The world and war changed on August 6, 1945, at 8:15 a.m. Tokyo time. If all you know about that day and August 9, 1945, is that atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, flattened the cities, killed thousands of people and ended World War II, you are the victim of the spin doctors. “The Last Train From Hiroshima” by Charles Pellegrino tells the stories of the survivors and victims of both sides relating what really happened.
History, real history, is more than names, dates and heroic deeds. It is littered with people and events that make you feel uncomfortable. Yet, if that history is white washed, it will happen again. The purpose of looking at history is to learn from the mistakes and decisions of the past. And, as many have known for years, people can learn more from their mistakes than their successes.
Story of Hiroshima
Why do we learn so little about what actually happened on those days? General MacArthur laid out his Protocol forbidding survivors from talking about what happened. He curtailed any scientific research about it. He confiscated and classified written information about it. Then he and the Japanese government put out their sanitized versions.
John Hershey managed to gather and publish some of what did happen. His book, “Hiroshima” follows six survivors on that day and for some days afterwards. Dr. Paul Takashi Nagai published “The Bells of Nagasaki”, the story of his survival and the efforts of the University medical school personel and became the focus of a smear campaign.
Atomic Bomb Trivia
Did you know the Hiroshima bomb was a dud? Only around 10% of it exploded.
How does an atomic bomb explode? It isn’t one explosion, but a series of waves each carrying its own type of destruction.
How many people died? No one knows or will ever know.
Why did some people survive even though they were close to the explosion? Some of the Hiroshima survivors took that Last Train from Hiroshima just in time for the second bomb and survived that one too.
And the second bomb didn’t explode over Nagasaki, but its suburb Urikami, just over a little hill. This made it easy to hide the true effects of the second bomb which was a plutonium bomb, not an atom bomb and three times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb. Yet, this bomb has been relegated to little more than a sentence or two in the history books.
Aftermath
Few people knew about the effects of radiation. People without a scratch on them would sicken and die days, weeks or years later as speculation about what was wrong proliferated. These effects too were mostly hidden from the public.
Some older survivors of one or both bombs lived long lives advocating for peace. They had lived through hell and didn’t want anyone else to have to. Masahiro Sasaki summed it up this way: “It’s been more than sixty years since the bombs were dropped. God made everyone equal. So, I forgot who dropped the bomb. What I am trying to say is that it does not matter who dropped the bomb. It’s not an issue. It should never be an issue for any country. It’s an issue for all humanity.
“The important thing is that I, and Sadako (his sister who folded paper cranes as she was dying cancer caused by radiation), knew the feeling of Omiyari (In your heart, always think about the other person before yourself.) – and if this principle can be taken to heart and passed down by just a few of you here in this room today, it may, in time, lessen the dangers in the world.”
This is an excellently written book. It is objective, not dwelling on gory details. That does not make this an easy book to read.
My ratings and book reviews of both “Last Train from Hiroshima” and “The Bells of Nagasaki” are on Goodreads.