Site Ed. Note: Honor Tracy, pen name of British author and novelist Honor Lilibush Wingfield, included Hiroshima during her tour of Occupied Japan in 1948. She was curious about the after effects on the city of the atomic bombing in 1945 but also interested in the administration of the city under British military government. Hiroshima, as she explains, was in the area controlled by British Commonwealth Forces in Japan (BCOF). Her arrival there was preceded by by a quick journey to Fukui, a city on the west coast of Honshu which had been struck by a giant earthquake that summer. She called it a "Japanese Tragedy." Hiroshima was an "American Tragedy." Throughout her travel record, she displays a sharp tongue and penetrating but sometimes patronizing views of both the occupiers and the deated. Hiroshima is no exception.

From Fukui I went to Hiroshima, which was an hour's drive from Kure, a port on the Inland Sea and the headquarters of the British element. Having crept back to Kyoto in the same panting, rattling little train, and taken the Dixie Limited overnight to Kure, I had then to enter into negotiations with the British authorities for the loan of a car, before the rest of the journey could be made. This took more time than one might suppose, for the British were apparently much surprised to think that anyone should want to visit Hiroshima. From the General down to the Press Relations Officer, they were convinced that a correspondent entering the area could have no other purpose but to write dispatches describing the brilliant achievements of the British Command. As long as one was content to tour the military installations and admire the cinemas, rest centres, family quarters, barracks, and cookhouses, all went very smoothly. Transport was provided, and one could further enjoy the company of a handsome and engaging young escort, who explained the scene before one with an attention to detail which, had one only been blind, must have been invaluable. They would also stretch a point and take one round the great shipyards of Kure, once a major naval centre, now ruined and dismantled, with its great British, German, and American machines on the one hand, and on the other, its piles of scrap, purchased haphazardly by the ton from all over the world, water-cans, tins, bedsteads, bicycle wheels, all heaped together, pathetic and gimcrack. But at the mere suggestion of one's borrowing a car and slipping off to make investigations of one's own, their faces lengthened; an interest in anything Japanese appeared to strike them as a kind of disloyalty. I submitted, therefore, to two whole days of inspection of Kure and Etajima, and of instruction by the Press Officer, and on the third and subsequent days was rewarded with a jeep, an interpreter, and a delightful old Australian digger to drive us about. We set off early, in bright sunlight, along a road that wound through hills and lakes and woods, while the digger entertained us with a flow of anecdote and reminiscence of his life in Japan which, while quite absorbing, rather made nonsense of the findings of a Morality Commission that had recently finished a tour of the British area.

The first impression I got as we entered the city was that it was a very ordinary kind of place. There seemed to be nothing special about it at all. If it stood for anything, indeed, it was simply as a token of man's failure to be as mischievous and as destructive as he would have liked. There was still one great patch of desolation, round the explosion centre; the streets were ruined, many stone buildings stood gutted and useless and the circling mountains were scarred with huge pale burns. To see these relics, however, it was necessary to climb up on to a roof and have them pointed out. There was nothing to be seen but row upon row of new wooden houses, shops full of food, clothes, toys, and knick-knacks, antiquated taxis, carts drawn by oxen, and crowds of little people clattering along in clogs, with the same expressionless faces as everywhere else. No horrible mutilations, no bizarre after-effects, were to be noticed among them; vegetables did not reach an enormous size, but, on the other hand, not did they refuse to grow at all; and there was nothing more sinister in the landscape anywhere than the large, closely guarded buildings of the Atomic Commission, where a bunch of genial, poker-faced scientists were always pleased to welcome a visitor, to give him a fat American lunch, tell him nothing and to insist even so that his manuscript be submitted to them before it went into print.

I had not, however, been an hour in the city before I discovered how wrong this prosaic impression was. The city was bursting with a wonderful self-importance; everyone from the mayor down to the newspaper boys was full of the glory and the pride of being a man of Hiroshima. The business of receiving the stranger, and imparting to him a sense of his rare privilege, had become a fixed routine. No sooner does he appear than he is hurried to the Town Hall, to meet the city elders; green tea is served and the mayor, a person with great charm of manner, makes a short smooth speech on world peace, concluding with the slogan, No more Hiroshimas! Next the party moves up to the roof, rain or shine, where, from a platform built specially for the Emperor's visit (the comment of His Imperial Majesty was: There seems to have been a lot of damage here) the worst spots and the weirdest effects of the explosion are drawn to his attention. Down to the mayor's office again, for more tea. An impressive album, bound in silk, also prepared for the Emperor's visit, is now brought out; it contains a collection of pictures taken soon after the bomb fell, of curious twistings and meltings, of shadows burned indelibly into walls, of oranges hanging on a tree far from the scene with one side of their peel all burned off. These are care-fully examined, one by one; nothing may be missed. Finally, the mayor presents a souvenir, a large chunk of lava or a distorted tile, which is solemnly wrapped in paper and handed over to the visitor with another little speech.

It is all unpleasantly business-like, even a little macabre, but worse is to come. The next point of call is the hospital, where the star patient, Mr. Yoshikawa, is on view. He comes into the room dressed in a white hospital smock, which he immediately peels off, without waiting to be asked. His back and arms are a mass of angry purple colloids, which grow again and again as often as they are cut away and the new skin grafted. When the explosion took place, he was on a tram more than a mile away; he threw up one hand to protect himself from the glare, and the fingers of this are twisted back and paralysed. He has offered himself as a guinea-pig to the doctors of the world, and hopes to be sent to America: in the meantime he remains here as a ghastly peep-show, showing his wounds and saying his little piece to everyone passing through.

