KNOWLEDGE THE FIRST ATOM BOMB

 THE FIRST ATOM BOMB

Three weeks had passed since the two atomic bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but we still knew practically nothing about the fate of the devastated towns or of the innumerable victims. The American wireless had broadcast a very great deal about the preparations made for the use of the new weapon and about its extraordinary power, but information concerning the effects of atomic bombardment was limited to the horrible prophecy' for seventy years at least the radio-activity of the earth around the scene of the explosion will prevent all forms of life from existing there' 

The Americans I had met the evening before on board the Benevolence had all fallen silent the moment I had mentioned the word 'Hiroshima'. When they questioned me about Japan they carefully avoided all mention of it, and when I uttered the word I think we all felt an indefinable sense of discomfort. 

For different reasons the Japanese also maintained complete silence For concerning the disaster which had brought about their sudden defeat. 

It was only through the verbal reports which went from one end of Japan to the other that we began to have some idea of what the sudden cataclysm had meant for the inhabitants of Hiroshima. One of our secretaries named Nohara, a half being Japanese, sometimes repeated to us more or less the gist of what was rumoured amongst the Japanese. Many fugitives had fled from Hiroshima to seek safety with their families, and their first-hand descriptions of the horror were profoundly disquieting; the blinding light suddenly flashing out of peaceful sky was a phenomenon much more terrible than an earthquake. It was a typhoon of glare, heat, and wind which had swept Suddenly over the earth and left a sea of fire behind it. 

No one knew the total of the dead, 50,000 said some; 200,000 insisted others. And there were just as many wounded, or more. And of those who seemed at first to have escaped injury, thousands were dying every day with strange, new, and inexplicable symptoms. 

On 2 September a Japanese policeman brought a copy of a telegram to our villa in Torizaka for which Tokyo had not yet issued a censorship visa. Bilfinger had arrived at Hiroshima on 30 August and hurriedly sent off the following disjointed report: 

Situation horrifying... Ninety per cent of town razed ... All hospitals destroyed or severely damaged...Have visited two provisional hospitals' conditions indescribable Bomb effects mysterious.... Many victims apparently recovering suddenly experience fatal relapse owing to degeneration of white corpuscles and other internal injuries. Deaths still Occurring in great numbers. More than 100,000 victims still in provisional hospitals in neighbourhood. Grave shortage of material, bandages, medicaments.. Appealallied high command supplies be parachuted immediately into centre of town. Urgently need large supplies of bandages, cottonwool, ointments for burns, sulphamides, blood plasma and transfusion kits.. Immediate action necessary... 

took this telegram, and the photographs, which I still had in my possession, and went at once to the Yokohama Chamber of Commerce where General MacArthur had installed himself and his staff. 

A few minutes after my arrival, four high officers were bending over the table on which I had wordlessly placed the photos and the telegram: General Fitch, Chief of the U.S. Information Service; Colonel Marcus, of the Prisoners-of-war Department; Colonel Webster, Chief of the Hospital Service; and Colonel Sams, who was incharge of assistance for the civil population. 

They were the first Americans to see photographs of Hiroshima taken on the ground after the fall of the atomic bomb. Their faces were grave and attentive, and their expressions were a trifle wry at the sight of those carbonized Corpse

No one spoke. The photos went from hand to band. General Fitch put on his 

glasses. He read the telegram twice and then turned to me. 

What do you want us to do?" 

What did I want them to do? Wasn't Bilfinger's telegram plain enough? There were 100,000 wounded people without proper attention. Bandages, sulphamides, blood plasma -Bilfinger had listed it all. I suggested that a rescue expedition should be organised at once. 

The General turned to Colonel Sams. That's your department, I think, 'he said. The four officers put their heads together. Then one of them picked up the photos and the telegram. 

It was 7 September, five days later, before I heard anything further, and then Colonel Sams summoned me to Yokohama. 

It is impossible for the United States Army to organize any direct relief action, he informed me, 'but General MacArthur is willing to let you have fifteen tons of medicaments and hospital material. They can be distributed under the control and responsibility of the Red Cross.'Andhe added: 

A commission of inquiry is leaving for Hiroshima tomorrow. A seat has been reserved for you on board one of the planes.' 

Early on 9 September the investigation commission left the island of Miyajima. From our hotel we walked along the shore of the little harbour. We boarded the boat which was to take us over the arm of the sea which separated us from the main island. 

A car was waiting for us there, and I sat between two Japanese interpreters, a Miss Ito, who had been born in Canada, and a Japanese journalist who had spent twenty years in the United States. They both gave me a great deal or information about what Hiroshima had once been, its main activities and is geographical situation. I needed their accounts in order to compare the reality geographical. e the reality of yesterday; a busy prosperous town, with the reality of today; the desolating the desolating ectacle after its utter destruction by one flash of blinding, searing light. aring light. spectacle after. lained the fragile Miss Ito 'means "the broad island" nd". It was of Hiroshima,' explai lt on delta of the river Ota which flows down from Mount Kamuri and it the seventh town in point of size in Japan. The seven arms of the Ota-seven rivers which pour their waters into the inland sea- enclose in an almost perfect triangle, thee harbour of the town, the factories, an arsenal, oil refineries, and warehouses. Hiroshima had a population of 250,000 people, and in addition there was a garrison of about 150,000 soldiers. 

