There are insufficient words to express my gratitude to project historian Robin LaVoie, M.A., who has worked side by side with me for eleven years. Robin located, analyzed, cross-referenced, and organized source materials; created detailed maps of Nagasaki to pinpoint locations significant to the survivors’ stories; provided immense help in the acquisition of photographic rights and preparation of the chapter notes and bibliography; and offered superb editorial insights. All the while, she was the best colleague imaginable. It is no exaggeration to say that this book would not exist without Robin’s immeasurable dedication and support.
To my sweet friends Charlene Brown and Judy Starr, thank you for your wisdom, constancy, strength, and love. To the Essential Theatre ensemble, past and present, my wholehearted appreciation for your ongoing exploration of listening and collaborative artistry in bringing our audiences’ stories to life.
Finally, to my family, whose patience, cheerleading, practical support, and love have exceeded anything I could have imagined: Gary and Sue Southard; my brothers, Ry Southard and Jonathan Southard; and my daughter, Eva Black, who accompanied me on my first research trip to Nagasaki when she was ten years old and grew up with this book. This book is for you.
NOTES
Quoted passages of the five featured survivors are their own words, taken primarily from multiple personal interviews that I conducted in Japanese and translated with the help of a dedicated translation support team. I have edited the survivors’ words for length, clarity, and to eliminate repetition and the off-topic threads of dialogue that naturally occurred in our conversations. These quotes are also drawn from their words in follow-up interviews, correspondence, and unpublished personal writings. To reconstruct the featured survivors’ stories with accuracy, I also consulted hundreds of other sources related to their lives, including published and unpublished testimonies and biographies; newspaper and journal articles; transcripts of speeches; radio, television, and film interviews; photographs; and personal interviews and correspondence with their family members. Sources for quotations by the featured survivors other than my interviews are cited below, and a selected list of my primary and secondary sources, organized by featured survivor, is provided in the first section of the Hibakusha Sources.
As part of my research, I also read more than three hundred testimonies by other Nagasaki survivors that have been translated into English by the Nagasaki National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims, the Nagasaki Foundation for the Promotion of Peace, and other survivor organizations. These testimonies provided extraordinarily valuable stories and images of the destruction and the physical and emotional pain survivors endured, expanding my understanding of atomic bomb survival beyond the experiences of Do-oh, Nagano, Taniguchi, Wada, and Yoshida. Sources for these stories, including survivors’ direct quotes, are cited below. A full list of the published, unpublished, and Internet sources for Nagasaki hibakusha testimonies in English is included in the second section of the Hibakusha Sources.
My primary source for the immediate and long-term medical, social, and psychological effects of the atomic bombings was Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Physical, Medical, and Social Effects of the Atomic Bombings, edited by the Committee for the Compilation of Materials on Damage Caused by the Atomic Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and translated by Eisei Ishikawa and David L. Swain (1981). I supplemented the information in this book with the most up-to-date findings in published studies of the Radiation Effects Research Foundation; interviews with medical providers, researchers, and atomic bomb specialists; and research provided by the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum and the Atomic Bomb Disease Institute at Nagasaki University Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.
For detailed information about the city of Nagasaki before, during, and after the nuclear attack, one of my most valuable resources was Nagasaki genbaku sensaishi [Records of the Nagasaki Atomic Bombing and Wartime Damage], originally compiled by the city of Nagasaki in five volumes between 1973 and 1984. In 2011, the Nagasaki National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims released on its Web site a tentative English translation of the first volume, covering prewar and wartime Nagasaki. The full five-volume record is also available in English in a condensed form in Nagasaki Speaks: A Record of the Atomic Bombing, published in 1993 by the Nagasaki International Culture Hall, translated by Brian Burke-Gaffney. Additional sources include the hundreds of individual hibakusha testimonies mentioned above, and the exhibits and publications of the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum, the city of Nagasaki, and the Nagasaki Foundation for the Promotion of Peace.
