Rise of the Atomic Sun

8/9/2019 Rise of the Atomic Sun

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Rise of the A tomic S un: J apanese A merican Reactions to the

A tomic B ombings of H iroshima and N agasaki

Photo by Christian Heimburger

C enter of the A merican West T hompson Writing A wards

C hristian H eimburger


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Rise of the Atomic Sun CAW Thompson Writing Awards

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“Are you Americans?” he asked. The question instantly made us self-conscious.

“Yes,” I replied, looking at him and then returning my gaze back to the memorial before us.

Bouquets of thoughtfully arranged flowers had been placed in front of the graceful concrete arch,

giving off a sweet fragrance that seemed distantly familiar. The man looked at us again and inquired,

“What do you think of all this?” Standing before the cenotaph – a monument that contains the names

of all victims of the first atomic bomb in Hiroshima, Japan – we were not sure how to answer him.

Any quick answer would have been flippant. We had just spent the last five hours wandering

the Atomic Bomb Memorial Museum, and our thoughts were heavy with emotion. This was the

second time I had visited the museum and memorial park; now I was here with my wife. Although

Tokyo and Kyoto were the focal points of our two-week journey across Japan, I felt compelled to

travel an extra 200 miles south to take my wife to Hiroshima.

I am drawn there, I think, because it is part of my history. As a youth studying the atomic

bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in history textbooks, I was confronted with photos, always

taken from the air, of gargantuan mushroom clouds rising into the troposphere; the commentary that

inevitably attended such photos taught that these bombs simply saved lives and ended the war. That

may very well be true, but in Hiroshima I saw images that imparted another, less acknowledged,

history. Walking through the museum, I not only saw photos of an utterly destroyed city, but of men,

women, and children with horribly burned bodies and disfiguring scars. I viewed pictures drawn by

children who survived the blast depicting scenes of fire, mayhem, and suffering – a hell on earth –

that graphically narrated a story I could not even begin to imagine. The images were strikingly

different than the textbook photos I was accustomed to seeing. As an American, I can not escape the

human consequences of the bomb – in Japan, I stare a strategic wartime decision, for better or for

worse, in the face. Perhaps I have come back to Hiroshima to confront our collective past – to add

faces, names, and experience to the geography of my understanding.


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that shaped them – including exclusion laws, acculturation, internment, and wartime loyalty. When

one considers that a considerable portion of the Japanese immigrant community had emigrated from

Hiroshima Prefecture, many of whom still had family living in Hiroshima in 1945, their reactions to

the news of the atomic bomb demonstrate a compelling, though perhaps not widely understood,

chapter in our national narrative.

Atomic Energy Unleashed

How Americans Learned About and Reacted to the News of H ir oshima and Nagasaki

The headlines that San Franciscans read when they opened up the paper on August 7, 1945,

announced, “Atomic Energy Unleashed: Atomic Bomb Blasts Japan.” The front-page article

continued:

The most terrible destructive force ever harnessed by man – atomic energy – is now being turned on the

islands of Japan by United States bombers… the first bomb…had been dropped on the Japanese army base of Hiroshima 16 hours before. That one bomb alone carried a wallop more violent than 2000 B-29

Superfortresses normally could hand an enemy city…[President] Truman said, with the new bomb, the

Japanese “may expect a rain of ruin from the air.”1

For most of the people reading The San Francisco Chronicle and other papers that day, the stunning

announcement represented the first time they had heard anything concerning the atom bomb.

News of the bomb was first reported by radio broadcasts late on August 6, after newsmen

were called to a press conference at the White House.2 With the press gathered, Press Secretary Eben

Ayers read a statement by President Truman. The President’s declaration had been constructed over

a period of months, with heavy input from government and military officials. It stressed themes of

“military necessity, American decency, [and] scientific and industrial achievement” but contained no

details about the Hiroshima bomb’s physical or human consequences.3 On August 7, the Pentagon

released a series of fourteen reports to news agencies around the country that detailed information

about the bomb’s development and the Hiroshima mission. The content of these reports soon

dominated radio and newspaper stories across the country. As official War Department press


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releases, the reports had been carefully composed months in advance by (later Pulitzer Prize-

winning) New York Times reporter William Laurence, under the direct supervision of General Leslie

Groves. Laurence’s skills as a journalist lent credibility, as well as a distinct quality, to the reports.

Largely celebratory in nature, the press releases described for the first time the bomb’s development,

hailing it as “the birth of a new age – The age of Atomic Energy.” Laurence’s reports dominated

available information about the bombs, and over time became the official atomic narrative.4

News of the Hiroshima bombing spread quickly; by August 8, nearly 97 percent of Americans

had heard about it.5 Unofficial information from Japanese government and news agencies also

surfaced, claiming, “Practically all living things, human and animal, were literally seared to death,”

and that, “The dead are too numerous to be counted.”6 Such graphic reports were quickly dismissed

as Japanese propaganda by government and media news agencies.7

So how did Americans react to the news of the atomic bombings? When asked whether they

approved or disapproved of using the new atomic bomb on Japanese cities, over 87 percent of

respondents said they approved of the Hiroshima bombing.8 Pearl Harbor still weighed heavily on

the minds of Americans, and vengeance, along with years of racially dehumanizing the enemy,

“would have made the death toll at Hiroshima and Nagasaki easier to accept.”9 To most Americans,

however, “the bomb meant victory.” Speculation about a Japanese surrender quickly overshadowed

news of the bomb; even information about the second atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki was

relegated to subtext in the August 9th edition of The New York Times.10 Historian Paul Boyer adds

that in the period immediately following Hiroshima, “relief over the war’s end and the emotional

high brought on by Japan’s surrender inclined Americans to downplay their atomic bomb fears and to

endorse “for the record” President Truman’s insistently positive view of the bomb.”11 Many

Americans believed that by ending the war early, the bombs had saved lives. To be sure, some

Americans questioned whether the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified; one