Then comes the tour of the city, with a visit to the Tower of Peace, a somewhat shaky edifice of pinkish wood, where flocks of white doves are released, the Hymn of Peace is sung, on each anniversary of the dropping of the bomb: the little monument in cement, erected by the city children to express their hope for eternal world peace, in which broad, deep cracks are already appearing: the widows' homes and the orphanages, places of dreary squalor, full of forgotten and unwanted people: and a cultural centre for children, with a theatre and assembly rooms, perfectly empty. When all these have been inspected, the party returns again to the Town Hall, where the visitor consumes yet another bowl of green tea, records his own impressions, at the mayor's request, and writes his name in a book. From that moment, he is free to roam the city and collect a few ideas of his own.

This extreme and disagreeable self-consciousness has been brought about by influences from outside. Left to themselves, the people would not have found the atom bomb so very extraordinary. They marvelled at, and of course envied, its power and, since their Government had already been forced to send out peace feelers before it was dropped, they rather welcomed the opportunity it gave them of accepting the Allied demand for an unconditional surrender without too great a loss of face. As far as the people in the city itself were concerned, it was a horrible disaster to be accepted and patiently borne, like a giant earthquake or flood. Only afterwards, when they began reading the foreign press, did they learn that a crime against humanity had been committed and that the martyrdom of Hiroshima would ring down the ages. Then foreign notables, scientists and journalists all came pouring in, eager for horrors, American ladies wept in public and uttered beautiful thoughts, and the inhabitants of this modest capital of a modest province found the eyes of the whole world focused upon them. They were surprised and pleased and, without attempting to fathom the mentality which could first perfect such a weapon and then wallow in an orgy of sentiment over its use, they set to work in their practical way and made the most of things.

They mean now to turn Hiroshima into a centre of culture and peace, attractive to pilgrims from the four corners of the earth and especially to such as come bearing hard currency in their scrip. There are to be gardens, pools, fountains, and boulevards; and, it is hoped, a casino. The casino, however, will not be placed in Hiroshima itself, where it might distract or offend, but on a pretty little island in the Inland Sea a few miles away. Hotels in both Japanese and western style are to be built. Plans are already taking shape for the creation of this new and marvelous resort: two sets of plans, indeed, one being prepared by a Japanese architect, the other by an Australian officer. The Australian's part in the affair is viewed by some of the Americans as an astute political move: we knocked it down, you build it up, huh? They need not, as it happens, be afraid. The Australian works away at his drawings with immense enthusiasm, for, while without experience in town planning, he has always longed to try his hand at it. The mayor tells everyone how particularly grateful he is to the British for lending him this Australian. But meanwhile the Japanese plan is already completed and the Town Council is only waiting for some money before starting on its execution.

For the present, the town tries to make a small beginning with anniversary celebrations. Apart from the grave ceremonies in the morning, the hymns and prayers, the ringing of peace bells, the processions of youths and maidens, the planting of trees, the speeches by the mayor and the edifying messages from General MacArthur, there are baseball matches and popular dancing. Orchestras from Tokyo are engaged at great expense to play suitable music in public places, and there are collections of famous paintings from different parts of the country. Tourists flock in, and the shops do a roaring trade, having by general agreement considerably reduced their prices for the duration of the holiday. In the evenings the streets are full of giggling, swaying, red-faced Japanese, a familiar festive sight in this country, where a small bottle of beer goes a very long way.

The facts of the case have long since been swallowed up in a cloud of commercial high-mindedness. There was quite a little stir at the Peace Ceremony one year when General Robertson, Commander-in-Chief of the British Common-wealth Occupation Force, remarked that the Japanese had, after all, brought the catastrophe on themselves. His speech was reported in the Japanese press as if he had produced some quite original and striking theory concerning the bomb; and, reading the pained rebukes addressed to him by American papers for his want of taste and feeling, one was in grave danger of forgetting who had dropped it.

To me the whole thing was nauseating, and a sad demonstration of the less agreeable side of the Japanese. As soon as I had done and seen everything that the mayor and his friends required of me, I began to pay some calls among private citizens, whose names had been suggested by one of the Asahi men in Tokyo. Among these were business men, black marketeers, journalists, and a police officer. They were no more candid than the average Japanese expects to be, but they did not trot out the old formulas from the Town Hall, and a sly little remark here and a twinkle there encouraged me to think they were not duped by them. The private thoughts of the mayor, as he meditated at home in his garden, we may never hope to know, but the general feeling of the inhabitants of Hiroshima I believe to be something like this: That was a very dreadful bomb. How strange that the barbarians could produce such a bomb, and not the Japanese. Let us hope that one day we too can produce such a bomb, perhaps more cheaply. In the meantime, let us pray for peace. And, since the barbarians make this extraordinary mess of our city, by all means let us play up to them. Who shall penetrate the mysteries of the occidental mind? Nevertheless, we seem to be on to a good thing. And another point: after the next war, there will doubtless be Hiroshimas dotted about all over the place, and who in the world will bother to come all this way to see us? Yes, let us pray for peace, and may the martyrdom of our once glorious city ring in a new age of unprecedented harmony among the peoples of the earth.

Tracy, Honor. "American Tragedy." Kakemono: A Sketch Book of Post-War Japan. London: Mathuen & Co, 1950, 169-174.