"Scientific knowledge has progressed enough to develop highly sophisticated missiles... but there is still no cure for my illness."
-Taniguchi Sumiteru
The author of this very insightful but tragic volume reportedly earned a Master of Fine Arts to write this book. She spent twelve years researching and composing it, and the compendium of survivors' experiences included herein reflects her dedication to bringing to a larger audience the experiences of survivors. "Nagasaki" essentially tells the stories of five primary individuals, who describe in excruciating detail the upper limits of man's inhumanity to man.
I don't want to engage in a political discussion here regarding the morality of Truman's decision to drop the two atomic bombs on Japan, a debate which will probably rage as long as the events are remembered. As a side note - whether it was in anticipation of the criticism he would undoubtedly encounter in the aftermath is also still hotly debated - Truman recorded in his diary on July 25, 1945, that "I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use [this weapon] so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital [Kyoto] or the new [Tokyo]. He and I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one."
The following day, July 26, Allied leaders issued the Potsdam Declaration, which laid out demands for Japan's unconditional surrender, including an ultimatum which informed their leadership that the subsequent attack for their failure to capitulate would result in "the inevitable and complete destruction of the Japanese armed forces and... utter devastation of the Japanese homeland." The Allies' intended use of atomic weapons was not mentioned.
What most people don't know, however, is that the US wasn't alone in the decision to use them. Great Britain also had to consent to that course of action, in accord with the Quebec Agreement, a long-secret pact between the UK and the US regarding the coordinated development of nuclear power, both for peaceful and military purposes. It was signed in August, 1943, by Churchill and Roosevelt in Quebec, Canada - hence the name - and stipulated that both nations would contribute resources to the development of nuclear weapons, but also that they would never use them against each other OR other countries WITHOUT MUTUAL CONSENT.
This much-celebrated book tells the stories of, in particular, five "hibakusha," roughly translated as "bomb-affected people," a term unfortunately still little-known outside of Japan. Its release was not without (some legitimate) controversy, however. It was published on the seventieth anniversary of the bombing, in fact. Yes, it's one-sided. Yes, it discounts "historical context" and the political and military climate of the day which led to the decision to use these devastating new weapons, the consequences of which few other than the inventors really realized. Yes, it omits a detailed catalogue of Japanese aggression - not only the attack on Pearl Harbor, but also the many other atrocities committed by the Empire during the war - and paints Nagasaki residents as victims... but all that's OK.
This book instead focuses on the invaluable experiences of the people who witnessed and endured that terrible day firsthand, and that's where the focus, at least for this review, should remain. A litany of books and articles have been written which address those and innumerable other topics related to the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japanese cities, but this one recounts the human factor in the accounts of those who survived it, loosely speaking. I keep going back to the words of some 9/11 survivors, who reported in the wake of their life-changing experiences: "we aren't survivors... we just didn't die."
It's also somewhat unique in that it focuses on Nagasaki rather than Hiroshima, which, as many in the book have rightly complained, has been historically overlooked. Admittedly, much of the attention has instead been paid to the first atom-bombed city. In fact, Nagasaki wasn't even the primary target that day, so its destruction was somewhat the result of mere chance. The initial, intended target was the city of Kokura, but because it was largely obscured by drifting smoke from fires resulting from a firebombing raid on the nearby city of Yahata the previous day, the bomber crew elected to move on to the secondary target, and the rest is history.
If you're reading this review, you're at least familiar with the rudiments of this historical event: in a nutshell, on the morning of August 9, 1945, a B-29 bomber, christened "Bockscar" by its crew and flown by Major Charles W. Sweeney, took off from Tinian Island and flew into history. The crew was tasked with the goal of nothing short of ending World War II. Its payload was the so-called "Fat Man" bomb, a balloon-shaped, five-ton plutonium implosion weapon whose design had been tested in the "Trinity" detonation in July of '45. Its effectiveness was shortly to be proved again.
