{"id":45208,"date":"2023-12-29T09:32:37","date_gmt":"2023-12-29T17:32:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=45208"},"modified":"2023-12-29T09:32:37","modified_gmt":"2023-12-29T17:32:37","slug":"the-most-bizarre-football-bowl-game-ever-in-the-ruins-of-nagasaki","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2023\/12\/29\/the-most-bizarre-football-bowl-game-ever-in-the-ruins-of-nagasaki\/","title":{"rendered":"The Most Bizarre Football Bowl Game Ever \u2013 in the Ruins of Nagasaki"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

The Atomic Bowl, January 1, 1946<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The famed 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, three months after the atomic bombing (which killed at least 75,000 civilians) with a British military mission sent to study the effects of the new weapon.<\/p>\n

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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\u2026civilization face to face with its own implications.\u201d The power of science to produce good or evil had troubled other societies. \u201cNothing happened in 1945,\u201d he observed, \u201cexcept that we changed the scale of our indifference to man\u2026.\u201c<\/p>\n

One of the most bizarre episodes in the entire occupation of Japan took place less than two months later, on January 1, 1946, in Nagasaki.\u00a0 (For more on this critical period,\u00a0and my own experiences in Nagasaki, see my book Atomic Cover-up<\/a>.)<\/em> Back in the States, the Rose Bowl and other major college football bowl games, with the Great War over, were played as usual on New Year\u2019s Day. To mark the day in Japan, and raise morale (at least for the Americans), two Marine divisions faced off in the so-called Atomic Bowl, played on a killing field in Nagasaki that had been cleared of debris.<\/p>\n

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It had been \u201ccarved out of dust and rubble,\u201d as one wire service report put it \u2013 without mentioning that it was the former site of a high school where hundreds of students perished on August 9 \u2013 and was soon dubbed “Atomic Athletic Field No. 2.”<\/p>\n

Both teams had enlisted former college or pro stars serving in Japan for their squads. The \u201cBears\u201d were led by quarterback Angelo Bertelli of Notre Dame, who won the Heisman Trophy in 1943, while the \u201cTigers\u201d featured Bullet Bill Osmanski of the Chicago Bears, who topped pro football in rushing in 1939 (and then became a Navy dentist). Marines fashioned goal posts and bleachers out of scrap wood that had been blasted by the A-bomb. Nature helped provide more of a feel of America back home, as the day turned unusually chilly for Nagasaki and snow swirled.<\/p>\n

A band played the fight song, \u201cOn Wisconsin!\u201d The rules were changed from tackle to two-hand touch because of all the irradiated glass shards from the atomic blast remaining on the turf.\u00a0 Two referees watched for infractions.\u00a0 Each quarter lasted ten minutes.<\/p>\n

Press reports the next day claimed Japanese locals observed the game \u2013 from the shells of blasted-out buildings nearby.\u00a0 The two stars, Bertelli and Osmanski, had agreed to end the game in a tie so that both sides would be happy but Osmanski, after leading a second-half comeback, could not resist kicking the extra point that gave his team the win, 14-13. A commemorative booklet produced for the game included this line:\u00a0 “In the rubble of the atomic bomb, we made a gridiron.\u201d<\/p>\n

When servicemen stationed in Nagasaki returned to the U.S., a good number of them suffered from strange rashes and sores. Years later some were afflicted with disease (such as thyroid problems and leukemia) or cancer (such as multiple myeloma or forms of lymphoma) associated with radiation exposure.<\/p>\n

Note<\/strong><\/em>: A former\u00a0 Marine named Bob Trujillo read my piece and sent it to a bunch of other Marines and the son of one of them responded with photos and a program for the game.\u00a0 I’ve now been in touch with the son and, yes, his father later suffered health defects he related to his atomic exposure in 1946.<\/p>\n

\u00bb\u00bb\u00bb\u00bbMy film<\/strong>, based on my Atomic Cover-up<\/em> book, and now airing via PBS (watch here<\/a>) and free at Kanopy, focuses on how the U.S. suppressed the most important film footage shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by a Japanese newsreel team and an elite U.S. Army squad. In reviewing dozens of hours of the long-buried color footage shot by our military, I was amazed when I came upon a very brief segment <\/strong>in which appeared the goal posts from the game left behind<\/strong>, with a wrecked building and devastated Nagasaki behind it. You can find it<\/strong> if you click that PBS link<\/a> and go to the 12:48 mark.<\/p>\n

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