About two hours after the explosion came the black rain: freakishly large and heavy drops, the size of marbles, black and sticky in color and consistency. Caused by condensation that had absorbed rising ash and dust, the black raindrops were large enough to cause pain when they fell upon refugees, and they stained their skin with dark blotches that would not wash away. The black rain was very cold, and some of those who were caught out under it began to shiver. Though the survivors would not know it until later, this sinister rainfall was contaminated with radiation.
Those in the city saw the flash but did not notice the boom. Those who lived farther out on the outskirts saw the flash and then afterward heard the boom. The Japanese in Hiroshima spoke of a pika, meaning a flash, and a don, meaning a very loud sound. Thus, the nuclear explosion was called the pikadon, the flash-boom.23
At the Jesuit novitiate in Nagatsuke, the priests did what they could to assist the walking wounded who streamed up the valley from the city. Their chapel and library served as emergency medical wards, but they were soon so crowded with patients that no more could be admitted. The priests laid tatami mats out on the grass. One had studied medicine before taking holy orders, and he instructed the others in providing basic first aid. But the novitiate’s supply of bandages and medicines soon gave out. They cleaned the wounds as best they could, and then applied cooking oil to the burns as a salve.
Later that afternoon, the priests learned that two of their fellow Jesuits had been at the Parish House in the city and were badly injured. They had taken refuge in Asano Park, on the Enko River (near the remains of Hiroshima Castle and the Second Army headquarters). Father Siemes and several of his colleagues collected two stretchers and headed into the city. It was difficult to make headway against the tide of refugees coming the other way. The devastation worsened as they drew closer to the city center. “Where the city stood,” Siemes later said, “there is a gigantic burned-out scar.” Injured people cried out to them. The priests did what they could, picking out a single wounded child here or there, but they could not help everyone, and were forced to turn a deaf ear to many pathetic entreaties. The scene in Asano Park was terrible. Tens of thousands were camped on the grounds. A firestorm had uprooted large trees and deposited them across the paths, so that one had to pick one’s way through seemingly endless numbers of hideously wounded men, women, and children. The rescue party found their fellow priests and loaded them onto the stretchers. They returned to Nagatsuke at dawn the following morning. Their round-trip journey had taken twelve hours.
The Red Cross Hospital, adjacent to Asano Park, was partly collapsed and gutted by fire, but still the surviving doctors and nurses remained on their feet, and the wards were filled with an estimated 10,000 horribly burned and wounded patients. Little could be done for the worst burn cases. If the doctors even tried to remove their clothing, the skin peeled off with it. Signs of radiation poisoning were seen even on August 6; they would grow more distinct in the following weeks and months. Victims bled through the skin, gums, and eyes; they vomited blood, or expelled bloody diarrhea; their hair came out in clumps. Many patients in the hospital received nothing but a dab of iodine on their wounds. One man confronted a doctor at the hospital, asking why the medical staff were doing nothing for the immense crowds in Asano Park. The doctor replied: “In an emergency like this, the first task is to help as many as possible—to save as many lives as possible. There is no hope for the heavily wounded. They will die. We can’t bother with them.”24
For the Hiroshima survivors, time was distorted. In the city, throughout nearly all of August 6, the sky remained dark until late afternoon. Most clocks and watches had been destroyed. Dr. Hachiya remembered wondering whether it was day or night. “Time had no meaning,” he said. “What I had experienced might have been crowded into a moment or been endured through the monotony of eternity.” Knowing nothing of the concept of an atomic bomb, they wondered what had happened. Had the Americans somehow sprayed the entire city with an invisible gasoline mist, and then ignited it? On the morning of the seventh, the air was clearer, and the citizens of Hiroshima got their first glimpse of the ugly scar that marked the place where their city had once stood. Here and there, a few sections of ferrous-concrete walls or steel girders remained standing. The green mountains to the north and east, and the Inland Sea to the south, seemed closer and more vivid than ever before. The flattened city had cleared the views: “How small Hiroshima was with its houses gone.”25
Among the survivors, few expressed anger. The predominant mood was one of passivity and fatalism. Many shrugged and remarked, “Shikata Ga Nai.”26 The expression was common in wartime Japan: “It can’t be helped.” The disaster had occurred, and now it would run its course. Some would live, others would die, and the war would go on until those in power said it was over.
