The Fat Man Bomb Experience Interview Report

During the 1940 Pacific War, an atomic bomb named the Fat Man (Taylor 1993) was used by the United States of America army to bomb Japan in what was known as the operation final destruction. This war started after the USA opposed the Japanese expansion to the South East of Pacific which led to the Japanese army attacked the United States of America's Naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii (Dower 1993). The bomb destroyed the Japanese land area of Nagasaki three days after the United States had dropped another atomic bomb at Hiroshima hence marked the epitome of the Pacific war. The Japanese surrendered as the USA was prepared to attack again with its unending chemical weapons. The event is a source of History studies in many countries' curriculum, but very few materials of what transpired in Nagasaki remain out of record. I, therefore, have former New York Times journalist Elis Davis and Dr Haruto Kaito who happened to be in existence at the time of the event and can describe the aftermath experience of the event.

Dr Haruto Kaito was a Japanese government doctor who was on the medical response team that was sent to Nagasaki, although most of his teammate died as a result of the side effects, the retired doctor is still strong with only a vision complication. He was affected by the event and had a personal experience of what transpired to this event and the impact it had on his people. On the other hand, former Journalist Elis Davis was posted by his country the United States based news company New York Times to go to Japan's Nagasaki area to report on the impact and damage the atomic bomb had caused to the Asian country.

In this interview I sought to find out based on their personal experience what they thought of the event that went down in Nagasaki, its impact and if it could have been avoided.

Welcome gentlemen, we can start with a simple description of what was your feeling when you heard you were going on duty at Nagasaki?

DR. Kaito: It was a call to humanity and patriotism. I felt my country needed me more to save lives of fellow countrymen and medics as you understand most forty-four out of forty-five hospitals had been destroyed in the area, and seventy percent of the victims had multiple injuries if not death. Therefore, when I was ordered to go there and help lives, I did not and could not hesitate.

Elis: First I always heard news about the war. The news only originated from the USA army as a press release (Fujitani 2001), and therefore I did not have a clear picture of what was transpiring. On the other hand, the government had kept it secret from its subject about the atomic weapons. When I was given a chance by my employer to be the first journalist to cover on the ground the aftermath of the Nagasaki event, personally as a journalist, it was an excitement that I had not experienced ever in my career. I knew the stories that I was going to bring out of the field would put me on journalistic history but other than the thought of being a celebrated journalist, I feared for my personal life; what would the chemicals do to my body? If I board that plane to Japan, will I ever see my country and family again or I am going to die there? I had mixed feelings on that to a point of affecting my emotional stability.

Now, when you got on the ground, what was the impression? Did you freak out, did you cry, puked or what did you feel and think?

Dr Kaito: The placed looked horrific, human bodies all over, buildings brought flat down (Dower 1993). I had seen a lot of terrifying things in my career as a doctor, but I had not seen such destruction. It caught us as a country very an unaware and stretched the country's resources since the government was still responding to what had also happened to Hiroshima. The pain of the victims could not allow us as physicians to break into emotions as everyone looked up on us for help. We did our best but we had little to no resources. The situation kept on developing as even the doctors, nurses and many health officers started being affected and dying.

Elis: I broke in tears, seeing human bodies lying all over. Although I wanted to get the most stories out of my visit on the ground, for the first day I did not know what to write because my head was full of many ideas which included the idea of government censorship back at home. The government wanted the event just to pass untold to the world to reduce the public reaction. Biblically, I saw it as the end of the world. It was as if God was angry with the people and he had destroyed them with all that they owned, from property, animals to plants, all destroyed. I remember watching people scrolling down screaming helplessly as even the doctor watched. I found some of the medics who had come to give help to the victims were also affected by the radiation heat as they tried to help others and now were staring at death with no one to help.

Before the event, did you see the events building up to end up to that point of uttermost destruction?

Dr. Kaito: At first I did not follow closely, all I knew was that my country was at war with the United States of America and had identified Russia, China and Korea as possible enemies. I knew of the small bombing my country had carried out on the American Island of Hawaii and the many battles that followed making each country to lose a good number of soldiers but a chemical weapon, I had not foreseen the possibility of it happening. The idea of chemical weapons was unimaginable.

Elis: I had not foreseen an event of this magnitude. Remember at first I told you the army of United States of America had kept it a secret about the chemical weapon, and it was hard to predict such an act by my government. It was hard for both the media and the public to know as we only depended on one source of news which came from the military communication department.

Now that you personally saw what happened, what do you think of the perpetrators and the victims?

Dr.Kaito: It was very senseless of both countries to show their mighty power through a war losing a lot of their countrymen. I personally lost a relative in the battle of Iwo Jima and more than two hundred other young men who could have lived to build their nation (Jima 1994). A huge number of people died immediately while others experienced complications caused by the radiation. Most of my colleagues whom we were posted with died of aftermath complications. It would have saved both nations a lot of lives, resources and built a trustworthy relationship if both countries had opted for diplomacy than war to solve the issues that were of conflict.

Elis: My country being the perpetrators of the Nagasaki bombing, I know the government launched the operation uttermost destruction as a self-defense mechanism and get Japan to surrender without posing any conditions to the United States (Ienaga 2010).instead of Japan surrendering, it kept on fighting, war after war and threat after threat. Japan should have surrendered after the battle of Okinawa where they lost more than one hundred thousand soldiers as the United States of America lost more than fifty thousand soldiers. Although my country was affected in various ways, its soldiers had to keep on fighting in order to prove its power and mighty to Japan and any other country that would think of getting to war with it.

Conclusion

Based on the answers provided by the Dr. Kaito and Journalist Elis, they both find the event to be inhuman but they highly differ on how the event could have been avoided. As Dr. Kaito would have advocated for diplomacy by both countries, Elis thought that by Japan surrendering, the event could have been avoided.

References

Dower, J. W. (1993). War Without Mercy: Race & Power in the Pacific War. Pantheon Books.

Feifer, G. (1992). Tennozan: The Battle of Okinawa and the Atomic Bomb. New York.

Fujitani, T., White, G. M., & Yoneyama, L. (Eds.). (2001). Perilous Memories: The Asia-Pacific War (s). Duke University Press.

Ienaga, S. (2010). Pacific War, 1931-1945. Pantheon.

Jima, I. (1945). Battle of Iwo Jima.

Taylor, B. C. (1993). Fat Man and Little Boy: The cinematic representation of interests in the nuclear weapons organization. Critical Studies in Media Communication.