How 'The Atomic Bowl' in Nagasaki Happened

"One has to wonder, however, why Nagasaki of all cities would be selected as a site, and on a field so close to Ground Zero."

My latest film, “The Atomic Bowl: Football at Ground Zero—and Nuclear Peril Today” has been airing over PBS stations and now 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 last month has a piece about me and my new PBS film, which you can read here. And subscribing to this newsletter is still somehow FREE.

This continues the story from previous posts on the first weeks of the U.S. occupation of atomic bomb-ravaged Nagasaki in the autumn of 1945. It is adapted from the companion book to my current PBS film “The Atomic Bowl.”

Troops would soon search for large, rubble-strewn land to convert into athletic fields. One flat spot that drew special attention was found in front of the concrete shell of a middle school in the Urakami valley, less than a mile from the hypocenter of the atomic blast. Thirteen teachers and 162 pupils at the Nagasaki Commercial School had died on the day of the bomb or in the weeks since due to injuries or radiation disease.

“The most wretched were the pupils who had been engaged in digging air raid shelters,” Hirako Shoji, a worker at the school, recalled. “I saw them lying on the ground, calling their parents’ names and begging for water, with their entire bodies burned. I could not help but curse the war that brought such tragedy.”

Two large athletic fields were soon cleared and graded by military work crews, one of them in front of that middle school.

Top U.S. military officers, meanwhile, often requested personal tours of the Nagasaki ruins. Lt. William Watt, who was communications director of the Port of Nagasaki, was called on to conduct tours. Watt held advanced degrees from Harvard and Yale...and was teaching literature at Lafayette College when he joined the Navy in 1944. That year The New Yorker magazine published one of his poems (many would follow).

Watt, unlike many, did not like viewing the ruins, and he hated giving the tours. One day, a visiting admiral ordered him to steal a sacred relic from a temple. Watt had a vest made that he would wear in protest, with needlework showing rubble and in large letters “Atomic Bomb Tours, Incorporated.”

He revealed in a letter to his wife: “On a tour I would say, ‘Over there are the ruins of the Mitsubishi Ordnance Plant, a military target. Up along the side of the hill are what’s left of the Yamazoto Primary School, the Urakami Cathedral, the Nagasaki Medical College, and the College Hospital. None of them could be called a military target. And all around us here, where the athletic fields are now, thousands of people lived and died. And many are still dying….Now, are there any questions?”

Already, when journalists or U.S. officials referred to the atomic attacks on Japan, it was likely that one word, Hiroshima, would be used as shorthand for the two separate catastrophes. This meant that Nagasaki was often ignored, an afterthought.

During the past year, U.S. servicemen played numerous types of sports in both the Pacific and in Europe. This led to everything from pickup games on aircraft carriers to contests between all-star Marine or Army units. “The Mosquito Bowl,” held on Guadalcanal in December 1944 between two squads of Marines, drew wide notice. On New Year’s Day in 1945, while fighting still raged, a contest between Army and Air Force squads, dubbed “The Spaghetti Bowl,” was staged in Italy. According to a later report:

For the more than 25,000 U.S. troops in attendance (plus a few interested locals), the Spaghetti Bowl delivered everything one would expect from a stateside bowl game: there were two bands, several military vehicles were dressed up as parade floats (carrying cheerleaders and two bowl queens), Broadway performer Ella Logan was on hand to sing, Brooklyn Dodgers’ manager Leo Durocher gave a speech at halftime, and lovely majorette Peggy Jean twirled her batons. Meanwhile, the USO was on hand to provide coffee and donuts. By any measure, the Spaghetti Bowl was a successful operation for the U.S. military.

Many teams were organized by military units in Nagasaki. They played local Japanese in baseball and taught them American football. Top brass encouraged this as a way for bored servicemen to--as one put it--“blow off steam,” and to show locals the glory of American sports.

So it was no surprise that Major General LeRoy P. Hunt, the Second Marine Division’s commander for the occupation, ordered that a game be held in Japan to coincide with the Christmas and New Year’s holiday, when homesick soldiers would need it most.

One has to wonder, however, why Nagasaki of all cities would be selected as a site, and on a field so close to Ground Zero.

We thought it would be totally appropriate and symbolic of a celebration. It was certainly not to look like there was a joyful glee in what had happened there. We were there, yet we had many buddies that didn’t make it through the war.

-- Marine Lt. Gerald H. Sanders

Sanders believed that many of the Marines had seen the beaches where they would have come ashore and were further convinced that the bombings had spared their lives. He was asked to help organize the game.

Selected as captains of the two squads: Notre Dame’s Heisman-winning quarterback, Angelo Bertelli and pro football star “Bullet Bill” Osmanski. These two big names would aid worldwide publicity, Sanders believed.

to be continued…