At 11:01 AM local time, a last-second break in the clouds over similarly-clouded-over Nagasaki provided the opportunity to drop the bomb. The "Fat Man" weapon was released and detonated 47 seconds later, at 11:02, above a tennis court halfway between a Mitsubishi steel and arms plant and the Nagaski arsenal. Its yield was approximately 21 kilotons, about five more than the "Little Boy" device that was dropped over Hiroshima three days earlier.
It's unclear how many people were killed outright in the blast. Casualty estimates range from 60,000 to 80,000 - a third of the population - over a period of four months, mostly resulting from burns and other injuries, and the unanticipated effects of widespread radiation sickness, now termed ARS: acute radiation syndrome. The first person officially certified to have died of radiation poisoning was Midori Naka, who died eighteen days after the bombing of Hiroshima, but untold tens of thousands followed her.
Also among the dead were a reported eight Allied prisoners of war, but the figure may have been higher. The eight confirmed deaths included a British RAF corporal and seven Dutch POWs. However, several other POWs survived, including one American: Joe Kieyoomia, a Navajo captured after the fall of Manila who also survived the Bataan Death March lived because he reportedly had been shielded from the effects of the blast and radiation by the concrete walls of his cell.
In the wake of the devastating bombings, for which Japan had no defense, the Empire's capitulation was formally announced on August 15, with the emperor's famous words, "the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage..." Its formal surrender was signed on Sept. 2, 1945, by foreign affairs minister Mamoru Shigemitsu aboard the USS Missouri. However, the Allied occupation of Japan was already underway by that time, beginning on August 28. It was only with the arrival of Allied forces and their scientists that the true scale of the devastation and the long-term effects of the bombs began to be realized.
The Japanese government has recognized about 650,000 "hibakusha," with just over 113,000 still alive as of 2023. The author notes that "hibakusha history is a complex and multidimensional story, and there are few straight lines in the survivors' lives." As such, she weaves their individual accounts together into a heartbreaking and poignant memoir, which is a testament to the human will to survive against almost insurmountable odds. Five of these survivors, all of whom were teenagers at the time of the bombings, are featured in this moving book. These include Taniguchi Sumiteru, Do-oh Mineko, Nagano Etsuko, Wada Koichi and Yoshida Katsuji, although the stories of many more also appear, notably, those of several medical personnel, including Takashi Nagai, a doctor working in the radiology department of the Nagasaki Medical College Hospital at the time of the bombing who labored tirelessly to save the lives of the initial survivors despite his own severe injuries.
Taniguchi Sumiteru (26 Jan 1929-30 Aug 2017) was sixteen years old at the time of the bombing. He was a mail carrier for the post office at the time, and had been making deliveries on his bicycle, without a shirt due to the oppressive summer heat. He estimates that he was about 5,900 feet north of the hypocenter at the time of the explosion. He suffered instant, severe, third-degree burns which melted the skin from his back and left arm. After he was found, he was carried to a hill, where he lay for two days with no aid while all the initial survivors around him perished.
He was finally rescued on Aug. 11, and taken to a clinic 18 miles from Nagasaki, where it was determined that he stood almost no chance of survival. He was later moved, however, to a primary school where survivors were being treated, and then to Omura Naval Hospital, where he spent 21 months lying on his stomach. As a result, he also developed bedsores on his chest so severe that he reported that "the movement of my heart and other organs became visible through the skin."
Taniguchi is perhaps most famous for the photograph taken of his injuries: in October, 1945, a US Marine photographer took a picture of his blistered back, which is now exhibited in museums around the world. It was also featured on Taniguchi's own business card. By May, 1947, he could still only sit up, but, against all odds, he survived, and was finally discharged from the Omura hospital in March, 1949, nearly four years later. He returned to his work at the post office, but still required medical treatment, eventually enduring dozens of surgeries and procedures to remove benign growths and keloid tumors. Despite his medical challenges, Taniguchi became an outspoken activist who advocated for global nuclear disarmament, until his death of duodenal papilla (pancreatic) cancer at the age of 88.
