On the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the impact on Japanese people cannot be ignored.
This week — Wednesday and Saturday — marks the 80th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.
I wanted to know about Japanese experiences in the aftermath, so I looked for books in the library. There was disturbingly little. Most books were about scientists who created the bomb, or American politicians and military leaders who ushered in the use of this weapon of mass destruction. They were largely glorified.
But there was a glaring absence: Japanese people. At the end of 1945, the bombs had killed an estimated 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 74,000 in Nagasaki. Most were civilians, including 38,000 children. In Hiroshima, 270 of the city’s 300 doctors were killed or injured. Yet Japanese people are largely left out of U.S. history and are reduced to faceless statistics.
Those near the bombs’ epicenters were obliterated by blasts hotter than temperatures on the sun. Survivors suffered burns that shredded their skin to ribbons. The injured moaned beneath rubble, begging to die.
The horrors continued long after the blasts. Survivors suffered from cancer and other agonizing effects of radiation.
Where were the stories of lives lost? Or of survivors of the world’s only nuclear attack? Where were the stories of children playing on a summer morning, mothers making breakfast — all oblivious to the bombs?
There’s a reason for this gross lacuna. After the attack, the U.S. government “went into overdrive to contain the human cost of their new weapon,” according to the book “Fallout” by Lesley M.M. Blume.
U.S. officials deliberately blocked journalists from going independently to Hiroshima and Nagasaki and censored reporting.
