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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
The original title of my proposed book about Hiroshima and Nagasaki was, “The Last Train to Nagasaki.” I believed the title conveyed how I would bridge the story of the two cities via the people who had survived both atomic bombings – the double hibakusha. In this manner, I thought I could correct the problem of how history all but forgot the second and even more powerful atomic bomb and its victims. As one survivor expressed the forgetting: “It is never good to be the second of anything.” I did not know how extreme the forgetfulness had become. In 2009, my editor discovered that almost no one at the publishing house knew what the name, Nagasaki, referred to – and thus the title change, to a name familiar to everyone: “The Last Train from Hiroshima.”
1 The first hundred milliseconds over Hiroshima: The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, The Effects of Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, internal report, Chairman's Office, June 30, 1946, pp. 1–33; E. Ishikawa, et al., pp. 21–79. The next half-second, throughout Hiroshima, was reconstructed in accordance with U.S. high-speed film footage of tests near and below 15 kilotons, on structures and animals. Tests: Hot Shot, How, Sugar, Fizeau, Fox, and Stokes; at Bikini Atoll, Test Able; at Enewatak Atoll, Tests Seminole and Sequoia. Collectively, footage and results covered varying distances from the hypocenters. NOTE: The direction of neutrinos through Setsuko's body is determined, not by a straight-line path from the bomb's detonation point through the Earth's core, but via an angle dictated by the location of the Hirata house, relative to the bomb (location verified by the Hirata family, 2010).
2 Robert Trumbull, Nine who Survived Hiroshima and Nagasaki (N.Y., Dutton, 1957), p. 24, referenced Kenshi Hirata's prior near miss of the Osaka and Kobe fire-bombings of March 13 and 17, 1945 [p. 38]. Mr. Hirata at Hiroshima, Aug. 6, 1945: 8/9/55, translation of K. Hirata report for Mitsubishi, Nagasaki, in Trumbull, pp. 23–27, 34–35, 64–71, 76; Norman Cousins, personal communication (1987); Henshi Hirata and family, interviews via Hideo Nakamura and Hidetaka Inazuka (2010). On the Hiroshima bomb as a 10–12.5 kiloton “disappointment” (as opposed to 20 kilotons officially announced by President Truman): Smithsonian Timeline #2—The 509th (Composite Group), The Hiroshima Mission, p. 3: “8/6/45; 8:15:17–8:16AM—Little Boy exploded at an altitude of 1,890 feet above the target. Yield was equivalent to 12,500 tons of TNT.” (For comparison, the Nagasaki bomb was in the range of 24 kt (nomenclature, Sigurddson, Sheffield, Shoemaker, Pellegrino based on Nagasaki yield, in, “Ghosts of Vesuvius,” Harper, N.Y., 2004, p 62.)
3 See note 2.
4 Implosive effects, heavy machinery, air-filled storm drains “vacuumed” up through the pavement, in U.S. Strategic Bombing Surveys, Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Washington D.C., June 30, 1946). Tsutomu Yamaguchi pulled by a collapsing shock bubble (personal communication, 2008 and unpublished report, “I Live to Tell My Story,” translated by Hideo Nakamura, 2009). Carbonization of people: Testimony K. Hirata – “shadow people” and “statue people,” July 2010; testimony of Dr. Hiroshi Sawachika, p. 1; Japan Society Conference 5/21/10; testimony of Takehisha Yamamoto, p. 2 (and personal communication, 2010). Shadows and ash bodies: Yoji Matsumoto, in personal communication and via his daughter Kae Matsumoto (2010); testimony Setsuko Thurlow, May 2015. Conditions and views near the Hirata House: Morimoto (Mitsubishi account, 1945, 1946), translated in R. Trumbull (see note 2).
5 See notes 1, 4.
6 Residual radiation effects at the location of Kenshi Hirata's home in Hiroshima: E. Ishikawa, et al, Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Physical, Medical, and Social Effects of the Atomic Bombings. Originally published in Japanese, (Tokyo, Iwanami Shoten Publishers, 1979); English Translation, (N.Y., Basic Books, 1981), pp. 73–79.
7 See note 2. Further details about the first night, including planes and towers of smoke: Sumiko Kirihara's family, in Youth Division of Soka Gakkai, Cries for Peace, (The Japan Times, 1978), pp. 78–80; Masahiro Sasaki, personal communication (2008).
8 “Statue people,” see note 2.
