Eyewitness (30 page)

He couldn’t raise the exchange because all the telephone operators had been killed. Seventy-five per cent of the police force, fire brigade and A.R.P. workers were also killed amongst the 100,000 dead of Hiroshima.

From the third floor of the police station, which had formerly been a bank, and the most solid building in the city, one could see almost to the horizon, nothing but flat acres of ground, from which rose a few trees and factory chimneys. Amongst the buildings still standing was a church which had jumped into the air from about three feet off the ground. It had twisted round and come to rest practically intact but crazily athwart its foundations. Low-level heavy concrete bridges had jumped off their piles, some spans landing back again, others dropping down into the river. All balustrades and stone-work from bridges had disappeared. Of the Emperor’s palace and large military barracks there was not a sign except for red dust and broken grey tiles strewn on the ground. There were no broken walls, large chunks of rubble, blocks of stone and concrete, nor any craters as one usually sees in a bombed city. It was destruction by pulverisation. The only explanation for these buildings still standing seemed to be that they were directly underneath the bomb as it parachuted down to explode and they were perhaps caught in a sort of safety cone, as the explosive force expanded round about them.

Floating in the river were hundreds and hundreds of dead fish, floating with their white bellies dully gleaming in the misty air. Although scientists who visited Hiroshima later testified that there was no radioactivity left in soil or water, they did not have an adequate explanation for the dead fish in the river. These could not have been victims from the original explosion, otherwise they would have been washed out to sea weeks earlier.

In an improvised hospital on the outer rim of the devastated city, I saw evidence of what atomic bombing does to humans. Stretched out on filthy mats on the floor were scores of people in various stages of dying from atomic radiation. At least the doctors assured me they must all die, unless Allied doctors and scientists had some antidote to the terrible wasting disease that had stricken down thousands of people since the bomb was dropped.

All the victims were terribly emaciated and gave off an odour that almost halted me at the hospital door. Some had purplish burns on face and body, others had bunched bluish black marks near the necks. The doctor in charge told me that he was completely at a loss how to treat his patients. A group of Japanese scientists working on some cadavers in a filthy dissecting room told me they had no clue as to what caused the wave of deaths, after the bombing.

The chief doctor said: ‘At first we treated these burns as we would any others, but patients just wasted away and died. Then people without marks on them, who hadn’t been here when the bomb exploded, fell sick and died. We thought there must be some poisonous gases left in the wake of the bomb, and people were told to wear masks. We soon found there was no damage to the respiratory organs, but people still feel safer with their masks. Patients came to us with swelling throats, and we thought we were in for a diphtheria epidemic, but they wasted away, hair fell out, they started bleeding through eyes, ears, nose and mouth, and within a few days they were dead. We tried to build them up by giving Vitamin C injections, but the flesh rotted away from the needle and they died just the same. We have found out now that something is killing off the white corpuscles, and there’s not a thing we can do to arrest it. There is no known way of replacing white corpuscles.’

‘What are you doing for these people?’ I asked.

‘We have no nurses. Most of them were killed and of those that were left some died through handling the patients, others just left. Now we don’t admit patients unless their relatives stay here and look after them. We try and provide vitamin-rich foods and keep the wounds clean. Apart from that we can do nothing.’

The assistant city health officer told me they had found that those who took sick after the raid, in almost every case, were those who had been digging round in the ruins for bodies of relatives or for buried belongings. They thought there must be some rays released by disturbing the soil, so now no-one was allowed to dig amongst the ruins.

‘There are 30,000 bodies in the dirt and rubble,’ he said, ‘and they must remain unburied until we can find some way of dealing with the disease.’

One curious thing that I heard several times when I was in Hiroshima was that cows and horses that were severely wounded and burned had nearly all recovered, whereas most humans who were marked in any way had died.

A commission of Japanese scientists was at work in the city, trying to decide whether it was safe to rebuild Hiroshima on the old site, or whether they would have to build elsewhere. The suggestion by one British scientist that the ground would be contaminated for at least 70 years was taken very seriously in view of the atomic plague which had smitten the city.

Through the good offices and perseverance of the Canadian- Japanese interpreter I managed to get the first story of Hiroshima phoned back to my colleague in Tokyo, and so to the outside world.

