With ‘Hiroshima: The Last Witnesses,’ M. G. Sheftall asks readers to feel

If you don’t mind, dear reader, I’m going to treat you as someone who already knows that on Aug. 6, 1945, at 8:15 a.m., American pilot Paul Tibbets, while flying the B-29 Enola Gay— his mother’s name — dropped the first atomic bomb in history over the city of Hiroshima, killing over 100,000 people.

Also if you don’t mind, I’m going to treat you as someone who is already weary of what has been a nearly eight-decade long debate. Was the bomb’s use justified? By horrifying a nation (and soon a world) with such a powerful and deadly weapon, did the United States inevitably save the lives of hundreds of thousands of American and Japanese soldiers?

By now, you’ve already met that middle-aged male veteran sitting at the end of a bar. He tells you that, yes, it was justified, and it did save lives, and yes, the Japanese deserved it because of Pearl Harbor and the 1942 Bataan Death March. A part of you understands the man’s argument, but you are left cold from how insensitive he sounds. You wonder if there’s more to the event.

There is. And if you read M. G. Sheftall’s stupendously ambitious and profoundly humanistic Hiroshima: The Last Witnesses (Dutton, 2024), you will — after 475 pages — arrive at a conclusion that is all your own.

I say this with utter relief. For too long I have read Hiroshima accounts that feel either hell-bent on convincing you that the bomb was necessary — or that it wasn’t. Sheftall is far too experienced to be one-sided. When looking into his background, you soon become in awe of how he is, indeed, the perfect kind of scholar to tackle such an immensely controversial moment.

For that guy at the bar I mentioned, he would need to respect that Sheftall attended West Point (Class of 1984) and later majored in political science and international relations from Fordham University.

For the person offended by the insensitivity of the bar guy’s delivery, they could be assured that Sheftall is fluent in Japanese and has lived in Japan for nearly four decades. His first book, Blossoms in the Wind (NAL, 2005), goes into the mindset of kamikaze pilots via interviews with the Japanese veterans who were ready to crash-bomb their planes and die for their country if called.

Sheftall’s balanced background allows his writing to echo both sides simultaneously. Consider the following passage, in which Sheftall pushes back against people who choose to find comfort in believing that most of the atomic bomb victims “died instantly:”

“These hypothetical precise-geographical Ground Zero victims would have had just about time in the final second or two of their lives to begin registering hellfire pain, hear their own skin begin to sizzle, and perhaps take in a deep gasp of air for a scream before the supersonic shock wave—the impact, at this close range, arriving ahead of the sound of the explosion coming up behind it—literally blew them to pieces, delivering as much as eleven tons of pressure to every square meter of surface with which it collided.”

This passage alone is enough to widen the eyes of a war-weary army general. But Sheftall continues… feet still planted in the center of the argument.

“...stupendously ambitious and profoundly humanistic...”

“If you are going to defend these weapons’ use, it is morally imperative that you own that image. Turn it around in your head a bit. Imagine it happening to ten thousand children or even just a single child. Imagine it happening to your child.”

If you think this reveals a bias, consider that Sheftall, through Japanese sources and dozens of interviews, depicts hundreds of children — girls around 14 years old — working to receive messages in a military bunker, and both boys and girls ordered to help tear down homes “to clear the firebreak lanes.”

The killing of these children is not just to be imagined, but to be felt. It happened. Having an unemotional, numb opinion on the issue of nuclear weapons might be the most dangerous stance of all. Yet this is where humanity stands in a world geopolitically organized out of fears of mutually assured destruction.

What also separates Hiroshima from other accounts is the amount of time, patience and trust Sheftall gives to each hibakusha (atomic bomb survivor) he meets.

It probably won’t surprise you to learn how annoyed many hibakusha have become with Western journalists swooping in to exploit their pain and victimhood all in the pursuit of a quick headline that will inevitably be piled atop a dozen others during the first nine days in August.

In one stirring chapter, Sheftall shares how he met Dr. Tomonaga Masao at a café in Nagasaki. At first, Dr. Tomonaga is prickly, unsure if Sheftall truly cares about what he has to say or if he’s yet another one of those quick-hit listicle writers looking to score a byline.

As Sheftall reveals himself, though, Dr. Tomonaga begins to rest easy. The author in front of him has all the time in the world to understand exactly what happened on that morning of Aug. 6 — when humanity cast its shadow.

By staying with hibakusha longer than other authors, Sheftall reveals their complex humanity.

In one incredibly stirring moment, the son of a hibakusha was frustrated. Why doesn’t she have hate in her heart for a country that committed such atrocities?

Her reply? “Gandhian,” notes Sheftall, philosophically.

“If I were to hate America over what happened in the war, then I would have to hate my own country, too. And where would that leave me?”

• Hiroshima: The Last Witnesses (Embers Vol. I)
  By M. G. Sheftall
  Dutton
  Release: Sept. 10, 2024
  Available in audiobook (¥2,800) and hardcover (¥5,250)
  

Patrick Parr is the author of Malcolm Before X. He lives with his wife near Tokyo and teaches at Lakeland University Japan.

© Japan Today