In his book Para(graph) Trooper for MacArthur, my father talks about taking the first group of correspondents into Nagasaki after the dropping of the atomic bomb. The dropping of the bomb caused Japan to surrender in World War II.

Why is This Important?

I’m writing at a time when we’ve seen increased tensions in the world with North Korea and now Iran. We need to keep in mind that the United States is the only country ever to have used an atomic weapon. In my father’s book, he justifies this by saying the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while horrific, saved hundreds of thousands of lives by ending the war. A conservative estimate of 225,000 died in the bombings of the two cities.

He quotes author William Manchester as saying, “You think of the lives which would have been lost in an invasion of Japan’s home islands–a staggering number of Americans but millions of Japanese–and you thank God for the atomic bomb.”

Here is What They Saw

“Flying time was relatively short,” Dad wrote…”In about an hour we were over the city. Looking down on the red-tinged brown, scarred landscape, it was difficult to imagine that the area we were looking at was once the smoky and busy industrial section of this once great steel-producing city…

“The city appeared as if a giant broom had swept nearly everything away under a rug of nothingness. I had seen bombed cities before, but I couldn’t believe that a single bomb could cause so much destruction…”

Badly Burned Woman with Her Child

Along the way, the press group found a woman who was badly injured carrying a small child. When my father stopped her, she unbuttoned her blouse. While my father was startled, he soon realized she did this to show her extensive burns. The child was crying.

Shinji Owada’s Story

They then found a man named Shinji Owada, who had a bandaged arm and head. He recalled not seeing or hearing anything unusual until he witnessed a “flash of light” that turned into a bright orange fireball. “Millions of degrees at its core, it roared in boiling waves down into the city, finally sucking the life from Nagasaki,” Dad wrote.

Owada was knocked to the ground by a wave of heat and concussion. His house shook and began to fall down. He took his dazed wife and son quickly to a relative’s home two miles away. Along the way they battled many hysterical and horribly burned citizens.

“He said he saw many people running toward the river with their arms and legs in charred shreds of flesh, hanging from the bones,” Dad said.

Thousands of Nagasaki Stories

“There were thousands of stories in Nagasaki, and our group saw many pitiful sights of people with radiation burns who, in dreadful agony, were slowly dying,” my father said. Japanese doctors asked if there were any cure for the bomb’s effects on the human body. There are not. This was obvious in the modern-day Chernobyl nuclear accident in Russia.

Resentment?

“If there was any resentment in the hearts or minds of the people, we did not see it or sense it,” my father wrote. However, their interpreter said many Japanese people considered use of the atomic bomb as way beyond the contingencies of war. “There is surely some hate here,” the interpreter said. “How would you like to have such a horror dropped on your city?”

What Could We Say?

“No one managed a reply,” Dad wrote. “What could we say?”

Application Today

We need to remember that the U.S. is the only power ever to have used an atomic weapon. And as we approach tensions with North Korea, Iran and others, we should keep the following numbers in mind. The U.S. has 6,800 nuclear warheads. It also spends more on its nuclear arsenal than all other countries combined. Russia has 7,000 and is investing in modernizing its warheads and delivery systems. This is followed by the United Kingdom, with 215; France, 300; China, 270; India, 115; Pakistan, 125; Israel, 80, although it maintains much secrecy about this; and North Korea, fewer than 10.

These numbers came from the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

Dad’s Books

Dad’s book, Para(graph) Trooper for MacArthur is available in hardback on Amazon (not from me), and will soon be available as an Amazon paperback or Kindle ebook. His other books, Post Scripts and County Seat Paper are available from Amazon as both paperback and Kindle ebook.