, In Search of History: A Personal Adventure (San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 1978).

[60] Henry L. Stimson, "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb," Harper’s Magazine, February 1947, accessed June 14, 2018, http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/ps/japan/stimson_harpers.pdf

[61] "Nanjing Massacre," Encyclopedia Britannica, last modified February 16, 2018, accessed June 19, 2018, https://www.britannica.com/event/Nanjing-Massacre.

[62] Dower, War Without Mercy, 12.

[63] Our Enemy: The Japanese, narrated by Joseph C. Grew, United States Navy / War Activities Committee of the Motion Pictures Industry, 1943, accessed August 6, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7smDzv9knlc.

[64] White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 12:58.

[65] Compton, "If the Atomic Bomb Had Not Been Used.”

[66] Dower, War Without Mercy, 12.

[67] Dower, "The Bombed: Hiroshimas and Nagasakis in Japanese Memory," 290.

[68] Morning Edition, "How Is Hiroshima Remembered in America?," National Public Radio, first broadcast August 5, 2005, hosted by Richard Paul, accessed August 5, 2018, https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4786615.

[69] John Hersey, "Hiroshima," The New Yorker, August 31, 1946, accessed June 17, 2018, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1946/08/31/hiroshima.

[70] "When Atom Bomb Struck: Uncensored," Life Magazine, September 29, 1952.

[71] Keiji Nakazawa, The Day After, vol. 2, Barefoot Gen (San Francisco, CA: Last Gasp of San Francisco, 2004).

[72] Dower, "The Bombed: Hiroshimas and Nagasakis in Japanese Memory," 291.

[73] Moore, Majority Supports Use of Atomic Bomb on Japan in WWII.

[74] Norman Cousins, Present Tense: An American Editor’s Odyssey (New York City, NY: McGraw Hill Book Company, 1967), accessed June 14, 2018, http://hibakushastories.org/hiroshima-maidens/.

[75] Adam Taylor, "In Japan and America, more and more people think Hiroshima bombing was wrong," The Washington Post (Washington, DC, USA), May 10, 2016, accessed June 14, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/05/10/in-japan-and-america-more-and-more-people-think-hiroshima-bombing-was-wrong/.

[76] "Hiroshima," Encyclopedia Britannica, last modified March 29, 2017, accessed June 17, 2018, https://www.britannica.com/place/Hiroshima-Japan.

[77] "Piano that survived Hiroshima A-bomb to play at Nobel Peace Prize event in Oslo," The Mainichi (Tokyo, Japan), December 9, 2017, accessed June 20, 2018, https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20171209/p2a/00m/0na/003000c.

[78] Dower, "The Bombed: Hiroshimas and Nagasakis in Japanese Memory," 294.

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