Conv-Hiroshima - A-Bombing of

From: Jim White

Dated: August 16, 2020

Subject: 75th Anniversary of Hiroshima

From Jim White
Sachiko finally opened up a little bit about the end of the war. She was working at the hospital on August 15th, 1945 and was ordered to stay there to take care of the patients. She finally got away about 10 or 15 days later and was able to make her way to Itabashi (where she been raised) in Tokyo. Had no money and no food. Did have a few clothes but had to guard them carefully (to include taking them with her when she went to the toilet). Did loose her shoes, so she ended up stealing a pair from someone else. For a while she slept under a raised floor of a temple and then in the gymnasium of the elementary school she had attended. Was able to get a certificate showing that she had lived in Itabashi before nearly everything was burned to the ground. This helped in getting a little food whenever something was distributed. Even so, she became extremely thin. After a month or so in Itabashi, she was able to go to her mother’s place of birth in Fukushima. But she was not treated at all well and finally went back to Itabashi and was able to stay with a elderly friend of her family near Ikebukuro. When the US forces moved in, younger kids were able to beg for chocolate, etc. However, Sachiko, at 17, was looked upon as a target for “rape and restitution” so she had to shy away from the GIs. This included that sometimes, when she realized a GI was following her, she would ask a Japanese man who was a complete stranger to pretend she was his wife. That usually caused the GI to lose interest in her. August is hot in Japan and there was no way to take a bath, so very quickly everyone was covered with lice. Everyone would sit around (nothing else to do) and pick them off and kill them one at a time but I don’t think that method ever got one ahead of the lice. This problem was solved to an extent by the GIs showing up with DDT spray and spraying everyone (including Sachiko) with it. However, Tokyo winters are rather severe, particularly when you have few clothes and most likely no coat at all. People around her would sometimes say “I’m going to die tonight” and the next morning then would be dead. Some would go to a shrine or to the open ground in front of the palace and the men would you a short sword to stab themselves in the gut while women would slice their throats along the side so as to cut a main artery to the brain. Both methods were traditional ways of committing suicide. Some would call out “May the Emperor live 10,000 years” (“Tenno Heika, Banzai”) but Sachiko had never understood why the Occupation Forces never hung him as a war criminal.

Here is a link to a longer story on the Tokyo Bombings: Click Here.

From: Jim White

Dated: August 8, 2020

Subject: 75th Anniversary of Hiroshima

I am fairly sure that many more died in the firebombs of Japan overall than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. It could be that it could be that the March through August total in just Tokyo exceeds that figure.
One thing I failed to mention in my post below, I am probably the only one in our group who has a wife who suffers from PTSD. I have to wake her up from a nightmare at least a couple of times a month.
Jim W

From: Jim White

Dated: August 9, 2020

Subject: 75th Anniversary of Hiroshima

Marc, (and everyone else)
I'm not out and about that much any more, so I haven't seen/heard any comments about the Hibakusha Disease (exposure to the radiation from the A-Bombs) recently. I do recall that during the time period you mention there was still a reluctance to marry (or let one's offspring marry) someone whose parents or grandparents were Hibakusha. They were afraid of DNA mutations which might be transmitted to any children from such a marriage.
For more information, go to HIBAKUSHA in Wikipedia.
Jim W

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From: Bob Morecook

Dated: August 10, 2020

Subject: 75th Anniversary of Hiroshima

Hi Jim,

I am sorry to read about her suffering. Give her a hug for me too.

Bob M

From: Jim White

Dated: August 9, 2020

Subject: 75th Anniversary of Hiroshima

Frank,
You are right. the Japanese term "Hibakusha" (lit. "those who were bombed" includes anyone who was within a certain distance of the epicenter at the time it exploded. This includes embryos. Their names are added each year regardless of the the cause of death. Again, see HIBAKUSHA in Wikipedia.
Jim W

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From: Frank Rogers

Dated: August 9, 2020

Subject: 75th Anniversary of Hiroshima

Am I wrong, but every year on the anniversary at Hiroshima don’t they add the names of any residents who have died - whatever the cause- listing them as victims of the bombing?