Fellow survivor Do-oh Mineko was a fifteen-year-old factory worker at the time of the bombings. She was inspecting torpedoes in a weapons facility when the bomb detonated. Her primary injuries resulted from hundreds of glass shards from shattered windows being embedded in her back and a critical head injury that caused her to linger in a semi-coma for months. She also suffered from severe radiation sickness that resulted in almost all her hair falling out.
As such, she remained a virtual recluse in her home for almost ten years before she attempted to venture out in public. Due to the stigma of being labeled a hibakusha and for fear of having a sick or disabled child, Mineko never married or had children, instead choosing to pursue an illustrious career as a representative of a cosmetics company in Tokyo, where she moved at age 26, and remained for most of her life. She actually became the company's first female executive, but she continued to conceal her identity as a hibakusha until she was in her late 60s, when she retired and finally began telling her story to schoolchildren.
Nagano Etsuko was a sixteen-year-old airplane parts factory worker. Earlier in the day, she had fled the factory to return home after an air-raid siren went off. Her mother had sent her two siblings, a younger sister and brother away to live with their grandmother, but she had recently gone to retreive them, against her mother's wishes. Her two siblings were both killed in the bombing and its aftermath. Etsuko lived with the guilt of their deaths all of her life, especially since her mother also blamed her. They reconciled just days before her mother's death.
Wada Koichi was an eighteen-year-old streetcar driver who was on a lunch break inside the terminal when the bomb exploded. He had feigned blindness to avoid enlistment, which resulted in his being labeled an anti-war activist. He was thus subjected to frequent harassment and abuse from the police. The force of the blast collapsed the structure on top of him and his co-workers, trapping him under a beam. Miraculously, he wasn't seriously injured, and attempted to carry others to safety. He continued to work tirelessly on recovery teams, but reportedly watched his best friend die; he then lit the fire of his friend's funeral pyre.
Wada returned to work just a few short months after the blast: when seven streetcars resumed operation, he drove the fourth. Although he only suffered minor injuries, compared to so many of the people around him, like many other survivors, he long resisted speaking out about his experiences, for fear of ostracism and the irrational fear of the general public that the hibakusha carried some permanent, communicable disease or condition. He only decided to do so decades later, after holding his first grandchild, which resulted in a flashback of the sight of the charred remains of an infant he had stepped over while searching for missing fellow streetcar drivers. He later spent years gathering information about the 110 streetcar drivers who had died in the bombing, and worked tirelessly to raise funds for a memorial to them. He retired in 1987 after 43 years with the Nagasaki Streetcar Company.
Yoshida Katsuji, a jovial thirteen-year-old, was reportedly lowering a bucket into a well when he looked up and saw what appeared to be two parachutes descending through the clouds. He called out to his friends to look up, as "something's falling!" At that instant, the bomb detonated. Yoshida was severely burned on one side of his face, which resulted in permanent disfigurement. He spent more than a year in a hospital, and was only released sixteen months later, but, as with many of the other survivors, he continued to endure multiple surgeries. The skin had melted so severely that he could barely open his mouth enough to eat.
Although he recovered to some degree and even eventually married, his own wife admitted to finding him unattractive and even grotesque at times. Even his children weren't spared from the aftermath of the bombings: they reported that they were mercilessly harassed and bullied by other children because of their father's disfigurement. Yoshida, like many other survivors, resisted telling his story, until years later, on account of his visible injuries - he was also in his 60s when he began to speak publicly of his experiences.
Honorable Mention Takashi Nagai (3 Feb 1908-1 May 1951) was a Japanese Catholic physician who, ironically, specialized in radiology. He is sometimes known as The Saint of Urakami, for his work immediately following the bombing and attempts to treat survivors, despite having incurred serious injury himself. He had worked at the Nagasaki Medical College since 1928, and converted to Catholicism in 1934. Dr. Nagai was working in the radiology department at the hospital at the time. He wrote a hundred-page medical report about his observations which famously documented the "concentric circles of death" which emanated from around the hypocenter.
