As the mushroom cloud rapidly ascended two miles over the city and eclipsed the sun, the bomb's vertical blast pressure crushed much of the Urakami Valley. Horizontal blast winds tore through the region at two and a half times the speed of a Category 5 hurricane, pulverizing buildings, trees, animals, and thousands of people. The blazing heat twisted iron, disintegrated vegetation, ignited clothing, and melted human skin. Fires broke out across the city, burning thousands of civilians alive. And though no one knew it yet, larger doses of radiation than any human had ever received penetrated deeply into the bodies of people and animals.
Defining Terror, 1945-Style
"What about Pearl Harbor?" American supporters of the bomb write me, referring to the Japanese attack that began the Pacific War. "What about Japan's atrocities in China?" a man screamed at me at a reading. "And," veterans ask, "what about the Allied POWs who were tortured and killed by Japanese soldiers?"
Yes, I say to them. Yes, I understand your outrage, even so many decades later. I can fathom the courage of those who fought, the profound loss so many American families experienced during that long and costly war, and how desperately everyone wanted it to end.
But other truths exist as well. Japan did attack the United States and committed countless other military aggressions and horrific war crimes -- and the United States bombed and incinerated all or parts of 66 Japanese cities, killing, maiming, or irradiating more than 668,000 civilians. In Nagasaki alone, by the end of 1945 when a first count was possible, 74,000 men, women, and children were dead. Of those, only 150 were military personnel. Seventy-five thousand more civilians were injured or irradiated. Today, this kind of indiscriminate killing and harm to civilians would be called "terrorism."
Despite the history most Americans have learned -- that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were military necessities that ended World War II and saved a million American lives by obviating the need for an invasion of Japan's home islands -- there is no historical evidence that the Nagasaki bombing had any impact on Japan's decision to surrender. What we aren't taught are the political and military complexities of the last few months of the war or how, in the post-war years, our government crafted this end-of-war narrative to silence public opposition to the atomic bombings and build support for America's fast-expanding nuclear weapons program. What many don't realize is that this misleading version of history allows us to turn away from what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and continue to support the development and proliferation of nuclear weapons without ever having to think about what those weapons do.
Still, so many decades later, in a world in which the Trump administration is preparing to withdraw from a key Cold War nuclear agreement with Russia and the U.S. nuclear arsenal is being modernized to the tune of up to $1.6 trillion, it's worth recalling the other side of the story, the kind of suffering the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings caused in August 1945 and long after. Within weeks, people in both cities began experiencing mysterious symptoms: vomiting, fever, dizziness, bleeding gums, and hair loss from what doctors would later understand as radiation-related sickness. Purple spots appeared all over their bodies. Many died in excruciating pain within a week of the first appearance of such symptoms. Fear gripped Nagasaki. From one day to the next, no one knew when his or her time might come.
In those first nine months, pregnant women suffered spontaneous abortions, stillbirths, or the deaths of their newborn infants. Many of the babies who survived would later develop physical and mental disabilities.
Five years after the bombings, thousands more began dying from leukemia and other illnesses caused by high-dose radiation exposure, initiating cycles of higher than normal cancer rates that would last for decades. The bombs had, from the survivors' perspective, burned their bodies from the inside out. Parents exposed to radiation feared possible genetic defects in their children and hovered over them year after year, terrified that what looked like a simple cold or stomach ache would lead to severe illness or death.
Even today, radiation scientists are still studying second and third generation hibakusha (atomic-bomb-affected people) for genetic effects passed down from their parents and grandparents, reminding us how much we still don't understand about the insidious nature of radiation exposure to the human body.
Hibakusha Stories
It's essential for us to remember such grim details, not just for the sake of history, but for our future, because nuclear weapons far more powerful and devastating than the Nagasaki bomb are now commonplace.
In a small area of Nagasaki that includes Hypocenter Park, the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum, and Peace Park, dedicated teams of Japanese men and women still work tirelessly to counter the world's inclination to forget what happened. For the past 35 years, one organization, the Nagasaki Foundation for the Promotion of Peace, has assembled cadres of hibakusha speakers -- typically about 40 at any time -- willing to tell their stories. They are now aging women and men with unique memories of the day of that bombing and the weeks, months, and years that followed.
Sixteen-year-old Taniguchi Sumiteru was delivering mail on his bicycle about a mile from the hypocenter when, a split-second after the bomb detonated, its tremendous force and searing heat blew him off his bicycle and slammed him face-down onto the road. His entire back was burned off. By all rights, he should never have survived. Three months later, he finally received medical treatment. Still in constant pain ten years after the bombing, he became one of Nagasaki's earliest anti-nuclear activists.
Wada Koichi, an 18-year-old streetcar driver at the time of the bombing, decided to speak out when he held his first grandchild and flashed back to the charred corpse of a baby he'd stepped over as he searched for his missing colleagues. Do-oh Mineko, then 15, suffered critical injuries to her head and lingered near death for months. Though those injuries eventually healed, radiation exposure had caused all her hair to fall out. For nearly a decade, she hid in her house until her hair finally grew back. As an adult, she kept her identity as a hibakusha secret until, in her late sixties, she found new meaning for her life by telling her story to schoolchildren. Yoshida Katsuji, only 13, was looking up in the direction of the bomb at the moment it exploded. His entire face was scorched. Years later, as friends and colleagues told their stories publicly, he remained silent, afraid of looks of disgust from audiences due to his disfigurement. He finally began speaking out in his late sixties after deciding that being shy was not a good reason to keep silent when it came to the terrorizing impact of nuclear weapons.
These four and many others dared to cross boundaries in Japanese culture to tell their personal stories of suffering and help others grasp what nuclear war would mean for the world. Unfortunately, most hibakusha -- at least those who were old enough to have vivid memories of the bombing and its aftermath -- have died or are reaching the end of their lives. They are the only people capable of telling us firsthand about the experience of nuclear war, and each year their numbers diminish.
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