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magazine even decried the lack of public protest following the bombs’ use. Reactions in national

magazines showed “the juxtaposition of awe and questioning on one hand, and emphasis upon the

saving of lives on the other.” Beneath the surface was a moral questioning that would continue to stir

deep within the American psyche.12

By the end of 1945, however, Americans still did not fully appreciate the human suffering that

had been caused by the atomic bombs. On August 20, Life Magazine published full-page

photographs of the physical destruction in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and included some of the first

photos of the iconic mushroom cloud.13

However, the magazine spread contained no photographs of

“injured Japanese...no doctors and nurses treating the ill and wounded, no funeral pyres, [and] no one

in mourning.”14

It was not as though photographs were unavailable or that reporters did not attempt

to document the human perspective – indeed, many had tried. U.S. occupation forces consistently

censored information coming out of the atomic cities, and downplayed reports of radiation-induced

illnesses and casualties. Films shot on location, as well as media reports, were confiscated, declared

top secret, and not released until years (sometimes decades) later.15

Because of such censorship, and the official government narratives constructed to avoid

controversy, very few Americans ever confronted the human effects of the atomic bombs. Though it

is apparent that there were dissenting voices around the country, a majority of citizens credited the

bomb with saving American and Japanese lives and accelerating the end of the war.

Three weeks after the first anniversary of the bombings, the publication of John Hersey’s

“Hiroshima” in The New Yorker would have a significant impact on the tone of atomic bomb

discourse. Hersey’s account, based on extensive interviews conducted in Hiroshima, detailed the

stories of four civilians who had survived and endured the nightmarish days and weeks that followed

the bombing. The piece was an instant sensation: copies of the magazine quickly sold out and the

entire article was widely read over the radiowaves.16

Ministers even used it in sermons.17

Average


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Americans were moved by Hersey’s narrative: one college student admitted that before reading the

article, he had “never thought of the people in the bombed cities as individuals.”18

Though Hersey’s

Hiroshima did not alter the “official narrative” that justified the bombings of Hiroshima and

Nagasaki, it did begin to expose Americans to the human suffering the bombs had caused, and

perhaps encouraged citizens to re-think some of their deeply held assumptions about them. An

October 1947 Gallup Poll showed that only 55 percent of Americans considered the use of the bomb

a “good thing” and 38 percent thought it was a “bad thing,” perhaps reflecting the influence Hersey’s

story had on the changing nature of American public opinion.19

A Brief Review of Japanese American H istory

Though Japanese Americans shared a common identity through heritage, their reactions to the

atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not monolithic. Indeed, their responses were

uniquely shaped by their history (including exclusion laws and wartime internment), generational

conflicts, ideas about loyalty and Americanization, and military service. In order to put their

reactions to the atomic bombs into context, a brief summary of Japanese American history is

necessary.

The first Japanese immigrants began arriving in the United States in the late nineteenth

century. Initially made up of modest numbers of indigent student laborers, by the mid-1890’s

contract laborers began immigrating en masse to Hawaii and later to the mainland West Coast. Most

of them came from rural, economically depressed regions of Japan (like Hiroshima Prefecture), and

sought to earn as much money as possible before returning home.20

Labor concerns and racial

intolerance during the first quarter of the twentieth century culminated in a series of exclusion laws

that severely limited the rights of the first generation of immigrants (or Issei). The 1908 Gentleman’s

Agreement dramatically reduced Japanese immigration, especially for contract workers.21

Seeking to


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December 7 attack on Pearl Harbor, there was “no clamor for wholesale reprisals against the

mainland Japanese…[but] as war rumors took wing in the weeks following Pearl Harbor, sobriety

gave way to anxiety, then to a rising cry for draconian action against the Japanese on the West

Coast.” Alleging that Japanese spies in Hawaii had enabled the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor,

citizens, politicians, and journalists voiced their support for radical action. On February 9, President

Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the creation of military defense zones where

“any and all persons may be excluded.” A month later people of Japanese ancestry, both immigrant

and citizen alike, were forcibly removed to temporary assembly centers. Then, in June of 1942, they

were moved to permanent “relocation centers” scattered across the West.

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World War II internment camps, as one historian put it, “changed the lives of Japanese

Americans forever. Some felt the war’s crushing blows in lost homes, businesses, and from the loss

of loved ones and broken families.”30

In addition to the disruption of life, the camps exacerbated a

generational rift between the Issei and Nisei that had begun before the war. As Japanese aggression

in the Pacific accelerated during the late 1930’s, the English-speaking Nisei pressed to “fix the image

of the ethnic community as unquestionably loyal to the United States.”31 The Nisei-directed Japanese

American Citizen’s League (JACL), lead the push for the Americanization of the Nikkei community.

When Issei leaders were taken into custody following Pearl Harbor, the federal government

accelerated a generational shift in leadership by recognizing the JACL as the official mouthpiece of

the Nikkei community. JACL leaders, in an effort to prove their loyalty, fully cooperated with the

government’s plan to evacuate Japanese Americans from the West Coast; they would later be

criticized by other Nikkei for so easily forfeiting the constitutional rights of Japanese American

citizens.32

Conditions in the internment camps were, by all accounts, poor. Cramped, one-bedroom

barracks, long lines for substandard food, and communal bathroom facilities (including toilets with


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no stalls) all contributed to the dehumanization of the Nikkei. Despite such conditions, the

government viewed the camps, and especially camp schools, as an opportune way to assimilate the

Nikkei into American society. In February of 1943, the government, in conjunction with the U.S.

Army (and the support of the JACL), introduced a “loyalty questionnaire” designed to determine

whether residents were eligible for early leave or military service.33

Questions 27 and 28 asked “if

the respondent was ‘willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States in combat duty,’ and

second, if, after swearing allegiance to the United States, he or she would ‘foreswear any form of

allegiance to the Japanese emperor’ or any other foreign government.”34

The questions were terribly

ironic: one asked citizens who had been forcibly imprisoned to serve their country in combat, and the

other had the potential to render the “alien” Issei effectively stateless. “The confusion and anxiety

surrounding the questionnaire created havoc in many families,” and split whole communities. “No-

No” respondents were sent to the Tule Lake camp and branded as disloyal; some were later deported

back to Japan. Many of the “Yes-Yes” respondents were allowed to leave to pursue educations and

careers, or to serve in the United States military.

