First Into Nagasaki - Synopsis

Synopsis

The Occupation authorities declared Nagasaki (and Hiroshima) off-limits to reporters.

Weller reports that he was the first outside observer to reach Nagasaki, on September 6, 1945, four weeks following the U.S. atomic bombing of the city. He spent a total of three weeks in Nagasaki and in the nearby Allied P.O.W. camps — some of which he "opened", and revisits the series of news reports he published at the time about his experiences.

The first dispatches by non-Japanese reporters were filed by Associated Press correspondent Vern Haugland and New York Times Lawrence who visited Nagasaki September 9, 1945. Captain Joe Snyder, press officer with MacArthur headquarters, in his book Para(graph) Trooper For MacArthur: From the Horse Cavalry to the USS Missouri 1997 Chapter 16 "Nagasaki Inferno" pp199–209 describes "boarding a transport plane packed with reporters headed for Nagasaki.]Other officers and correspondents headed for Hiroshima about the same time, so the world would soon know more than it was prepared to digest about the horrors of the atomic bomb. ... I toured the city with the AP's Jim Hutcheson, among others. He and I had become good friends since our narrow escape on Corregidor. ... There were thousands of stories in Nagasaki and our group saw many pitiful sights of people with radiation burns who, in dreadful agony, were slowly dying. The first thing Japanese doctors asked was if American doctors had a cure for the bomb's effects on the human body. ... We received a report from GHQ that American doctors were coming to Nagasaki soon...." Snyder acknowledges what he calls Wilfrid Burchett's "ingenuity" in successfully reporting from Hiroshima. Snyder does not mention George Weller or any dispatches of George Weller's from Nagasaki. Joe Snyder and Walter Cronkite are both recipients of the Missouri School of Journalism Honor Medal.

From the first days of the Occupation reporters were cleared to cover freeing and rescue operations on behalf of these prisoners. Weller comments: "What the command wanted covered was the prison camps of northern Japan. The dam was to be opened to one last orgy of home town stories, more mindless and more alike than the slow molasses drippings of four years of sloppy, apolitical, dear-mom war....I did not feel that the right way to end this war was to...chew more fodder about what-beasts-the-Japs-are and Jimmy-looks-skinnier-today."

The U.S. military in Tokyo censored approximately 55,000 words of his dispatches, along with more than 100 photographs.

However, Weller does not refer to governmental censorship of any photographs of his related to Nagasaki.

On January 7, 2009 the Telegraph published Nagasaki photographs dated September 5, 1945: "After we asked readers for stories and photographs relating to Britain at War, we received these fascinating photographs of Nagasaki and Hiroshima from Cecil A. Creber, who took them less than a month after the atom bombs were dropped on both cities ." The Linlithgow Gazette November 28, 2008 "Amazing atomic aftermath pics set for key war archives" features a photo of Creber captioned "Life through a lens: Cecil with his faithful Ensign box camera."

On February 13, 2010 Mainichi published "New color footage of Nagasaki A-bomb devastation shows need for greater research resources" plus a 01/05/2010 Photo Special .

Weller writes these correspondents "looked like yacht passengers who have stopped to buy basketry on an island." He writes that Colonel McCrary "offered to take carbons of my stories and file them when airborne." The reporters under McCrary's leadership were not subject to censorship, making their dispatches especially valuable. Weller writes: "I refused." "How could I close up my atomic laboratory, with the work only half finished?"...and concludes with the explanation that his refusal is because he wanted to write "something free, big and formal....something ample, leisurely and magnificent."

Haugland of The Associated Press states: "We offered Weller a ride back to Tokyo with us,...." Weller describes a feeling of "hopelessness" about his dispatches because the Kempeitai to whom he claims to have entrusted the stories had "returned to Nagasaki, but they had no message for me." Weller, although working as a reporter for a daily publication, chose to refuse an offered opportunity either to timely send his Nagasaki dispatches uncensored from the aircraft or alternatively to confront the Occupation censorship directly by filing in Tokyo, despite writing: "I wanted to be prepared to defend every line. If the stories were blocked as reprisal against me, I intended to take the case to MacArthur himself."

Weller traveled to Nagasaki from Kanoya airbase with Sergeant Gilbert Harrison. Harrison's career later included: Chairman of the American Veterans Committee; Editor and Publisher of the The New Republic magazine; author of several books. In Harrison's memoir he describes carrying George Weller's Nagasaki reporting from an airstrip outside Nagasaki to the Chicago Daily News in Tokyo:

'You'll be the errand boy,' he informed me. The plane we'd met was going on to Tokyo.... ...I picked up my belongings and Weller's copy. He wrote down the name and address of his Daily News associate in Tokyo...and the near-empty plane took off. A bus awaited us at Atsugi airport outside Tokyo and the plane crew and I were driven to the American-occupied Dai-Ichi Hotel....That night I slept between sheets and the following morning delivered Weller's story to the Daily News. As payment, a rowdy evening's entertainment was provided at an establishment catering to thirsty American officers and featuring compliant Japanese girls who were not of the Geisha class.

A Boston Globe article by Gerald R. Thorp of the Chicago Daily News "TOKYO, Sept. 10(CDN) 'New Brand of Jap to Him!'" indicates that Harrison was by September 10, 1945 accompanying correspondents in Tokyo.

The first dispatch presented in First into Nagasaki (see page 25 and photos on cover and back inside endpaper) is datelined Nagasaki September 6 and reads: ..."After a 24-hour trip on what seemed like dozens of trains, the writer arrived here this afternoon as the first visitor from the outside Allied world." On September 6 the Chicago Daily News printed a dispatch under Weller's byline datelined Kanoya, which begins:

The veteran 25th portable hospital, numbering many Chicagoans and downstate Illinoisans, jumped from ships today to become the first American hospital in southern Japan. Every doctor but one is a Rush Medical College graduate. Commanded by tall Maj. Frederic de Peyster] of 445 Cedar St. Winnetka, they include Capt. Hugo Baum, 55 E. Washington st., Chicago, and Capt. Edward Murphy, Dixon, Ill., who comprise a special surgical team, and Capt. Roy Swanson, Leadville, Colo.

The remainder of Weller's dispatch consists of a series of direct quotations from men of this medical corps with names, addresses, and photographs (these last are not from in Japan but are formal military portraits). Samples:

'Tell the boys on the Chicago Daily News fifth floor that the heat here is terrific,' said Corp. Carl Johnson, 4729 N. Avers av., Chicago Daily News composing room employee on leave in service....Corp. Walter Newman, Beloit, Wis., drove past with a box marked 'human blood' and said, 'I've seen it--let's go home.'

After the September 6 dispatch from Kanoya, Weller's next dispatch was printed on September 12 with an "Ōmuta, Kyushu" dateline (Omuta was a prisoner of war camp approximately 100 miles by railroad from Nagasaki and twice that from Kanoya. Headlined "New Saga of Boldness For Wermuth as Captive" it is an account of the famous "One-Man-Army" Captain Arthur W. Wermuth continuing his leadership as a POW on a Hellship carrying prisoners to Japan.