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Japan Today
3 days ago
- Science
- Japan Today
80 years after the bomb, Nagasaki still has stories to tell
book review By Patrick Parr Time heals all wounds, so the saying goes, but too much time forgets there ever was a wound to begin with. With 'Nagasaki: The Last Witnesses' (Dutton, 2025) author and Shizuoka University professor M.G. Sheftall wants to keep the memory of that wound alive so that we don't have to endure it all over again. 'At 1102 local time,' Sheftall writes, 'Fat Man exploded at an altitude of five hundred meters over a tennis court in Matsuyama-cho, two hundred meters east of the racetrack [pilot Kermit] Beahan had used as his aiming point. For approximately eight seconds after detonation, everything (and everyone) out to about a kilometer and a half from the bomb's fireball was bathed in thermal radiation to a temperature of some four thousand degrees Celsius, which was hot enough to melt the surface of ceramic roof tiles.' Eight seconds. Take a moment and watch the clock tick by. We're in August, and it's around 35 degrees Celsius. Go ahead and add 4,000 degrees to your air conditioner. Eight. Seconds. And here's something even more unfathomable. Some of you will momentarily survive those 'thermal radiation' burns up and down your body … long enough to register one of the most horrific torments a human body has ever endured. How? Well, Sheftall uses ceramic roof tiles, but as he knows … human bone is stronger than ceramic, closer in strength to low-quality steel. So, you're still here. Barely. Sheftall is far more effective at this than me. His research for these two books has been nothing short of astounding and, as I mentioned in my review of his first book, 'Hiroshima: The Last Witnesses,' he made me feel to my core the sheer agony of a nuclear weapon. For approximately eight seconds after detonation, everything (and everyone) out to about a kilometer and a half from the bomb's fireball was bathed in thermal radiation to a temperature of some four thousand degrees Celsius... —M. G. Sheftall Listening to the last witnesses But what will stand as far more memorable is the way Sheftall committed years of his life to understanding the ever-decreasing hibakusha (atomic bomb survivor) community. This is a man who has lived in Japan for nearly 40 years, has a Japanese wife and children, is bilingual and, with grace and humility, has spoken intimately with dozens of hibakusha. He shares their pain, trying to remain objective in approach. Still, as described in the book, there were moments when he could not protect himself from floods of empathy. One such story is Sheftall's personal moment with Norio Gunge, whose brother Yoshio was killed by the bomb, his body never found. Sitting with Gunge-san in his home in Kumamoto, Sheftall listens intently: 'Now, through sobs, he talks about the pain of losing a sibling and says that no one can ever understand that unless they have experienced it themselves. I tell him that I know exactly what that feels like — and then I start to lose it, too. Doing something I have never done with a hibakusha before, I put a hand around Gunge-san's shoulder, and the two of us hold that pose for what is probably only thirty seconds or so but feels much longer.' Sheftall keeps the hibakusha's experience front and center. In the days after the bombing, survivors were tortured with images that seeped deeply into their psyche. Sueko Tateno was the youngest child of five. A junior high school student at the time of the bombing, Sueko suffered from a near-suicidal anxiety: 'Every night Sueko bathed,' writes Sheftall, 'she frantically checked her body for signs of the telltale purple petechiae [bleeding under the skin] that signaled imminent death for hibakusha. Using soap and a tawashi bristle brush — an implement normally used for laundry or kitchen cleaning — she scrubbed at her skin until it bled. Yet no matter how often or hard she washed herself, she could not get over the idea that the American bomb — and the six days she had spent around burning corpses — had fatally contaminated her body.' On Aug. 9, 1945, pilot Charles Sweeney dropped the second atomic bomb over Nagasaki, the blast killing more than 70,000 people by year's end. It does not matter if you think it was justified or if you think it was a war crime. Before starting Sheftall's two-volume series, I was unclear on how I felt. Now, 900 pages later, I understand clearly: These bombs must never be used on human beings ever again. Time may heal, but we must not forget the wounds of history. Sheftall's two-volume series will stand as the definitive examination of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for years to come. "Nagasaki: The Last Witnesses" (Embers Vol. II) By M. G. Sheftall Dutton Release: Sept. 10, 2025 Available in audiobook (¥2,100), Kindle (¥2,954) and hardcover (¥6,650) Patrick Parr is the author of Malcolm Before X. He lives with his wife near Tokyo and teaches at Lakeland University Japan. © Japan Today