For many Japanese Americans, the legacy of internment left them understandably

disillusioned with supposed American ideals of liberty, justice, and equality. Many of the Nisei had

come of age in the assembly and relocation centers, and by 1945 had entered adulthood; they

struggled to balance injustice with the burdens of resistance and accommodation. “In spite of the

hardships and human costs,” however, “most individuals, families, and communities adapted,

struggled, resisted, and survived this ordeal.”35

Rise of the Atomic Sun How Japanese Americans Reacted to the Atomic Bombings in Japan

By August of 1945, many Nikkei had left the internment camps. The ban on Japanese

Americans on the West Coast had been revoked in January, and, with the government intent on


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completely phasing out the camps by 1946, a number of Nikkei had returned to their former

communities in California. Still, violence against Japanese Americans in that region – including

arson fires, shootings, and other acts of terrorism – made many wary about returning to their homes.36

As a result, only 5,000 of the 55,000 people cleared to leave the camps had done so by August.

Forty-thousand Nikkei had settled in other parts of the country, while still others were serving in the

military overseas.37

Japanese Americans learned about the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by listening to

many of the same radio broadcasts and reading the same newspaper headlines as their fellow

Americans. For the Nikkei still living in internment camps in August of 1945 – between 45,000 and

50,000 people – outside radio broadcasts and camp newspapers provided much of their news. Camp

newspapers mentioned surprisingly little about Hiroshima and Nagasaki – references to the bombings

were cryptic and largely imbedded in larger stories concerning an imminent Japanese surrender. The

Manzanar Free Press, for example, casually mentions that, “another atomic bomb had been dropped

on Nagasaki. This is the second atomic bomb to be dropped on Japan…” within an August 11 story

about the unconditional surrender of the Japanese army.38 It may seem surprising that ethnic

newspapers did not engage in more dialogue concerning the bomb. However, Yoo explains that, due

to censorship and a conscious effort to put a bright face on things, “the freedom of the press rang as

hollow as other notions of democracy” in the camps.39

The reactions of the Japanese American population, taken as a whole, were not dramatically

different from the greater American population; most Nikkei were shocked and confused, many

relieved yet saddened, while some were completely devastated. A great many remained silent about

their feelings. The experiences of Japanese Americans before and during the war no doubt shaped

their varied responses. For many Japanese Americans, silence probably reflected a general

unwillingness to speak out during a period when patriotic loyalty functioned as a potentially life-


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altering concern; one can only speculate about how many members of the Japanese American

community might have held deep-seated feelings about the bombings but never outwardly expressed

those sentiments. For many, the rapid end of the war overshadowed the immediate significance of

what had occurred in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Additionally, literature documenting the Nikkei’s

specific responses to the atomic bombings is limited. As such, it is difficult to generalize their views.

In an effort to both understand and illustrate the particular reactions of Japanese Americans, I have

divided the population into three groups – typical Japanese Americans (both citizens and non-

citizens), Japanese American military veterans, and Japanese American hibakusha (or explosion-

affected persons). Even within these three distinct groups, responses are by no means monolithic, but

grouping them in this way enable us to begin to understand the complicated set of emotions they

showed regarding the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Tears of Reli ef and Anguish: Typical Japanese Ameri can Reactions to the Atomic Bombings

Late in the afternoon on August 7, 1945, second-generation Japanese American Mary

Matsuda finished her shift in the kitchen of the Jane Lamb Memorial Hospital and headed back to the

nurse’s home to prepare for the next day’s classes. As she walked through the nurse’s lounge, she

picked up a newspaper and read the headline: “First Atom Bomb Dropped on Japan; Missile is Equal

to 20,000 tons of TNT.’” As she studied the photographs of the towering mushroom cloud and a

devastated city, Matsuda’s first reaction was one of panic. “Oh, no!” she thought, “An atomic bomb

has been dropped on Hiroshima!” Later, as more pictures of the destruction and the human suffering

became available, Matsuda described a more complex set of emotional responses. “When I saw the

pictures of Japanese people burned and charred by the atomic blast, I was heartbroken for them. I

was an American by birth, but at that moment, I was Japanese.”40


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Mary Matsuda had grown up helping her family manage a small strawberry farm in western

Washington. Her father had immigrated to the United States in the late 1890’s; years later, he briefly

returned to the land of his birth to bring back his Japanese bride, at which time the couple settled on

rural Vashon Island, located in Puget Sound. After Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese in

1941, the Matsuda family was sent to an internment camp at Tule Lake, California. When the

famous loyalty test was administered to internees, Mary and her brother, the only legal American

citizens in their family, reluctantly volunteered for the United States Cadet Nurse Corps. and the

Army, respectively; her parents remained in at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming.

Mary’s brother was serving in the European theatre, and Mary in the middle of her nurse’s training,

when news of Hiroshima reached her.

Matsuda’s reactions to the atomic bombing were complicated – on the one hand she was

relieved that the war would finally be ending, and on the other she felt deeply connected to the people

whose were lives were scarred and abruptly ended in the land of her ancestry. Of her feelings on

August 7, she wrote, “When I looked at the pictures, I felt nauseated and dizzy, as if I had been hit in

the head and stomach. So many innocent lives wiped out. I knew instantly that the United States had

won the war. My tears were a mix of relief and anguish. Even though part of me was glad the

United States won the war, the Japanese part of me was speechless with grief and horror.”41

Like Mary Matsuda, the reactions of Japanese Americans to news about the use of the atomic

bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were complex. Generalized responses are difficult for a historian

to elicit, for, as one government official reported, “every sort of reaction” was observed when the

news came.42

Responses were no doubt shaped by the various historical factors discussed earlier, like

where they were living when the bombs were dropped, whether the person had come from Hiroshima

or had relatives living there, their particular generation (Issei or Nisei), whether they served in the

military, and finally what information was available to them when the bomb was dropped.


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In her book about World War II internment camps, writer Michi Nishiura Weglyn describes

the reactions of Tule Lake internees to the news of bombings: “For the Issei and Nisei still trapped at

Tule Lake, the atomic incineration of a quarter million kindred fellow humans in Hiroshima ushered

in the final nightmare stage in the sequence of injustices which had issued forth from the order to

evacuate.”43

Nearly a third of the Japanese American immigrants incarcerated at Tule Lake had

come from Hiroshima. First-hand descriptions compiled by the camp’s community analyst Marvin

Opler inform Weglyn’s insights. Opler described how the news of the atomic bombings “left the

[relocation] center stunned on August 8 with a complicated series of reactions.” He further observed:

Issei from Hiroshima-ken were going to hold Memorial Services for relatives assumed to be obliterated;

Ward VIII was leading in this, the ceremonies to be in a definite religious and traditional style….

