Nagasaki and the Hibakusha Experience of Sumiteru Taniguchi: the Painful Struggles and Ultimate Triumphs of Nagasaki Hibakusha

Volume 18 | Issue 16 | Number 1 | Article ID 5447 | Aug 15, 2020 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Nagasaki and the Hibakusha Experience of Sumiteru Taniguchi: The Painful Struggles and Ultimate Triumphs of Nagasaki Hibakusha Sumiteru Taniguchi Introduction by Peter J. Kuznick Abstract: Sumiteru Taniguchi was one of the Many of the more than 250,000 who lived in “lucky” ones. He lived a long and productive Nagasaki on August 9, 1945 were not so lucky. life. He married and fathered two healthy Tens of thousands were killed instantly by the children who gave him four grandchildren and plutonium core atomic bomb the U.S. dropped two great grandchildren. He had a long career that day from the B29 Bockscar, captained by in Japan’s postal and telegraph services. As a Major Charles Sweeney. The bomb, nicknamed leader in Japan’s anti-nuclear movement, he “Fat Man,” exploded with a force equivalent to addressed thousands of audiences and21 kilotons of TNT and wiped out an area that covered three square miles, shattering hundreds of thousands of people. Many of the windows eleven miles away. Some 74,000 were more than 250,000 who lived in Nagasaki on dead by the end of the year. The death toll August 9, 1945 were not so lucky. reached 140,000 by 1950. Included among the victims were thousands of Korean slave Keywords: Nagasaki, atomic bomb, hibakusha, laborers, who toiled in Japanese mines, fields, Sumiteru Taniguchi, the atomic decision and factories. Since then, atomic bomb-related injuries and illnesses have claimed thousands more victims and caused immense suffering to Sumiteru Taniguchi was one of the “lucky” many of the survivors. ones. He lived a long and productive life. He The scene of death and destruction defied married and fathered two healthy children. He description. Corpses, many of which had been had a long career in Japan’s postal and charred by the blast, lay everywhere. Susan telegraph services. As a leader in Japan’s anti- Southard, in her groundbreaking book nuclear movement, he addressed thousands of Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War, describes audiences and hundreds of thousands of the scene that U.S. occupation troops people. He traveled to at least 23 countries. encountered when they landed on September The organizations in which he played a23, 1945: “The Urakami Valley had vanished prominent role were nominated several times from existence, corpses were burning on for the Nobel Peace Prize. cremation pyres, skulls and bones were piled 1 18 | 16 | 1 APJ | JF on the ground, and people were walking Enemy Situation.” The section on the through the ruins with beleaguered and empty “Possibility of Surrender” clearly stated: expressions.” Among the troops was Keith Lynch, a sailor from Nebraska. Lynch wrote to his parents that he had just seen “a sight I hope The Japanese ruling groups are aware of my children, if I am so fortunate, will never the desperate military situation and are have to see, hear of, or ever think of. It was increasingly desirous of a compromise horrible and when you get to thinking, peace, but still find unconditional unbelievable…. Such a thing as I saw yesterday surrender unacceptable….a considerable cannot be described in words. You have to see portion of the Japanese population now it and I hope no one ever has to see such a consider absolute military defeat to be thing again.” probable….An entry of the Soviet Union into the war would finally convince the The death toll was even higher and the Japanese of the inevitability of complete destruction greater in Hiroshima, which the defeat. U.S. had obliterated three days earlier with a uranium core atomic bomb. There, some 200,000 were dead by 1950. The Nagasaki Truman recognized the growing desperation of bomb was more powerful than the one that Japanese leaders, whose citizens were leveled Hiroshima, but damage was limited by becoming increasingly demoralized. The U.S. the fact that the bomb missed its target and had firebombed and largely destroyed more that the mountains surrounding Nagasaki, than 100 Japanese cities, leaving millions which is located in a valley, contained the blast. homeless. With the food supply shrinking and However, in Urakami Valley, the center of the transportation system in tatters, starvation Nagasaki’s Christian population, where the loomed. Energy supplies had run so low that bomb landed, nearly 70 percent of thenew Japanese pilots could barely undertake the population perished. training flights needed to prepare for battle. U.S. forces had decimated Japan’s air force and Questions about the atomic bombings have navy. And, as the July 6 report indicated, persisted ever since those fateful days in Japanese leaders were looking for a way out August 1945. Renowned journalist Edward R. and American leaders knew it. Truman Murrow asked President Truman in a 1958 described the intercepted July 18 