TRUMAN RECEIVED THE NEWS while crossing the Atlantic in the Augusta. He was seated on a bench at a long table in the enlisted men’s mess, shoulder to shoulder with members of the crew, eating his lunch off a steel tray. A military aide begged pardon and handed him a high-priority radio telegram from Washington. It told him that the first special bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima under ideal weather conditions, with results seemingly better than those of the New Mexico test. Truman beamed, shook hands with the aide, and exclaimed, “This is the greatest thing in history.”27 Ten minutes later came a second report, directly from Secretary Stimson, estimating that the blast had equaled 20,000 tons of TNT. Truman stood and read it aloud to the crowded mess deck. The assembled sailors clapped and cheered. The president then went up to the wardroom and repeated his announcement for the ship’s officers, who likewise applauded. Lieutenant Rigdon said that the crew was cheered by “a hope that the Pacific war might come to a speedier end.”28
By prearrangement, the White House issued a statement announcing that the United States had dropped the world’s first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, “an important Japanese Army base.”29 Truman met briefly with the traveling pool of press correspondents, but he could tell them little that was not included in the formal announcement. He then read portions of the statement for a newsreel crew. The film was made in his stateroom in “flag country” on the Augusta. Wearing a light tan summer suit with red tie, the president sat at a desk facing the camera, a round porthole visible behind him. “It is an atomic bomb,” he said. “It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.” He explained that the United States, with assistance from Great Britain, had assembled the leading scientists and built the immense industrial plants required for this enterprise, at a cost of more than $2 billion. More details about the project would be released by the War Department, he said. As for the Japanese, the Potsdam Declaration had given the Japanese a fair opportunity to avoid this awful fate, but leaders in Tokyo had promptly rejected that ultimatum, and therefore: “If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.”30
IN TOKYO, NEWS OF THE CATASTROPHE in Hiroshima arrived in fits and starts. At 8:30 a.m., fifteen minutes after the explosion, the Kure Navy Yard reported that the neighboring city had been struck by “a new weapon of unprecedented destructiveness.”31 An hour and a half later, an airbase 80 miles outside Hiroshima reported that “a violent, large, special type bomb, giving the appearance of magnesium,” had exploded in a blinding flash, and the blast wave had flattened everything within a 2-mile radius. Tellingly, IGHQ in Tokyo received no word at all from the Second Army headquarters in Hiroshima; all radio and landline communications links were down. A radio correspondent who had been 8 miles outside the city managed to relay a verbal report by telephone to the Domei News Agency in Tokyo at 11:20 a.m. He said the city had been completely annihilated by a bomb or bombs dropped by just one or two B-29s.32
At first the army leaders and technical authorities expressed doubt that the Ame
ricans could have built such a weapon. Admiral Toyoda, who had been fully briefed on Japan’s failed nuclear program, judged that even if the enemy had assembled enough fissile material for a bomb, they had probably built only one. And even if they had more than one, the number could not be more than two or three, so they would not have enough to destroy the entire country from the air. (On that score, he was right.) Civil defense authorities moved to suppress panicked rumors, and falsely reported that all Hiroshimans who had been in their underground bomb shelters had escaped without injury.33
Before dawn the next day, news monitors in Tokyo picked up the text of President Truman’s announcements reporting that an atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima, and the peace party began maneuvering to force the issue of surrender. Foreign Minister Togo met with the emperor at the Imperial Palace that morning. Hirohito declared that the war must end, and asked Togo to convey his wishes for immediate peace to the prime minister. After briefing the emperor that afternoon, Marquis Kido recorded in his diary that he had been gravely concerned and had asked many questions. But in a meeting of the SWDC that day, the hardline faction played for time, arguing that no action should be taken until an investigation could determine what precisely had happened to Hiroshima. Anami said that the army’s technical advisers were skeptical of the existence of an atomic bomb, but that an investigatory mission had been sent to Hiroshima to learn the facts. At a meeting of the newly formed “Atomic Bomb Countermeasure Committee,” representatives of the Technical Board said they doubted that the Americans could have built such a bomb, or if they had, they could not have transported such an unstable device across the Pacific. They speculated that Hiroshima had been hit by a “new type [of] bomb with special equipment, but its content is unknown.” The press was authorized only to say that Hiroshima had been hit by a new type of weapon, but no mention of atomic bombs was made in Japanese newspapers until the eighth.