Takashi had sustained a serious head wound which severed his right temporal artery, an injury which confined him to bed for a month. He shortly thereafter returned to Urakami, the epicenter of the blast, and built a small hut from the remains of his old house, where he had discovered that his wife had perished in the bombing, although their two children survived. He resumed teaching and began to write a series of best-selling books, but his health continued to deteriorate. He died of leukemia on May 1, 1951 at the age of 43. In 1991, the Takashi Nagai Peace Award was founded, to reward recipients for their contributions to the improvement of health care for hibakusha and social welfare.
The book does indeed chronicle Life After Nuclear War, if one can call it that, as many didn't have life for very long. In the years following the main events, survivors began to die in the tens of thousands from illnesses they had fought since the day of the bombings, most of which were the result of high-dose radiation exposure. As the author notes, the bombs had burned their bodies from the inside out - those who initially survived shortly thereafter succumbed to, in particular, cancers, especially leukemia. Survivors also experienced nerve damage, digestive and other internal ailments, miscarriage, and generational birth defects. Due to the degree of suffering they encountered in the bomb's aftermath, not a few took their own lives, choosing not to survive, but to depart this life to be with all those they had lost.
The book also describes some of the unconscionable actions of the Americans and others in the wake of the bombings, who essentially viewed and treated the affected hibakusha as guinea pigs, harvesting the organs of the victims and essentially seizing specimens of survivors for analysis. American military personnel, those very people whom survivors saw as responsible for their losses, followed the hibakusha for years, without compensation. The author also notes the censorship which followed, even in the US, where a propaganda campaign attempted to silence any criticism of the use of the bombs and painted it as an unfortunate necessity to stop the war.
"Nagasaki" received critical acclaim, as the winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, a finalist for the Ridenhour Book Prize, Chautauqua Prize, the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing and the PEN Center USA Literary Award. It was also named one of the best books of the year by The Economist, The Washington Post and the American Library Association. It is, unfortunately, a timely one, and reminds us of the enduring legacy of a nuclear attack, as the threat of nuclear war still looms large on the international stage.
-Taniguchi Sumiteru
The author of this very insightful but tragic volume reportedly earned a Master of Fine Arts to write this book. She spent twelve years researching and composing it, and the compendium of survivors' experiences included herein reflects her dedication to bringing to a larger audience the experiences of survivors. "Nagasaki" essentially tells the stories of five primary individuals, who describe in excruciating detail the upper limits of man's inhumanity to man.
I don't want to engage in a political discussion here regarding the morality of Truman's decision to drop the two atomic bombs on Japan, a debate which will probably rage as long as the events are remembered. As a side note - whether it was in anticipation of the criticism he would undoubtedly encounter in the aftermath is also still hotly debated - Truman recorded in his diary on July 25, 1945, that "I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use [this weapon] so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital [Kyoto] or the new [Tokyo]. He and I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one."
The following day, July 26, Allied leaders issued the Potsdam Declaration, which laid out demands for Japan's unconditional surrender, including an ultimatum which informed their leadership that the subsequent attack for their failure to capitulate would result in "the inevitable and complete destruction of the Japanese armed forces and... utter devastation of the Japanese homeland." The Allies' intended use of atomic weapons was not mentioned.
What most people don't know, however, is that the US wasn't alone in the decision to use them. Great Britain also had to consent to that course of action, in accord with the Quebec Agreement, a long-secret pact between the UK and the US regarding the coordinated development of nuclear power, both for peaceful and military purposes. It was signed in August, 1943, by Churchill and Roosevelt in Quebec, Canada - hence the name - and stipulated that both nations would contribute resources to the development of nuclear weapons, but also that they would never use them against each other OR other countries WITHOUT MUTUAL CONSENT.
