Nagasaki

May 18, 2015
Southard, founder and director of the Arizona-based Essential Theatre, presents a vivid (if gruesome) group portrait of five hibakusha, or “atomic bomb affected people,” 70 years after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Her long acquaintance with the survivors and facility with the Japanese language result in an invaluable snapshot of that harrowing moment in history. Opening with a description of Nagasaki circa 1945, “an L-shaped city built along two rivers,” Southard dramatically depicts how its 240,000 residents toiled to support a hopeless military effort. The Japanese had been deluded into believing that Nagasaki would be spared, as it was home to “the largest Christian community in the nation.” Zeroing in on the crucial event, Southard movingly focuses on her subjects’ experiences against the backdrop of the Manhattan Project, the whitewashing of the bombing’s aftermath by the U.S. government, and the tug-of-war over autopsy specimens, which was finally resolved in 1973 by President Nixon. While the hibakusha initially chose to remain silent, a doctor named Akizuki Tatsuichiro pushed for transparency, organizing the Nagasaki Testimonial Society. This group, having reached old age, continues to share stories at public events around the world. Southard offers valuable new information and context, and her work complements John Hersey’s 1946 classic, Hiroshima. Photos. Agent: Richard Balkin, Ward & Balkin Agency.

Starred review from April 15, 2015
Intense, deeply detailed, and compassionate account of the atomic bomb's effects on the people and city of Nagasaki, then and now. The generation of hibakusha, or atomic-bomb survivors, is sadly passing away, as journalist and artistic director Southard (Essential Theatre, Tempe, Arizona) acknowledges in her tracking of the experiences of five who were teenagers in the once-thriving port city of Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945. As the 70th anniversary of the dropping of the bomb over Nagasaki approaches, the author aims to enlighten her American audience, whose largely unequivocal stance about the rightness of forcing Japan to capitulate and the ignorance regarding radiation exposure the U.S. government took great pains to promote have kept readers unaware, she believes, of the magnitude of this nuclear annihilation-"a scale that defies imagination." These five teenagers, and many like them, had all been enlisted in the war effort, as had their families in Nagasaki, one of Japan's first Westernized cities, containing the largest Christian population. One of the teens delivered mail, one was a streetcar operator, and several worked in the Mitsubishi factories that lined the river. When the bomb obliterated the Urakami Valley, where many of them lived, all lost family members and were horribly injured and scarred for life. Southard's descriptions stick to the eyewitness accounts of these and other survivors, and they are tremendously moving, nearly unbearable to read, and accompanied by gruesome photos. She alternates first-person accounts-e.g., reports by the Japanese doctors who first treated the burns and identified the subsequent radiation "sickness"-with an outline of the political developments at the war's conclusion. The author emphasizes the postwar censorship imposed by the U.S. occupying force in Japan regarding the discussion of the bombing or radiation effects (see George Weller's First into Nagasaki), as well as the bravery of the hibakusha, who were determined to speak the truth. A valiant, moving work of research certain to provoke vigorous discussion.

COPYRIGHT(2015) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from May 15, 2015

Published to mark the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this account is an investigation of the decades-long impact of the explosion that defined the end of World War II. Using the first-person narratives of hibakusha ("bomb-affected people"), playwright Southard (formerly creative writing, Arizona State Univ.) works her way from the morning of August 9, 1945 through the occupation and escalation of the Cold War to reveal the horrific destruction that was censored in both Japan and America for decades. While the bulk of the investigation relies on the story of the survivors who were caught in the explosion, Southard's documentation of the censorship of images and film depicting the after effects and medical tests run during the occupation reveals a darker side of America's military occupation after the war. This book provides the material and personal stories of one of the darkest days in human history. Southard's research uncovers the way the American military mistreated Japanese citizens and provided misinformation about the results of nuclear blasts to the rest of the world. VERDICT One of the definitive histories of the end of World War II. Essential.--John Rodzvilla, Emerson Coll., Boston

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.