Sheftall's Hiroshima: an extraordinary account of the last atomic bomb survivors
"Hiroshima: The Last Witnesses” is the story of the hibakusha, then and now. Unsurprisingly, it is not an easy read.
To remember the last test explosion of a nuclear weapon in the atmosphere you have to be approaching 60 years of age. To have any recollection of the Cuban Missile Crisis you have to be 70 or older. And only someone approaching 90 can have any personal memory of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Most poignantly, only a very small number of the Japanese who experienced the actual bombings that destroyed the two cities where they were living in August 1945 are still alive and able to remember. They are known in Japan as hibakusha or atom bomb survivors. Alongside the even smaller number of Koreans and Chinese then stationed in Hiroshima, they are the only witnesses of the impact of the first and hitherto only uses of nuclear weapons in war.
Until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and Vladimir Putin's nuclear sabre-rattling, the spectre of nuclear war had for most people seemed a thing of the past. It was assumed such a possibility had become inconceivable. And memories of the first atomic bombings and of past Cold War confrontations were fading as the years passed. The signal achievement of M.G. Sheftall’s new book, “Hiroshima”, is to remind us of what the actual use of nuclear weapons meant for those who suffered under their impact. The stories told by the declining numbers of survivors are to that extent acts of witness; but they are also words of warning to the complaisant who think nuclear weapons can never be used again.
Unsurprisingly, “Hiroshima” is not an easy read. Sheftall tells of horrors and heroism, of sometimes fortunate but most often of deeply unfortunate circumstances. Whether individuals were inside a concrete or wooden structure, whether at work or ill at home, whether in the centre of the city or sheltered by the surrounding hills, was often the difference between life and death. And whilst many deaths were effectively instantaneous, others came later the same day or weeks or months thereafter. Ionising radiation emitted by the bomb exacted slow punishment for the accident of living in Hiroshima in the midst of a war that wouldn’t seem to end.
Sheftall is particularly well-placed to write his account. An American who has lived in Japan for nearly forty years, who is married to a Japanese woman and teaches at a Japanese university, his research has been exhaustive. His seeking out of hibakusha has been tenacious as has his cultivation of individuals often understandably reluctant to revisit a painful past.
“Hiroshima” is the story of the hibakusha, then and now. It is an account of what happened to the city on 6 August 1945 and on the days which followed. But it is also the story of how the city set about rebuilding itself physically and psychologically.
The scene is set at the beginning and end of Sheftall’s book far away from Hiroshima on the US Air Force base on Tinian Island in the Marianas archipelago in the north west Pacific east of the Philippines. Here the B-29 bomber group had been discretely assembled. The “Enola Gay”, the aircraft that was to carry the "Little Boy" atomic device towards the Japanese Home Islands, was commanded by Colonel Paul Tibbets. As dawn rose, the pilot and crew prepared to drop the now live device over the port city of Hiroshima. After months of secret preparation, they knew the scale of the destruction they were about to unleash.
Far below them, thousands of Japanese were starting their daily lives as normal, or at least as much as anything was any longer normal in wartime Japan. Sheftall’s narrative shifts backwards and forwards – sometimes rather confusingly it must be said – from descriptions of the city and population of Hiroshima in 1945 to the creation of the Peace Park as a memorial nine years later and the city’s continuing peacetime evolution. But at its core “Hiroshima” is a disturbingly cool telling of a painful unmooring of tens of thousands of lives and of perhaps as many as 140,000 deaths.
Even before that fateful August morning, Japanese cities up and down the country had been pummelled by “conventional” bombs. Indeed the US Air Force was running out of "militarily significant" targets. Meanwhile many in Hiroshima thought they had been lucky to escape the earlier bombings and hoped their luck would hold out. But unbeknownst to them their city had been spared for a purpose and that purpose was to be served on 6 August. A matter of days later another city hitherto spared, Nagasaki, would suffer the same fate.
Against the possibility of American bombing raids, the local population had prepared as best they could, all too aware of the many vulnerable wooden dwellings in the city. Firebreaks were constructed along main roads to help contain anticipated fires and to allow movements of people and vehicles. With increasing labour shortages, children as young as twelve were formed into cadres of assistants for some tasks. Of course, all such preparations were to no avail as "Little Bomb" was detonated above the central administrative and commercial districts of the city close to the estuary port. The initial stunning light was followed by a rolling blast of air and then darkness and soon fire on an unprecedented scale. Those effects could at least be seen but the ionising radiation emitted by the bomb was unanticipated, unseen and without end.
Rather in the manner of a horrific pointillist picture, Sheftall paints in the dots through the eyes and experience of the hibakusha. The effect of his method is cumulative and as the story of those days in August unfolds the reader repeatedly meets up with families and individuals as they seek assistance and often offer it, too. Though lives were torn apart, individuals showed extraordinary self-discipline and adherence to the cultural expectations of Imperial Japan. Even as hundreds of corpses had to be cremated and the stench and sight of human decay was all around them, many blocked out the immediate horror to do what they saw as their duty and as existentially necessary.
Though lightly touched upon, Sheftall also draws out a political context which manifested itself in different ways in post-war Japan. There was above all the memory of the deaths from the atomic bombings and the later deaths from cancers induced by continuing radiation effects up to the present day. But were those who suffered in Hiroshima (and Nagasaki) “victims” or dutiful “heroes”?
This raised ethical questions as well as financial ones. For if hibakusha had died in service of the Emperor as “heroes", were they not as much entitled to financial support as former members of the imperial armed forces? And when in 1954 Japanese fishermen on the “Lucky Dragon” ship were injured or killed from radiation fall-out from a US atmospheric nuclear test in the Pacific, they received compensation from the US government. If they were to be compensated, why not the people of Hiroshima who were also “victims" of US nuclear fall-out? There was no simple way forward though eventually and subject to certain criteria, financial support was agreed for the hibakusha.
Even then there were political dangers for, if the hibakusha were remembered as “heroes”, might they not be made to serve a post-war Japanese nationalist narrative? That is why supporters of the far-right in Japan, not least senior politicians, have sought in recent decades to downplay the “victim" narrative in memorials established in or near the Peace Park.
The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have cast long shadows across Japan’s history. Those shadows have served also to sustain a pacific national defence policy. Though Japan took the then controversial decision to develop civil nuclear power, the country has always been at the forefront of efforts to support the goal of international nuclear disarmament. But the geopolitics around Japan have been shifting and doubts about the US nuclear guarantee have grown in the face of an increasingly strong nuclear-armed China. As the hibakusha gradually fade away, will Japanese memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki still animate their nuclear pacifism?
It is perhaps not a coincidence at a time when nuclear threats are being made by Russia that the Nobel Peace Prize was this year awarded to the Nihon Hidankyo organization of hibakusha. The organisation will receive the prize in Oslo next month and the citation includes the following words about Nihon Hidankyo’s achievements in “demonstrating that nuclear weapons must never be used again”.
Hiroshima: The Last Witnesses by M.G Shefthall, Headline Press, September 2024, £30