{"id":43779,"date":"2023-08-31T06:36:55","date_gmt":"2023-08-31T14:36:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=43779"},"modified":"2023-08-31T13:22:49","modified_gmt":"2023-08-31T21:22:49","slug":"american-soldiers-faced-radiation-dangers-in-hiroshima-and-nagasaki","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2023\/08\/31\/american-soldiers-faced-radiation-dangers-in-hiroshima-and-nagasaki\/","title":{"rendered":"American Soldiers Faced Radiation Dangers in Hiroshima and Nagasaki"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell\u2019s newsletter Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood<\/a>.<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Seventy-eight years ago this week, \u00a0the first American troops landed at Yokohama, near Tokyo, with fifteen thousand pouring in within a few days, under the direction of Gen. Douglas MacArthur. Also arriving were forward elements of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, which had been organized by the Army the previous November to study the effects of the air campaign against Germany and now shifted its sights to Japan.<\/p>\n

The Japanese formally surrendered on the battleship Missouri on September 2. At this point, the American public knew little about conditions in the atomic cities, which are far from Tokyo, beyond Japanese assertions that a mysterious and deadly affliction was destroying many of those who survived the initial blasts (claims that were taken to be propaganda by Gen. Leslie Groves, among others, as we saw yesterday<\/a>). No Westerners had arrived in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, few photographs circulated. The first Americans did not reach Hiroshima until September 3. They were beaten there by the Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett, who had already filed a story<\/a> for the London Daily Express <\/em>describing people dying from an \u201catomic plague.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 The first American to reach Nagasaki, George Weller, found that all of his dispatches were spiked<\/a> by General MacArthur\u2019s office in Tokyo.<\/p>\n

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On September 8, General Thomas F. Ferrell arrived in Hiroshima with a radiologist and two physicists from Los Alamos, ordered to return to Tokyo the following day with preliminary findings. There was some urgency. It was one thing if the Japanese were dying of radiation disease; there was nothing we could do about that. But sending in American soldiers if it was unsafe was another matter. Three days later, Farrell announced that \u201cno poison gases were released\u201d in Hiroshima. Vegetation was already growing there.<\/p>\n

The first large group of U.S. soldiers arrived in Nagasaki around September 23, and in Hiroshima two weeks later. They were part of a force of 240,000 that occupied the islands of Honshu (where Hiroshima is located) and Kyushu (Nagasaki). Many more landed in Nagasaki, partly because its harbor was not mined. Marines from the 2nd Division, with three regimental combat teams, took Nagasaki while the U.S. Army\u2019s 24th and 41st divisions seized Hiroshima. The U.S. Navy transported Marines and evacuated POWs, but its role ashore beyond medical services was limited.<\/p>\n

Most of the troops in Hiroshima were based in camps on the edge of the city, but a larger number did set up camps inside Nagasaki.\u00a0 Because of the alleged absence of residual radiation, no one was urged to take precautions. Some bunked down\u00a0 in buildings close to ground zero, even slept on the earth and engaged in cleanup operations, including disposing bodies, without protective gear.\u00a0\u00a0 Few if any wore radiation detection badges, which also worked erratically.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe walked into Nagasaki unprepared…. Really, we were ignorant about what the hell the bomb was,\u201d one soldier would recall.\u00a0 Another vet said: \u201cHell, we drank the water, we breathed the air, and we lived in the rubble. We did our duty.\u201d<\/p>\n

A marine named Sam Scione, who had survived battles on Guadacanal, Tarawa and Okinawa, now arrived in Nagasaki, sleeping first in a burned out factory, then a schoolhouse.\u00a0 \u201cWe never learned anything about radiation or the effects it might have on us,\u201d he later said.\u00a0 \u201cWe went to ground zero many times and were never instructed not to go there.\u201d\u00a0 A year later, on his return to the\u00a0\u00a0U.S., his hair began to fall out and his body was covered in sores.\u00a0 He suffered a string of ailments \u2013 he was far from alone \u2013 but never was awarded service-related disability status.<\/p>\n

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The occupying force in Nagasaki grew to more than twenty-seven thousand as the Hiroshima regiments topped forty thousand. Included were many military doctors and nurses. Some stayed for months.\u00a0 The U.S. Strategic Bomb Survey sent a small group of photographers to take black and white photos of blast effects.\u00a0 By all accounts the Americans were charmed by the Japanese, and profoundly affected by what they witnessed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the back of our minds, every one of us wondered: What is this atomic bomb?\u201d a Nagasaki veteran later testified. \u201cYou had to be there to rea1ize what it did.\u201d After describing the horrors, he added:\u00a0 \u201cWe did not drop those two [bombs] on military installations. We dropped them on women and children … I think that is something this country is going to have to live with for eternity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mark Hatfield, a young naval officer in 1945 and later a longtime U.S. senator (known for his opposition to the Vietnam war), would reflect on his \u201csearing remembrances of those days\u201d in Hiroshima when a \u201cshock to my conscience registered permanently within me.\u201d Much of his legislative and personal philosophy was \u201cshaped by the experience of walking the streets of your city,\u201d he wrote to the mayor of Hiroshima in 1980, adding that he was \u201cdeeply committed to doing whatever I can to bring about the abolition of nuclear weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n

The biologist Jacob Bronowski revealed in 1964 that his classic study Science and Human Values<\/em> was born at the moment he arrived in Nagasaki in November 1945 with a British military mission sent to study the effects of the bomb. Arriving by jeep after dark he found a landscape as desolate as the craters of the moon. That moment, he wrote, \u201cis present to me as I write, as vividly as when I lived it.\u201d It was \u201ca universal moment … civilization face to face with its own implications<\/em>.\u201d The power of science to produce good or evil had long troubled other societies. \u201cNothing happened in 1945,\u201d he observed, \u201cexcept that we changed the scale of our indifference to man …. \u201c<\/p>\n

When Bronowski returned from Japan he tried to persuade officials in the British government and at the United Nations that Nagasaki should be preserved exactly as it was. He wanted all future conferences on crucial international issues \u201cto be held in that ashy, clinical sea of rubble ….. only in this forbidding context could statesmen make realistic judgments of the problems which they handle on our behalf.\u201d His colleagues showed little interest, however. They pointed out delegates \u201cwould be uncomfortable in Nagasaki,\u201d according to Bronowski.<\/p>\n

Just published: an expanded edition of my book Atomic Cover-up<\/a>, now with several thousand words of mine re: the movie and the man <\/strong><\/em>Oppenheimer<\/strong>. And it\u2019s on sale this week as an ebook for just $3.99 ($12.95 for the paperback).<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Note<\/strong>: If you missed this comment by David Chambers on my post this week about Oppenheimer signing off on MGM movie about The Bomb while Einstein resisted. The grandfather, of course, was Whittaker Chambers:<\/p>\n

My grandfather wrote that [Einstein] cover story for TIME:<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2022 cover: https:\/\/content.time.com\/time\/covers\/0,16641,19460701,00.html<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\u2022 story: https:\/\/content.time.com\/time\/subscriber\/printout\/0,8816,803775,00.html<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

In the piece, my grandfather himself described the bomb as “the biggest boost humanity has yet been given toward terminating its brief history of misery and grandeur.” He also stated, “If the atom bomb blasted the last popular skepticism about Einstein’s genius it also blasted man’s complacent pride in the power of unaided intellect. At the very moment that it was finally mastered, matter was most elusive and most menacing.”<\/em><\/p>\n

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Thanks for reading Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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