Customer Reviews

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

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Anthony Weller has made a real contribution to history in locating and having published -- after over 60 years -- the dispatches of his renowned war correspondent father describing the first outsider's impressions of the atomic bomb attack on Nagasaki. These dispatches -- and those covering his visits to nearby POW camps where he interviewed the Allied victims of over three years of Japanese brutality -- were submitted by George Weller but fell afoul of General MacArthur's self-serving censorship and never saw the light of day -- until his son rescued the carbon copies of the dispatches from oblivion in 2002.

Also included in this remarkable volume are graphic descriptions -- published in part only -- of the POW experiences of two American civilians captured on Wake Island and of the 300 survivors of the 1600 American officers and enlisted men transferred under horrendous conditions -- including attacks by American submarines and aircraft -- from the Philippines to Japanese-held Formosa.

Without the benefit of his lost 1945 dispatches, George Weller did manage to have his recollections of his Nagasaki experience published in 1966 as a essay, focusing on the veil of censorship that dogged his efforts 21 years earlier, and that full account is also included in this volume. In addition to making all this material available in one place, a major effort of research, Anthony Weller has contributed his own essay analyzing his father's struggles with wartime censorship and the controversial "atomic bomb" issue that was so sensitive immediately after World War II. In all, this book is highly recommended by the reviewer to anyone concerned about the Nagasaki attack and the effects of censorshp in World War II -- and afterwards -- who is sympathetic to the efforts of honest and dedicated reporters like George Weller to get the truth out.

It was perhaps the most underreported story of World War II. Very little has ever appeared in print about the incredibly inhumane treatment of American soldiers and civilians in Japanese POW camps. Until now. In the days immediately following the surrender of the Japanese empire, Chicago Sun Times reporter George Weller, who Walter Cronkite charactorizes as "one of our best war correspondents" slipped quitely and without authorization into Nagasaki, Japan to see for himself the legacy of the atomic bomb that had been dropped just four weeks earlier. In terms of press coverage of this horrifying and historic event Mr. Weller was indeed "First Into Nagasaki".

Upon his arrival in Nagasaki George Weller immediately embarked on a tour of the devastated city. What he saw shocked him. There was devastation everywhere. He learned from various officials that at least 21,000 people had already died and that thousands more were injured. He saw first hand those people who were suffering from what he referred to as "Disease X". These doomed individuals were destined to die a slow and painful death due to atomic radiation. George Weller reported his findings in a series of dispatches to his newspaper. Unfortunately for him General Douglas MacArthur was not particularly disposed to having any negative news coming out of Japan. Unbeknownst to George Weller, his reports were being 100% censored by the United States military. After completing his tour of the city proper Weller moved on to a number of the POW camps in the city, among them Omuta and Izuka. He interviewed scores of American POWs along the way. These former POW's told Weller of the inhumane and sadistic treatment they had received at the hands of their Japanese captors. Once again, Weller sent another series of dispatches to the Chicago Sun-Times only to have them totally censored by our own military! For a host of political and security reasons, the American people would never hear the troubling stories George Weller was trying to tell. His reports it seemed had been lost forever. He had made carbon copies of all of them but these too seemed to have disappeared. After George Weller died in 2002 his son Anthony was sifting through some of his dad's papers in an old trunk when lo and behold he came upon those tattered and yellowing copies.

And so now, more than six decades after these historic events took place "First Into Nagasaki" finally presents George Weller's compelling dispatches for all to read and digest. This is powerful stuff folks. Over the decades much has been written about the atrocities in Nazi POW camps. Curiously, very little has ever been disclosed about the inhumane conditions that existed in Japanese POW camps. "First Into Nagasaki" does much to set the record straight. This is an extremely important book and one that should prove to be a real eye opener to those like myself who were born after the end of World War II. It might be useful to conclude this review by quoting George Weller on the subject of censorship: "The moment when it could have been understood politically is missed, surpressed. The possibility of comprehension will never again return...And the porcelain men of history will pose forever in these lying attitudes. The aim of well-timed censorship is to instill this simple idea: it probably never happened." Highly recommended!

George Weller's First into Nagasaki is one of the best books I've read of late. Much of what Weller tells us about the bombing of Nagasaki we already new, at least in total. Weller provides details the make the aftermath of the bombing vivid in the mind of the reader. It is such a shame that it took two atomic bombs to get the Japanese to surrender.

