News-Info-Alerts

Re: Hiroshima and US POWs

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: December 13, 2003

"U.S. families told of POW deaths after A-bombing

Yomiuri Shimbun

The U.S. government notified the families of at least three U.S. prisoners of war of their deaths in the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima to their families soon after the end of World War II, although it did not officially admit they died in the bombing until 1983, The Yomiuri Shimbun learned.

The fact was confirmed by an investigation conducted by Shigeaki Mori, 66, a historian, as well as searches of sealed documents of the U.S. National Archives & Record Administration.

According to the discovery, the death of these POWs was announced to their families between 1946 and 1949. It indicates the U.S. government disclosed secret information to bereaved families at a time when reporting related to the atomic bombing was censored.

The U.S. soldiers included crew members of the "Lonesome Lady" and "Taloa," the bombers that were hit and went down near Hiroshima at the end of July 1945.

Mori, himself a survivor of the bombing, has studied the history of the bombing and also surveyed U.S. POWs.

In 1996, he got a notice of the death of 2nd Lt. James Ryan, 20, after obtaining related information from surviving POWs. The notice was dated Aug. 28, 1947, and read that the city of Hiroshima was destroyed in an atomic bombing and the second lieutenant died. It was signed by the adjutant general of the army from the now defunct U.S. War Department.

The Yomiuri Shimbun asked the U.S. National Archives and Record Administration about the matter and learned that the facility had death notices of two others.

One of them, addressed to the wife of a 23-year-old sergeant and dated Feb. 5, 1946, read that her husband had been injured in the head and face in the atomic bombing and died at a hospital.

The other one, addressed to the father of a 26-year-old first lieutenant and dated May 27, 1949, read that POWs including his son had died in the atomic bombing and their remains had been buried by the Japanese.

The U.S. General Headquarters had acknowledged the names, ranks and serial numbers of U.S. POWs who were killed or injured within two months after the bombing.

GHQ also interviewed Japanese military police officers about how and where these soldiers were hit by the bombing and it further returned ashes of several such soldiers, which had been buried in Hiroshima, to their homeland at the end of 1945.

The U.S. government meanwhile censored news reporting in Japan at that time and strictly regulated reporting on the atomic bombing.

In 1977, an assistant at Hiroshima University discovered at the Japanese Foreign Affairs Ministry's Diplomatic Record Office a list of U.S. POWs who died, and learned that 20 of them died in the bombing of Hiroshima.

Based on the record, Barton Bernstein, a professor of American history at Stanford University, made an inquiry to the U.S. government. The U.S. government, however, had not officially admitted the existence of U.S. soldiers who died in the bombing until 1983, when it notified the professor that at least 10 had died.

"Considerate U.S. government employees notified bereaved families of the fact in a detached way," Mori said. "I want to believe their hearts were shielded from politics."


Copyright 2003 The Yomiuri Shimbun "