The First On-the-Scene Report From Hiroshima

By: Greg Mitchell On Aug. 14, 1945, eight days after Hiroshima was attacked, and six days after the Soviets entered the war, Japan agreed to surrender, but with one significant condition: keeping its emperor. Truman called the surrender "unconditional" anyway, and the press did not challenge him. Arthur Krock's report in The New York Times, for example, opened with: "Japan today unconditionally surrendered. ..."

With victory in hand, few Americans protested the emperor clause. V-J Day had finally arrived. This meant that Hiroshima would fade as America plunged headlong into the postwar era. Despite a few breaks in the official story, the War Department had effectively managed the news media, thanks to its control over information, a generally acquiescent press, and the national euphoria over an impending surrender.

But there was one troubling issue. Reports on Japanese radio claimed that thousands were dying from a "mysterious disease" long after the atomic bombing. American officials, identified in the press as "experts on Japanese propaganda," said that these "abstract" theories may be nothing more than an attempt to "capitalize on the horror of atomic bombing in an effort to win sympathy from their conquerors."

Behind the scenes, however, the military was considering the issue of radiation quite seriously. The Pentagon's censorship office had deleted two-thirds of a Philadelphia Bulletin article which revealed that radioactivity from the July 16 atomic test in New Mexico had spread to small towns surrounding the Trinity site.

Reports of death by radiation in Japan complicated the Hiroshima story. As they celebrated the Japanese surrender, most Americans seemed to accept as necessary the instantaneous killing of tens of thousands of the enemy. But now the end-of-the-war euphoria was starting to wear off, just as reports of thousands of additional deaths from a cruel and lingering illness surfaced.

Until late August, however, little was known for certain about conditions on the ground in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, beyond hazy reconnaissance photographs and unconfirmed reports from the enemy about the actual effects of the bomb. But with General MacArthur's arrival at Yokohama on Aug. 28, it was only a matter of time before American reporters entered Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Whether they would be allowed to disclose freely what they discovered was another matter. President Truman had declared an end to wartime censorship on Aug. 15, but articles and photographs documenting the "employment" of the atomic bomb remained under strict review. General MacArthur, in addition, had instituted his own censorship apparatus and notified reporters arriving in Japan that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were off limits. They could witness the Japanese surrender on board the Missouri in Tokyo Bay on Sept. 2, then be escorted, if they wished, on a tour of prisoner-of-war camps in northern Japan.

Of several hundred Western reporters in Japan in early September only two chose to defy restrictions and travel on their own to the atomic cities.

One was the Australian war correspondent Wilfred Burchett. He set out from Tokyo for Hiroshima by train on the morning of Sept. 2. Burchett, who had once written dispatches glorifying the firebombing of Japanese cities, was simply looking for a scoop. (Only later did he become known for his pro-Soviet views.) The following morning he encountered in Hiroshima what he later described as a "death-stricken alien planet." He noticed a dank, sulfurous smell; people hurried past, white masks covering their noses and mouths.

Burchett was taken directly to one of the few hospitals left standing (although badly damaged) in the city. Its director, Michihiko Hachiya, later known in America as the author of "Hiroshima Diary," felt certain that what he called "radiation sickness" was real. Shortly after the bombing he had observed that one in five patients developed purple skin hemorrhages; some were also losing their hair. Many had white-cell counts about one-tenth the normal number. About three weeks later, these patients began to die, and the death rate rose as each day passed.

In the half-standing hospital, Burchett found patients strewn about on the floor, suffering from the final stages of radiation disease. The reporter pulled out his typewriter and, sitting on a chunk of rubble near the hypocenter of the atomic blast, composed his historic article, which began: "In Hiroshima, 30 days after the first atomic bomb destroyed the city and shook the world, people are still dying, mysteriously and horribly -- people who were uninjured in the cataclysm -- from an unknown something which I can only describe as the atomic plague. ... I write these facts as dispassionately as I can in the hope that they will act as a warning to the world. ..."

Just as Burchett was finishing his story, a group of journalists on an Air Force charter landed just outside Hiroshima. Included in this group were Homer Bigart of the New York Herald-Tribune, reporters for The Associated Press, The New York Times and the Hearst news service, and an official censor. According to Burchett's later account, the reporters were not happy to discover they had been scooped. He told one of the visitors, "The real story is in the hospitals." After just a few hours they were ready to leave and Burchett asked one of the officials to carry a copy of his article to Tokyo. The request was denied.

That evening, Burchett managed to transmit his story to a colleague in Tokyo, who eased it through the censorship office mainly intact, perhaps because it was written for a British publication. Two days later, on Sept. 5, it ran on the front page of the London Daily Express under the headline "THE ATOMIC PLAGUE." Burchett credited his editor with displaying extraordinary courage in publishing the article. Great Britain, after all, had helped build the bomb.