( Preface: Last year was the seventy-fifth anniversary of the atomic bombings on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was a decisive act of war by the USA to drop the bomb on Japan. It was a move that eventually broke the Japanese resilience, had them unconditionally surrender. The complete annihilation of two cities, the moral and physical devastation of the people, followed by Japan’s phenomenal post-war resurrection and growth, is a different story by itself. This essay focuses on the bombing and John Hershey’s account of that fateful day through the eyes of a few survivors. I originally wrote this essay in August 2020. I have rewritten many parts of the essay for this portal)
Seventy-five years ago, on a quiet morning on August 6th, 1945, at exactly 8.15 AM Japan standard time, a blinding flash of light ripped through Hiroshima — a town of about two hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants. People who lived twenty miles away saw the flash and heard a thundering rumble that had no equivalent in their living memories. Almost instantly, along with the deafening sound, a sharp and powerful gust of hot wind swept the city; it literally blew people, buildings, and everything else that stood in the way. Immediately after, the bright morning sun was obliterated by mushrooming spirals of thick black smoke, turning the day into an unpleasant and artificially dark concave – the blue skies of the morning now painted pitch black. A cloud of dust and tremendous heat rose steadily from an epicenter not far off from the center of the city and sped through the city. Within minutes sixty-two thousand buildings out of Hiroshima’s 90,000 were razed to the ground (only five buildings could be reused later), nearly 100,000 people died within the hour, and several thousand were burnt, scarred, and heavily injured under the weight of the accumulated rubble. It was found later, that Mica, which is known to possess a high melting point of 900 degrees centigrade, had effortless melted in the intense heat, and clumps of it clung to the Granite beneath, Carbonized telephone poles were charred, clay tiles dissolved — all within the thousand-yard radius of the flash. On examining the ashes and the debris later, scientists posited that the ground temperature during the time of the flash should have risen close to 6000 degrees centigrade.
The citizens of Hiroshima couldn’t process what had hit them on that beautiful morning. They knew it had to be a bomb; they had been preparing for it every day since Japan entered the war, but what they didn’t expect was the scale and gravity of what hit them. As the day wore on, and the effects of the blast unfolded, it gradually became increasingly clear that a routine bombing exercise couldn’t have caused such an impact; this blast was of an ominously different order. Something extremely portent and harmful had been unleashed. There was a reeking smell of electricity in the air, and everything around seemed poisoned, searingly hot, and quickly decaying. People fell by the roadside miserably sick, many dropped dead in mid-stride like withered flowers from a stalk, and those who looked apparently healthy a few hours ago developed symptoms of a mysterious sickness.
Four days later, on August 9th, another episode of blinding light, sound, and death hit the neighboring Island of Nagasaki. The effects mirrored the blast in Hiroshima a few days ago in all its fury and tragedy. And then on August, 15th, the unbelievable happened. Emperor Hirohito made his first public radio broadcast to the nation. The Japanese have never seen or heard their emperor speak directly to them before. The emperor of Japan, venerated as the representative of God, always spoke through his deputies, his spokesmen. But on that day, the cloistered king broke his silence and chose to address the nation through a recorded broadcast. For many, that would be the first time they will hear the Emporer actually speak. The bewildered citizens didn’t quite understand the need for this break in tradition. Why had the emperor chosen this moment to come out of his divine seclusion and speak? No one knew why? Around 1 PM, Hirohito’s voice crackled out of old radios across the country, his speech was around four and a half minutes long, and by the time it was over Japan wept: their emperor had just announced in a low-key voice Japan was unconditionally surrendering to the allied powers. The war was over for them. Instead of rejoicing, the Japanese were strangely sad and mournful. It was almost as if, by this message, the emperor had doubted their integrity, honor, loyalty, and patriotism. Many felt let down and murmured discontent, others, simply stunned that the end had to come like this. Despite the colossal death and tragedy Japan’s participation in the war had led to and the virtual annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese still believed they had a fighting chance and more to sacrifice. This strange reaction at such a tragic moment in a nation’s history is emblematic of Japan, its people, its history, and the secret of its extraordinary resilience in the past and in the decades to come.
