My latest film, “The Atomic Bowl: Football at Ground Zero—and Nuclear Peril Today” has been airing over PBS stations this past month and streaming for free (key links to watch now and more here). A companion book is now available, and you can read more or order here.
The New Yorker magazine this week has a piece about me and my new PBS film, which you can read here. And subscribing to this newsletter is still somehow FREE.
Excerpt from my new book “The Atomic Bowl” (derived from my current PBS film, see links above).
September 1945. Thousands of U.S. Army troops and Marines land near the port city of Nagasaki in southern Japan as part of a military force that will occupy the area, shortly after the enemy’s formal surrender ended World War II. They witness a city, and countless survivors, still devastated by the U.S. atomic bomb dropped over Nagasaki six weeks earlier. The Americans come from all walks of life—doctors, teachers, factory workers, farmers. Some are former college or professional football players.
William W. Watt, a Navy lieutenant, described his response to the ruins of Nagasaki in letters to his wife back in Easton, Pennsylvania: “It looks like a brickyard in which some giant Vandal has gone about smashing the bricks for the Hell of it….I feel sorry for the women, and the little kids break my heart, some of them with burned faces…
“It is not uncommon to see three- and four-year-old kids naked from the waist down and with a bad case of ringworm or some such skin disease festering on their shaved heads and around their wondering eyes….It is pathetic to see little kids imitate the whizzing of the A-bomb, put their hands over their ears, and pretend that they are running off. It is more pathetic to see an occasional kid laughing—with his face horribly burned.”
Less than a month after the bombing, the first Americans—journalists and scientists—arrived in Nagasaki. U.S. Army troops and Marines would occupy the city by the end of September. "It was just total destruction, a terrible picture," observed Gerald Sanders, from Tyler, Texas, who had played quarterback at Louisiana Tech.
Lt. William W. Watt commented in another letter home: “Nagasaki is wrapped around the end of a narrow bay and wreathed by tall green mountains. It is built on hills. From a distance as you enter the harbor it is picturesque—the hillsides studded with houses and honeycombed with terraced gardens. A narrow river winds through town, under low stone bridges….
“Horror had clouded my conscience since I first visited the Atomic Area. I had seen what “ordinary bombing”—as we called it—could do to urban centers. But the devastation of Nagasaki was of a totally different order. ‘Good God,’ we said to each other, ‘all this with one bomb!’ It did have to be seen to be believed.
“A recent article said that it had been the opinion, before the occupation, that no American could go to Nagasaki for 20 years without being torn to bits by the enraged populace. I have seen nothing to indicate that. The Japanese can be charming companions, fascinated by American ways and passionately fond of imitating them. There is no reason we can’t get together with them—eventually—on some common ground of friendship. But for now suspicion remains, because the recent past is all too vivid in their memories--and in ours.”
The occupying force in Nagasaki grew to more than 27,000 as the Hiroshima regiments topped 40,000. Included were many military doctors and nurses. Some stayed for months. The U.S. Strategic Bomb Survey sent a small group of photographers to take black and white photos of blast effects. By all accounts the Americans were charmed by the Japanese.
“In the back of our minds, every one of us wondered: What is this atomic bomb?” a Nagasaki veteran later testified. “You had to be there to realize what it did.” After describing the horrors, he added: “We 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.”
Not every American felt that way, of course. A staff sergeant who served in Hiroshima named Edwin Lawrence later recalled thinking, “The Japs got what they deserved.”
Lt. Daniel McGovern, a leading Army Air Force cameraman, flew into Nagasaki in September with the first journalists and scientists, who carried out testing for radiation levels. “The first time I got into Nagasaki and saw the devastation and the horror, it was pathetic,” he recalled. “You would be going along streets that were in ruins and no buildings in sight, buildings up on the hill crushed as if a massive anvil had fallen down and destroyed them. People were lying by the wayside like sick animals.
“Going down through the city, you would find people in hovels, in shelters, in what at one time was their home. And some of them would be picking up the remains of some family member.
“Being a camera man you can't dwell too much--you can't be a spectator--you have to do your job. You can't think about how bad it is, but you know it's bad. The thing that bothered me the most was the poor children suffering--it was a lost look--like a zombie--looking at me, staring at me as if to say, Who are you?
“I think what bothered me that most was at a school where hundreds died, Shirayama School, there were hundreds and hundreds of bones and crushed skulls piled up, stacked up, from the children, in the corner….I remember one scene on a hillside, there was a group of boys and girls marching, singing, some little song--I can still see it, a young girl eating this apple, enjoying every bit of it, like a squirrel--that at least made me feel good.”
Thousands of Nagasaki children had been killed by the atomic bomb but now Americans befriended them. Some American servicemen were welcomed by Nagasaki women at local dance clubs. But the attitudes below the surface were far more complicated.
One of the tasks handled by the occupiers was clearing rubble, but locals who had lost family members to the bomb criticized the Marines for showing little care as they bulldozed and buried the bones and bodies that remained.
While half of Nagasaki escaped the worst effects of the atomic blast, thousands of survivors were still dying from radiation disease or remained hospitalized with burns and other injuries. When reports of deaths from radiation disease emerged from Japan, General Leslie Groves called it “a hoax or propaganda." Groves worried that the bomb would be viewed as a chemical or biological weapon, banned around the world.
To be continued….