NAGASAKI’S RECOVERY, 1948–1949
Quotations by Taniguchi Sumiteru: His joy when he was finally able to walk again is quoted from Give Me Water: Testimonies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, translated by Rinjiro Sodei. His feeling of being “resurrected” appeared in “Bomb Victims’ Stories Reach into the Heart” by Imada Lee, Maui News, September 20, 1987, reprinted in Beijin kisha no mita Hiroshima Nagasaki [Hiroshima and Nagasaki Through the Eyes of American Reporters], Akiba Project 1987 (Hiroshima: Hiroshima International Cultural Foundation, 1988). Taniguchi’s fears upon being discharged from the hospital are quoted from The Light of Morning, translated by Brian Burke-Gaffney.
Signs of Nagasaki’s postwar recovery: Hiroshima and Nagasaki, edited by the Committee for the Compilation of Materials on Damage Caused by the Atomic Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, especially chap. 11. See also Embracing Defeat by John W. Dower; A Modern History of Japan by Andrew Gordon; and “Beyond the Black Market: Neighborhood Associations and Food Rationing in Postwar Japan” by Katarzyna Cwiertka in Japan Since 1945: From Postwar to Post-Bubble, edited by Christopher Gerteis and Timothy S. George.
Relaxation of occupation controls: The Reports of General MacArthur, vol. 1 supp.; “Japanese to Get Added Authority” by Lindesay Parrott, New York Times, August 16, 1949; and The Atomic Bomb Suppressed by Monica Braw.
For the four hundredth anniversary of St. Francis Xavier ceremonies: “A Monument Was Built at the Hypocenter of the Explosion” by Tomiomi Koda in Living Beneath the Atomic Cloud, edited by Takashi Nagai; “Nagasaki Plans Fete,” New York Times, March 6, 1949; “Over 100,000 Japanese in Atom-Bombed City Honour Francis Xavier,” Catholic Herald, June 3, 1949; and “The Arm of St. Francis Xavier,” Life, June 27, 1949.
Nagasaki teacher Teruko Araki remembered the scent of “new wood” in the rebuilt classrooms and described her experiences teaching orphaned children in Living Beneath the Atomic Cloud, edited by Takashi Nagai. This collection also includes the testimony of another Nagasaki teacher, Tatsuo Oi.
Quotations by Dr. Nagai Takashi: “as we walk in hunger . . .” is quoted from The Bells of Nagasaki; Nagai blamed the “rhythm of military marches” in his work Hanasaku oka [Hill in Bloom], translated excerpts of which were provided by the Nagai Takashi Memorial Museum; and he described the atomic bombs as “anti-war vaccinations” in We of Nagasaki. For additional information on Nagai’s impact as the “saint of Nagasaki,” see Embracing Defeat by John W. Dower; City of Silence: Listening to Hiroshima by Rachelle Linner; “Resurrecting Nagasaki” by Chad R. Diehl, Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University; and “The Atomic Bomb and the Citizens of Nagasaki” by Sadao Kamata and Stephen Salaff, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 14:2. For the editing and censorship of the film version of The Bells of Nagasaki, see Screening Enlightenment by Hiroshi Kitamura.
Survivors’ reactions to Nagai’s message: Masako Imamura defined the atomic bomb as God’s “test of love and forgiveness” in Living Beneath the Atomic Cloud, edited by Takashi Nagai; an unnamed survivor expressed that “people without faith . . . could not have borne the burden” in “Through Survivors’ Tales, Nagasaki Joins Japan’s Timeless Folklore” by Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times, August 9, 1995; and Fr. Paul Glynn, in A Song for Nagasaki, described his encounter with a hibakusha who converted to Christianity due to Nagai’s message.
Dr. Akizuki Tatsuichiro’s frustration with the Catholic sisters’ beliefs and his anger at the governments who “willfully perpetuated this senseless war” are quoted from his memoir Nagasaki 1945. His decision to shed his “victim of war” mentality and his experiences in Yue are detailed in Natsugumo no oka [Hill Under the Summer Cloud] by Yamashita Akiko, translated into English for the author’s use.