August 6th, 1945 is a red-letter day in Human History. The Uranium and the Hydrogen bombs, nicknamed “the little boy”, dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively were newly minted nuclear weapons, the result of the scientific effort of some of the finest brains of the twentieth century. It had inaugurated a new era in modern warfare and triggered a race for nuclear supremacy that would reverberate across the world. Nations would race against each other to build nuclear armaments, pouring billions of dollars into the project with no chance of ever using it. The state of warfare itself reached an impasse. The only positive side of this nuclear armament is that it effectively became a deterrent to any future world war, for one more world war would only mean complete annihilation of Man, and perhaps of the planet. Man’s quest to understand nature and its material had begotten its own atomic Frankenstein. He will now forever remain in perpetual fear of his own creation.
Each year around this time, I pick out a short, slim volume from my library to read again. It is a ritual with me. The book is “Hiroshima”, written by the American journalist and novelist John Hershey. It was published just after the war. John Hersey was commissioned by the New Yorker magazine in November 1945, to report on the effects of the nuclear bombs on the ground, and if possible, interview survivors of the tragedy. Hershey wrote four pieces based on what he saw and heard. All four essays were published in the Newyorker Aug. 1946 issue; the essays filled the entire edition for that month. It was the first time in Newyorker’s history, an entire volume was devoted to a single cause. The editors of the magazine during that time were perceptive men, they knew the importance of the bomb and were painfully aware of the unsettling ramifications of this irrevocable step man had taken towards his own annihilation. They also knew that by commissioning Hershey they would not only a credible and factual account of the tragedy but also a novelist’s insider view of how the Japanese had experienced the bombing and the aftermath. Hershey did not disappoint; in the course of few weeks in Japan, he witnessed the vast desolation of the land and the inconsolable suffering and pain it had caused through the eyes of six survivors who miraculously escaped death on August 6th, 1945: Two doctors, two priests, a widow, and a lady clerk relate their own stories of that day to Hershey, who transcribed them into essays.
In each essay, Hershey captured the subjective state of the seven survivors. All seven of them had begun that day like any other day going about their daily routine and family chores. Then the calamity struck. Through their stories, their experience of the blast, their miraculous escape, Hershey paints a kaleidoscopic picture of a proud nation beaten into submission by an overwhelming force, but never, even in their direst moments, losing their will to survive or the heart to help. The four essays (for the 1985 edition of the book, Hershey added one more essay tracing the lives of his subjects) epitomized the best of the journalistic traditions. They are compassionately sensitive, bluntly objective, and lucid pieces of writing. Hershey was a Pulitzer-willing novelist first and then a reporter, therefore he brought to bear a novelist’s understanding of the human condition to his sketches. Each year, when I read Hershey’s prose, I live and breathe alongside the six survivors in his story. I watch them survive and grapple with what has happened. I am in tears as I read Hershey describe how they helped others when they were in no condition to help themselves, I reflect on the tremendous resilience and manners of the Japanese as a nation, and admire their sense of Stoic resignation in the face of such indescribable hardship, I am moved by Hershey’s stark prose filled with empathy, optimism, and hope. Those few hours it takes for me to read this slim volume are moments of self-reflection on the human condition and predicament. During that time, I reflect on what progress really means?
Hiroshima is today a flourishing city with all its sky-scraping modernity, but the effects of the atomic bomb still linger. The genetic mutations caused by the radiation are showing up generations later. Even today, children test positively for radioactive effects and diseases. The Japanese have coined a word to refer to those who survived the bombing. They are called “Hibakusha” — roughly meaning — explosion-affected person. They don’t prefer to use the word victim. Victim implies helplessness, and the Japanese don’t feel that about themselves. It’s a cultural trait. And the Hibakushas have learned to live and accept their fate, and to go beyond it. In the 1985 edition of the book, Hershey wrote a special proscript that traced the lives of all the six survivors forty years after the tragedy. They have done well for themselves, despite poor health. The terrible days in August 1945 have given them enough perspective and a goal to live for. Death no longer holds any fear. How could it? — When one has come so close it.
Seventy-six years after the first use of an atomic bomb in war, we still shudder to think about it. Seventy-six years later, there are more atomic bombs a hundred times more powerful than what was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The nuclear stockpile of developing and the developed nations are only increasing each year – either openly or surreptitiously. Under these circumstances, considering the precarious nature of today’s global peace, the events of August 6th, 1945 assume even greater importance, and in that context, John Hershey’s book is a mirror to our collective moral conscience.
God bless…
Yours in mortality,
Bala