Numerous scholars and historians provided superbly researched information on Japanese history, the Pacific War, U.S. development of the first atomic bombs, the U.S. occupation of Japan, occupation censorship policies, U.S. denial of radiation effects, the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission, and the 1995 Smithsonian exhibit. In particular, I would like to acknowledge John Toland’s The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936–1945; John W. Dower’s War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War and Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II; Richard Rhodes’s The Making of the Atomic Bomb; Monica Braw’s The Atomic Bomb Suppressed: American Censorship in Occupied Japan; M. Susan Lindee’s Suffering Made Real: American Science and the Survivors at Hiroshima; and Hiroshima’s Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy, edited by Kai Bird and Lawrence Lifschultz.
Below are notes and citations for each chapter. As in the narrative, Japanese names are listed with the surname first, except when they appear in Western order (surname last) in their original publications.
For Nagasaki updates, photos, links, and other information, please visit http://www.susansouthard.com.
PREFACE
Taniguchi provided an unpublished copy of his 1986 speech, which was translated into English for the author’s use.
The number of hibakusha living around the world as of March 2014 was reported on the sixty-ninth anniversary of the atomic bombings. See, for example, “Atomic Bomb Victims Stand Alone” by Norihiro Kato, New York Times, August 14, 2014.
Oyama Takami’s poem: Hiroshima/Nagasaki: After the Atomic Bomb—Volume V: Elegy for Nagasaki: 124 Tankas of Takami Oyama, translated by Kemmoku Makato.
PROLOGUE
In addition to the translation of Nagasaki genbaku sensaishi, vol. 1, and Nagasaki Speaks, sources for Nagasaki history include Nagasaki: The British Experience: 1854–1945 by Brian Burke-Gaffney; “The Atomic Bomb and the Citizens of Nagasaki” by Sadao Kamata and Stephen Salaff in Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 14:2; “Historical Momentums at Nagasaki’s Suwa Shrine” by John Nelson in Crossroads 2; The Restoration of Urakami Cathedral: A Commemorative Album, edited by Hisayuki Mizuura; “Religious Responses to the Atomic Bomb in Nagasaki” by Okuyama Michiaki in Bulletin 37; and numerous testimonies by Nagasaki hibakusha.
For wartime slogans and other personal remembrances of Japan during the war, see Japan at War: An Oral History by Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook.
Key sources for prewar and wartime Japanese history include Inventing Japan: 1853–1964 by Ian Buruma; Japan: The Story of a Nation by Edwin O. Reischauer; Japan: A Documentary History, Vol. II: The Late Tokugawa Period to the Present, edited by David J. Lu; Embracing Defeat by John W. Dower; The Making of Modern Japan by Marius Jansen; Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan by Herbert P. Bix; and Japan’s Decision for War in 1941: Some Enduring Lessons by Jeffrey Record.
The extent of Emperor Hirohito’s active role in the direction of the war continues to be debated among historians, particularly because many Japanese government wartime documents were destroyed between Japan’s surrender and the U.S. occupation a month later, and because of the likely pro-emperor bias in existing postwar Japanese sources, motivated by officials’ desire to safeguard the emperor from prosecution for war crimes. See, for example, “Introducing the Interpretive Problems of Japan’s 19
45 Surrender” by Barton J. Bernstein in The End of the Pacific War: Reappraisals, edited by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa; and “Emperor Hirohito and Japan’s Decision to Go to War with the United States: Reexamined” by Noriko Kawamura, Diplomatic History 31:1.
CHAPTER 1: CONVERGENCE
WARTIME JAPAN
Japanese national proclamations: “The Way of Subjects” and “Imperial Rescript on Education” in Japan: A Documentary History, Vol. II: The Late Tokugawa Period to the Present, edited by David J. Lu. For Tojo’s radio announcement following the attack on Pearl Harbor, nationalistic slogans, and Japanese citizens’ remembrances of life during the war, see Japan at War: An Oral History by Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook.
For an examination of the role of racism and nationalistic propaganda during the war, see War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War by John W. Dower. The Time magazine quotation is from “The Enemy: Perhaps He Is Human,” July 5, 1943, as quoted in “Hiroshima: Breaking the Silence” by Howard Zinn in The Bomb.
