) Some even thought (rightly) that it was being spared for something big. However, no one in their wildest imagination was anticipating an atomic bomb attack. Hence, on the morning of the fateful day, the residents of Hiroshima were completely unprepared for an atomic bomb explosion.
Painting of Hell":
Many survivors of the atomic explosion on Hiroshima have likened the experience of the blast and its immediate aftermath to mankind's common perception of hell. A young Japanese sociologist, for example, described the scene of a nearby park after the explosion: "The most impressive thing I saw was some girls, very young girls, not only with their clothes torn off but with their skin peeled off as well...my immediate thought was that this was like the hell I had always read about." (Selden and Selden, xix) Another eye-witness, twenty-year-old Shibayama Hiroshi, recalled entering Hiroshima on foot from his suburban workplace within hours of the bombing and encountering a scene reminiscent of "a painting of hell." Apart from the scores of dead bodies he saw floating in the Kyobashi River with "faces swollen to twice their normal size," there was one sight the young man believed he would never forget. He saw a man, his face burned and his blue clothes in shreds, riding along with what looked like black wood fastened to his bicycle with coarse straw rope. As the man on the bicycle came nearer, Hiroshi saw that what he had taken for wood was a stiff, blackened corpse -- probably the remains of a loved one. The man himself seemed crazed. To Hiroshi, all the inhabitants of Hiroshima appeared deranged in the aftermath of the explosion. (Ibid, xx)
Suppressed Feelings During the American Occupation
One of the main objectives of the American occupation government in Japan was to inculcate a sense of guilt for the war in the Japanese people and to snuff out any lingering ultra-nationalist feelings among the populace. It also took steps to ensure that no hatred towards the occupying force was spread through the media. To achieve these aims, a strict Press Code was immediately enforced that forbade any reference to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that could be interpreted as direct or indirect criticism of the Americans. As a result, any comments in the press that would describe the widespread suffering of the atomic bombs' victims or even imply that Japan would have won the war but for the atomic bombs were strictly forbidden.
For the next four years, any reports and information by the Japanese journalists from the bombed cities or discussions about the effects of the bomb were strictly checked, held-up or deleted by the American authorities. Hence the Japanese people and the victims of the bombings were prevented from expressing their true feelings about the bombings in the immediate aftermath of the nuclear holocaust. For example, a book "Masako taorezu" (Masako does not collapse), written by a fifteen-year-old survivor about her terrifying experience of the Nagasaki bombing was not allowed to be published by the censors in 1947 "at least for the time being" without giving any time-frame about when it would be allowed publication. (Braw 93)
Divine Providence
In an environment which forbade open outpouring of feelings about the bombings, many Japanese people adopted the belief that the bombings were an "act of divine providence." An early Japanese book about the atomic bombings, "The Bells Toll for Nagasaki," authored in 1946 by a doctor and a resident of Nagasaki -- Takashi Nagai -- is representative of this view. The book was an eyewitness account of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, especially the destruction of the Nagasaki Medical College where Nagai was working at the time. Apart from his interest as a doctor in the 'atomic sicknesses' witnessed in the victims of the bombings, Nagai -- a Catholic -- was particularly interested in the significance of the bombing for human morality. Nagasaki was the largest Christian city in Japan at the time of the bombing and the bomb had burst above a point only 500 meters from the Urakami Catholic Cathedral. Approximately 8,500 Catholics died from direct exposure to the bomb as most of the 12,000-strong population of Nagasaki's Catholics lived in the area around the cathedral (Kamata and Salaff, 43). Nagai found this fact to be of some significance. He put forward the idea of divine will in the suffering of the people of Nagasaki and wrote that the "only holy place in all [of] Japan" was chosen as a victim for some definite purpose -- "a lamb, to be slaughtered...
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