First Into Nagasaki: The Censored Eyewitness Dispatches on Post-Atomic Japan and Its Prisoners of War Paperback – December 31, 2007

A lost story scoops today's war reportsGeo BeachRight now, the most important war reporting about Iraq is coming from a dead man who sneaked into a Japanese bomb site more than 60 years ago.To recognize why that is so, you must admit the colossal failure of American journalism in this Iraq War. As with all wars, there has been military fog and political pettifogging. But in Iraq the willing collaboration of the media was, together with the neocons, coequally responsible for America's unthinking entry into the war, and for the subsequent uncritical review of its strategy and tactics. Until now, when it's become safe to be a quagmire-raker.)Here's the enigma that breaks the code of silently going along to get along - "First Into Nagasaki", by George Weller (325 pgs, Crown, $25). New Yorker subscribers have been tantalized by its advance publicity; Harper's readers have just tasted a salty excerpt.Not bad for an author who died five years ago at the age of 95.But no wonder, either. "First Into Nagasaki" boasts all the right bona fides. "The much machine-gunned George Weller" (as Time pronounced him) was a Harvard man and Pulitzer-winner who covered every theatre of the Second World War, "one of the most-captured [foreign correspondents] as he kept crossing front lines in search of the day's front-page news." (Chicago Sun-Times).In "First Into Nagasaki", Walter Cronkite introduces the reportage of George Weller ("one of our best war correspondents") as a crucial warning for today, "when our nation is again at war and our citizenry can only guess as to how thick are the blindfolds of censorship that distort the truth of our military engagements."And George Weller's dispatches from the smoking ruins are deftly framed with a deeply-researched and lyric essay by his son, novelist and foreign correspondent Anthony Weller.(Disclosure: I was privileged to know George Weller for thirty years, with still-growing admiration. And for thirty-five years now Anthony Weller has been a colleague and inspiration.)As befits the work of father-and-son writers, "First Into Nagasaki" is a thrilling read constructed of stories upon stories. How George, in the guise of a colonel, contrived to reach Nagasaki. How Gen. Douglas MacArthur censored George's atomic reports. How George persevered with stunning scoops of POWs' stories. How, at the 60th anniversary of the bombing, Anthony discovered the lost carbons of George's censored Nagasaki dispatches a scant few feet from his deceased father's desk. And how surviving POWs subsequently contacted Anthony with poignant stories of George himself.But the guts of the book is the simultaneously elegant and straight-shooting reportage of George Weller, a man who defined the difference between being "embedded" and "in bed with".So "First Into Nagasaki" may spell the last word on getting out of Baghdad.Here's George Weller on the military holding a free press hostage: "All censored information is fundamentally propaganda." Remember that when you hear a splurge of words like "surge", instead of "escalation".)On bait-n-switch foreign policy: "In war [the American people] are alternately drugged with the promise of bloodless and easy victory, then whipped up with official warnings that peace will be expensive and is far off."On compliant media: "The newspaperman's malady is to accept all the inhibitions of a bad censorship and to discourage himself by precensoring his own work."Everywhere George Weller is a genuine correspondent, with letter-like intimacy that conveys respect for readers - a dirt-under-the-fingernails reporter, in striking contrast to today's repeaters.And Anthony Weller's explications retain the old man's bulldog toughness and beautiful touch: "[T]he Nagasaki reports each contained a dangerous radiation of their own, the unpredictable half-life of truth."George Weller wasn't just first. Sixty years later, he's still new, with stories of "The Two Robinson Crusoes of Wake Island" and - in a terrifying obverse of Hampton Sides' "Ghost Soldiers" - "The Death Cruise", which discloses vampirism, cannibalism, and murder on the Japanese hellship voyages.Four years ago the Iraq War began under a false "mushroom cloud" of propaganda. Today, George Weller and Anthony Weller drop the more devastating bomb. The real story might be delayed. But, fiercely reported, the truth will be set free. Eventually.Independent journalist Geo Beach writes for Anchorage Daily News, National Public Radio, History TV, and TomPaine.com. [Column originally published January 2007.]