In addition to the sources listed in the prologue chapter notes, sources for wartime Japan include Japan in War and Peace: Selected Essays by John W. Dower; and Japan’s Struggle to End the War, USSBS report no. 2. For examples of Japanese resistance to the war, see “Evidences of Antimilitarism in Prewar and Wartime Japan” by Alvin D. Coox, Pacific Affairs 46:4; and Leaves from an Autumn of Emergencies: Selections from the Wartime Diaries of Ordinary Japanese, edited by Samuel Hideo Yamashita.
WARTIME NAGASAKI
Wada’s quotation about his hunger during the war appeared in his testimony “There Was No ‘War-End’ in Nagasaki,” English translation provided by the Nagasaki National Peace Memorial Hall.
Many Nagasaki hibakusha recalled mandated wartime service, neighborhood association activities, air raid preparations, rationing, militaristic indoctrination, and the drafting of family members into the armed forces. Their stories supported and expanded on the information about life during the war in the translations of Nagasaki genbaku sensaishi, vol. 1. Mitsue Kubo, in Hibaku: Recollections of A-Bomb Survivors, remembered the wartime hunger that sparked her nickname, Senko (incense stick). See also Nagasaki: The British Experience: 1854–1945 by Brian Burke-Gaffney.
Do-oh’s quotations about her father’s strictness, the announcement of the attack on Pearl Harbor at her school, and her family’s preparations in sending her brother off to war appeared in her essay “Ikasarete ikite” [Allowed to Live, I Live] in a collection by the same name, edited by Keisho bukai (Do-oh Mineko iko shuu) henshu iinkai [Legacy Group (Do-oh Mineko Posthumous Collection) Editorial Committee], translated into English for the author’s use.
Additional details about Nagasaki’s civil defense measures were recorded by U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey Civilian Defense Division investigators. See Field Report Covering Air-Raid Protection and Allied Subjects in Nagasaki, Japan, USSBS report no. 5.
The connection between Nagasaki’s Mitsubishi Ohashi weapons factory and the air-launched torpedoes used in the attack on Pearl Harbor is noted in Nagasaki genbaku sensaishi, vol. 1. See also At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor by Gordon W. Prange, Donald M. Goldstein, and Katherine V. Dillon (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981); and Shinjuwan sakusen kaikoroku by Genda Minoru (Tokyo: Yomiuri Shimbun, 1972).
For information about Nagasaki’s first air raid in August 1944 as one of the early “test” raids of the USAAF’s nighttime firebombing campaign, see The Army Air Forces in WWII, vol. 5, edited by Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate; and The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon by Michael S. Sherry. See also the “Air Target Analysis” for the Nagasaki Region (Objective no. 90.36), produced by the U.S. Joint Target Group in June 1944, which outlined industrial and other targets within the Nagasaki area, including two key zones vulnerable to incendiary attack: the Nakashima and Urakami valleys, with “densely grouped houses” and limited rivers, canals, or streets to act as firebreaks. The Joint Target Group files are housed in the Records of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, Record Group 243, National Archives at College Park, MD, Online Public Access catalog identifier 561744; digital copy available at http://www.fold3.com/page/2848_japanese_air_target_analyses/.
SPRING AND SUMMER 1945
The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff’s directive that the air campaign against Japan should aim to impact the Japanese people’s morale as well as the country’s military infrastructure is noted in The Army Air Forces in WWII, vol. 5, edited by Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate, chap. 23, p. 748. Due to the chaos of these air raids, evacuations of Japanese civilians before and after the attacks, and fires that destroyed city records, no one knows how many people died in these Allied air attacks. Some sources estimate 200,000 or more prior to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with hundreds of thousands more wounded and missing. For an analysis of the various estimates of air raid casualties, see War Without Mercy by John W. Dower; and The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon by Michael S. Sherry, especially p. 413, fn. 43. For additional documents and testimonies related to the impact of the U.S. strategic bombing campaign against Japan, see http://www.japanairraids.org.