The journalist described: 

On 6 August there wasn't a cloud in the sky above Hiroshima, and a mild, hardly perceptible wind blew from the south. Visibility was almost perfect for ten or twelve miles. 

At nine minutes past seven in the morning an air-raid warning sounded and four American B 29 planes appeared. To the north of the town, two of them turned and made off to the south and disappeared in the direction of the Shoho Sea.The other two, after having circled the neighbourhood of Shukai, flew off at high speed southwards in the direction of the Bingo Sea. 

At 7.31 the all-clear was given. Feeling themselves in safety people came out of their shelters and went about their affairs, and the work of the day began. 

Suddenly a glaring whitish pinkish light appeared in the sky, accompanied by an unnatural tremor which was followed ai most immediately by a wave of suffocating heat and wind which swept away everything in its patl. 

Within a few seconds the thous nds of people in the streets and the gardens in the centre of the town were scorc:ed by a wave of searing heat. Many were killed instantly, others lay writhing on the ground screaming in agony from the intolerable pain of their burns. Everything standing upright in the way of the blast- walls, houses, factories, and other buildings -was annihilated, and the debris spun round in a whirlwind and was carried up into the air. Trams were picked up and tossed aside as though they had neither weight nor solidity. Trains were flung off the rails as though they were toys. Horses, dogs, and cattle suffered the same fate as human beings. Every living thing was petrified in an attitude of indescribable suffering. Even the vegetation did not escape. Trees went up in flames, the rice plants lost their greenness, the grass buried on the ground like dry straw. 

Beyond the zone of utter death in which nothing remained alive, houses collapsed in a whirl of beams, bricks, and girders. Up to about three miles from the centre of the explosion lightly-built houses were flattened as though they had been built of cardboard. Those who were inside were either killed or  wounded. Those who managed to extricate themselves by some miracle found themselves surrounded by a ring of fire. And the few who succeeded in making their way to safety generally died twenty or thirty days later from the delayed effects of the deadly gamma rays. Some of the reinforced concrete or stone buildings remained standing, but their interiors were completely gutted by the blast. 

About half an hour after the explosion, whilst the sky all round Hiroshima was still cloudless, a fine rain began to fall on the town and went on for about five minutes. It was caused by the sudden rise of overheated air to a great height, where it condensed and fell back as rain. Then a violent wind rose and the fires extended with terrible rapidity, because most Japanese houses are built only of timber and straw. 

By the evening the fire began to die down and then it went out. There was nothing left to burn. Hiroshima had ceased to exist. The Japanese broke off, and then pronounced one word with indescribable but restrained emotion: 

Look

About two and a half miles from the centre of the town all the buildings had been burnt out and destroyed. Only traces of the foundations and piles of debris and rusty charred iron work were left. 

At three-quarters of a mile from the centre of the explosion nothing at all was left. Everything had disappeared. It was a stony waste littered with debris and twisted girders. 

We got out of the car and made our way slowly through the ruins into the centre of the dead city. Absolute silence reigned in the whole city. There was not even a survivor searching in the ruins, though some distance away a group of soldiers was clearing a passage through the debris. There was not a bird or an animal o be seen anywhere. 

Professor Tsusuki (one of the leading surgeons in Japan) led the way and sp in a loud voice so that we could all hear what he said. His sentences came t disjointed as though by deep excitement and emotion. oke We must open our minas.. we must try to understand everything. He Do inter to the remnants ora wall, the base of which ran for perhaps six or seven 

There was a hospital here, gentlemen. Two hundred beds, eight doctors, twenty arSeS. Every single one and all the patients were killed. That's what an atomic bomb doe... 

few days before I left Tokyo, Brigadier-General Baker, one of the American officers incharge of foreign relations, informed me that General MacArthur wished to receive the delegation of the International Red Cross. 

General Mac Arthur received us in his office on the top floor of the building. He was wearing the ordinary service uniform of the U.S. Army, and the only indication ofhis high rank were five stars in each shoulder strap. 

He invited us all to sit down near the window, which gave on to the grounds of the Imperial Palace, and sitting down with us and smoking his traditional pipe he talked to us freely. 

He thanked us for the work we had done on behalf of the imprisoned Americans, but we could feel that his thoughts went even further than the fate of his own men. He was thinking of every one who had been assisted and protected by the Red Cross, of all those who in their exile and their humiliation had no other hope of assistance. 

The supreme value of human life and human blood has been forgotten, he said,'and human dignity too.' 

Ina firm voice, emphasizing each word, he went on: 

Force is not a solution for man's problems. Force on its own is nothing. It never has the last word. Perhaps you find it strange that I, a professional soldier, should say that to you. 

The chief architect of victory in the Pacific did not conceal his opinion that peace still lay far ahead in the future. 'Even with our present weapons,' he went on, 'not including those still to be developed, a new war would leave nothing behind worthy of mention.' 

And in even more precise terms he sketched the danger of death and destruction which still hung over the world. 

Too much has been destroyed in this war, and the physical exhaustion is too great, for there to be another war during the next twenty or twenty-five years. But what will happen after that? What wil happen unless between now and then we do everything possible to save mankind from itself? 

This Knowledge is given by Marcel Junod

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