This much-celebrated book tells the stories of, in particular, five "hibakusha," roughly translated as "bomb-affected people," a term unfortunately still little-known outside of Japan. Its release was not without (some legitimate) controversy, however. It was published on the seventieth anniversary of the bombing, in fact. Yes, it's one-sided. Yes, it discounts "historical context" and the political and military climate of the day which led to the decision to use these devastating new weapons, the consequences of which few other than the inventors really realized. Yes, it omits a detailed catalogue of Japanese aggression - not only the attack on Pearl Harbor, but also the many other atrocities committed by the Empire during the war - and paints Nagasaki residents as victims... but all that's OK.
This book instead focuses on the invaluable experiences of the people who witnessed and endured that terrible day firsthand, and that's where the focus, at least for this review, should remain. A litany of books and articles have been written which address those and innumerable other topics related to the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japanese cities, but this one recounts the human factor in the accounts of those who survived it, loosely speaking. I keep going back to the words of some 9/11 survivors, who reported in the wake of their life-changing experiences: "we aren't survivors... we just didn't die."
It's also somewhat unique in that it focuses on Nagasaki rather than Hiroshima, which, as many in the book have rightly complained, has been historically overlooked. Admittedly, much of the attention has instead been paid to the first atom-bombed city. In fact, Nagasaki wasn't even the primary target that day, so its destruction was somewhat the result of mere chance. The initial, intended target was the city of Kokura, but because it was largely obscured by drifting smoke from fires resulting from a firebombing raid on the nearby city of Yahata the previous day, the bomber crew elected to move on to the secondary target, and the rest is history.
If you're reading this review, you're at least familiar with the rudiments of this historical event: in a nutshell, on the morning of August 9, 1945, a B-29 bomber, christened "Bockscar" by its crew and flown by Major Charles W. Sweeney, took off from Tinian Island and flew into history. The crew was tasked with the goal of nothing short of ending World War II. Its payload was the so-called "Fat Man" bomb, a balloon-shaped, five-ton plutonium implosion weapon whose design had been tested in the "Trinity" detonation in July of '45. Its effectiveness was shortly to be proved again.
At 11:01 AM local time, a last-second break in the clouds over similarly-clouded-over Nagasaki provided the opportunity to drop the bomb. The "Fat Man" weapon was released and detonated 47 seconds later, at 11:02, above a tennis court halfway between a Mitsubishi steel and arms plant and the Nagaski arsenal. Its yield was approximately 21 kilotons, about five more than the "Little Boy" device that was dropped over Hiroshima three days earlier.
It's unclear how many people were killed outright in the blast. Casualty estimates range from 60,000 to 80,000 - a third of the population - over a period of four months, mostly resulting from burns and other injuries, and the unanticipated effects of widespread radiation sickness, now termed ARS: acute radiation syndrome. The first person officially certified to have died of radiation poisoning was Midori Naka, who died eighteen days after the bombing of Hiroshima, but untold tens of thousands followed her.
Also among the dead were a reported eight Allied prisoners of war, but the figure may have been higher. The eight confirmed deaths included a British RAF corporal and seven Dutch POWs. However, several other POWs survived, including one American: Joe Kieyoomia, a Navajo captured after the fall of Manila who also survived the Bataan Death March lived because he reportedly had been shielded from the effects of the blast and radiation by the concrete walls of his cell.
In the wake of the devastating bombings, for which Japan had no defense, the Empire's capitulation was formally announced on August 15, with the emperor's famous words, "the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage..." Its formal surrender was signed on Sept. 2, 1945, by foreign affairs minister Mamoru Shigemitsu aboard the USS Missouri. However, the Allied occupation of Japan was already underway by that time, beginning on August 28. It was only with the arrival of Allied forces and their scientists that the true scale of the devastation and the long-term effects of the bombs began to be realized.
The Japanese government has recognized about 650,000 "hibakusha," with just over 113,000 still alive as of 2023. The author notes that "hibakusha history is a complex and multidimensional story, and there are few straight lines in the survivors' lives." As such, she weaves their individual accounts together into a heartbreaking and poignant memoir, which is a testament to the human will to survive against almost insurmountable odds. Five of these survivors, all of whom were teenagers at the time of the bombings, are featured in this moving book. These include Taniguchi Sumiteru, Do-oh Mineko, Nagano Etsuko, Wada Koichi and Yoshida Katsuji, although the stories of many more also appear, notably, those of several medical personnel, including Takashi Nagai, a doctor working in the radiology department of the Nagasaki Medical College Hospital at the time of the bombing who labored tirelessly to save the lives of the initial survivors despite his own severe injuries.
