■

MIS Nisei and the Surrender of Japan, August–September 1945 Startling news swept around the world on 6 August 1945: a single bomb of hitherto unimaginable power had leveled Hiroshima in southern Japan. The Japanese people struggled for the right word. Their language simply lacked words to describe what had happened. Some used the word pika, a flash (of lightning), or pika-don, flash-boom. The U.S. government called it an atomic bomb. The MIS Nisei already knew the Japanese word bakudan, bomb. So they looked up the word for atomic, genshi, and combined it to form genshi-bakudan, literally atomic bomb.1 2d Lt. Harry K. Fukuhara, like many of the MIS Nisei, had family members living in Hiroshima. In fact, before the war he had attended school in the city. Now stationed in the Philippines, he delivered the news to the Japanese prisoners of war near Manila: I told them that a new bomb called the atomic bomb, equivalent to thousands of tons of TNT, had been dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, and that one single explosion had completely wiped out the entire city of Hiroshima and that it had been erased from the surface of the earth. I told them nothing living had survived and that all human and animal life was non-existent. I further elaborated that no vegetation, plant life or trees would grow there and people would not be able to live there for at least 100 years, due to radiation. When I told them that, they were silent—either they did not believe me or else the information was beyond their comprehension. I know that I did not want to believe it myself.2 Three days later the Twentieth Air Force dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki. A rumor that Japan was about to surrender swept through American service personnel throughout the Pacific. When the news hit Manila, it touched off six hours of delirious celebration; similar celebrations erupted on Guam, in Honolulu, and elsewhere. On Okinawa, a Japanese guerrilla commander saw the night sky fill with tracers and wondered if it was the grand Japanese counterattack he had been hoping for; but his scouts reported that the Americans seemed to be celebrating. On 10 August came radio reports that Tokyo had accepted the Potsdam Declaration demanding unconditional surrender. The rumors were true.3 The Nisei were jubilant that the fighting had finally ended, but the way it ended hit them hard. More than for other Americans, the war’s ending was bittersweet. Half of all Japanese immigrants to the United States came from Hiroshima and the neighboring prefectures. Many Nisei, like Fukuhara, still had relatives in the area; some Nisei had lived and attended school there before the war. Fukuhara recalled his feelings upon hearing of the Hiroshima bombing: My frame of mind . . . was one of shock and relief. . . . I was shocked because Hiroshima was where I had lived before the war and where my mother and three brothers were still living. I was relieved because we would not be participating in the long-dreaded invasion. . . . For the first few days I kept thinking: Why? Why did they drop it on Hiroshima? . . .The more I thought about it, the more depressed I became. My thinking degraded to the point that I blamed myself—that they had died because I had volunteered to fight against them.4 Another Nisei officer, 2d Lt. George S. Taketa, knew from interrogating prisoners in Manila that Japan could not hold out much longer, so he felt the atomic bombings were unnecessary: “What the hell are we doing? Why kill additional people? We didn’t have to; the war was going to end. Then a couple of days later they dropped one over Nagasaki. And that really shook us. I said, ‘Geez, what the hell is going on? Here another hundred thousand killed. . . .’ It was a terrible thing; I wouldn’t do it to a dog. . . . It just made us sick.” 5 On the other side of the world, Nisei stationed with the 442d Regimental Combat Team (RCT) in Italy also expressed mixed feelings. One expressed the consensus of millions of American soldiers when he told a correspondent, “Those goddamn bastards! They cost us plenty at Pearl Harbor. It’s time they paid for it.” Other Nisei remained silent, “still trying to comprehend what an atomic bomb could do.” 6 S.Sgt. Mike Masaoka, the regimental public relations officer and a leading Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) spokesman, described the atomic bombs as “the ghastly and unnecessary coup de grâce.” He recalled, “Reporters came to our camp for comment. How did we feel about Japan’s surrender? We were elated. The war was over, wasn’t it?” The atomic bomb, he felt, “was a helluva weapon. It was just too damned bad that civilians had to be killed—we had seen too much of that in Italy and France. But if it shortened the war, we were glad we had this new weapon rather than the other guys.” 7 Army commanders in the Pacific shared the Nisei’s feelings. General Douglas MacArthur was reportedly “appalled and depressed” by the atomic bombings and felt there was no military justification for their use. “Probably no living man has seen as much of war and its destruction as I had,” he later wrote. “My abhorrence reached its height with the perfection of the atomic bomb.” 8 Maj. Gen. Charles A. Willoughby, MacArthur’s G–2, knew that Japan had been on the verge of collapse and was seeking to negotiate. “There was then no reason to use the Atom bomb and give the show away that we had perfected the most revolutionary weapon in modern history. MacArthur was not consulted; he was merely presented with a fait accompli.” Brig. Gen. Bonner Fellers, MacArthur’s chief of psychological warfare, felt much the same way.9

For some Nisei the war’s end meant new beginnings. For example, Sgt. Akira Nakamura had already been on Okinawa for five months by August 1945. Just before going overseas, he had been married in the Fort Snelling chapel. On Okinawa, he had survived several close calls; at one point an American bullet struck his helmet and left a dent, “a slight headache, ringing of his ears and wounded pride.” But he had survived. A few days after the Hiroshima bombing, he received a cablegram informing him that his wife had given birth to a daughter in Minneapolis on 6 August. He searched through the ruins of an Okinawan distillery, “found a clay urn filled with well-aged sweet potato whiskey,” and brought it back to the language detachment, where his Nisei buddies helped him celebrate the birth of his first child.10 For several days after the atomic bombings the relentless pounding of Japan continued by air and sea. The Twentieth Air Force paused its B–29 raids after 10 August, but land-based aircraft of the Fifth and Seventh Air Forces and carrier aircraft and surface units from the Third Fleet continued to blast Japanese targets. “Never before in history had one nation been the target of such concentrated air power.”11 The Psychological Warfare Board continued its radio broadcasts twelve hours per day and dropped up to 2 million copies per week of the Rakkasan News on Japan and Japanese troop concentrations around the region. Col. Sidney F. Mashbir broadcast personal appeals to Japanese leaders on 9 and 13 August. On the night of 13–14 August, B–29s dropped 5 million leaflets over the Tokyo area. Prepared by the Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Areas (JICPOA), and the Office of War Information, the leaflets gave the texts of the Japanese note accepting the Potsdam Declaration, as well as the American Secretary of State’s reply, which the Japanese government had not yet released to its own people.12 On 15 August Radio Tokyo carried a special broadcast to the Japanese people. Speaking to the nation for the first time, the emperor addressed his “good and loyal subjects” in traditional courtly language. “Despite the best that has been done by everyone,” he explained, “the war situation has developed not necessarily