Later-occurring medical conditions: Hiroshima and Nagasaki, edited by the Committee for the Compilation of Materials on Damage Caused by the Atomic Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, chap. 9. See also Radiation Effects Research Foundation: A Brief Description; Children of the Atomic Bomb by Dr. James N. Yamazaki; and “Long-Term Radiation-Related Health Effects in a Unique Human Population: Lessons Learned from the Atomic Bomb Survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki” by Evan B. Douple et al., Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness 5:S1.
An anonymous hibakusha recalled the results of her brother’s autopsy following his death from leukemia in The Deaths of Hibakusha, vol. 2.
Many survivors hold memories of taunts and discrimination; examples in this chapter include Komine Hidetaka’s “A Message to the World from Hiroshima and Nagasaki” exhibit panel at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, May 2010; and Toyomi Hashimoto and Masako Okawa in Cries for Peace, edited by Soka Gakkai, Youth Division. See also The Impact of the A-Bomb: Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 1945–85, edited by the Committee for the Compilation of Materials on Damage Caused by the Atomic Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
For work discrimination and difficulties in employment, see Hiroshima and Nagasaki, edited by the Committee for the Compilation of Materials on Damage Caused by the Atomic Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, chap. 11; “The Hibakusha: The Atomic Bomb Survivors and Their Appeals” in Appeals from Nagasaki: On the Occasion of SSD-II and Related Events, edited by Shinji Takahashi; and “Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Voluntary Silence” by Monica Braw in Living with the Bomb, edited by Laura Hein and Mark Selden.
THE ATOMIC BOMB CASUALTY COMMISSION (ABCC)
Do-oh recalled her experience at the ABCC 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.
For an excellent study of the survivors’ relationship with the ABCC and the agency’s no-treatment policy, see the works of M. Susan Lindee: Suffering Made Real: American Science and the Survivors at Hiroshima; “Atonement: Understanding the No-Treatment Policy of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 68:3; and “The Repatriation of Atomic Bomb Victim Body Parts to Japan: Natural Objects and Diplomacy,” Osiris 13. In Suffering Made Real, Lindee acknowledges that Dr. James V. Neel, head of the ABCC’s genetics program, Dr. William J. Schull, and other ABCC personnel whom she interviewed did not agree with her characterization of the ABCC, saying that she, in her words, had “overemphasized the impact of political and social concerns on the science of the ABCC.” Lindee responded, “I do think that Neel and his colleagues struggled heroically to conduct their science in that neutral zone in which language, culture, and history do not exist, that is, in the realm of the idealized Science that they learned in the course of their formal education. My text operates from the assumption that such a neutral zone does not exist, for anyone, at any time.” My effort here is to capture some of the Nagasaki survivors’ most serious concerns related to their participation in the ABCC studies.
For the establishment of the ABCC, see Colonel Ashley W. Oughterson’s August 1945 memo in Medical Effects of Atomic Bombs, vol. I, app. 1 (1), by Oughterson et al. See also “The Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission in Retrospect” by Frank W. Putnam, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 95:10, which includes a copy of Truman’s presidential directive that established the agency in 1946; and the historical and scientific materials available from the Radiation Effects Research Foundation at http://www.rerf.jp.
Fears over the “free unrestrained use” of ABCC material by Japanese scientists: Memo from James K. Scott to Charles L. Dunham, October 14, 1954, Series 2, AEC Correspondence: 1951–1961, ABCC collection, National Academy of Sciences Archives, Washington, DC.
Nagasaki physician Nishimori Issei is quoted in “Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Voluntary Silence” by Monica Braw in Living with the Bomb, edited by Laura Hein and Mark Selden.
Norman Cousins’s critique: “Hiroshima Four Years Later,” the Saturday Review of Literature 32.
Further information about Dr. Yamazaki’s experiences in Nagasaki and his lifelong contribution to the health of children, as well as photographs, survivors’ paintings, testimonies, and lesson plans, can be found at the “Children of the Atomic Bomb” Web site, developed by Dr. Yamazaki in collaboration with UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center at http://www.aasc.ucla.edu/cab.
For Do-oh’s refusal to participate with the ABCC: With her family’s permission, I was able to locate medical records completed by the ABCC at the Atomic Bomb Materials collection of the Otis Historical Archives, U.S. National Museum of Health and Medicine. These records indicate that Do-oh visited the ABCC at least three times. However, Do-oh consistently describes only one visit before her decision not to participate in any further ABCC studies, perhaps collapsing her multiple visits into one. The Atomic Bomb Materials collection also includes medical documentation on Taniguchi and Yoshida.
