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Search - First Into Nagasaki: The Censored Eyewitness Dispatches on Post-Atomic Japan and Its Prisoners of War

First Into Nagasaki The Censored Eyewitness Dispatches on PostAtomic Japan and Its Prisoners of War
Author: George Weller, Anthony Weller

George Weller was a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter who covered World War II across Europe, Africa, and Asia. At the war’s end in September 1945, under General MacArthur’s media blackout, correspondents were forbidden to enter both Nagasaki and Hiroshima. But instead of obediently staying with the press corps in northern Japan,... more » Weller broke away. The intrepid newspaperman reached Nagasaki just weeks after the atomic bomb hit the city. Boldly presenting himself as a U.S. colonel to the Japanese military, Weller set out to explore the devastation.

As Nagasaki’s first outside observer, long before any American medical aid arrived, Weller witnessed the bomb’s effects and wrote “the anatomy of radiated man.” He interviewed doctors trying to cure those dying mysteriously from “Disease X.” He typed far into every night, sending his forbidden dispatches back to MacArthur’s censors, assuming their importance would make them unstoppable. He was wrong: the U.S. government censored every word, and the dispatches vanished from history.

Weller also became the first to enter the nearby Allied POW camps. From hundreds of prisoners he gathered accounts of watching the atomic explosions bring an end to years of torture and merciless labor in Japanese mines. Their dramatic testimonies sum up one of the least-known chapters of the war—but those stories, too, were silenced.

It is a powerful experience, more than 60 years later, to walk with Weller through the smoldering ruins of Nagasaki, or hear the sagas of prisoners who have just learned that their torment is over, and watch one of the era’s most battle-experienced reporters trying to accurately and unsentimentally convey to the American people scenes unlike anything he—or anyone else—knew.

Weller died in 2002, believing it all lost forever. Months later, his son found a fragile copy in a crate of moldy papers. This historic body of work has never been published.

Along with reports from the brutal POW camps, a stirring saga of the worst of the Japanese “hellships” which carried U.S. prisoners into murder and even cannibalism, and a trove of Weller’s unseen photos, First into Nagasaki provides a moving, unparalleled look at the bomb that killed more than 70,000 people and ended WWII. Amid current disputes over the controlled embedding of journalists in war zones and a government’s right to keep secrets, it reminds us how such courageous rogue reporting is still essential to learning the truth.

ISBN-13: 9780307342010
ISBN-10: 0307342018
Publication Date: 12/26/2006
Pages: 336
Rating:

Currently 3.4/5 Stars.

3.4 stars, based on 6 ratings

Publisher: Crown
Book Type: Hardcover
Other Versions: Paperback, Audio Cassette, Audio CD
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Member | Amazon | Write a Review

Top Member Book Reviews

Karin M. reviewed First Into Nagasaki: The Censored Eyewitness Dispatches on Post-Atomic Japan and Its Prisoners of War on 11/22/2009

Helpful Score: 1

I found this book fascinating, although I'm a bit of a nerd. I found the information about war-time journalism and censorship especially interesting. I love the story about Weller impersonating a military officer to get access to information (and a nice villa to boot). Quite the character; quite the journalist. At LEAST 4 stars.

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Suzanne L. (SueL) reviewed First Into Nagasaki: The Censored Eyewitness Dispatches on Post-Atomic Japan and Its Prisoners of War on 3/8/2007 + 17 more book reviews

This book tells storeis of the soldiers who lived through not only the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, but, the terrible time spent in Japanese prison camps, mines and fields. An eye opening experence.

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Genres:

Biographies & Memoirs >> Historical
History >> Asia >> Japan
History >> Military >> Weapons & Warfare >> Nuclear
History >> Military >> World War II >> Hiroshima & Nagasaki
Biographies & Memoirs >> True Crime

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