Discuss the speech made by Marcel Junod in the story the first atom bomb
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Answer:
The Hiroshima disaster – a doctor's account
12-09-2005
Extracts from the journal written by the ICRC's Dr. Marcel Junod, the first foreign doctor to reach Hiroshima after the atom bomb attack on 6 August 1945, and to treat some of the victims.
Dr. Junod, the new head of the ICRC's delegation in Japan, arrived in Tokyo on 9 August 1945 – the very day that the United States dropped a second atomic bomb, this time on Nagasaki. Junod, who had been travelling for two months and had not caught up with the news, was astounded:
For the first time I heard the name of Hiroshima, the words "atom bomb". Some said that there were possibly 100,000 dead; others retorted 50,000. The bomb was said to have been dropped by parachute, the victims had been burnt to death by rays, etc…
Information was hard to come by, and Junod's immediate task was to visit Allied prisoners of war held in Japan (Emperor Hirohito's surrender broadcast came on 15 August). It was only after one of the ICRC delegates in the field sent Junod a telegram (pdf. doc) with apocalyptic details of the Hiroshima disaster that Junod could set the wheels in motion for a belated, but still vital, relief effort.
On 8 September he flew from Tokyo with members of an American technical commission, and a consignment of relief provided by the US armed forces.
At twelve o'clock, we flew over Hiroshima. We… witnessed a site totally unlike anything we had ever seen before. The centre of the city was a sort of white patch, flattened and smooth like the palm of a hand. Nothing remained. The slightest trace of houses seemed to have disappeared. The white patch was about two kilometres in diameter. Around its edge was a red belt, marking the area where houses had burned, extending quite a long way further, difficult to judge from the airplane, covering almost all the rest of the city. It was an awesome sight…
Hiroshima was a major regional centre, with a port, industries and a military garrison, with a population totalling some 400,000. Before the fateful 6 August, it had been virtually free of air raids. The day after their arrival, Junod and the American group set out to find out more about the effects of the bomb:
The first signs of these effects were visible four miles or so from the bomb’s dropping point. The roofs looked denuded, as their tiles had been blown off by the blast. In places, the grass was bleached, as if dried; the Japanese journalist explained to me that the plants, vegetables and rice up to five or six miles from the bomb's epicentre had lost their green colour immediately after the explosion. They only got their colour back three or four weeks later. However, some plants, obviously more sensitive, had died.
At three miles from the bomb's epicentre, some houses had been flattened like cardboard. The roofs were completely caved in; the rafters stuck out all round. This was the familiar sight of cities destroyed by explosive bombs. At two and a half miles, there were only piles of beams and planks, but the stone houses seemed intact. At just over two miles from the town centre, all houses had been gutted by fire. All that remained was the outline of their foundations and heaps of rusty metal. This area looked like the towns of Tokyo, Osaka and Kobe, destroyed by incendiary bombs. At one mile or so everything had been torn apart, blasted and swept away as if by a supernatural power; houses and trees had disappeared
Junod's priority, once in the city proper, was to check on the situation in the hospitals, many of them makeshift places:
This emergency hospital is in a half-demolished school. There are many holes in the roof. On that day, it was pouring with rain and water was dripping into the patients' rooms. Those who had the strength to move huddled in sheltered corners, while the others lay on some kind of pallets; these were the dying. There are eighty-four sick and injured in this hospital with ten nurses and twenty schoolgirls, who seem to be very little girls, aged from 12 to 15 years, to look after them. There is no water, no sanitary installations, no kitchen.
A doctor comes in from outside to visit the sick every day. The medical care is rudimentary; dressings are made of coarse cloth. A few jars of medicine are lying around on a shelf. The injured often have uncovered wounds and thousands of flies settle on them and buzz around. Everything is incredibly filthy. Several patients are suffering from the delayed effects of radioactivity with multiple haemorrhages. They need small blood transfusions at regular intervals; but there are no donors, no doctors to determine the compatibility of the blood groups; consequently, there is no treatment.
Things were slightly better at the Red Cross hospital, which had withstood much of the blast and fire damage:
Answer:
The First Atom Bomb, full of vivid and pictorial descriptions, throbs with emotion. It reveals Marcel Junod’s (a French pacifist who visited the devastated city as a member of the International Red Cross just after its destruction) deep sympathy for the casualties, his bitter hatred of brutal wars and his great anxiety for our posterity in view of the emergence of the deadly modern weapons.
Nagasaki Bomb
The First Atom Bomb begins with accounts of The two Japanese interpreters who went with the investigation commission of the International Red Cross, were Miss Ito, who was born in Canada and a journalist who lived in the United States for twenty years. According to Miss Ito, Hiroshima, which means ‘the broad island’, was a busy prosperous town on the delta of the river Ota. It was the seventh biggest town in Japan and seven branch rivers of the Ota enclosed it in a perfect triangle. It had many factories, warehouses, oil refineries, a harbour and an arsenal. Read More Essay It had a population of 2, 50,000 people. There was also a garrison of 1, 50,000 soldiers. Professor Tsusuki was one of the leading surgeons’ in Japan. He led Marcel Junod and other members of the investigation commission of the International Red Cross to the centre of the atomic explosion in Hiroshima.