The news of the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki City (only 28 people from this ken here) was hardly so

devastating. In general, I noted a slight amount of ‘hate-the-hakujin’ [whites] feeling which soon died out,along with some feelings of persecution: ‘Maybe we’ll be bombed next.”…Generally, however, the center

recognized what we noted on the 8th – that the war was over. Over the weekend, the center was distinctly

well up on the news. To say that the imminence of a Japanese defeat spelled gloom is to misread the

picture. People were quietly at their radios; and when I visited I found every sort of reaction.44

Because of their close ties to Japan, members of the immigrant generation exhibited much more

visceral reactions to the news. In Farewell to Manzanar , Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston describes her

Issei father, after hearing the news about his hometown of Hiroshima, “sitting on our steps for long

hours, smoking cigarettes in his ivory holder, staring into the mountains he went to with his eyes

whenever he needed sustenance. Here he sat, a man with no prospects, perhaps now without even a

family in Japan to confirm his own history…”45

When Mary Matsuda learned about the news, she,

too, thought about her Issei parents. Though both had come to America “by choice and stood by their

decision against such terrible odds…Japan was the land of their birth and both of them had family

there.” Eight days after Nagasaki was bombed, she received a letter from her mother that expressed

how America “had a bad bomb that shouldn’t be used in the world and used it to try to make Japan

disappear.” “For us here,” she continued, “we do not talk about it. We might try to hide it but it

cannot be hidden. This splendid America has done a very bad thing… we must never forget that


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America did this kind of thing.”46

Journalist Bill Hosokawa was not able to speak to his parents until

some years after the war, though he recalled that the news of the bombs really affected them.

Hosokawa’s parents, too, were from Hiroshima. They, like so many other Issei, had emigrated from

Japan when they were adults and had much closer familial ties with their homeland. Imagining that

their birthplace had been destroyed was too much to digest for some Issei who refused to believe the

news at all. When Kay Matsuoka’s father heard the news, he immediately dismissed it as “just an old

rumor.”47

The Nisei’s reactions to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were in many ways

more complex than their parents. The Nisei lacked the same direct physical ties to Japan as their

parents, and were a generation caught between two cultures. Most of the Nisei were still in their

adolescence, and for them the memory of the atomic bomb was less distressing. Joe Yasutake was

only twelve years old when his family heard the news. Joe could sense that “the atomic bomb was

really bad, and…it was huge and it killed a lot of people kind of thing.” Though he remembers his

mother grieving for all the dead, he stated, “I don’t remember it really affecting me at the time.”48

For other Nisei children, like Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, looking at the newspapers and hearing

rumors of the bomb spread throughout Manzanar “was as strange, as awesome, as mysteriously

unnerving as Pearl Harbor had been. And in the same way that the first attack finished off one period

in our lives, so this appalling climax marked the end of another.”49

Most Nisei were stunned by the news, and had a difficult time appreciating the scale of the

bomb’s destruction. Bill Hosokawa recalls that the news was “devastating.” Working as a reporter at

the Des Moines Register in Des Moines, Iowa at the time, Hosokawa read about Hiroshima as soon as

the information was reported by the Associated Press. He, like many other Japanese Americans, was

relieved that the war seemed to be ending, however, he did not “really fathom how horrible the bomb

had been until years later.”50

Frank Yamasaki was in a federal penitentiary at McNeil Island – a


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result of evading the draft at the Minidoka Relocation Center – when he heard about Hiroshima from

a fellow inmate. Skeptical of such fantastic news, he had to listen to the radio reports himself before

he believed that it had actually been destroyed by a single bomb. He described feeling shocked, and

struggled to process the news.51 For most Japanese Americans, the far-fetched technology of the

bomb – and the idea that it could almost instantaneously annihilate a whole city – was almost

unimaginable.

When they were able to move past the initial shock, the Nikkei’s feelings about the bombing

were tremendously complicated. Takashi and Mitsue Matsui perhaps best illustrate the dynamic

reactions – all the thoughts and emotions – that Japanese Americans experienced. Takashi was born

in Hood River, Oregon, but attended elementary and secondary school in Japan. He later returned to

the United States and married Mitsue, whose family had emigrated from Hiroshima. Takashi was

drafted in 1942, and was serving as an instructor in the Military Intelligence Service (MIS) when

news of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima circulated through Fort Snelling, Minnesota. Mitsue

remembers that the news was shocking to everyone at the fort. Takashi thought, “Oh my, that’s the

end of the war…but I felt sorry for the hundreds of thousands of victims, and justification…I didn’t

know what to think.”52

Mitsue was devastated, and immediately thought of her family. “I knew then

and there that some of my relatives had perished…and they did, they did actually. And I thought

there was no need for that. I felt that there was no need for that because things were getting pretty,

rather bad in Japan already.”53 Like so many other Japanese Americans, Takashi and Mitsue

Matsui’s reactions were tears somewhere between relief and anguish.54

As Bill Hosokawa described, many of the Nikkei were unable to process the significance of

the atomic bombs until years after. Those with relatives in the atomic cities did not learn the fate of

relatives until months, and sometimes years, afterward. Many of the Nikkei, especially those who

had direct familial ties to the cities, visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the years after the war, and it


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was only then that the devastating effects of the bomb – both on a material and human scale – became

tangible. Not knowing how many members of her family had survived, Mitsue Matsui returned to

Hiroshima during the U.S. occupation and saw the human effects of the bomb firsthand. A few of her

relatives had perished in the initial blast, and others would pass away in the years to come. At that

time, however, she was reunited with one of her cousins, a doctor working at the Red Cross hospital.

She described walking through the hospital with her cousin and seeing the bomb’s victims: “And

there was one person in bed with his hands like that [bent backward], you know, burnt, and my

cousin said, ‘Well, I’m gonna operate on him, so it would be back in position.’ His back was all

burned and I said, ‘I’ve seen enough, you’ll have to excuse me, I want to go home.’”