9 Kenshi Hirata and the soldiers, see notes 2, 4.
10 See notes 2, 6. Notes on the train that picked up speed, fanning the flames as it raced past Kaitaichi Station toward a collision with a truck: Nancy (Minami) Cantwell and the Hiroshima nurses of Dr. Fujii's crew (personal communication, 2008). Their first rescue effort was in fact at the site of this famous train wreck. Some details on flavorings added to extreme rations: N. Cousins in personal communication (1987); Tokusaburo Nagai in personal communication (2008); Hiroko Nakamoto in personal communication (2010) and in her book, My Japan: 1930–1951 (N.Y., McGraw Hill, 1970), pp. 50–51.
11 Kuniyoshi Sato was a friend of fellow double-survivor Tsutomu Yamaguchi, who affirmed (first during interview, July 19, 2008, p. 9), that it was indeed Kenshi Hirata seen by Mr. Sato on the train from Hiroshima. K. Sato's description of the man on the train, bringing his recent bride's remains in a helmet-shaped bowl to her parents in Nagasaki, and Sato's double-survival: Translations [in] Richard L. Parry, London Times (August 6, 2005). K. Sato's story of survival in Nagasaki was recorded and translated by H. Nakamura, personal communication, 2010. On a cremated body full of broken glass, and the people Junichi found in a bank near the hypocenter: The Asahi Shimbun Messages from Hibakusha Project (accessible via C. Pellegrino home page and here); Junichi Kaneshige, Case 20003, 2010.
12 Kenshi Hirata, “the night train”: See note 2.
13 See note 2.
14 On the greater power of the Nagasaki bomb, including flash-dessication of leaves out to a radius of 80 km (compared to 12 km for Hiroshima): M. Shiotsuki, “Doctor at Nagasaki,” Koesi, Tokyo (1987), p108; Clarence Graham (radius 63km) in T. Brokaw, “The Greatest Generation Speaks,” Random House, N.Y. (2005), Ch. 1. See note 1.
15 See note 2 (Trumbull, p. 119). Note: Norman Cousins was quite familiar with the Hirata history up to the point of Hirata's disappearance about 1955 (personal communication, 1987).
16 Kuniyoshi Sato's late arrival at the ferry, for the meeting at which Tsutomu Yamaguchi was being upbraided for having lost track of engineer K. Sato in Hiroshima: Interview, Aug 6, 2005, R.L. Parry, The Times of London (chapter 5, footnote 18). T. Yamaguchi on K. Sato, personal communication July 2008. Events at the pier, on the opposite side of the river from Yamaguchi: K. Sato interview, Hideo Nakamura, 2010.
17 Further notes related to the first three minutes: Nagano in Nagasaki Museum Archives, Testimony of Atomic Bomb Survivors #14. Dr. Nagai (on the Urakami firestorm), in The Bells of Nagasaki, pp. 28, 32, 41; Nishioka, in Trumbull, p.113. The Nagai children, Dr. Akizuki and other eyewitnesses described a large variety of objects raining down from the cloud, some being whipped up into the air by cyclones of flame springing from an immense lake of fire, as in Tasuichiro Akizuki, Nagasaki 1945 (London, Quartet Books, 1981), p. 27. Tamotsu Eguchi, in “Nagasaki,” in Hiroshima in Memoriam and Today (Hitoshi Takayama, editor; Peace Resource Ctr., U.S., the Hamat Group, Hiroshima, 2000), pp. 58–60; Asahi Shimbun (Charlespellegrino.com), “Hibakusha Voices,” Disk #6, Witness #256. Kenshi Hirata and Setsuko's family: Interviews with Kenshi Hirata, his daughter Saeko, and Setsuko Hirata's brother, July 2010 (Hideo Nakamura, Hidetaka Inazuka).
18 Dr. Nagai: Tokusaburo Nagai, personal communication (2008); discussions with Father Mervyn Fernando (Subhodi Institute, Sri Lanka), about what Dr. Nagai was trying to learn and to teach (2007). The mother whose unborn son was fiercely irradiated in the womb, and the incomparable tragedy that followed, is only one episode in Nagasaki memorialist Hayashi Kyoko's essay, “Masks of Whatchamacallit,” translated by Kyoko Selden The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, 2014.
19 Kenshi Hirata, his daughter Saeko, and what happened after Kenshi disappeared (about 1955) to protect his family from anti-hibakusha discrimination [pp. 334–35]: Interviews with Kenshi Hirata, Saeko Hirata, and Setsuko's brother, by Hideo Nakamura and Hidetaka Inazuka, March, July, 2010.
20 Tsutomu Yamaguchi and his family, personal communication, 2008 – 2015. Kenshi Hirata, after the war: see note 19. Tomoko Maekawa, personal communication (2010, 2014), Hideo Nakamura, Hidetaka Inazuka, personal communication, 2010 - present.
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