Newsweek
5 days ago
- General
- Newsweek
Nagasaki Book Tells Survivor Stories and US Thinking 80 Years After Bombing
In August of 1945, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan—the only time in history that nuclear weapons have been used in combat. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9 led to the end of World War II the following month. The effects on both cities were devastating. In Nagasaki alone, "Fat Man" killed an estimated 40,000 civilians almost instantly, with the number reaching around 70,000 by January 1946 from the effects of radiation poisoning. On the 80th anniversary of the bombing, Nagasaki: The Last Witnesses by M.G. Sheftall, a historian at Shizuoka University in Japan, remembers the lives lost and the world forever changed by nuclear warfare. The two-part series features firsthand accounts from hibakusha—the Japanese word for atomic bomb survivors—to give personal accounts of the aftereffects of this unprecedented weapon. In this excerpt from his second book in the Embers series, Sheftall recounts how young Nagasaki civilians unwittingly went about their mornings before their lives changed forever. (Original Caption) 09/13/1945-Nagasaki, Japan: A Japanese civilian pushes his loaded bike down a path which has been cleared of rubble. On either side of the path debris, twisted metal, and gnarled tree stumps fill the... (Original Caption) 09/13/1945-Nagasaki, Japan: A Japanese civilian pushes his loaded bike down a path which has been cleared of rubble. On either side of the path debris, twisted metal, and gnarled tree stumps fill the area. This is in the center of the devastated area. More Bettmann / Contributor/Getty On Tinian Island in the Pacific Ocean at 0030 hours on August 8, 1945, 33 hours after its roaring return to North Field, Enola Gay sat empty and crypt quiet on its macadam hardstand. The whirring movie cameras and cheering crowds of its August 6 mission-accomplished celebrations had been long since replaced by the ambient buzz of insects and the occasional passing sentry jeep. Fifteen hundred and fifty miles to the northwest, in the harbor city of Nagasaki, 16-year-old Gunge Norio was walking home after working a night shift at a Mitsubishi ordnance plant. Roughly 1.2 miles southeast of this factory, in Nagasaki's central business district, two of Norio's Mitsubishi coworkers, 15-year-old Kiridōshi Michiko and 14-year-old Ishida Masako, were catching their last few precious hours of sleep ahead of another day shift of thankless toil for Japan's rapidly collapsing war effort. So was 13-year-old Tateno Sueko, who, later that morning, would be helping to dig bomb shelters with other members of her neighborhood association. In the northern Nagasaki suburb of Urakami, a 21-year-old Catholic novice named Itonaga Yoshi would soon rouse in her convent room for matins prayers with her fellow sisters in the chapel of Junshin Girls' School. Around and amongst these five adolescents, 40,000 men, women and children were a few hours away from waking up to the last full day of their lives. Thirty hours later, they would be casualties of history's second (and hopefully last) nuclear weapon dropped in anger. Across the Sea of Japan from Nagasaki, Kiridōshi Michiko's uncle, Tetsurō, was one of the million-odd soldiers defending the northwestern frontier of Japanese-occupied Manchuria. Along the border of this territory, the Red Army was using the cover of darkness to move more than 5,000 tanks, 26,000 artillery pieces and 1.5 million men into final jumping-off points. Thirty minutes later, these forces would spring into action, fulfilling Joseph Stalin's Yalta Conference promise to Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill that the Soviet Union would officially join the war against Japan three months to the day after the capitulation of Nazi Germany. About 2,500 miles southeast of Stalin's massing armor, and several hundred feet from Enola Gay's hardstand, scientists and engineers from the Manhattan Project's "Project Alberta" technical team were pulling an all-nighter in a purpose-built air-conditioned assembly shed. Here, they were readying a second atomic bomb—a "Fat Man" (so called because of its rotund shape) plutonium device of the same type first ground-tested in the New Mexico desert barely three weeks previously. In a little more than 24 hours, this second Fat Man would be dropped from a B29 on a Japanese city—either Nagasaki or the arsenal town of Kokura. While the "sure thing" and technologically much simpler one-off uranium device that had been dropped on Hiroshima had gone off, as expected, without a hitch, none of the Project Alberta team members were as confident about the odds of this far more complex and mechanically sensitive Fat Man device functioning as designed in the inherently chaotic conditions of a combat mission. Moreover, the probability of malfunction was further increased as the