What I found particularly moving were the interviews that Weller conducted with surviving allied prisoners of war. The brutality of the Japanese toward helpless prisoners is still mind blowing even after all these years. Those of the "greatest generation" who fought the Japanese had ber strong feelings. On page 120 of First Into Nagasaki, Marine Sergeant Charles Eckstein summed up the opinions of most Americans who fought in the Pacific when he said "I believe the Japs are the lowest people on earth, and I would rather have spent my three years on Alcatraz." I don't think the revisionist historians can deny the truth as brought to us by Weller.

I'm also amused by a story told by Weller and reported by another reviewer by a Japanese who asked Weller what he thought about a people who would drop such a bomb on the people of Nagasaki. Weller quickly reminded the Japanese of the unprovoked sneak attach on Pearl Harbor.

First Into Nagasaki should be required reading in every high school in America.

A superb read.

This is a splendid report from a reporter who actually chose to report rather than just be a mouthpiece for MacArthur in Japan. For unknown reasons, the areas around Hiroshima and Nagasaki were declared off limits to American reporters. Mr. Weller managed to get assigned to a visit to a air base in Southern Japan he then 'escaped' from supervision by an Army PR type and made his way to Nagasaki.

I was particularly struck by an exchange between he and a Japanese lieutenant.

'What do you think of the culture of a people who could drop such a terrible weapon on the people of Japan?'

'To give you an honest reply, I would have to ask my own people. And of course I would have to begin with those who were walking to church on Sunday on Red Hill in Hawaii when your planes struck them.'

My own discussions with young Japanese of today have them almost thinking that the story of World War II was basically that the US began dropping Atomic bombs on them for no reason.

In travels around Southern Japan Mr. Weller visited POW camps near Nagasaki and interviewed dozens of American POWs who told stories of torture, starvation, murder and above all of their travel in a 'hellship' which carried US prisoners.

A splendid book that brings to light several stories that have been little reported.

In the foreword, Walter Cronkite says: "This is an important book -- important and gripping." Somehow, categorizing a book as "important" has always struck me as a rather weak recommendation ... until now.

A gentleman I have known for years has told me often of his brother, a prisoner of the Japanese, beaten repeatedly in the coal mines of Japan. In fact, almost 50 years later, he lost a kidney as a direct result of those assaults. This book illustrates that I did not have even the foggiest idea until now of the intensity of base brutality in the coal mines of Baron Mitsui.

Although a better title may have been "The Censored Dispatches" or something similar, that takes absolutely nothing away from the power of this book. As a published historian, I have learned that there is no substitute for the firtshand account of someone who was actually there, and the immediacy of these dispatches, feverishly written over a few weeks, have the unmistakeable ring of on-the-spot authenticity as told by a skilled observer.

This is strong stuff, disturbing and hard to read. I found that setting the book aside from time to time helped me to be better able to stop and ponder the ramifications of these distant events in our days ...

* Is cansorship right or wrong? And who decides?
* When is harsh brutality right (whether in person or by a remote weapon)?
* When (if ever) is it right to make a "deal with the devil" for "the greater good" (such as leaving some wrongdoers go unpunished so that they might share their research or help the Allied cause -- i.e., Baron Mitsui died wealthy and at a comfortable old age)
* What other important things are we ignorant of because they were censored?
* How can we learn from the horrors of the past in our history-poor present?

This book is highly recommended as a window into an almost forgotten chapter of the past, one that we cannot afford to forget or ignore.

