Like much of the greatest generation, my father-in-law, Emil Msall, did not talk much about what he went through in World War II. One day when he was visiting, we were watching an episode of “The Century” series about the atomic bomb. My son Daniel, who at the time was in middle school, happened to see what we were watching and made the comment that he had studied Hiroshima in school and that we didn’t necessarily have to drop the atomic bomb.
Emil said, “If we hadn’t dropped the bomb, you wouldn’t be here because I wouldn’t be here.”
He then launched into a description of what he’d seen during the war. He was only 17 when he went in, and his father had to sign a letter for him to join the Navy. His ship transported Marines throughout the Pacific. He had seen the fierce fighting on Iwo Jima. He had heard the stories of the mass suicides on Okinawa from the Marines who won it. After that, they all knew that the war with Japan would be won only by an invasion of Japan, which would cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of troops and civilians.
Then he told me that he had actually been to Hiroshima a couple of weeks after the dropping of the bomb to bring scientists there to study the aftereffects. He spoke of standing on deck and looking at the desolation with a young scientist.
He said the only structures still standing were the bank vault and the butcher’s freezer. He saw piles of white ash of different sizes. When he asked the scientist what they were, the scientist said, “People.” He said it was devastating, but the only way Japan would surrender would be to face the annihilation of the bomb. And it meant the men in the Pacific fleet would all live and come home.
— Steven Fischer, Itasca, Illinois
A visit to Hiroshima after 9/11
Shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, I visited Hiroshima as a teacher on a Fulbright program. Our guide, Yoko Konosan, had a personal connection to the bomb. Her mother, a high school student at the time, was late for school on Aug. 6, 1945. At 8:15, when she saw the atomic flash, she crouched behind a cement water fountain. That act saved her from intense radiation and heat injuries.
You might think, if you didn’t know Hiroshima’s history, that you were just in a beautiful city park with flowers, sculptures, trees and a museum, if it weren’t for the skeletal ruins of a building with exposed steel girders. The bomb exploded directly above this building, but because the blast radiated out in all directions, the structure survives.
Arriving at sunset, we first toured the park, talking in whispers. We stopped at the Peace Bell, and Konosan encouraged us each to ring the bell for world peace. With the tolling of the bell still resonating, we walked to the nearby statue of Sadako Sasaki. A 2-year-old girl when the bomb fell, Sadako developed “the atomic disease” (leukemia) nine years later as a result of exposure to bomb radiation. Her paper cranes became famous as symbols of peace.
In growing darkness, we entered the museum. I saw a half-melted lunchbox with the blackened remains of the food inside. A woman, searching for her son, could find only his lunchbox and took it in her desperation to have something of his.
Konosan showed us a picture of a blackened wall where survivors scratched names to ask if anyone had seen them, similar to the message boards near the World Trade Center after 9/11. She also said Hiroshima survivors had flashbacks of the atomic blast when they saw New York crowds running away on 9/11.
The Peace Memorial Museum does not just chronicle the destruction caused by the atomic bomb. A large portion of the museum also is about the emergence of peace as the mission of this city. The museum documents the development of Hiroshima University’s internationally respected peace curriculum and the Hiroshima Peace Institute’s conferences.
I left the museum inspired that traumatized people can choose to respond not with violence but with introspection and a commitment to peace. I also felt regret. The United States was making plans for war with Iraq at the time.
May this anniversary remind us of the enormous human costs of war and the value of peacemaking.
— Paul Seline, Oak Park
Bomb likely saved my dad’s life
My dad, Joe Lewis, served in World War II in the 86th Infantry Division, or Blackhawk Division, which was formed in Rockford and is the namesake of the Chicago hockey team. The division’s members trained with Marines in Southern California for the invasion of Japan and were on ships crossing the Pacific to undergo weeks of invasion training when Japan unconditionally surrendered. And although they no longer had to fear an armed invasion of Japan, there was not much cheering on board the ship as the division’s destination and fate were still unknown. They arrived in the Philippines and spent the next year rounding up Japanese soldiers who refused to surrender throughout the islands. In November, they captured more than 700 Japanese.
I am of the opinion that the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki probably saved my dad’s life. An invasion of Japan would have been an extreme bloodbath with the deaths of thousands and thousands of U.S. military personnel and probably many more Japanese citizens, who would have tried to repel the invasion.
I wish the power of the atom bomb had never been developed in our world, and I hope these bombs are never used again, but in this case, I think U.S. actions were justified.
My dad came home in December 1945. The 86th Infantry Division was deactivated in December 1946 and the colors returned to Rockford.
— James Lewis, Geneva
Hersey’s ‘Hiroshima’ eye-opening
When I was in high school, I took a summer course in Northwestern University’s Cherubs program. A book we read was John Hersey’s “Hiroshima.” I remembered again how strongly he entered into the individual world of that cataclysmic day, of people whose lives were forever changed within that moment of a nuclear blast.
His reporting on the experiences of those people went to the heart of empathy and universal experiences. Those he wrote about stayed with me, what they experienced and would permanently carry. I took great inspiration from his book and felt inspired to write in the way that he was able to present, of seeing the human condition within the historical event.
Their experiences can be felt personally; they were no mere objective facts.
These stories can apply to those in Ukraine; each one there has a life worth telling. Writers like him are needed today to bring a human face to the events that are made up of thousands of stories, beyond one moment in time.
— Mandy May, Evanston
Nuclear weapons still with us
Aug. 6 is the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. The immediate explosion killed possibly as many as 80,000 people. Thousands would die later from exposure to radiation.
With current events and everyday concerns claiming our attention, it’s easy to lose track of that now long-ago historical event. The reality of nuclear weapons is still with us, but our experience of nuclear armament is dry, remote, the stuff of negotiations, rhetoric and distant menace.
John Hersey wrote “Hiroshima,” a moment-by-moment recounting of the city’s experience, which was published in 1946. It’s not long, it’s riveting, it’s great reporting, and it’s still in print. I suggest his book as good reading for all of us to understand the horrifying results of unleashing this terrible weapon.
— Barbra Goering, Chicago
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