technicians were being forced to race against the clock; the second atomic strike was being timed to take advantage of the last remnants of a patch of favorable weather over the target area of western Japan. If the August 9 window of good drop weather were missed, it would be nearly a week until the weather cleared enough for the 509th to get its next chance to drop a visually aimed second atomic bomb on Japan. The Americans' meteorological urgency was a direct consequence of the strategic imperative to exploit the psychological shock value of Hiroshima. It was hoped that dropping a second bomb so soon after the first would lead the Japanese to believe that there were many more of these weapons in the American arsenal than there actually were, and that these would continue to be dropped on Japan until that country either surrendered or—as per Harry Truman's July 26 Potsdam Declaration threat (which the Japanese so far were refusing to acknowledge)—ceased to exist. To ramp up the political and psychological pressure on Japan's national leadership, as well as its general populace, Twentieth Air Force B29s—in between incendiary raids—had been dropping over Japanese cities in the wake of the Hiroshima bombing leaflets featuring a photo of Little Boy's mushroom cloud and bearing a message translated into Japanese threatening to use "the most destructive explosive ever devised by man." The leaflet continued: "We have just begun to use this weapon against your homeland. If you still have any doubt, make inquiry as to what happened to Hiroshima when just one atomic bomb fell on that city. Before using this bomb to destroy every resource of the military by which they are prolonging this useless war, we ask that you now petition the Emperor to end the war.... You should take steps now to cease military resistance. Otherwise, we shall resolutely employ this bomb and all our other superior weapons to promptly and forcefully end the war. EVACUATE YOUR CITIES." View of the atomic bomb, codenamed 'Little Boy,' as it is hoisted into the bomb bay of the B-29 Superfortress 'Enola Gay' on the North Field of Tinian airbase, North Marianas Islands, early August, 1945.... View of the atomic bomb, codenamed 'Little Boy,' as it is hoisted into the bomb bay of the B-29 Superfortress 'Enola Gay' on the North Field of Tinian airbase, North Marianas Islands, early August, 1945. The bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on August 6. More PhotoQuest / Contributor/Getty But even if the Americans' bombing schedule were met, and despite these air-dropped appeals to popular fear, there was still a possibility that the second bombing would prove as unconvincing to the Japanese leadership as the first apparently had been. In this case, the unlimited-bombs bluff would lose its teeth (assuming it had ever had any in the first place) long before a third bomb became available, which would be some time around August 19 to 21. As a matter of military prudence, the Americans could not dismiss out of hand official crowings that had featured center stage in Japanese propaganda content since the fall of Saipan a year earlier about possessing the ultimate strategic weapon of a populace that was prepared to die en masse in a final decisive battle—a so-called hondo kessen—to defend its homeland rather than dishonor it with surrender. Until the Americans began hitting the invasion beaches of Kyushu later that fall, they would not know if all of this Japanese talk about "a hundred million balls of fire," and flaming mass suicide was a sincere declaration of national resolve or mere propaganda bluster. The Americans, then, were not the only players in this strategic standoff in which bluff and resolve were indistinguishable. The Japanese played their hand by raising in the American imagination the specter of a ground-combat and kamikaze-plane apocalypse that, if the Americans went ahead with their plans for a land invasion of the Home Islands, could have been akin in degree of ferocity to the bloodbath the Allies had just endured on Okinawa (where they had suffered some 50,000 casualties and up to twice as many Japanese civilians might have perished), but potentially multiplied by orders of magnitude in terms of scale. The Japanese aim here was to get the Americans to blink first and cut a peace deal more generous than the unconditional surrender they had been demanding since the Casablanca Conference of January 1943. In the early days of August 1945, Emperor Hirohito and his most trusted advisors—unaware not only of what was about to happen in Manchuria, but also of what the Soviet leader had promised in Yalta six months earlier—held out pipe-dream hopes that the still technically Japan-neutral Stalin might help to broker such a deal. In what can only be considered either a gross lapse of foresight or a fatal case of wishful thinking, no one at the highest levels of strategic decision-making in Tokyo seems to have advised the emperor—the only person in Japan