The investigative team, seven military officers and scientists, flew into the city on the morning of August 7. The group included Yoshio Nishina, Japan’s leading nuclear scientist, who had led its abortive atomic bomb program. As they circled above the devastated city, Nishina said he knew at a glance that “nothing but an atomic bomb could have done such damage.”34 His Geiger counter confirmed it. As their plane taxied to a stop at the airfield, they were met by an officer who was himself a rather vivid example of what the bomb could accomplish. The man had been exposed to flash burns, but he had been facing in a perpendicular direction to the epicenter, so one-half of his face was completely burned, and the other unharmed. He told the investigators, “Everything which is exposed gets burned, but anything which is covered even only slightly can escape burns. Therefore it cannot be said that there are no countermeasures.”35 The next day, the team submitted its report to the Imperial General Headquarters, concluding that there was no possible doubt that Hiroshima had been hit by an atomic bomb.36
In Tokyo, on August 8, Prime Minister Suzuki summoned the Big Six to another meeting of the SWDC, but was informed that certain members could not attend because they had been detained by other duties. A full forty-eight hours after the first atomic bomb had been dropped, no change in Japanese policy was even possible, because the ruling council did not have a quorum. Instead, the government renewed its urgent petitions to Moscow. The Japanese government was still ignorant of Soviet preparations for an attack on Manchuria. Togo cabled Ambassador Sato, asking whether the Russians had given any indications of an answer. Replying a few hours later, Sato said that Foreign Commissar Molotov had finally agreed to receive him that day at 5:00 p.m., Moscow time.
According to Hisatsune Sakomizu, the chief cabinet secretary, the entire capital was now on tenterhooks, hoping for some encouraging signal from the Russians that might offer salvation in the form of a diplomatic exit to the war.37
Sato was on time to the minute for his appointment at Molotov’s office in the Kremlin. As the Japanese ambassador commenced his formal greetings, Molotov cut him off and invited him to take a seat, adding that he had a formal statement he wished to read. Molotov took a page out of a folder on his desk and began reading the Soviet declaration of war against Japan, pausing at intervals for the translator. He stated that his government was acting in response to the request of the Allied governments of the United States, Great Britain, and China, which had invited the Soviets to join in the Potsdam Declaration. (That was false.) The USSR was acting to “bring peace nearer, free the people from further sacrifice and suffering and give the Japanese people the possibility of avoiding the dangers and destruction suffered by Germany after her refusal to capitulate unconditionally.”38 The Soviet Union would consider itself at war with Japan on the following day, August 9, 1945. Molotov did not offer any justification or rationale for abrogating the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact, which was scheduled to expire the following year.
With genteel sarcasm, Sato thanked Molotov for his diligent labors in the cause of peace. The ambassador received a copy of the document and was shown the door. It had not occurred to him to ask precisely what time zone should be used in calculating the starting hour for pending hostilities. Sato may have assumed that Molotov meant August 9 in Moscow—that is, the following morning. But the Russians had considered the timing carefully. Five o’clock in Moscow was eleven o’clock in the Trans-Baikal (UTC+10) time zone. At midnight, one hour later, it would be August 9, 1945 on the Siberian-Manchurian border. At that hour, to the minute, Soviet warplanes would take off and Soviet tanks would begin rolling.