NAGASAKI, 1952–1955: END OF U.S. OCCUPATION AND THE FIRST DECADE OF POSTBOMB SURVIVAL
For Nagasaki’s celebration of the end of the occupation, see “Two Atom-Bomb Cities Hail Peace Treaty,” New York Times, September 10, 1951.
For the Tokyo War Crimes Trials and Japan at the end of the U.S. occupation: Embracing Defeat by John W. Dower; Inventing Japan: 1853–1964 by Ian Buruma; and A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa to the Present by Andrew Gordon.
Release of scientific studies and other atomic bomb publications in Japan: Hiroshima and Nagasaki, edited by the Committee for the Compilation of Materials on Damage Caused by the Atomic Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, chap. 13; Nagasaki Journey: The Photographs of Yosuke Yamahata, August 10, 1945, edited by Rupert Jenkins; and Japanese Documentary Film by Abé Mark Nornes. The Asahi Graph reprinted the 1952 “atomic bomb” special edition in full on its thirtieth anniversary in 1982. See also “Nuclear Images and National Self-Portraits: Japanese Illustrated Magazine Asahi Graph, 1945–1965” by Utsumi Hirofumi, Kansei gakuin daigaku sentan shakai kenkyujo kiyo [Annual Review of the Institute for Advanced Social Research, Kwansei Gakuin University] 5.
Hibakusha photographs in the U.S. press: “When Atom Bomb Struck—Uncensored,” Life, September 29, 1952. See also Dr. Shiotsuki Masao’s recollection of the popular U.S. magazine article in Doctor at Nagasaki.
For nuclear arsenals by the end of 1955, see “A History of the Atomic Energy Commission” by Alice L. Buck; “Global Nuclear Weapons Stockpiles, 1945–2002” by the National Resources Defense Council; “Fact Sheet: The Nuclear Testing Tally” by the Arms Control Association.
For President Truman’s remarks about the use of nuclear weapons during the Korean War, see “The President’s News Conference,” November 30, 1950, in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman, 1945–1953. For information about U.S. nuclear strategy during the Korean War, see “American Atomic Strategy and the Hydrogen Bomb Decision” by David Alan Rosenberg, Journal of American History 66:1 (1979): 62–87; and “American Airpower and Nuclear Strategy in Northeast Asia Since 1945” by Bruce Cumings in War and State Terrorism: The United States, Japan, and the Asia-Pacific in the Long Twentieth Century, edited by Mark Selden and Alvin Y. So (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), pp. 63–90.
The passing of the first decade and the city’s tenth anniversary ceremony was remembered by Chie Setoguchi in “The Human Dam” in Testimonies of the Atomic Bomb Survivors. See also “Nagasaki Marks 1945 Atom Blast” by Robert Trumbull, New York Times, August 10, 1955.
Nagasaki in 1955: Hiroshima and Nagasaki, edited by the Committee for the Compilation of Materials on Damage Caused by the Atomic Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Nagasaki Speaks; Burnt Yet Undaunted, compiled by Shinji Fujisaki; and Screening Enlightenment by Hiroshi Kitamura. Photographs of the hypocenter marker, taken in 1954 by Dave Patrykus and other U.S. servicemen serving aboard the USS Wisconsin, can be found at http://www.usswisconsin.org.
Do-oh’s reputation as the “girl with the triangle cloth” and her decision to move to Tokyo despite her parents’ objections are quoted from 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.
CHAPTER 7: AFTERLIFE
NAGASAKI, 1960S
Descriptions of Nagasaki: Song Among the Ruins by William J. Schull; Burnt Yet Undaunted, compiled by Shinji Fujisaki; Nagasaki: The Forgotten Bomb by Frank Chinnock; “Letter from Nagasaki” by E. J. Kahn Jr., New Yorker, July 29, 1961; and various survivor accounts.
For the clearing of the Urakami Church ruins and its reconstruction, see “The Atomic Bomb and the Citizens of Nagasaki” by Sadao Kamata and Stephen Salaff in Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 14:2; and The Restoration of Urakami Cathedral: A Commemorative Album, edited by Hisayuki Mizuura.