55

Kay

Matsuoka also had family in Hiroshima, and was not able to confirm who had been killed until letters

came months later. She read about their awful experiences in the aftermath of the bombing, and how

many of them suffered from radiation-induced disease and painful keloid scars, but it wasn’t until she

visited with them personally, and went to the atomic bomb museum (and later to Pearl Harbor), that

she realized how terrible the war had been. “I tell you, war is just awful…And we saw all those

names that perished. No matter which way you see it, Japan or America, it’s just…it’s just awful.”56

Fred Hirasuna’s parents also came from Hiroshima, and his family has made three trips to the city, as

well as one to Nagasaki. He confided to a reporter writing a story on the 50th anniversary of the

bombings that during his visits, “We saw pictures of the maimed and killed. It affected me terribly.

We were in a group with close Caucasian friends. I think they were ashamed.”57 For these Japanese

American citizens, the atomic bombing of their ancestral home was only fathomable after they had

come to terms with the physical effects the bombs had on human beings – many of them kin.


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Japanese American Mi li tary Veterans

United States Army Colonel Harry Fukuhara was on the Philippine island of Luzon when he

heard that two atomic bombs had been dropped on Japan. Though he had every reason to celebrate,

considering he would have been part of the long-dreaded invasion, Fukuhara’s sense of relief was

quickly replaced by anguish. He had grown up in Hiroshima, and his mother and three brothers were

still living there when the bomb had been dropped. It would be months before he would learn their

fate.

Fukuhara was not aware that such a bomb was being developed, but as more information

about its destructive power became available, he was assigned to explain the inconceivable to the

Japanese prisoners on the island. The POW’s were silent after he told them, and Fukuhara recalls

that, “Either they didn’t want to believe me or else the information was beyond their comprehension.

I know that I did not want to believe it myself.” He asked himself many times, “Why? Why did they

drop it on Hiroshima?” Though he tried to remain optimistic, descriptions and photos of the blast’s

magnitude left him with little hope that his family could have survived. He grew depressed. “My

thinking degraded to the point that I blamed myself – that they had died because I had volunteered to

fight against them.”58

A month later Fukuhara joined the occupation forces in Japan. After several

failed attempts, he finally made it to Hiroshima; standing atop the central train platform, Fukuhara

surveyed the flat and lifeless landscape that no longer resembled the city he remembered. Finally

locating the house he had lived in only seven years before, he had a tearful reunion with his mother,

his aunt, and older brother.59

Two of his brothers, serving with Japanese military on an island off the

southern coast, were unaffected. His older brother, however, had been exposed to radiation on his

way to work, and died less than a year later.60

Though they were of Japanese ancestry, over 33,000 Nikkei like Harry Fukuhara served in the

United States military during World War II. Many of them came from the same camps that


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continued to house their loved ones.61

A small number of Nikkei joined the army before the war and

served in regular combat units; most, however, served in one of three segregated units: the 100th

Battalion, 442nd

Regimental Combat Team, or in the Military Intelligence Service (MIS). Both

combat units were made up of mainly Japanese Hawaiians, but in an effort to prove their loyalty to

the United States, many mainland Nikkei volunteered as well.62

Eventually becoming part of the

same unit, the 100th Battalion and the 442

nd Regiment distinguished themselves in battles across

Europe. In the French Alps, for example, the Nikkei soldiers rescued 221 men from the famous Lost

Battalion at the cost of 800 casualties. The 442nd

became the most decorated military unit during

World War II. 6,000 Nisei in the MIS served as interpreters and interrogators in the Pacific, though,

because of the nature of their work, their contributions were not as widely recognized. Still, one

general has asserted that the MIS soldiers “saved a million lives and shortened the war by two

years.”63

Like the members of their community at home, Japanese Americans serving in the military

expressed a wide range of reactions when word reached them about the atomic bombings. Hachiro

Togashi describes the day he heard about the bombings as, “probably the worst day that I had

overseas.” While his family was interned at the Amache Relocation Center, Togashi was seriously

wounded (just shy of his twentieth birthday) while serving in Europe with the 442nd

. Many of his

friends died in combat. Then the news about the bomb arrived. “I had no idea that we had the atomic

bomb…it was devastating because I had a number of fellows in my squad [whose] families were

from Hiroshima.” “Then a few more days later and we hear about Nagasaki and that really…I tell ya,

I really felt bad.”64

Many Japanese American soldiers expressed relief upon hearing that the bombings had

effectively shortened the war. George Takabayahi, a Nisei who grew up in Hawaii and served in the

MIS, was in Okinawa when he heard. Members of his unit, anticipating a protracted invasion of


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Japan, celebrated when they heard the announcement. “For we who were in uniform, that meant that

our exposure to future conflict…that meant the end of the war.”65

Kazuma Taguchi, after enduring

the travails of war in Italy with the 100th Infantry, remembers feeling glad, “because I was supposed

to go back to Europe, you know, or someplace yet.” Later he learned more about the bombings that

tempered his view, “but at that time, in August of 1945, I thought it was a good thing…because my

war would be over.”66

While his family remained interned in Granada, Colorado, Hiroshi Mayeda

was training for the MIS when the war ended. Mayeda expressed relief as his unit “would have been

right in the midst of the invasion of Japan.” In his mind, the war ended “because of the atom bomb

being dropped. I had my personal opinion about dropping the bomb, although young people won’t

agree with me…Well, I’m here today because the bomb was dropped, you see, so that makes a big

difference because the invasion of Japan would have been something awful for both sides.”67

Many veterans like Hiroshi Mayeda felt that using the atomic bombs on Japan effectively

saved lives. James Yamate is one of them. Yamate landed in Normandy with the 44th

Infantry a few

months after D-Day, and was involved in combat across Europe. He was in France when the bombs

were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. His cousin who was serving in the Japanese military,

survived the bombing of Hiroshima, and Yamate admits, “It was a terrible bomb. But all in all, if the

bomb was terrible, it saved a lot of lives. It ended the war… if you weigh the costs, there were a lot

less losses because of the bomb.” He later learned that his unit had been selected to invade Japan in

April of 1946 had the war not ended, which no doubt had an effect on his feelings concerning the

subject.68

Veteran Richard Narasaki felt that, “Regardless of what the feeling is nowadays about the

bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I think most GI’s would feel that it stopped the war…People

died – innocent people, lots of innocent people…[but] if you think about a place like Dresden, the

firebombing of Dresden killed as many people as the atomic bomb did in Hiroshima.” “I feel for the

people in Hiroshima no matter what. But at the same time, we had to end the war.”69


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Ben Honda was another Nikkei who had a vested interest in the long anticipated invasion.

