Early Accounts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

What really happened?

“I was keyed up for my first view of an atom-bombed city, prepared for the radically new sights suggested by the exciting descriptions I had read and heard. But to my utter astonishment, Hiroshima from the air looked exactly like all the other burned-out cities I had observed!

Within an area defined by black, undestroyed houses there was the familiar pink carpet, about two miles in diameter. What is more, precisely as in Yokohama, Osaka, or Kobe, it was dotted with buildings still standing erect, with charred trees, poles, and other objects. All but one of the steel and concrete bridges were intact. A cluster of modern concrete buildings in the downtown section stood upright and seemingly undamaged.

. . .I had heard about buildings instantly consumed by unprecedented heat. Yet here were buildings structurally intact, with outside and stone facings in place. What is more, I found them topped by undamaged flag poles, lightning rods, painted railings, air-raid sirens, and other fragile objects. Clearly they had weathered the blast and somehow escaped the infernal heat, as well as the alleged super-hurricane thousand-mile-an-hour wind.

For two days I examined Hiroshima. I drove to T Bridge, which had been the aiming point for the atomic bomb. In its environs I looked for the bald spot where everything presumably had been vaporized or boiled to dust in the twinkling of an eye. It wasn’t there or anywhere else in the city. I searched for other traces of phenomena that could reasonably be tagged ‘unusual.’ I couldn’t find them.”

—Alexander Seversky

The public—that means you and me, and mom and pop, and gramps and grandma—have been repeatedly lied to about an infinite number of things, especially by the government and the media. The 20th century could aptly be termed, the “century of lies.” Lies told over the radio and on black and white TV in unhesitating tones that conveyed absolute matter-of-factness and undeniability. The best policy in view of such a situation is to question everything, no matter how absurd it may seem to do so.

In a previous article published by Nevermore Media, I asked the question whether the evidence pointed to the possibility that Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been firebombed like Tokyo and other Japanese cities rather than being nuked.

DO NUCLEAR WEAPONS EXIST?

“Why would you ask such an absurd question?” some readers must have thought.

My reasons were simple:

1. A friend had drawn my attention to some very odd footage from the Trinity test site showing dynamite being stacked up in a large pile for a “parallel” test to “compare” the newly developed atom bomb with. Why would such a test be needed? Could the subsequent “real” test have just been another fake?

2. Another strange thing was this photo taken at the Trinity test site in New Mexico:

   

   I put this at the top of that article to see if anyone would comment on the oddities. We have J. Robert Oppenheimer with his foot on the rubble of the tower the bomb was alleged to have sat atop; General Leslie Groves, the big man to Oppenheimer’s left who was the head of the Manhattan Project; with other important people huddled in closely. Where is their protective clothing? Aren’t they worried about radiation? Did they all get sick and die after this? Look closely at the metal ruins. The rebar like rings don’t even appear smoothed by the heat, much less evaporated.

3. The Americans had already firebombed a large district of Tokyo, completely destroying it, displacing over a million people while killing between 80,000 and 100,000 of the inhabitants—more than were later killed in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. They knew already from experience that they could utterly demolish a smaller city this way. They didn’t need nukes to do it. But the one thing they needed nukes for was drama: to create a horrifying impression that the world would never forget.

This last point was corroborated by a nuclear weapons historian I happened across in preparing that first, tentative post:

And to some, the atomic bombs were just a refinement of the art of area bombing — a more efficient means to accomplish the same ends. […]

The goals were similar, though the people planning the atomic bombs emphasized the raw terror that they hoped such a spectacle would inspire.

This historian provides side by side images of the destruction for comparison.

The ruins of 1945: Tokyo, left, and Hiroshima, right

No fewer than 67 Japanese cities were firebombed by the U.S. military. If Hiroshima and Nagasaki were firebombed, that would make 69. Why have the other 67 cities received little attention?

The quote at the beginning of this article—taken from the ninth chapter of Seversky’s book, Air Power: Key to Survival—was reproduced by Michael Palmer MD in Hiroshima Revisited (2020). A more complete version of that quote is given in an intriguing, well-researched documentary (also available on Rumble)

If you read our previously posted interview with Dr. Palmer you may recall him mentioning Seversky. A Russian-American pilot and aeronautical engineer, at the end of WWII Seversky had been “sent on an official mission to report on the results of the Allied bombing campaigns in Germany and Japan.” In the same tour, he visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“For two days I examined Hiroshima …. I looked for the bald spot where everything presumably had been vaporized or boiled to dust in the twinkling of an eye. It wasn’t there or anywhere else in the city. I searched for other traces of phenomena that could reasonably be tagged ‘unusual.’ I couldn’t find them.”