capable of ordering an end to the war—of the possibility that a solemnly sworn threat of imminent Armageddon, rather than halting in its tracks the American juggernaut then headed for the Home Islands, might instead spur that enemy to deploy ever more effective means of indiscriminately slaughtering Japanese soldiers and civilians in their millions. Although American field commanders at the in theater operational level were contemplating using a third atomic bomb on Tokyo, higher-echelon decision-makers in Washington were coming around to the idea that there would be little strategic value in dropping another very expensive bomb just to rearrange the rubble in the imperial capital and kill another hundred thousand or more civilians, especially if the hearts of Japan's leaders were already inured to such sacrifice. Instead, the third bomb and the rest of the next production run of plutonium Fat Man devices could be put to better use as tactical battlefield weapons for the upcoming invasion of Kyushu, prepping the landing sites and neutralizing Japanese command and logistic centers farther inland when the Allies began hitting the beaches there on November 1, by which time, General Leslie R. Groves assured Washington, the Manhattan Project organization would have 10 or more such devices ready to go. In the meantime, the Allies would press on with their systematic dismantling of Japan's economy and infrastructure by conventional means and spare no collateral damage in the process. A passage from an official intelligence briefing for the Fifth Air Force succinctly encapsulated the operant mindset of this strategy: "[T]he entire population of Japan is a proper Military Target.... THERE ARE NO CIVILIANS IN JAPAN. We are making War and making it in the all-out fashion which saves American lives, shortens the agony which War is and seeks to bring about an enduring Peace. We intend to seek out and destroy the enemy wherever he or she is, in the greatest possible numbers, in the shortest possible time." Toward this end, the country's sea-lanes, harbors, and inland waterways would continue to be blockaded and strangled by submarines, aerial mining ("Operation STARVATION") and air attack. The Far East Air Forces would hit tactical targets and immobilize the national railway network—an effort that would interdict enemy troop and supply movement as well as prevent the vitally important autumn rice harvest from reaching the main population centers on the Tokyo–Osaka urban corridor, a development that would result in mass famine in the Home Islands by year's end. Nagasaki: The Last Witnesses book jacket Nagasaki: The Last Witnesses book jacket Dutton Adult HC 2005 From Nagasaki by M. G. Sheftall, published by Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2025 by M. G. Sheftall.
Newsweek
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Newsweek
Nagasaki 80 Years Later, World 'More Dangerous Than Cold War,' Says Author
Author MG Sheftall and book jacket of Nagasaki: The Last Witnesses Author MG Sheftall and book jacket of Nagasaki: The Last Witnesses Dutton Adult HC 2005 While the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki helped hasten the end of World War II in 1945, they also unleashed devastation so horrific that the weapon has not been used in warfare since. On the 80th anniversary of this tragedy, M.G. Sheftall, an historian at Shizuoka University in Japan, reflects on the impacts of the bombing that are still felt in Japan—and the rest of the world. In his new book, Nagasaki: The Last Witnesses, Sheftall uses survivor stories to recount the events of that fateful day and share the lessons that can be learned from them. In this Q&A, Sheftall discusses one of the most horrifying facts about the effects of the bombing, its long-term political and societal implications for Japan, what effect the U.S. bombing of Iranian nuclear sites will have on nuclear proliferation, the lessons of Nagasaki and more. Q _ Last year you published Hiroshima. Why did you choose to write about Nagasaki separately? A _ Not long into the actual writing process, I realized that treating these subjects to the level of detail that they deserved was simply too much material for one book. Was it difficult to get people to share their experiences? A Hiroshima survivor once told me, in effect, that for every hibakusha (atomic bomb survivor in Japanese) willing to talk to a white American male about their bomb experiences, there are many more whose resentment and trauma regarding the bomb(s) are still too intense to do so. I think what he was trying to tell me is that I was only encountering the hibakusha who were OK with talking about this, and he was warning me against buying into the widespread and comforting postwar myth that the hibakusha, as a group, uniformly embrace a sort of Gandhi-like acceptance of what happened to them, and to their loved ones, in 1945, and that all is forgiven toward the greater good—and in the hope—of world peace. Yes, there