My black-uniformed police took charge of me again at the Hiroshima station, putting me under benevolent detention, feeding me on dried beans and weak tea, and allowing me to sleep on the wooden floor until my train left in the early hours of the morning, back to Tokyo.

Frank Legg

Frank Legg was born in England in 1906, and came to Australia in 1927 where he worked as a freelance until joining the Adelaide
News
in 1937, and contributing broadcasts to the ABC. He joined the A.I.F. in 1940 and found himself in the 2/48 th Battalion, whose members won four VCs – three at El Alamein, and the fourth by Diver Derrick at Sattelberg in New Guinea. Legg served with distinction at Tobruk and El Alamein, finally as Regimental Sergeant- Major. He had earned promotion, but wanted to stay with his unit. However, in late 1943, having done officer training, he found that he couldn’t be posted back to his old unit and instead found himself an ABC war correspondent. A technological breakthrough had occurred – where Chester Wilmot had needed an immense recording device that used large steel discs, the whole requiring a power supply and a truck to cart it around – now the ABC was about to acquire portable wire recorders which used batteries.

Legg was in New Guinea in 1944, and had the chance to try his documentary technique on May 1st, 1945, when he joined the 2/48 th and Diver Derrick in the first wave of the landing at Tarakan.

Hello everyone, I’m broadcasting to you, very appropriately, from what was until about three hours ago, the radio station on Tarakan, off the coast of Borneo. Tarakan is ours! We landed this morning at 0815 hours, and the situation now is thoroughly under control …

This was at the beginning of what has been rightly described as the ‘unnecessary war’ – the three operations in Borneo that cost some 750 Australian lives for no real military purpose. They included Diver Derrick, killed at Tarakan.

Legg was on board the USS
Missouri
for the surrender in Tokyo Bay.

After the war he was a very popular broadcaster and host of
Any Questions?
on radio and TV. He wrote books about Damien Parer (1963) and Frank Hurley (1966). He died in 1966.

*

For the war correspondents there was little time for sightseeing. We were quartered at the Bund Hotel in Yokohama, where the Japanese food was so indifferent that it was fortunate we had brought with us rations for the first three days. Here almost every hour we were summoned together by Colonel Diller to receive the latest hand-outs from GHQ, and we were kept busy pouring out a constant stream of news cables to our offices. I was anxious to locate the Australian nurses captured at Rabaul, who were reported to be in the Yokohama area.
But there was no transport available to correspondents, and when George Johnston and I visited the Japanese police, and even the Foreign Office, it appeared that all the limousines they would have been only too happy to place at our disposal were either petrol-less or, for that particular day, suffering from engine defects.

Among the interviews I was able to record, however, sandwiched in between the news cables, were one with General Blamey, who had now flown in to lead the Australian delegation at the signing of the surrender, and another with Lieutenant-General A.E. Percival, the British Commander in Malaya, who had, like General Wainwright from Bataan, been released from captivity and flown to Yokohama to witness the ceremony.

At last VJ Day, Sunday 2 September 1945, dawned – fine but overcast. After four hours’ sleep, we were aroused at dawn, to be herded, breakfastless and unshaven, into three open Japanese Army trucks which were to take us to the wharf at Yokohama. All told there were 238 of us.

The great day, which was to end in comedy, began with farce. We piled into the trucks, to stand there, packed like prisoners-of-war, with nothing to hold on to. I found myself pressed face to face with a giant Russian correspondent. As we were jammed tighter and tighter, my face became embedded further and further into the lower reaches of his black beard, which reeked of vodka. The smell, of course, transferred itself to me, and stayed there the whole day. The ginger moustache of Jim Watson, the missing BBC technician who had eventually turned up, but whose recording-truck had been left somewhere at sea, tickled the back of my neck.

When it was obviously impossible to squeeze even a midget on to the tailboard of the truck, a strangled cry of ‘Let’s go!’ came from one of the Americans. It was soon taken up in Russian, French, Chinese, Dutch, and all other languages.

The demands were stilled by an excited jabbering in Japanese. Our truck was shuddering, as its engine spluttered into life, but when no sound at all came from the truck behind us, the drivers began a highpitched excited exchange of what sounded like threats and insults. It seemed the second truck wouldn’t start, and its engine was in reverse. If we didn’t get away soon, I felt sure I’d be drunk on vodka fumes before the surrender began.