I purchased "First Into Nagasaki" from [...] after watching the author, Anthony Weller, talk about the book with Brian Lamb on C-Span in January 2007. Actually, Anthony's father, George Weller wrote all the articles (in the book) in 1945 when he was the first American war correspondent to enter Nagasaki a few weeks after the bomb was dropped. He was not supposed to be there since General McArthur had put a total news blackout on all information about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The entire southern area of Japan was "off limits" to all war correspondents (with few exceptions).
George Weller naively forwarded all his Nagasaki stories to General McArthur's headquarters in Tokyo where they were promptly confiscated and later destroyed (everything had to be passed by McArthur's censors, even though the war was over). Luckily however, Weller kept a "carbon copy" of all his material but over the years, he apparently forgot all about them until his son Anthony, a fine writer in his own right (a Pulitzer Prize author), found the "goldmine" of material stashed away in a closet. George edited the fading copy and had the basis for a remarkable new book called "First Into Nagasaki".
The title is a bit misleading. Although the book does give much new and surprising information on the effects of the bomb and how it affected Nagasaki (In 1945, the city was a leading industrial complex, with many war-related factories). Instead, much of the book deals with the unbelievable harsh and inhumane treatment of Allied prisoners of war in the Japanese POW camps in and around Nagasaki. The stories are sickening and difficult reading.
Goerge Weller says it perfectly in one of his short essays scattered throughout the book: "The Japanese POW camps are one of the greatest omissions in World War II memory. Despite the large numbers involved - 140,000 Allied prisoners through the war - they have not been portrayed in films, chronicled by historians, or officially documented as the Nazi camps have been, though they were SEVEN TIMES DEADLIER for a POW." (My emphasis added).
The Japanese were consistant: they treated all their prisoners, American, British, Australian, Canadian, New Zealander, Chinese, Filipino, etc. with equal contempt. When the prisoners were released after the war, they described their captors as "animals, uncivilized barbarians, hateful people, a disgrace to humanity, the most wicked people on earth"...and the lists goes on.
Actually the prisoners were lucky to have been released. In the final days of the war, all Allied POW's were going to be slaughtered, but due to the quick end of the war caused by the two bombs, the camp guards (executioners) fled. The few who stayed, immediately became fawning and submissive to the prisoners, bowing and saluting them (the previous week they had been beating them).
Well, I could go on and on about this wonderful book. All I ask is that you take an afternoon off and read it.
I was a teenager when the bombs were dropped and the war in the Pacific quickly came to an end. I remember it vividly. I also remember the stories and the photos of the released Allied prisoners...nothing but skin and bones, walking skeletons, many who never recovered from the brutal treatment by the Japanese. But it was fast forgotten.

I was 13 at the time the Nagasaki bomb was detonated and have always wondered about it all. Even when I was in USAF Pilot Training classes 10 years later,the Classified training which covered these weapons was mostly "How it Works" but nothing memorable about what it does to humans or structures. Now 40 some years later I have a first hand account from someone who was there shortly after and talked to survivors.

A disturbing but beneficial bonus is the accounts of the Allied POW's tribulations while in Japanese hands. Those were awful times, at best.

And last but not least, the accounts of censorship during that time are eye-opening.

Highly recommended, especially to the historically deficit younger generations.

I know Anthony personally and what a fine journalist he is. This, as a tribute to his father, is a fascinating read for all newspapermen particularly. A great insight into censorship and how the world often learns too late. Gary Chapman

The book's title wrongly implies a treatment of Nagasaki similar to John Hersey's 1946 book on Hiroshima. Instead, the book collects the reporter's previously censored dispatches from Nagasaki and elsewhere in Japan in September 1945. In the end, the book provides only a few isolated accounts of the Nagasaki bombing.

Weller does provide historically important reporting from the site of the atomic bombing, some of which was still burning a month after the fact. Weller documented the radiation sickness that surprised the Americans -- a subject that MacArthur apparently wished to censor.

Weller writes like a dream and was clearly a leading journalist of the day. He brilliantly describes the bomb floating down by parachute and then emitting blinding tongues of fire that spread out below like a hoop skirt. He points out that much of the death came from the collapse and burning of wood houses whose kitchens were alit with meal preparation. Any kind of cover underground sufficed to shield residents from this very primitive and low grade bomb. And the heat blast, recounts Weller, is exaggerated. It is gone quickly, like a sudden opening and closing of a furnace.

But the radiation sickness was a horrible and sinister killer described at length by Weller.

Unfortunately, Weller spent very litte time in Nagasaki and did not complete the full regimen of interviews that Hersey later did at Hiroshima. That is too bad, because Weller was a much better writer than Hersey.

Much of the book consists of dispatches from POW camps visited by Weller, the most riveting of which concerned life at a forced-labor coal mine and on the horrific prison ships from the Phillipines that killed hundreds of Americans. The truly evil conduct of the Japanese -- born of contempt for prisoners who did not fight to the death, inculcated racism, and complete lack of resources and preparation to house prisoners -- is vividly described. And it puts into context the Japanese attempt to seize the moral high ground as victims of a cruel and inhuman atomic weapon.

The dispatches are in their raw form and, unfortunately, were never edited and supplemented by Weller later in life. But they are terrific and riveting.

I might be partial because my fathers is mentioned in the book, but it was able to give me a better insight as to what really happen to my Dad since he would not like to talk about it and when we tried to obtain his records in Washington we were we told they were destroyed in a fire, this so far has been one of the best books put together with the facts