are hibakusha like that, and they are the ones that tend to get all of the media attention. But—at least according to this particular gentleman—those hibakusha are in the minority and, in that sense, my interview subjects should not be considered to be completely representative of the hibakusha experience in toto. In fact, in my own field work experience, I did have several cases of hibakusha who had initially agreed to be interviewed, but who had gotten cold feet about it at the last minute. Is there a story that you found especially compelling? It is almost impossible to narrow that field down to a single episode that merits special mention. But if forced to do so, I think it would be the horrifying fact—brought to my attention by a research colleague and Nagasaki hibakusha, Dr. Masao Tomonaga—that no one in Hiroshima or Nagasaki was "instantly vaporized" by the bombs, not even someone standing at Ground Zero, directly under the explosions. Rather, they were blowtorched alive by thermal rays, at temperatures of 3,000-4,000°C [5,432-7,232°F], for a minimum of a few seconds before the shock wave from the explosion blew them to pieces. If any human beings have ever experienced eternity in a second, it was certainly such victims who were caught out in the open in the respective zones of total destruction of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. But in many ways, the victims who took longer to die—for example, from acute radiation syndrome—had it much worse, because they suffered that much longer, in some cases succumbing weeks or months after the events. How has the fallout affected health in the surrounding cities? There are almost 80 years' worth of data from rigorous longitudinal studies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors which prove, beyond doubt, that their exposure to the radiation from the bombs has had lifelong health consequences for them, most typically in terms of leukemia and other bomb-related cancers. This was because of the damage caused to the DNA in the cells of their bodies. These same longitudinal studies have yet to turn up any conclusive evidence that this radiation exposure has had transgenerational genetic consequences for the offspring of hibakusha. The United States drops an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan three days after dropping one on Hiroshima. Japan would surrender five day later, ending World War II. | Location: Nagasaki, Japan. The United States drops an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan three days after dropping one on Hiroshima. Japan would surrender five day later, ending World War II. | Location: Nagasaki, Japan. Bettmann / Contributor/Getty As for the physical environments of the two cities themselves, ambient radiation there has for all intents and purposes returned to "normal" levels, although it is said that there are still some slightly "warm" spots in the northern part of Nagasaki, due to the incomplete fission of the plutonium core of the bomb dropped on that city. Certain precautions have to be taken in these areas, for example, [for] construction projects involving significant excavation. What are the long-term political and societal implications in Japan? First and foremost, there is a quite understandable moral aversion to nuclear weapons among the general populace, and this has been consistent throughout the entirety of the postwar period. That said, there has been talk of late from certain politicians and other public figures—openly, for the first time in Japanese history—promoting the idea that, because of America's changing strategic stance on the world stage, Japan can no longer rely on the traditional postwar "American nuclear umbrella" for its national security, and thus should begin developing its own nuclear weapons. But I think it would take a years-long, dedicated campaign of active opinion-influencing on the part of the Japanese state to get even a slight majority of the populace on board with such a proposal. How do you think the U.S.'s June bombing of Iranian nuclear sites fits within the history of nuclear proliferation? Will it deter Iran and other non-nuclear countries? I think many of the countries that do not yet have nuclear weapons may be looking at what just happened to Iran, then comparing that to what has not happened—for example, to nuclear-armed North Korea—then drawing from that observation natural conclusions about the future of their own national security policies. As a result, we may be entering a phase of out-of-control nuclear proliferation posing risks to the world that are, in their way, even more dangerous than the prospect of nuclear Armageddon the world endured during the worst phases of the Cold War confrontation between America and the former Soviet Union. What do you want readers to understand about nuclear weapons? That these horrific, inhuman and potentially civilization-, or even species-annihilating, weapons must never, ever be used in anger again.
