‘There Are No Civilians in Japan’

Eighty years after the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki amid the rationale that it would save lives, a new book tells the survivors’ stories

- by M.G. SHEFTALL

THE WRECKAGE There was little left in Nagasaki beyond rubble near the center of the explosion, here four days after the 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.

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.