Taniguchi Sumiteru (26 Jan 1929-30 Aug 2017) was sixteen years old at the time of the bombing. He was a mail carrier for the post office at the time, and had been making deliveries on his bicycle, without a shirt due to the oppressive summer heat. He estimates that he was about 5,900 feet north of the hypocenter at the time of the explosion. He suffered instant, severe, third-degree burns which melted the skin from his back and left arm. After he was found, he was carried to a hill, where he lay for two days with no aid while all the initial survivors around him perished.
He was finally rescued on Aug. 11, and taken to a clinic 18 miles from Nagasaki, where it was determined that he stood almost no chance of survival. He was later moved, however, to a primary school where survivors were being treated, and then to Omura Naval Hospital, where he spent 21 months lying on his stomach. As a result, he also developed bedsores on his chest so severe that he reported that "the movement of my heart and other organs became visible through the skin."
Taniguchi is perhaps most famous for the photograph taken of his injuries: in October, 1945, a US Marine photographer took a picture of his blistered back, which is now exhibited in museums around the world. It was also featured on Taniguchi's own business card. By May, 1947, he could still only sit up, but, against all odds, he survived, and was finally discharged from the Omura hospital in March, 1949, nearly four years later. He returned to his work at the post office, but still required medical treatment, eventually enduring dozens of surgeries and procedures to remove benign growths and keloid tumors. Despite his medical challenges, Taniguchi became an outspoken activist who advocated for global nuclear disarmament, until his death of duodenal papilla (pancreatic) cancer at the age of 88.
Fellow survivor Do-oh Mineko was a fifteen-year-old factory worker at the time of the bombings. She was inspecting torpedoes in a weapons facility when the bomb detonated. Her primary injuries resulted from hundreds of glass shards from shattered windows being embedded in her back and a critical head injury that caused her to linger in a semi-coma for months. She also suffered from severe radiation sickness that resulted in almost all her hair falling out.
As such, she remained a virtual recluse in her home for almost ten years before she attempted to venture out in public. Due to the stigma of being labeled a hibakusha and for fear of having a sick or disabled child, Mineko never married or had children, instead choosing to pursue an illustrious career as a representative of a cosmetics company in Tokyo, where she moved at age 26, and remained for most of her life. She actually became the company's first female executive, but she continued to conceal her identity as a hibakusha until she was in her late 60s, when she retired and finally began telling her story to schoolchildren.
Nagano Etsuko was a sixteen-year-old airplane parts factory worker. Earlier in the day, she had fled the factory to return home after an air-raid siren went off. Her mother had sent her two siblings, a younger sister and brother away to live with their grandmother, but she had recently gone to retreive them, against her mother's wishes. Her two siblings were both killed in the bombing and its aftermath. Etsuko lived with the guilt of their deaths all of her life, especially since her mother also blamed her. They reconciled just days before her mother's death.
Wada Koichi was an eighteen-year-old streetcar driver who was on a lunch break inside the terminal when the bomb exploded. He had feigned blindness to avoid enlistment, which resulted in his being labeled an anti-war activist. He was thus subjected to frequent harassment and abuse from the police. The force of the blast collapsed the structure on top of him and his co-workers, trapping him under a beam. Miraculously, he wasn't seriously injured, and attempted to carry others to safety. He continued to work tirelessly on recovery teams, but reportedly watched his best friend die; he then lit the fire of his friend's funeral pyre.