Enduring months of horrific fighting on the Pacific islands of Kwajalein, Saipan, and later Okinawa,

Honda, too, felt the Hiroshima bomb was justified: “When I first heard it, having gone through what I

had with five years in the army, and almost three years of it out there in the battlefield, I was of a

mind to say, ‘well, okay, if it saved one of our soldiers, that’s okay.’” When Honda learned that a

second bomb had been dropped on Nagasaki, his feelings became more complicated. Though he was

glad the war ended when it did, he felt the second atomic bomb “was wrong…I really think that was

wrong.” Jim Tazoi, who was wounded (and consequently received the Purple Heart) while serving

with the 442

nd

in Europe, was also conflicted about the atomic bombings. “Hiroshima was bombed,

and I…maybe that was all right, I don’t know, but this Nagasaki bombing two or three days later…I

wonder if that was necessary.” Tazoi felt Japan was close to surrendering and wondered to himself

whether the second bomb was necessary.70

It is apparent from their responses that many of the veterans are now versed in the more

contemporary debates concerning whether dropping the atomic bombs had been necessary. Some

veterans, aside from how they might have felt immediately after August 9, were strongly influenced

by their experiences in the atomic cities in the months following the bombings. Thomas Sakamoto

saw two years of combat in Pacific theater before being reassigned as a language officer in the Allied

war correspondents. Sakamoto participated in the Japanese surrender ceremony on the deck of the

U.S.S. Missouri before accompanying members of the Press Corps to Hiroshima on September 9.

Sakamoto was the first Japanese American officer to arrive in the destroyed city, and his experiences

there profoundly shaped his feelings about the bomb. While visiting the overcrowded Red Cross

hospital, Sakamoto saw, first-hand, the victims of Little Boy. “Even after 50 years,” he reflects, “it

chokes me up and I find it very difficult to fully describe my feelings of that day.” He witnessed the

women, children, and elderly with flash burns that had “practically and completely peeled off skins


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and faces,” and described the scene as, “gruesome and like hell…as a Japanese American, I was

really shaken up – to think that these defenseless people were subjected to that kind of cruelty by one

bomb, transforming their lives, body, and totally disfiguring their faces was hard to take.”71

Dr. James Yamasaki’s feelings about the bomb represent some of the more compelling, if not

more complex, reactions felt by Japanese Americans. Yamasaki joined the army one week before

Pearl Harbor, and served valiantly as surgeon in the 106th Infantry in Belgium. During the Battle of

the Bulge, he was captured by the German army, and narrowly avoided the fire-bombing of Dresden

as he was being transported across Germany. Yamasaki was eventually transported to a prison camp

near Mooseberg, which he later said reminded him of the relocation facility in Arkansas where his

family was then interned. Liberated by Patton’s troops and sent home, he had just been reunited with

his wife and daughter when he read about the bombing of Hiroshima. “We paid only passing

attention,” he recalled. “An ‘atomic bomb’ meant nothing to us… Even the news of a second bomb,

this one dropped on Nagasaki, seemed unimportant.”72

He later admitted that he understood little

about the bomb’s devastating effects.73

All of that would change a few years later when he was appointed chief physician of the

Atomic Bomb Causality Commission and sent to Hiroshima. He spent the next nine years studying

the effects of radiation on children in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and later contributed to studies on the

natives of the Marshall Islands. Rehearsing all the arguments concerning whether the use of the

atomic bomb was justified, Yamasaki does not seem prepared to offer judgment on historical

contingency. Instead, he succinctly declares, “But I now also know, beyond any doubt or

uncertainty, what an atomic bomb can do. I know the measure of its human toll.”74

As with many of

the Nikkei, seeing the physical effects of the bomb on people, in all of its naked honesty, had a

sobering and intensely emotional impact on Japanese American veterans.


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Japanese Ameri can H ibakusha in H ir oshima

On the morning of August 6, 1945, pregnant Sadako Obata was quietly working in the

kitchen of the home she shared with her elder sister and year-old nephew in Hiroshima. Suddenly,

she saw a blinding flash of light, heard a deafening noise, and lapsed into an unconsciousness state.

When she finally came to, Sadako managed to extricate herself from the decimated rubble of the

house – just nearly escaping a raging fire – and survive for three days before being taken to her

father’s house in a neighboring village. The first atomic bomb had been dropped only 500 meters

from her kitchen. Her husband had been exposed to the bomb while training with the Japanese

military near the center of town; though he sustained no visible injuries from the initial blast, after a

week he began coughing up blood and died shortly after. Sadako’s older sister also succumbed to

effects of acute radiation, and her sister-in-law, who had cared for Sadako in the days immediately

following the bombing, also died in the days to follow.75

Sadako’s tragic experiences were not unlike

those of many other people living in Hiroshima when the atomic bomb was dropped. What makes

her story unique is that she was, in fact, a citizen of the United States.