I purchased "First Into Nagasaki" from [...] after watching the author, Anthony Weller, talk about the book with Brian Lamb on C-Span in January 2007. Actually, Anthony's father, George Weller wrote all the articles (in the book) in 1945 when he was the first American war correspondent to enter Nagasaki a few weeks after the bomb was dropped. He was not supposed to be there since General McArthur had put a total news blackout on all information about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The entire southern area of Japan was "off limits" to all war correspondents (with few exceptions).George Weller naively forwarded all his Nagasaki stories to General McArthur's headquarters in Tokyo where they were promptly confiscated and later destroyed (everything had to be passed by McArthur's censors, even though the war was over). Luckily however, Weller kept a "carbon copy" of all his material but over the years, he apparently forgot all about them until his son Anthony, a fine writer in his own right (a Pulitzer Prize author), found the "goldmine" of material stashed away in a closet. George edited the fading copy and had the basis for a remarkable new book called "First Into Nagasaki".The title is a bit misleading. Although the book does give much new and surprising information on the effects of the bomb and how it affected Nagasaki (In 1945, the city was a leading industrial complex, with many war-related factories). Instead, much of the book deals with the unbelievable harsh and inhumane treatment of Allied prisoners of war in the Japanese POW camps in and around Nagasaki. The stories are sickening and difficult reading.Goerge Weller says it perfectly in one of his short essays scattered throughout the book: "The Japanese POW camps are one of the greatest omissions in World War II memory. Despite the large numbers involved - 140,000 Allied prisoners through the war - they have not been portrayed in films, chronicled by historians, or officially documented as the Nazi camps have been, though they were SEVEN TIMES DEADLIER for a POW." (My emphasis added).The Japanese were consistant: they treated all their prisoners, American, British, Australian, Canadian, New Zealander, Chinese, Filipino, etc. with equal contempt. When the prisoners were released after the war, they described their captors as "animals, uncivilized barbarians, hateful people, a disgrace to humanity, the most wicked people on earth"...and the lists goes on.Actually the prisoners were lucky to have been released. In the final days of the war, all Allied POW's were going to be slaughtered, but due to the quick end of the war caused by the two bombs, the camp guards (executioners) fled. The few who stayed, immediately became fawning and submissive to the prisoners, bowing and saluting them (the previous week they had been beating them).Well, I could go on and on about this wonderful book. All I ask is that you take an afternoon off and read it.I was a teenager when the bombs were dropped and the war in the Pacific quickly came to an end. I remember it vividly. I also remember the stories and the photos of the released Allied prisoners...nothing but skin and bones, walking skeletons, many who never recovered from the brutal treatment by the Japanese. But it was fast forgotten.

This book is in three parts. The first part is the author's visit to Nagasaki as the first post atomic bomb drop correspondent to see the destruction. That was very interesting. The second part was the author's notes taken in interviews with the American POW's held by the Japanese. That part was deeply disturbing to me and caused a few sleepless nights. How we can occupy the same planet as the Japanese monsters who committed these acts and not hold them more accountable is beyond me. We have heard much about the Nazi atrocities in the death camps. We have not heard much about the Japanese atrocities in the American POW camps. It appears that General MacArthur purposely tried to cover up these atrocities by keeping war correspondents away from the camps. I would like to learn more about this era of our history. The last part is written by the author’s son, Anthony Weller, and explains how he discovered his father’s notes and eventually published them. That part was very interesting. All in all, a good read.

Erst die Konfrontation mit Opfern dieser „US-Experimente“ mit zwei unterschiedlichen Kernexplosionen zeigt, dass es nie um die Beendigung eines Krieges gegangen ist. Die Opfer waren statistische Werte medizinischer Untersuchungen, echte Hilfe wurde vorgetäuscht.

Good book - interesting read

I bought this book for my mother. Her father was in a prisoner of war camp mentioned in this book and she never heard from him about his experiences. He would not speak about them. She has been very interested in the book.