Working in closely guarded secrecy for the past several months, the Soviets had prepared one of the largest and most overpowering ground offensives in history. Assembly areas were set up well behind the border, and senior field commanders had traveled into the region incognito, wearing uniforms of junior officers. Troops, tanks, field artillery, and other war matériel had been moved east on the Trans-Siberian railroad, with continuous round-trips of some 136,000 rail cars. Since the fall of Germany three months earlier, Red Army strength in the region had more than doubled, to about eighty-nine divisions.39 Japanese intelligence had failed to detect any sign of these vast preparations and troop movements.
Russian plans called for a simultaneous three-pronged attack on Manchuria from the north, east, and west across a front more than 2,600 miles long. A new Far East and Transbaikal regional theater command was set up under the leadership of Marshal Aleksandr Vasilevsky, who would direct the overall campaign from a fully staffed headquarters. The western attack on the Transbaikal Front would require Red Army forces under Marshal R. Y. Malinovsky to cross arduous desert and mountain terrain, the Gobi Desert and the Altai Mountains, and to penetrate quickly into the heart of Manchuria to seize Mukden (now Shenyang). From the east, the First Far Eastern Front, commanded by Marshal K. A. Meretskov, would cross the Lesser Khingan mountain range and seize the city of Changchun, and then pour into northern Korea. The Second Far Eastern Front would provide support to the two wings while advancing into Manchuria from the north. The total number of Red Army troops involved in the operation was about 1.5 million, more than double the number of Japanese troops in the region—and the Soviet troops were mechanized. The Red Army, bloodied and victorious on the Eastern Front, was at its peak strength and efficiency—manned by veterans at all ranks, lavishly equipped, and superbly led. As one American military analyst has written: “Soviet plans were as innovative as any in the war. Superb execution of those plans produced victory in only two weeks of combat.”40
Although the Soviet plan was called the “Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation,” it included auxiliary operations to occupy northern Korea, the southern half of Sakhalin Island, and the Kurile Islands. An amphibious landing in the Kuriles would commence one day after Japan’s surrender on August 15, and Red Army forces would quickly seize the rest of the chain, with offensive operations continuing even after Soviet representatives had accepted the Japanese instrument of surrender aboard the battleship Missouri in Toky
o Bay on September 2, 1945. Stalin had also directed that contingency plans be drawn up to seize Hokkaido. If the Japanese surrender had been delayed by even a few weeks, Japan’s northern island might have passed forty-five years on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
By the time Moscow’s declaration of war was known in Tokyo, the Red Army was already charging into Manchuria. By dawn on August 9, the army ministry and the Imperial General Headquarters were already teeming with bleary-eyed officers. Many had anticipated the Soviet attack, but few had suspected that a large offensive could be launched so soon after the defeat of Germany. A staff study published a month earlier had estimated that a major Russian offensive in East Asia could not be mounted until February 1946, at the earliest. Therefore, according to Lieutenant General Torashirō Kawabe, the deputy army chief of staff, the sudden assault “was a great shock when it actually came.”41 At IGHQ, senior officers had discussed the possibility that the Russians might demand, as the price of Soviet neutrality and diplomatic assistance in ending the war, a withdrawal of all Japanese troops from the Asian mainland. Many had argued that the Japanese should accede to such a request, if it came—a measure of the Japanese high command’s consciousness of its weakness in the region.
As reports came in from Manchuria, it was soon clear that the Red Army was attacking on three fronts simultaneously, with huge armored and mechanized columns. The army that had overpowered the German Wehrmacht now appeared to be turning its full fury on the depleted Kwantung Army. Japanese soldiers fought with their customary tenacity and courage, but they were overmatched in every respect: troop numbers, tanks, air power, logistics, and mobility. As the Russians poured into the combat zone, they committed mass civilian atrocities on a scale and ferocity that matched those committed against German civilians earlier that year. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers were taken prisoner by the Russians, many to be held as forced laborers in Siberia for years after the close of hostilities.
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