Most Americans probably do not realize that several thousand of their countrymen were living

in Hiroshima at the time that it was bombed. Many Japanese Americans living in Japan during

World War II were called Kibei, or Nisei who were sent back to the land of their ancestry to receive a

formal Japanese education. Of the nearly 30,000 Kibei Nisei living in Japan in 1929, an estimated 16

percent were in Hiroshima. Of those roughly 4,800 Americans, 80 percent were enrolled in

elementary and middle schools.76

Like many of the other American hibakusha (or explosion-affected persons), Sadako Obata

never planned to permanently reside in Japan. She was born in California, and moved back to Japan

with her parents in 1939. Her parents returned to the United States, leaving Sadako and her older

sister in a Japanese school in Hiroshima. Her parents and other siblings were sent to Arizona’s


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Poston Relocation Center during the war, and after giving her in utero hibakusha daughter up for

adoption, Sadako left Japan and joined her family in the Bay Area in 1947. She eventually remarried

and had several children, many of whom suffered from chronic health problems. Sadako, too, battled

breast cancer and eventually developed bone cancer. Fighting disease her whole life, Sadako was

understandably bitter about the atomic bomb that changed her life. “I wish there had never been

atomic bombs. Any kind of bomb is terrible, but this one is especially scary because of what it does

even after the explosion. There is no end to it…” Struggling to forget the past and not be consumed

by resentment, Sadako can not help but feel bitter every time her health deteriorates. “Many

questions arise inside my mind,” she says, “as to the atomic bomb – ‘Why Hiroshima? Why me?’”

77

Sadako is not alone in her bitterness and frustration. Though many of the American

hibakusha perished in days immediately following the bombing, there were still over one thousand

survivors living in the United States in 1995.78

Though these Americans were bombed by their own

country, their story has garnered little attention from the federal government. Francis Tomosawa was

another Kibei who returned to Hiroshima, along with his mother, so he could benefit from both an

American and a Japanese education. After war was declared, the family was stranded in Japan,

separated from Tomosawa’s father who had remained in Honolulu. Tomosawa was participating in

an outdoor school activity when he saw the brilliant flash of the bomb and was knocked off his feet,

along with his classmates, and sent flying nearly 30 feet back. Though he was spared any lasting

injuries, Tomosawa and his mother spent the nightmarish succeeding days attending to victims who

poured into the local hospital “moaning and crying, asking for their mothers and crying, ‘mizu o

chodai,’ water, water.”79

His experience as a living witness to the atomic bombing convinced Tomosawa that its use

was not necessary, and the fact that many Americans today still justify the bombing saddens him

even more. Though Japanese hibakusha receive medical assistance from their government, American


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survivors to date have received no medical aide from the U.S. government. Because of the

tremendous medical expenses, pain, and emotional stress these Americans face, Tomosawa turned his

frustration into advocacy. He served as the president of the Committee of A-Bomb Survivors, and

along with other hibakusha, has devoted much of his energy petitioning the government to provide

medical help to American victims.80

Kanji Kuramoto is an American hibakusha who felt that use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima

was “the greatest crime ever committed by human beings.”81

In a 1974 California public hearing

convened to petition the state for medical aid to resident victims, Kuramoto related his “grief stricken

and futile attempts to locate his father in the ruins of Hiroshima.”

82

Though he initially tried to forget

those horrendous experiences, he would later dedicate himself to lobbying for the politically

powerless victims who “were completely deserted by the American and Japanese communities.”83

When a bill was finally introduced in the California State Senate, one legislator argued against its

passage asserting, “They were our enemies. Why should we help these people?” Kuramoto, after

hearing this (and the remarks of hecklers), offered his reaction in an interview: “Were we the enemy?

No, we couldn’t be. We were born in America and we only happened to be in Japan when the war

broke out and so couldn’t just return to the U.S.A. How can they call us enemies when we were

injured by our own country’s A-bomb?”84

As insensitive as the legislator’s comments may seem, this perception of the hibakusha

permeated almost all levels of government and public consciousness. Historian David Yoo has noted

that “decision makers made little distinction between citizens and aliens” when it came to the

Nikkei.85

When Kuramoto wrote a letter to President Jimmy Carter in 1978 to appeal for federal

assistance, a reply came from the chief of the Japan desk in the State Department. Informed by the

“erroneous view that the U.S. atomic bomb survivors were Japanese nationals,” the official’s

response reflected the usual “assertion of nonresponsibility of the United States government toward


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the atomic bombs victims, on the grounds that the dropping of the bombs was a justifiable act of

war.”86

The hibakushas’ claims have repeatedly been ignored even though American military

personnel exposed to residual radiation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki receive compensation from the

federal government.87

Because the government – and the general public alike – has paid little attention to their

plight, most Japanese American hibakusha felt like “strangers in their own homeland” – ignored and

abandoned. Many like Kaz Suyeishi were accosted by others Americans who, not distinguishing

them from Japanese citizens, blamed them for “bomb[ing] Pearl Harbor and kill[ing] our boys.”

Unable to communicate in English that she was in fact an American victim of the atomic bomb,

Suyeishi became frustrated and depressed. 88

Like Suyeishi, language barriers prevented many

Japanese American hibakusha from being able to communicate their feelings, especially to American

doctors. The doctors who did treated hibakusha lacked adequate knowledge about atomic bomb

syndrome and radiation sickness, and often showed “unsympathetic attitudes” toward the victims’

debilitating conditions. Tomoe Okai returned to Hiroshima for examination in 1962 when she began

suffering from the effects of the bomb, and was told by her Japanese doctor that “every organ was

affected.” When she returned to the States, an American doctor told her she was merely suffering

from nervousness.89

When Suyeishi began suffering from unusual illnesses upon her return to

Hawaii – including colored spots on her arms, high fevers and weight loss – doctors concluded she

was suffering from homesickness and should return home. 90 Jane Iwashika, battling one physically

disfiguring ailment after another, struggled with self-esteem and abject loneliness.91

Most Japanese American hibakusha struggled with feelings of alienation and helplessness,

and many expressed a discernable bitterness toward the decision to use the bomb. However, not

every Nikkei survivor disagreed with the government’s decision to drop atomic bombs on Japanese

cities. Ken Nakano, a Nisei born in Portland but living in Hiroshima when Little Boy was dropped


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on the city, felt that using the atomic bomb was a necessary evil. Nakano suffered burns on his hands

and face, but faced no long-term radiation induced illnesses. Explaining to a reporter from The