MARRIAGE AND CHILDREN
Japanese marriage traditions and discrimination faced by hibakusha: “Marriage with the Proper Stranger: Arranged Marriage in Metropolitan Japan” by Kalman D. Applbaum, Ethnology 34:1; Death in Life by Robert Jay Lifton; and “Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Voluntary Silence” by Monica Braw in Living with the Bomb, edited by Laura Hein and Mark Selden.
Many hibakusha described fears regarding marriage and children, including Tsutae Takai in “A-Bomb Victim Moved to Talk About Past by Earthquake Disasters,” Mainichi, August 11, 2012; and the testimonies at “Memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Messages from Hibakusha,” http://www.asahi.com/hibakusha.
Wada remembered how his pregnant wife felt “stabbed” by their doctor’s warnings of potential birth defects in “There Was No ‘War-End’ in Nagasaki,” English translation provided by Nagasaki National Peace Memorial Hall.
Taniguchi described how he was rejected by potential marriage partners who feared he could not “look forward to a long life” in Hibakusha: Survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, translated by Gaynor Sekimori. His marriage and honeymoon with Eiko are detailed in The Postman of Nagasaki: The Story of a Survivor by Peter Townsend.
Do-oh reflected on her personal determination and her work life in the title essay of her collection Ikasarete ikite [Allowed to Live, I Live], 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.
ANTINUCLEAR ACTIVISM
Sources for the “Castle Bravo” hydrogen bomb test on March 1, 1954, include Castle Series 1954 by Edwin J. Martin and Richard H. Rowland; Radiation: What It Is and How It Affects You by Jack Schubert and Ralph E. Lapp; and The Struggle Against the Bomb, Vol. 2: Resisting the Bomb by Lawrence S. Wittner.
The Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) has deemed the 1954 test on Bikini Atoll the “worst radiological disaster in the United States’ testing history”; see http://www.ctbto.org/nuclear-testing.
The Marshall Islanders’ radiation illnesses, including nausea, skin lesions, loss of hair, and hemorrhaging beneath the skin, were documented by U.S. researchers from Brookhaven National Laboratory; see, for example, A Twenty-Year Review of Medical Findings in a Marshallese Population Accidentally Exposed to Radioactive Fallout by Robert A. Conard et al. (Upton, NY: Brookhaven National Laboratory, 1975). The U.S. Department of Energy continues to monitor the atolls of the former Pacific Proving Grounds for radiological damage and provide medical scree
nings for residents who were exposed; see “Marshall Islands Dose Assessment and Radioecology Program,” Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, updated August 2014, https://marshallislands.llnl.gov; and “Nuclear Issues” at the Embassy of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, accessed August 2014, http://www.rmiem bassyus.org/Nuclear Issues.htm.
The effect of the test’s fallout on the Lucky Dragon crew, and the U.S. response, is detailed in the sources above, as well as in Suffering Made Real by M. Susan Lindee; The Voyage of the Lucky Dragon by Ralph E. Lapp; Elements of Controversy: The AEC and Radiation Safety in Nuclear Weapons Testing, 1947–1974 by Barton C. Hacker; and “Aide-Memoire Given to the U.S. Ambassador Allison by the Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs, Okumura, March 27, 1954” in Castle Series 1954 by Edwin J. Martin and Richard H. Rowland, p. 465.
Eizo Tajima recalled the fishermens’ description of the white ash that coated their boat and the ensuing panic in Japan over radioactive contamination in “The Dawn of Radiation Effects Research,” RERF Update 5:3. For more on the outcomes and experiences of the Lucky Dragon crew, the Marshall Islanders, and others impacted by radiation around the world, see Exposure: Victims of Radiation Speak Out, available at the Hiroshima Peace Media Center, http://www.hiroshimapeacemedia.jp.
The Japanese public’s opposition to nuclear testing was noted in “Resisting Nuclear Terror: Japanese and American Anti-Nuclear Movements Since 1945” by Lawrence S. Wittner in War and State Terrorism, edited by Mark Selden and Alvin Y. So. See also Wittner’s three-volume history of the international nuclear disarmament movement, The Struggle Against the Bomb, which includes a discussion of earlier antinuclear activism, dampened by occupation policies, that had begun in postwar Japan prior to the Bikini test; Hiroshima and Nagasaki, edited by the Committee for the Compilation of Materials on Damage Caused by the Atomic Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, chap. 14; and reports by the Nuclear Coverage Team of the Asahi Shimbun, collected in The Road to the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons.
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