Wada returned to work just a few short months after the blast: when seven streetcars resumed operation, he drove the fourth. Although he only suffered minor injuries, compared to so many of the people around him, like many other survivors, he long resisted speaking out about his experiences, for fear of ostracism and the irrational fear of the general public that the hibakusha carried some permanent, communicable disease or condition. He only decided to do so decades later, after holding his first grandchild, which resulted in a flashback of the sight of the charred remains of an infant he had stepped over while searching for missing fellow streetcar drivers. He later spent years gathering information about the 110 streetcar drivers who had died in the bombing, and worked tirelessly to raise funds for a memorial to them. He retired in 1987 after 43 years with the Nagasaki Streetcar Company.
Yoshida Katsuji, a jovial thirteen-year-old, was reportedly lowering a bucket into a well when he looked up and saw what appeared to be two parachutes descending through the clouds. He called out to his friends to look up, as "something's falling!" At that instant, the bomb detonated. Yoshida was severely burned on one side of his face, which resulted in permanent disfigurement. He spent more than a year in a hospital, and was only released sixteen months later, but, as with many of the other survivors, he continued to endure multiple surgeries. The skin had melted so severely that he could barely open his mouth enough to eat.
Although he recovered to some degree and even eventually married, his own wife admitted to finding him unattractive and even grotesque at times. Even his children weren't spared from the aftermath of the bombings: they reported that they were mercilessly harassed and bullied by other children because of their father's disfigurement. Yoshida, like many other survivors, resisted telling his story, until years later, on account of his visible injuries - he was also in his 60s when he began to speak publicly of his experiences.
Honorable Mention Takashi Nagai (3 Feb 1908-1 May 1951) was a Japanese Catholic physician who, ironically, specialized in radiology. He is sometimes known as The Saint of Urakami, for his work immediately following the bombing and attempts to treat survivors, despite having incurred serious injury himself. He had worked at the Nagasaki Medical College since 1928, and converted to Catholicism in 1934. Dr. Nagai was working in the radiology department at the hospital at the time. He wrote a hundred-page medical report about his observations which famously documented the "concentric circles of death" which emanated from around the hypocenter.
Takashi had sustained a serious head wound which severed his right temporal artery, an injury which confined him to bed for a month. He shortly thereafter returned to Urakami, the epicenter of the blast, and built a small hut from the remains of his old house, where he had discovered that his wife had perished in the bombing, although their two children survived. He resumed teaching and began to write a series of best-selling books, but his health continued to deteriorate. He died of leukemia on May 1, 1951 at the age of 43. In 1991, the Takashi Nagai Peace Award was founded, to reward recipients for their contributions to the improvement of health care for hibakusha and social welfare.
The book does indeed chronicle Life After Nuclear War, if one can call it that, as many didn't have life for very long. In the years following the main events, survivors began to die in the tens of thousands from illnesses they had fought since the day of the bombings, most of which were the result of high-dose radiation exposure. As the author notes, the bombs had burned their bodies from the inside out - those who initially survived shortly thereafter succumbed to, in particular, cancers, especially leukemia. Survivors also experienced nerve damage, digestive and other internal ailments, miscarriage, and generational birth defects. Due to the degree of suffering they encountered in the bomb's aftermath, not a few took their own lives, choosing not to survive, but to depart this life to be with all those they had lost.
The book also describes some of the unconscionable actions of the Americans and others in the wake of the bombings, who essentially viewed and treated the affected hibakusha as guinea pigs, harvesting the organs of the victims and essentially seizing specimens of survivors for analysis. American military personnel, those very people whom survivors saw as responsible for their losses, followed the hibakusha for years, without compensation. The author also notes the censorship which followed, even in the US, where a propaganda campaign attempted to silence any criticism of the use of the bombs and painted it as an unfortunate necessity to stop the war.
"Nagasaki" received critical acclaim, as the winner of the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, a finalist for the Ridenhour Book Prize, Chautauqua Prize, the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing and the PEN Center USA Literary Award. It was also named one of the best books of the year by The Economist, The Washington Post and the American Library Association. It is, unfortunately, a timely one, and reminds us of the enduring legacy of a nuclear attack, as the threat of nuclear war still looms large on the international stage.