Seversky took photos that accompany his account. Structures that were completely turned to ashes were wooden houses, which were common in Japanese cities and were easily destroyed by fire. Concrete buildings and bridges survived in tact.

Above: Photograph of downtown Hiroshima, taken by Seversky during his visit in early September 1945. The circle (B) represents what was supposed to have been “ground zero.”

Palmer goes on to cite what Seversky tells in the following chapter of his book:

The story sketched in the preceding chapter obviously was different from the one then being told virtually in unison by press, radio, and scientists.

Against the prevailing hyperbole it must have sounded more incredible than I suspected. But it was the only story I could conscientiously tell when I was questioned by newspapermen in Tokyo and back home in America.

I did not “underrate” the atom bomb or dispute its future potential. Certainly I did not dismiss lightly the infernal horror visited on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As an engineer, I limited myself to an analysis of the demolition accomplished by particular bombs exploded in a particular way. These one-man observations I embodied in a formal report to the Secretary of War, who released it to the public. In addition I wrote several articles on the subject.

Whereupon all hell broke loose over my sinful head. My findings were pounced upon by all sorts of people in angry fury, on the air, in the press, at public forums; scientists who hadn’t been within five thousand miles of the atomized cities solemnly issued condemnations of my heretical views.

Almost for the first time in my career I found myself in the position of a “conservative” under fire from “extremists.”

There was an official story for the world to hear, and Seversky’s account contradicted that. But in fact, as Palmer brings out, there was another official story—the one told in Japan. The aim of American censorship, assisted by the subordinated imperial government, was:

“. . . to draw a ring around Japan through which no unauthorized information slipped, either to or from Japan.”¹

This was necessary since early reports in Japan contradicting the allied narrative could not be entirely erased from the memory of the Japanese people, although a different species of censorship and storymaking was quickly put in place there, as well.

The earliest radio broadcast on record in Japan after the bombing of Hiroshima mentioned multiple planes and bombs:

A small number of B-29s penetrated into Hiroshima city little after eight a.m. yesterday morning and dropped a small number of bombs. As a result, a considerable number of homes were reduced to ashes and fires broke out in various parts of the city.

To this new type of bomb are attached parachutes, and it appears as if these new bombs exploded in the air.²

The mention of “bombs” was even included in the Japanese “protest” submitted to the Swiss Embassy only 6 days after the event:

On August 6, 1945, American airplanes released on the residential district of the town of Hiroshima bombs of a new type…³

Even though they enunciated the devastating effects of the “new bomb,” apparently the authors of this protest had not yet been informed that they were not supposed to mention multiple planes and bombs. This would soon be remediated and not reappear in official communications.

The idea of multiple planes, multiple bombs, and even bombs of different types is brought out in eye witness testimony and in the effects of the bombing. Palmer discusses the many inconsistencies: people who who were near the alleged center or ground zero of the nuclear detonation who survived, in spite of little protection, as well as people farther away who died or were severely affected.

During their secret preparations for deployment of the first A-bomb, B-29 bombers were modified to carry a FAT MAN bomb—the plutonium implosion bomb alleged to have been dropped over Nagasaki on August 9, three days after LITTLE BOY was alleged to have destroyed Hiroshima. The FATMAN bomb was huge, and these modified bombers could not carry bombs of a normal shape and size:

..the wartime FATMAN implosion bomb was almost 11 feet long, five feet in diameter, and weighed about 10,000 lbs.⁴

A special type of conventional bomb—the Pumpkin bomb—was developed to mimic the size and shape of FAT BOY for use in the modified B-29s, allegedly so members of the American Air Force group, “the 509th”, could practice for the nuclear bombing. The number of such modified bombers—apparently 42, or maybe even more—would seem extravagant given the fact that it would only take one bomber to to deploy a nuclear bomb. In fact, Leslie Groves, head of the “Manhattan Project” says these bombs were actually deployed around the “atomic targets”:

