International: FROM HIROSHIMA: A REPORT AND A QUESTION

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Where the city stood, everything, as far as the eye could reach, is a waste of ashes and ruin. The banks of the river are covered with dead and wounded; the rising waters have already covered some of the corpses. Naked burned cadavers are particularly numerous. Among them are wounded who still live. A few have crawled under burnt-out autos and trams.

We make our way to the place where our Church stood. In the ashes, we find a few molten remnants of the holy vessels.

We took under our care 50 refugees. Father Rector treated the wounded as well as he could. He had to confine himself in general to cleansing the wounds of purulent material. Even those with the smaller burns were very weak, and all suffered from diarrhea. Our work was, in the eyes of the people, a greater boost for Christianity than all our work during the preceding long years.

During the next few days, funeral processions passed our house from morning to night, bringing the deceased to a small valley near by. There the dead were burned. People brought their own wood and themselves did the cremation. Late at night, the little valley was lit up by the funeral pyres.

How Many Died? The magnitude of the disaster that befell Hiroshima was only slowly pieced together in my mind. As a result of the explosion, almost the entire city was destroyed at a single blow. The small Japanese houses in a diameter of five kilometers collapsed or were blown away. Those in the houses were buried in the ruins. Those in the open sustained burns. Fires spread rapidly. The heat which rose from the ground created a whirlwind which spread the fire throughout the whole city. As much as six kilometers from the center of the explosion, all houses were damaged, and many collapsed and caught fire.

How many people fell victims to this bomb? Hiroshima had a population of 400,000. Official statistics place the number who died at 70,000 up to Sept. 1, not counting the missing ... and 130,000 wounded, among them 43,500 severely wounded. Estimates made by ourselves on the basis of groups known to us show that the number of 100,000 dead is not too high.*

Thousands of wounded who died later could doubtless have been rescued, but rescue work in a catastrophe of this magnitude had not been envisioned. Since the whole city had been knocked out at a blow, everything which had been prepared for emergency work was lost. Those who received good care slowly healed of their burns. There were cases, however, whose prognosis seemed good but where death supervened suddenly. Some who had only small external wounds died within a week or later, after an inflammation of the pharynx and oral cavity. There cannot be any doubt that the bomb's radiation had some effect on the blood. However, myself and others who worked in the ruined area for some hours shortly after the explosion suffered no ill effects.

Query for Moralists. We have discussed among ourselves the ethics of the use of the bomb. Some condemned its use on a civil population. Others were of the view that in total war there was no essential difference between civilians and soldiers, and that the bomb itself was an effective force, warning Japan to surrender and thus to avoid total destruction. It seems logical to me that he who supports total war in principle cannot complain of a war against civilians.