Then we were moving. Our driver had decided to reverse into the truck behind, and give it an encouraging push. He badly mistimed the manoeuvre. There was a splintering crash, as headlights exploded and glass flew in all directions, followed by shouts and oaths, as peripheral correspondents were hurled onto the roadway. I stayed erect only because, in the middle of the truck, there wasn’t a place to fall. But I had an individual problem. Opening my mouth, like everyone else, to cry out involuntarily, I had been silenced by the sudden jolt, which had forced a vodka-impregnated piece of beard between my lips. Now, still without being able to move my head, I was trying to spit it out, without giving offence to its owner. Fortunately the top of my head prevented him from lowering his chin, so he couldn’t see exactly what was going on. Perhaps he didn’t care. There was so much spirit in his beard that he should have had an overpowering hangover.

Suddenly the truck lurched. There was a roar behind us, and the second vehicle came to life. We were off.

Happily, the nightmare journey was short. As we clambered off the truck, at the Customs House Wharf, I was surprised to see that my numbed right hand still grasped a typewriter. Then, to the strains of the brass band of the 11
^th
Airborne Division playing on the wharf, and showing our special Press Passes for the day, we filed aboard the US destroyer
Taylor
. In a slow-moving queue, we inched our way below to the ward-room, which normally seats fifteen. Somehow the ship’s staff provided the whole 238 of us with coffee and bread.

At 6.30
Taylor
cast off and steamed out into Tokyo Bay.

Everything was grey – the mist, the hills of Honshu astern, the sky, the ships in the bay, the stubble on the war correspondents’ chins. Grey fighters and naval float-planes roared overhead into lowering grey clouds. Dotted over the bay almost as far as the eye could see were vessels of the Allied fleets – aircraft carriers, battleships, cruisers, destroyers. Away to the east I made out the unmistakable lines of the Australian cruiser
Hobart
. Among the scores of American ships we passed the British aircraft carrier
Illustrious
, and the battleships
Duke of York
and
King George V
.

Just after seven we drew slowly in alongside the towering blue-and- grey
Missouri
. Her rails and every other vantage point were lined with sailors, and the deck of our destroyer was crammed with khakiclad correspondents and still more sailors. The
Missouri
’s 16-inch guns, in turrets of three, were reared menacingly towards the sky. Any last-minute Kamikaze attempt to stop the surrender would face a hostile welcome.

We climbed aboard the battleship soon after seven and were herded onto the after-deck. From there we were guided by PROs to our appointed positions. Mine, along with forty or fifty others, was on the Number Two 16-inch gun turret, only a few feet above the small veranda-deck on which the surrender was to take place. There were cameramen on every eminence to which a man could cling. One of them, a Russian, wore a shabby suit of civilian blue serge, and one of those cloth caps that usually frequent football matches in Yorkshire. The only other person in conspicuously civilian attire was the sole Japanese photographer; the Japanese had been permitted one photographer and one reporter to cover the surrender. He wore what appeared to be second-hand dungarees.

Somehow the Americans had managed to wedge enough collapsible wooden forms into the confined space of the gun turret to enable all of us to sit. I just had time to notice that from my cramped seat in Row Two I had a magnificent view of the back of a Russian reporter’s head, when
Missouri
’s band struck up the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’, and followed it with ‘God Save the King’. It was exactly eight o’clock. Every one stood to attention, and all the officers saluted – only the Japanese photographer peered around curiously, as though trying to memorise the tunes.

It was the cloth-capped Russian and his more suitably attired colleagues who caused the first incident. We had been cautioned not to move from our allotted places. All the cameramen were soon busily filming and photographing Admiral Nimitz, who had arrived on the veranda-deck and was chatting with his staff officers – all, that is, except the Russians. They didn’t like their position; so they moved to a better one. They didn’t like that either. Soon there were Russian photographers swarming all over the hallowed veranda-deck, some of them even taking shots of
Missouri
’s armament.

One of Nimitz’s staff officers went forward and protested. The Russians regarded him curiously, and continued their swarming. Now higher-ranking officers of several American fleets added their voices to the protest. To no avail; there is none so deaf as a Russian being spoken to in good American.