To familiarize the plane crews with the general areas of the [future] targets and to ensure more certain navigation and target recognition, the cities selected for the Pumpkin missions were in the general vicinities of, but outside, the atomic targets. The bombings were carried out at the same high altitudes . . .⁵

All of this brings up a number of questions. Why were they practicing with FATMAN-shaped Pumpkins? Could they have really been training for a different type of bombing? The Pumpkins could carry a large amount of conventional explosive in a heavy casing, conceivably resulting in an impressive blast. Perhaps impressions was what it was really about. Photoflash bombs may have been dropped simultaneously for effect.

One of the commenters on my earlier article felt that questioning nuclear bombs was insensitive to those who have suffered their effects. I replied that having heard of cancer or nuclear radiation sickness of those exposed after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was one thing that I still wondered about, and a reason for my hesitance in coming to any conclusions. Now having seen Michael Palmer’s book, all of this begins to make a lot of sense to me. I doubt anyone could accuse him of being insensitive to the horrifying effects of the bombings. In fact, writing as an MD, much of what he discusses is the medical evidence, which he believes points to the use of mustard gas and napalm. As anyone familiar with chemical weapons will know, these substances inflict such a horrific nightmare upon their victims that only someone with no conscience, or whose conscience has been numbed by propaganda, could inflict them on an innocent civilian population.

Below: Victims of a napalm attack. South Vietnam, 1972. (See Palmer, p. 157-158)

Below: Keyloids, or hypertrophic scar tissue, in two patients from Hiroshima. These types of scars are common among napalm victims. (See Palmer, p. 154-155)

It is possible that “dirty bombs” meant to disperse radioactive material at the same time could have been used. (Palmer questions whether this was the case, but suggests the evidence points to radioactive material being scattered after the fact.)

Yet, sulfur mustard gas alone is known to mimic certain effects of radiation, such as destroying the bone marrow and causing leukemia. A number of firsthand accounts collected from schoolchildren refer to “poison gas”:

Tokiko Wada: But Grandpa had breathed poisonous gas when the atom bomb fell and he got sick and went to the hospital. He died one night a little later and we had a funeral for him.

Satomi Kanekuni: On August 6 when the bomb fell, Father and Mother were living in Yanagi-machi. They were trapped by the house when it fell down and inhaled poisonous gas.

Junya Kojima: When I was five years old, there was the atom bomb explosion. My father was at his office then. I guess he breathed in poison gas . . . he soon died.

Yohko Kuwabara: Just then, I was blinded for a moment by piercing flash of bright light, and the air filled with yellow smoke like poison gas.

Yoshiaki Wada: My mother . . . breathed the poison gas from the atom bomb. That’s why she was so bad.

Children were not the only ones who believed poison gas had filled the air; it seems to have been a common belief among the survivors, but later the idea was discounted, or censored.

Palmer suggests that photoflash bombs dropped first, followed by special bombs with a TNT core developed to disperse a burning rain of napalm dropped into the cloud created by the former fits both eyewitness testimony and other available evidence, though this testimony is so varied that it gives the impression of elaborate variety of fireworks in an attempt to veil what was really being done and give the impression of a novel kind of bomb.

To be clear, Palmer does not address the question of whether real, working atom bombs may have been developed after the end of WWII, or not, but instead focuses on Hiroshima an Nagasaki. He presents a large amount of evidence, including medical evidence cited only briefly above, that contradicts what one could expect as the effects of a nuclear explosion.

Palmer concludes his book by examining what could have been the motivation for creating the spectacle of nuclear catastrophe, given that, in fact, the Japanese imperial government had already been willing to surrender and was seeking peace. The motive for prolonging the agony and upping the terror, he suggests, is to be found in postwar propaganda:

The people of the world, deeply traumatized by the war which had just ended, were told that even worse was soon to come—unless, that is, they accepted without delay the only possible solution: submission to a brand-new, benevolent, and unified world government that would henceforth guarantee eternal peace. This idea is captured in the title of the propaganda booklet One World Or None: A Report to the Public on the Full Meaning of the Atomic Bomb, a collection of essays advancing the scheme by leading scientists, several of whom took part in the ‘Manhattan Project’ and must be suspected of being in on the ‘nuclear’ scam.