Frank

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From: Jim White

Dated: August 7, 2020

Subject: 75th Anniversary of Hiroshima

Forrest (and others who are interested),
What did we do on the 6th, the 75th anniversary of Hiroshima? I went to see my prostate doctor. Was told that my PSA was a very low 0.009 and other blood and urine tests were normal. Got a "once every six months" shot in the arm and an eight week supply of pills for my prostate cancer. Sachiko went shopping. Otherwise we tried to hide from the heat and COVID-19. I think that we might have mentioned the anniversary in passing, and NHK, the public broadcaster, did pay a lot of attention to the ceremony held in Hiroshima, et c.
Sachiko has told me that all anyone in Tokyo knew about Hiroshima (and Nagasaki) until some time after the war ended was that some kind of "special bomb" had been used but no one knew the extent of the damage, loss of life, etc. At the same time, Tokyo and many other parts of Japan had been under almost constant B-29 incendiary bombings beginning in early March and continuing until the night of August 14th when Osaka was badly hit. So most people (or at least those who weren't already burned to death) didn't have much time think of any thing other than dodging the bombs. Sachiko turned 17 in February 1945 and her family had different two homes burned down around their ears during this time. But, she had two strokes of luck. One, was that she was scheduled to go to Manchuria in early 1945 but the ship she was supposed to go on was sunk by a US submarine as her transportation was on its way back to Japan to get her and the others in her group and then head back to Korea or where ever. The second was that for about the last two or three months of the war, she was "detailed" to work at an Imperial Army Hospital for amputees as a nurses' assistant. The hospital was located to the east of Tokyo on the tip of the point of land which projected to the east. She was there until the end of the war and then was told "OK, you can go home now" but was not given any travel money or anything else. Somehow she did find her way back to Tokyo which was almost as "flattened" as Hiroshima--just the methods were different. Here is a rough map of Japan.

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Hiroshima - A-Bombing of

August 2020

From: Nancy Smoyer

Dated: August 8, 2020

Subject: 75th Anniversary of Hiroshima

Thanks for telling us about Sachiko's experience, Jim. In listening to accounts of these bombs, one person said that the firebombs in Tokyo killed more people than the other two combined. It must have been a really hard time for the Japanese people in so many ways during this time, just as it was for others in the rest of the world.
Nancy

From: Marc Yablonka

Dated: August 9, 2020

Subject: 75th Anniversary of Hiroshima

Jim,
During my second assignment in Vietnam, in 1992, I befriended NHK/Radio Japan fie reporter Masako Yuasa. Over dinner one night, she told me that offspring were still being affected by Hibakusha Disease, as a result of the bombs. Is that still the case today?
Marc

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From: Ken Kalish

Dated: August 8, 2020

Subject: About the Hiroshima Anniversary

Friends:
In this morning’s e-mail traffic I found a list of articles from the New Yorker that I might find interesting. One was the following article, published 15 August 1945, about six people who lived through it. The article is a long read, but well worth your time. If the article is paywalled, buy the subscription – the article is that moving. Here’s the link.
Ken Kalish

From: Marc Yablonka

Dated: August 9, 2020

Subject: 75th Anniversary of Hiroshima

Thanks Jim!

From: Forrest Brandt

Dated: August 16, 2020

Subject: 75th Anniversary of Hiroshima

Thanks for posting, Jim. We were taught so much about the atrocities of the Japanese and Germans, but the firebombing of German and Japanese cities was always given a pass. We have much to be ashamed of.
Forrest

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From: Forrest Brandt

Dated: August 6, 2020

Subject: Hiroshima

PBS Newshour had a beautiful segment on the 75th Anniversary, comments from survivors, glimpses of the memorial and the museum constructed. Growing up, I listened as Dad and the uncles talked about the event, all of them agreeing that, “it saved lives on both sides.”
My high school senior English teacher had us read John Hersey’s Hiroshima and the exam asked us to write our opinion on the decision to drop the bomb. I had bothered to look up the facts - the fire bombing of Tokyo was far more deadly if we measure by lives lost, a fact I included in my answer along with the story of my father on a boat heading towards Panama and the assumption that the final port call would be somewhere in preparation for the invasion of Japan itself. Even as I reasoned my answer to the question, I couldn’t suppress the doubts I had as to the justice of it all..
I still don’t have an answer except to note that Tokyo and Hiroshima were both a culmination of a huge effort to create and use weapons of mass destruction on a population as well as the armed forces and industry of a nation. And, yes, there is the argument that we didn’t start the war, but at what point do we draw the line on what is fair in war and what is not? I liken it to a statement recorded in Phillip Caputo’s A Rumor of War, when Lt Caputo ia talking to a sergeant after a small fire fight and stating that he doesn’t believe American soldiers are capable of brutality, the sergeant says something along the lines of, “You just got here. You’ll be amazed at what these kids will turn into after a few weeks in combat.”
I watched the report and thought of Jim and his wife in Tokyo and wondered how they spent the day, I especially wondered what memories the day must bring to her. Would that the use of the bomb could have brought us the peace that was promised, but never delivered.
Forrest

Note; Click Here to see the above-mentioned PBS Newshour