Air raid preparations at Nagasaki Medical College were noted by Takashi Nagai in Testimonies of the Atomic Bomb Survivors. Mori Sumi described the first-aid kits carried by mobilized students in Footprints of Nagasaki, edited by the Nagasaki Prefectural Girls’ High School 42nd Alumnae. Hashimoto Yutaka remembered collecting pine sap for fuel in “Mom and Silver Rice” in Crossroads 4.
For the information Dr. Akizuki Tatsuichiro provided to USSBS medical team investigators about the city’s wartime health conditions, including beriberi, see Effects of the Atomic Bombs on Health and Medical Services in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, USSBS report no. 13, pp. 74–75; and “Interrogation no. 417,” November 8, 1945, Interrogations of Japanese Leaders and Responses to Questionnaires, 1945–1946 (Microfilm Publication M1654, roll 1, folder 42, 2.c.1–20), Records of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, Record Group 243, National Archives at College Park, MD.
Tsunenari Masatoshi remembered infestations of fleas and lice in Our Parents Were in Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.
Japanese war weariness by the summer of 1945: The Effects of Strategic Bombing on Japanese Morale, USSBS report no. 14. For Fukahori Satoru’s understanding, even as a child, that Japan was losing the war, see his interview in Steven Okazaki’s film White Light/Black Rain.
For the state of Japan’s war resources in the summer of 1945 and Japan’s preparations for an Allied invasion, see Japan’s Struggle to End the War, USSBS report no. 2; Embracing Defeat by John W. Dower; “Combined Chiefs of Staff: Estimate of the Enemy Situation” (document 28), in The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II, edited by William Burr; and Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire by Richard B. Frank.
For Japanese citizens’ preparations to sacrifice themselves as “shattered jewels,” see Embracing Defeat by John W. Dower and personal accounts of home front and military service in Japan at War by Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook. Details about Nagasaki’s civil defense activities and preparation for invasion, including first-aid training, volunteer brigades, land artillery stations, and suicide boats, are recounted in many survivors’ testimonies as well as in Nagasaki genbaku sensaishi, vol. 1.
TARGET SELECTION
President Truman informed about the Manhattan Project: “Memorandum for the Secretary of War: Atomic Fission Bombs” by General Groves, April 23, 1945 (document 3a), and “Memorandum Discussed with the President” by Henry L. Stimson, April 25, 1945 (document 3b), in The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II, edited by William Burr.
For target selection criteria for the atomic bombs, see “Defining the Targets” (documents 4–16) in The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II, edited by William Burr, especially “Summary of Target Committee Meetings on 10 and 11 May 1945” (document 6). For General Spaatz’s question regarding Na
gasaki’s POW camp, see A World Destroyed by Martin J. Sherwin. Evidence that U.S. officials gave only limited consideration to any alternatives to dropping the atomic bomb, including the use of a demonstration or warning, is noted by Barton J. Bernstein in “Truman and the A-Bomb: Targeting Noncombatants, Using the Bomb, and His Defending the ‘Decision,’” Journal of Military History 62.
The report of the Trinity explosion as a “harmless accident” is described in The Dragon’s Tail: Radiation Safety in the Manhattan Project, 1942–1946 by Barton C. Hacker.
For Japanese leaders’ prebomb surrender communications, the war cabinet’s mokusatsu response to the Potsdam Declaration, and Tokyo’s reaction to the Hiroshima bombing, see Japan’s Struggle to End the War, USSBS report no. 2; The Rising Sun by John Toland; Downfall by Richard B. Frank; Japan’s Decision to Surrender by Robert J. C. Butow; Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the Committee for the Compilation of Materials on Damage Caused by Atomic Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki; “Why We Dropped the Bomb” by William Lanouette, Civilization 2:1; “Mokusatsu: One Word, Two Lessons,” National Security Agency Technical Journal 13:4; and the various essays in The End of the Pacific War: Reappraisals, edited by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa.
The Potsdam Declaration: “Proclamation Defining Terms for Japanese Surrender, July 26, 1945” in Japan: A Documentary History, vol. 2, edited by David J. Lu. For the directive authorizing the use of the atomic bomb, see “Memo, Handy to Spaatz, 7-25-45” (document 41e), in The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II, edited by William Burr.
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