Seattle Times why he felt the bomb was necessary, he asserts, “We in Hiroshima never thought Japan

would surrender.” Repeating a sentiment articulated by many other Americans who felt the use of

the atomic bomb negated a potentially protracted and bloody invasion, Mr. Nakano felt the bombs

ultimately saved lives. “I don’t think there’s a need to apologize. Japan hit first. The revisionist

historian idea that the Japanese will soon surrender is a very wrong guess.”92

Other Japanese

American victims express a certain fatalism (often expressed in Japanese as shigataganai) about the

dropping of the bombs. Despite suffering a lifetime of bomb-related pain and illness, Iwashika

concludes, “What do I think of the atomic bomb? That was war.”93

Confr onting the Past

In 1999, the American public was asked by news agencies to pick an event they felt defined

the twentieth century. The fact that Americans chose the dropping of the atomic bomb suggests that

the legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki continues to affect us deeply. 94

If it does help to define us as a country, however, we have not yet completely figured out

how. Today, years later, the subject still generates prolific discussion and controversy. The debate

surrounding the 1995 Enola Gay exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum exemplifies the ongoing

dialogue between scholars, veterans, and citizens about how we should place the atomic bombs in our

collective memory. Conversation about whether the bombs were strategically necessary has

increased in recent years, and illustrates the deep-seated sensitivities of bomb survivors, military

veterans, and citizens alike. This paper has not attempted to engage questions of historical

contingency – of whether the bombs were necessary or justified – but rather to convey the ways in

which the bombs affected real people, both physically and psychologically.


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For years, by virtue of a silent mutual agreement, we avoided talking about what happened to our family in

Hiroshima. I thought that if I could disassociate myself from the subject and try not to think about it and

avoid talking about it, that it would ease my mind. I busied myself with work in Japan, aiding with the

Marshall Plan to help rebuild the country and creating a bridge between two former enemies that requiredlinguists. Once in a while I’ve had nightmares. I don’t remember what happens in them. Strange thing is,

more than half of them are about Victor.

It is 49 years since Victor died and 27 years since my mother died plagued by unexplainable illnesses. I can

talk about what happened in Hiroshima now, 50 years later. I believe that talking about it now, with a

purpose, was the medicine I needed.”97

I was not sure how to respond to the man I encountered at Hiroshima’s Memorial Peace Park,

but his question has persisted in my mind in the years since my visit. This paper, in a way, is my

answer. It began as a way for me to explore much-known but little-understood historical events

surrounding the atomic bomb, as well as to reconcile my own thoughts and feelings at the cenotaph in

Hiroshima; it ended up moving me toward an understanding of the multiple ways in which Japanese

Americans experienced and reacted to the rise of the atomic sun in Japan. It is my hope that by

highlighting the reactions of Japanese American citizens to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and

Nagasaki, I have given voice to their literary silence, and thereby have contributed to a meaningful

discussion regarding their significant role in modern American history.


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59 Ibid, 13.60 Shioya, Tara, “U.S. Officer Feared Worst for Family Living in Japan,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 5, 1995.61

Tateishi, And Justice for All, xxv.62

History of the 442nd

Regimental Combat Team and 100th Battalion, Go For Broke Educational Foundation, www.goforbroke.org (accessed

November 8, 2005). This site contains information about both units, as well oral histories of their members.63

Tateishi, And Justice for All , xxiv.64

Togashi, Hachiro, Go For Broke Educational Foundation Oral History, www.goforbroke.org (accessed November 21-23, 2005).65

Takabayashi, George, Go For Broke Educational Foundation Oral History, www.goforbroke.org (accessed November 21-23, 2005).66 Taguchi, Kazuma, Go For Broke Educational Foundation Oral History, www.goforbroke.org (accessed November 21-23, 2005).67

Mayeda, Hiroshi, “Interview with Hiroshi Mayeda,” in Regenerations Oral History Project: Rebuilding Japanese American Families,

Communities, and Civil Rights in the Resettlement Era, Chicago Region, Volume I (Los Angeles, CA: Japanese American National Museum, 2000):

451.68

Yamate, James, “Interview with James Yamate,” in Regenerations Oral History Project: Rebuilding Japanese American Families, Communities,

and Civil Rights in the Resettlement Era, San Diego Region, Volume III (Los Angeles, CA: Japanese American National Museum, 2000): 231, 243.69

Narasaki, Richard, Go For Broke Educational Foundation Oral History, www.goforbroke.org (accessed November 21-23, 2005).70 Tazoi, Jim, Go For Broke Educational Foundation Oral History, www.goforbroke.org (accessed November 21-23, 2005).71

Sakamoto, Thomas, “News of the Century: Japan’s Surrender and Hiroshima, September 1945,” Nikkei Heritage (publication of the NationalJapanese American Historical Society), Fall 1995, pg. 10-11.72

Yamazaki, James, Children of the Atomic Bomb: An American Physician s Memoir of Nagasaki, Hiroshima, and the Marshall Islands (Durham,

NC: Duke University Press, 1995): 43.73

Ibid, 4.74

Ibid, 142.75

Rinjiro, SODEI, “Were We the Enemy?” in Hein, Laura and Selden, Mark, Living with the Bomb: American and Japanese Cultural Conflicts in the Nuclear Age (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharp, Inc., 1997): 237.76

Ibid, 233-234.77 Rinjiro, “Were We the Enemy?” 250.78

Tomosawa, Thomas, “American Survivors of Hiroshima,” Nikkei Heritage (publication of the National Japanese American Historical Society), Fall1995, pg. 7.79

Tomosawa, “American Survivors of Hiroshima,” 7.80

Ibid, 7, 11.81

Rinjiro, “Were We the Enemy?” 245.82

Ibid, 245.83 Ibid, 246.84


Yoo, Growing Up Nisei, 135.86

Rinjiro, “Were We the Enemy?” 251-252.87

Lifton and Mitchell, Hiroshima in America, 257.88



Ibid, 241.91

Ibid, 248.92 Dietrich, Bill, “A Closer Look: Bomb History Still Bears Bitterness,” Seattle Times, July 9, 1995.93


Newton, Eric, “Challenged to Identify the Most Important News of the 20th Century, Men and Women Point to Dramatically Different Events,”

USA Today Weekend Magazine, www.usaweekend.com/99_issues/991226/991226century.html (accessed on December 12, 2005).95

Yamazaki, Children of the Atomic Bomb, 144.96

Hosokawa, Bill, Nisei: The Quiet Americans (Niwot, CO: University of Colorado Press, 1992).97 Fukuhara, “The Return,” 13.

Rise of the Atomic Sun

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