cable television interview, “When the bomb was between officials in Tokyo and Moscow as “the dropped, the war was near to ending anyway. telegram from the Jap emperor asking for Was this the result of a miscalculation of the peace.” Based on other recently intercepted Japanese potential? Was our intelligence faulty cables, his close advisors concurred. They knew in this area?” Truman correctly denied that he that giving the Japanese assurances that they had miscalculated or that the intelligence had could keep the emperor, thereby easing been faulty. He knew exactly what he was Japanese fears that the emperor would be tried doing. For months, in fact, Allied intelligence as a war criminal and possibly executed, would had been accurately reporting Japan’s growing likely bring surrender. Secretary of War Henry desire to quit and the fact that there were Stimson pushed Truman and Secretary of State alternatives to using atomic bombs to end the James Byrnes to drop the demand for war. On July 6, 1945, in preparation for the unconditional surrender and inform the Potsdam Conference, the CombinedJapanese that the emperor could stay. Most of Intelligence Committee of the Combined Chiefs Truman’s top military and civilian advisors of Staff issued a top secret “Estimate of the joined Stimson in that endeavor. General 2 18 | 16 | 1 APJ | JF Douglas MacArthur, Southwest PacificAtomic Bomb and the Apocalyptic Narrative” Supreme Commander, later declared, perhaps The Asia-Pacific Journal July 12, 2007.) Many somewhat overoptimistically, that the Japanese scientists knew he wasn’t exaggerating. would have happily surrendered in May if U.S. Physicist Edward Teller had been pushing for leaders had changed the surrender terms. He immediate development of hydrogen bombs for later told former President Herbert Hoover that years. Fellow Hungarian Leo Szilard warned if Truman had acted on Hoover’s “wise and that the destructive force in such bombs could statesmanlike” memo of May 30, 1945be almost unlimited in size. Los Alamos advocating changing the surrender terms, it scientific director J. Robert Oppenheimer had “would have obviated the slaughter atearlier warned top government and military Hiroshima and Nagasaki in addition to much of leaders that within three years the U.S. would the destruction …by our bomber attacks. That likely have weapons between 700 and 7,000 the Japanese would have accepted it and gladly times as powerful as the relatively primitive I have no doubt.” bomb that would flatten Hiroshima. In less than a decade, scientists were indeed testifying But that was not the only way to induce before Congress about the feasibility of surrender without use of the atomic bombs. developing a thermonuclear explosive with the U.S. leaders could also have waited for the power of 700,000 Hiroshima bombs. Insanity Soviets to declare war against Japan and begin was the order of the day. As Lewis Mumford the invasion of Japanese-occupied territories wrote, “madmen,” calmly, rationally planning and perhaps Japan itself. The U.S. had pressed annihilation, had seized the levers of power. As repeatedly for Soviet involvement and, at Yalta Sumiteru Taniguchi understood, they have not in February 1945, Stalin had finally agreed to relinquished it since. invade three months after the end of the war in Europe. Truman was confident that this would The question that plagues many historians is do the trick. When he got Stalin’s confirmation not whether the bombs needed to be used to at Potsdam that the Soviets were coming in, he prevent an invasion that was not even wrote in his diary on July 17, “He’ll be in the scheduled to begin for another three months Jap War on August 15. Fini Japs when that against a foe that had clearly been defeated. comes about.” He wrote to his wife the next Obviously, they did not. Seven of America’s day, exulting, “We’ll end the war a year sooner eight five star officers in 1945 are on record now, and think of the kids who won’t be saying as much. Admiral William D. Leahy, killed!” Truman’s personal Chief of Staff, said that in using the atomic bombs, the U.S. “adopted an But Truman’s responsibility goes beyond ethical standard common to the barbarians of slaughtering innocent civilians. Makingthe dark ages.” Even the National Museum of Truman’s actions totally indefensible was the the U.S. Navy in Washington, DC acknowledges fact that Truman knew that he was beginning a that the vast death and destruction wreaked by process that could end all life on the planet and atomic bombings “made little impact on the said so on at least three occasions. While at Japanese military. However, the Soviet invasion Potsdam, most famously, he reacted to an in- of Manchuria…changed their minds.” The depth briefing on the incredible power of the question is not whether the atomic bombs were Alamogordo bomb test by shuddering, “It may militarily or morally justifiable—they clearly be the fire destruction prophesied in the were not.

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