DECEMBER IN HIROSHIMA
By MARTIN HALLIWELL
CIRCLING low over Hiroshima in the wan sun of the Japanese winter, like vultures late for the feast, war correspondents click their cameras through the aircraft windows, tot up (on the fingers of two hands) the number of concrete buildings still standing in the bombed area, shake their heads once or twice, observe that there are tin shacks sprouting up everywhere, which shows the Japanese are returning to the town all right, and then turn to consult their watches to see if they will get back to Tokyo before dark. The atom bomb is now a worldwide commonplace, and in the present iconoclastic mood of the world almost a joke as well: so that even before the end of August an enterprising café proprietor in Manila had rechristened his establishment "Atomic Coffee Shop." It is important that our discussions of this subject should be firmly. based On the -facts as they are known, also that these facts should be widely known, since no British, American or Canadian citizen can shirk his share of the responsibility for. the two incidents. Among democratic peoples the secrecy in which a project is undertaken is no more an excuse than ignorance of the law is an excuse for crime. The atoin bomb was a manifestation of three nations' corporate will to destroy, no less terrible for being a weapon blindly forged in the fury of war. Let us not forget in the years to come to what lengths Mars drove us.
Hiroshima was ;.n ordinary Japanese town, lying on a river delta closely surrounded by fir-covered hills ; its peacetime population
was 310,000 (about the size of Hull), living mainly in ordinary Japanese wooden houses. The bomb fell soon after nine a.m. August 7th and burst above ground as it was intended to do. The exact height and place at which it burst is still unknown ; for whereas at Nagasaki it is possible to calculate this from the slant of the blast marks on the sides of the remaining buildings, the destruction at Hiroshima is too complete for this calculation to be possible. The area of total destruction, extending at least 4 square miles, was simultaneously subjected to blast, fire and toxic radiation ; the effects of the last have been overstated in some reports, and it seems doubtful whether anyone not actually in the town at the moment of the explosion was affected. Those who were affected received organic injuries which I have not the technical knowledge to discuss ; but-the story is told of a band of 30 coolies who had walked to their job in Hiroshima that morning and were caught sheltering behind a concrete building when the bomb burst. Though shielded by the building from the blast, they received the full effects of the gamma rays, and all but 4 died that afternoon after they had walked back the 15 miles to their home village. The blast seems to have been less effective on water than on land ; boys bathing in one of the river channels had their heads cut off but no damage to their bodies under the water.
The dead are estimated by Americans at 70,000 to 120,000, most lost without trace. Making every allowance for the uncertainty of statistics in the East, this wide variation gives an eloquent picture of the chaos which must have followed the explosion, chaos which also resulted in the civil authorities swallowing their pride and appealing to the military for help, a "loss of face" normally 'un- thinkable for any official body in Japan. A local newspaper circulating 200,000 copies before the war was printing only soo by hand in the middle of October.
This was all achieved by one atom bomb of moderate size, equal in explosive force to 20,000 tons of T.N.T. What then when we hear rumours that scientists have " perfected " one equivalent to 20,000,000 tons, and even believe themselves capable of reversing the axis of the earth, whatever that may mean? I for one have no desire to be snuffed out at the whim, or possibly even by the negligence, of a laboratory assistant, however good he may be at his job.
History, I think, will later be trying to answer the following questions :
(a) would a bomb of such known destructive capacity, if .ready say 6 months earlier, have been dropped without warning on a town in Europe? It is difficult to escape the feeling that the Japanese, by their remoteness from the Western scene, have been regarded as teeming guinea-pigs for whom no particular pity need be felt. This is not of course a Christian conception.
(b) was anything gained by the secrecy observed throughout? Secrecy during the initial stages is one thing ; but if, as we are told, the manufacturing process takes years and no other combination of peoples can assemble the brain power, the raw material and the industrial capacity for the job, there seems little point in keeping us in the dark on the principles involved in the use of such a weapon.
(c) was a strategy worked out for the use of the atomic weapon, and who conceived the plan for dropping only two bombs, the second- of which, at Nagasaki, was actually on a secondary target? It is again difficult to picture a responsible commander authorising the release of so novel an engine of destruction. anywhere but on its primary target, or in the sea on the way home. (The Nagasaki bomb burst over the centre of the town and left the docks intact.) (d) is there ultimately anything to choose between the Japanese massacre of 6o,000 civilians in Manila, and the Allied massacre of 70,000 to 120,000 civilians in Hiroshima? The Japanese worked by hand, in cold blood, and were responsible for countless outrages against individuals, too horrible to describe ; the Allies worked from the air, also in cold blood, and do not even care to know what suffering they caused. We too are supposed to be civilised enough to know better. At any rate, there is not much in it.
The full details of the atom incidents are still to be released, in the official report of. the United States Strategic Bombing Survey. Meanwhile some of these things need thinking about.
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