We were soon treated to the spectacle of a posse of Marines being called into action. They rounded up the Russians, shepherded them back to their places, and from then on stood over them with fixed bayonets.

At any moment now peace was due to break out.

The nations’ delegates were arriving on the stage. In spite of General MacArthur’s orders that dress for the day would be undress uniform – shirts and slacks or shorts, no decorations and no arms – it was a most colourful scene. Rear-Admiral Sir Bernard Rawlings was dressed in Navy whites, contrasting with Admirals Nimitz and Halsey, whose drab uniforms were relieved only by the heavy gold braid on their caps.

It soon became evident that some of the delegations either refused to appear at such an historic event in undress uniform or, more probably, had only packed full regalia for their hasty flights north.

General Sir Thomas Blamey, Australia’s representative, made a colourful figure in his ‘glamour suit’, red tabs and lapels and four rows of ribbons on his chest – the most decorated man to take part in the ceremony. He was accompanied by Lieutenant-General Berryman and Lieutenant-Colonel Dwyer, his personal assistant. In a moment or two the R.A.A.F. Air Vice-Marshals Jones and Bostock, in Air Force blues, added still more colour to the scene.

Now everyone seemed to arrive in a group. The French delegate, General Leclerc, spare and ascetic, was moving round wearing a
képi
and carrying his favourite stout ash stick. I saw the Dutch, led by Admiral Helfrich, distinguished by the small silver stars on their shoulders, and Colonel Moore Cosgrove, the solitary Canadian, who had formerly been Canadian Trade Commissioner to Australia. Two of the most interesting figures were the American General Wainwright and the British General Percival, whom the Supreme Commander had especially invited to witness the surrender of Japan after they had both spent more than three years in Japanese prison camps. They looked very thin, but very fit.

Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser and his Royal Navy staff arrived next. It was good to see them in their white summer uniforms, all looking cheerful and nonchalant, as though surrenders were all in the day’s work to the RN. Last of all, with fighters roaring overhead every minute or two, the Chinese delegation, with General Yung Chang in the lead, arrived and stood apart for some time, no doubt because of the language difficulty.

But it was the Russian delegation that held everyone’s eye. With their gold epaulettes and rows of ribbons, even their drab khaki tunics, buttoned tight to the throat, seemed to gleam. Their caps were of different colours, as were their trousers and even many of their tunics. They all carried gloves, and all, except General Nicholovich Derevyanko, wore short dagger-like swords at their left side, and pistols on the other hip. Derevyanko, a thick-set, powerful man of 40 or so, was obviously happy as he moved quickly around the veranda-deck, gesticulating emphatically to the large staff of armed officers who followed him. I had an absurd notion that, his cameramen having satisfactorily photographed
Missouri
’s armaments, he was planning a series of swift charges, with revolver and sword, which would yield the pride of the US Fleet to the Soviet with a minimum of bloodshed.

It was now 8.30. There were breaks in the heavy grey cloud but still no sunshine, as Major-General Sutherland, MacArthur’s Chief-of- Staff, began forming up the Allied delegations to face the baize-covered table which stood in the centre of the deck.

Soon a single rank of the signatories was formed. From right to left, these were Admiral Nimitz (United States), General Yung Chang (China), Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser (Britain), General Derevyanko (USSR), General Sir Thomas Blamey (Australia), Colonel Moore Cosgrove (Canada), General Leclerc (France), Air Vice-Marshal Issit (New Zealand), and Admiral Helfrich (Netherlands). Behind each signatory his staff of advisers, witnesses, and observers lined up. There was one exception. Apart from a Public Relations major and a war correspondent, Colonel Cosgrove appeared to be the only Canadian in this theatre of war. He stood not only junior in rank to all the other signatories, but conspicuously alone.

Eight forty-five, and the stage was set. The hero strode commandingly onto the deck. The band struck up with a gay march, everyone stood to attention; cameras whirred and clicked as General MacArthur, chin jutting purposefully, came to a halt beside the microphone set up a yard or two from the table.

Alas, it was a miscue. The hero was on stage before the villain. There was an awkward pause, then, imperiously beckoning Nimitz and Halsey to follow him, General MacArthur disappeared into the wings again, in the direction of the Admiral’s cabin.