The following quote by one of them, Leo Szilard, captures the tenor of the book:

The issue that we have to face is not whether we can create a world government before this century is over. That appears to be very likely.

The issue that we have to face is whether we can have such a world government without going through a third world war. What matters is to create at once conditions in which the ultimate establishment of a world government will appear as inevitable to most men as war appears inevitable at present to many.

Sound familiar? How many other lame excuses have the benevolent misanthopists ruling the world given us for supporting their project of world government?

A group of four prominent Russian scientists saw through the scheme, and though those who know me will know I do not endorse the Soviet system, I find their words apropos. In fact, their statements are surprisingly lucid:

First of all the ideas of “world government” and “super state” are not at all a product of the “atom age.” . . . It is enough to recall they have already been promoted at the origin of the League of Nations.

Furthermore in the present historic epoch such ideas were never progressive. They reflected the fact that capitalist monopolies which are dominant in the principal industrial countries . . . need world markets, world sources of raw materials and regions for investment capital [capital investment?]. Domination of monopolies in political life and in the state machine of great powers permits use of this machine for their struggle for spheres of influence and for economic and political enslavement of foreign countries . . .

[T]he ideologists of imperialism are trying to discredit the very idea of national sovereignty. In doing so they often advance pompous plans of “world state” which would allegedly do away with imperialism, wars, enmity between nations, would secure realization of all human laws, etc. . . .⁶

Few are probably aware that the United Nations, created in the wake WWII, was conceived by international financiers and industrialists. A Conference to discuss a new world monetary system, held in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire—in 1944, while the war was still in full swing—concluded with the founding of first the International Monetary Fund and what would become the World Bank. The UN would be formed the following year. John D. Rockefeller would later donate some $8 million (ten times that amount in today’s money) for the purchase of the land where the United Nations headquarters would be built in New York.

Palmer mentions influential financiers like Alexander Sachs and Bernard Baruch being involved in pushing the Manhattan Project to its conclusion:

Another financial tycoon, Bernard Baruch, was close to James F. Byrnes, who steered Truman through the rising tide of peace proposals to a successful conclusion of the atomic hoax; apparently going so far as keeping him deceived about the hoax as such—a rather brazen case of presidential puppetry.

Whether Baruch was indeed the gray eminence whose cover gave Byrnes such disproportionate influence over his peers and over Truman himself we do not know; there are, however, indications of Baruch’s considerable sway in government affairs.

To those who’ve read Anthony Sutton’s Wall Street trilogy, the name Bernard Baruch may be familiar. Sutton says of him:

Bernard Baruch was probably the most prestigious Wall Streeter of all time, perhaps even exceeding in influence both Morgan and Rockefeller.⁷

Baruch also figures largely in Eustace Mullins’ Secrets of the Federal Reserve. Baruch had been involved in finance since the 1890s and was head of the War Industries Board during the First World War. Mullins names him as one of the triumvirate—alongside his fellow financiers Warburg and Meyers—that led President Wilson during WWI. During the Second World War, Congressman Byrnes “was placed by Baruch in charge of the Office of War Mobilization...”⁸

Testifying before the Nye Committee on September 13, 1937, Bernard Baruch stated that "All wars are economic in their origin."⁹

Related:

Tobin Owl is an independent researcher/writer. Over the past four years he’s conducted in-depth investigation focusing on the history of modern medicine, medical science, geopolitical conspiracy and the environment. Articles written prior to his move to Substack are found on his website Cry For The Earth

1. M. Braw: The atomic bomb suppressed: American censorship in Japan 1945-1949 (Sharpe, 1991), p.13, as cited in Palmer, Hiroshima Revisited, p.253.

2. See Palmer, op cit., p. 237. There were some very large heavy—10 to 15 ton—conventional bombs that had been developed and deployed during WWII and some of them were dropped with parachutes, but parachutes could also have been used for photoflash bombs.

3. Ibid., p. 251

4. Ibid., p. 235

5. Cited in Palmer, p. 236

6. See Palmer, p. 274-275

7. See Anthony Sutton, Wall Street and FDR, chapter 5.

8. Eustace Mullins, Secrets of the Federal Reserve: The London Connection, p. 34.

9. Ibid., p. 157.