The front page of the Lawrence Daily Journal-World on Monday, Aug. 6, 1945.

Seventy years ago today, during the final stages of World War II, the United States military dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

American newspaper headlines — including those in the Journal-World — heralded the bomb as a military triumph and scientific breakthrough.

Without question, it was both.

On the ground in Japan, it also was a horrific, fiery event the likes of which the world had never seen. Some 80,000 people — mostly civilians — were killed immediately and tens of thousands more died later of radiation sickness, according to history.com, though death toll reports vary. Survivors were gruesomely injured, disfigured and poisoned by radiation.

On Aug. 9, the United States dropped a second atomic bomb, on the city of Nagasaki. On Aug. 15, Japan’s emperor announced its surrender.

Opinions still differ about the bomb.

Here are reflections on Hiroshima from several Lawrence community members.

Maggie Childs

Childs is associate professor of Japanese and chairwoman of the East Asian Languages and Cultures department at Kansas University. She has lived four years in Japan and traveled several times to Hiroshima, where she and students on the study abroad trips she’s lead have interacted with residents.

“My thoughts on the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima are the same as those of the survivors whose stories I’ve read or heard: such a horrifying thing as dropping an atomic bomb on human beings should never happen again,” Childs said. “There’s is no benefit to debating who to blame or why it was done. We should focus on eliminating such weapons from the face of the earth.”

Benjamin Uchiyama

Uchiyama is an assistant professor of history at KU who specializes in modern Japanese history, particularly wartime. He lived in the country for a year during graduate school. His mother is Japanese, his father Japanese-American.

The Hiroshima images most Americans know are of the mushroom cloud and post-bombing rubble, revealing the bomb’s immense power, Uchiyama said. “It kind of sanitizes it, it makes it very clean and neat. You don’t see the ugly radiation scars, the charred corpses.”

In Japan, Hiroshima is usually remembered in the context of victim consciousness, and peace activists there use it as an example for why war is inherently terrible, Uchiyama said. But there’s a “complicated wrinkle” to that mindset, he said.

“Basically it just ignores Japan’s complicity, or what the Japanese themselves call war responsibility… Hiroshima was not the only atrocity that happened in this war. Some atrocities were committed by Americans and some atrocities were committed by the Japanese.”

Grover Sanders

Sanders, 94, was a U.S. Navy chief petty officer working on destroyers in the Okinawa campaign of WWII. At sea around Okinawa, he saw a Japanese suicide plane dive into a U.S. destroyer just like his, maybe a quarter mile away. “The bow of the ship was pointed straight up,” Sanders said. “We watched it go under. It’s a terrible sight.”

Another day in the same waters, Sanders’ own ship was hit by a suicide plane — fortunately the plane only struck the gunmount on the back of the ship and its bomb exploded in the water, but six fellow shipmen were killed by shrapnel, Sanders said.

“I’m glad that Truman dropped the bomb, and I know a lot of people are opposed to that, but they don’t realize that the people that suffered from the flaming bombs didn’t suffer any more than the people that suffered on the flaming ships,” Sanders said.

“I feel sorry for the people that died in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, but there would have been a million Americans and Japanese killed if they hadn’t dropped the bomb.”

Jim Stokes Jr.

Stokes, 92, is also a WWII Navy veteran who served on destroyers in the Okinawa campaign. After Okinawa, Stokes said his squadron returned to the Philippines for R and R and minor repairs, then began preparations for the Japanese invasion. He is glad it never happened.

“Thank goodness with the two atomic bombs we didn’t have to invade. The casualty rate was going to be fantastically high, not only our own military but the Japanese,” Stokes said.

“Personally, I think Harry Truman did the right job. When you read the reports of the potential casualties for our own military as well as the Japanese people, I have to say I felt he did the right job. A lot of people don’t agree with that.”

Sanako Mitsugi

Mitsugi is a Japanese native who moved to Lawrence four years ago. She’s an assistant professor of Japanese at KU, and visited Hiroshima two years ago. She said her thoughts are with bombing survivors who have advocated the elimination of nuclear weapons, “in the hope that their past does not repeat.”

“The dire consequences of nuclear weapons in Hiroshima should serve as the driving force for denuclearization and remind us of a vision of a future free of nuclear weapons,” Mitsugi said. “In the past, the United States has publicly justified its use of atomic weapons against Japan on the grounds that they ended the war sooner. However, a recent survey shows that fewer Americans are supportive of the use of atomic weapons in Hiroshima. Perhaps now is the right time to reevaluate our beliefs going forward.”

Mitsugi said U.S. Ambassador Caroline Kennedy and U.S. State Department officials would attend this year’s Hiroshima event and the ceremony in Nagasaki.

“This is the first time that high-level Washington officials attend the two ceremonies and may be a sign of the change,” she said. “I hope the governments and the civil society in both Japan and the U.S. will continue to work together and strive for a ban on nuclear weapons. As a future generation, we have the responsibility to make this happen.”

Lawrence Daily Journal-World (Aug. 6, 1945), pages 1 and 2

Lawrence Daily Journal-World (Aug. 7, 1945), pages 1 to 4