Hiroshima Blast Defined an Era, and One Man’s Career

As his landing craft drifted toward Hiroshima, 23-year-old Navy Lt. Mark Hatfield clambered to the top for a better look, expecting to see the skeletal remains of buildings hit by the world’s first atomic attack.

Instead, there was nothing. No skyline. No sounds. Only a jumbled moonscape of rubble and ash from burned and blasted buildings for as far as the eye could see.

“There was a deathly silence,” Hatfield said. “There was nothing happening in a big area that once had been a city. Now it was totally quiet except for the sound of our voices.”

“Can you believe it?” he remembered one of his shipmates saying.

“Only one bomb?” another asked incredulously.

America’s bombing of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and the blast at Nagasaki three days later left more than 100,000 Japanese dead, led to the end of World War II and unleashed on mankind the power to destroy itself.

Hatfield was one of the first Americans to survey the damage, and what he saw changed him forever. That moment began a personal journey that shaped the views he would carry to the U.S. Senate and beyond.

Hatfield and his shipmates could barely fathom the news when they heard about Hiroshima over a shortwave radio broadcast while stationed on an amphibious attack ship in the Philippines.

“One of the fellows was a physics major, and he was trying to explain to us what splitting the atom meant. It was all Greek to us,” the retired Oregon senator said as he flipped through a stack of yellowed photographs from his Navy days.

It was clear, though, that a manned U.S. invasion of Japan--an event for which Hatfield and the others had been training--might not be necessary.

Hatfield was grimly determined to do his part in such an invasion but knew that the toll would be ghastly. He had seen dead American soldiers stacked like cordwood on Iwo Jima and Okinawa. He was convinced he likely would lose his own life in an invasion of Japan.

In fact, the Japanese appeared ready to fight to the last man and capitulated only after the atomic bomb was unleashed.

An Active Advocate of Disarmament

That point was driven home to Hatfield as he helped transport Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s occupation troops into Tokyo for Japan’s unconditional surrender on Sept. 2.

MacArthur had instructed the Japanese to put a white sheet in front of each gun emplacement as a way to reassure American soldiers and sailors and show that hostilities were truly over.

“From our ship, there were checkerboards in every direction you looked. You saw nothing but white spots,” Hatfield said. “We would have been going into every kind of cross-fire possible. It would have been murderous.”

To this day, Hatfield has wrestled with the morality of the atomic bombing, just as President Harry Truman struggled before making his fateful decision to drop the bomb.

“I can argue both sides of that in my mind,” Hatfield said. “There’s no question it saved my own life. But I think one could easily argue that unleashing that kind of energy and destructive power was morally wrong.”

Hatfield, now 76, wrestled with other issues of war. He was the only governor who refused to sign a statement supporting President Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam War policy. After election to the Senate, Hatfield was known as a dove, opposing U.S. involvement in Vietnam and later voting to stay out of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. He actively advocated nuclear disarmament. His World War II experience shaped those views.

As the Pacific war ground along, he recalled, he and his shipmates despised the Japanese.

“We had heard a lot about the Death March at Bataan, and we had heard about all these other atrocities,” he said.

A month after the bombing, with the war officially over, Hatfield and his shipmates were instructed to take a boat and chronicle what was left of Hiroshima.

Though worried about a possible ambush, they were determined that this would be a peaceful trip. They were careful not to do or say anything that could be construed as a hostile act.

“Our attitude was, ‘The war’s over. Let’s not lose our lives now in some silly thing here,’ ” Hatfield said.

As they prepared to disembark for a walking tour of the city, they were surprised to see about a dozen youngsters standing along a sea wall above them. They wore shorts; some were barefoot, some clung to the legs of adults. All watched in silence.

“They were in puzzlement. We were the first Americans they had seen. I’m sure these kids didn’t have any grasp of what had happened, except that death had rained from the sky,” he said.

The Americans, wanting to show that they meant no harm, smiled and waved at the children, who at first didn’t respond. Then several of the youngsters began waving back.

“Some of the kids broke away from the group and came down to the dock to watch what we were doing,” Hatfield said. “They were very, very curious. . . .

“One of the sailors took his white cap off and put it on a kid’s head. That little boy was just so proud. He turned around and wanted the grown-ups there to see him.

“Then the sailor would laugh and the kid would laugh. The children all began skipping around, and we all felt good about that.”

The sailors thought the children looked hungry, so they took out their sack lunches and shared sandwiches.

Hatfield marveled at the sight of the American sailors and a half dozen Japanese children enjoying a meal together, communicating in sign language.

“Just in the simple act of sharing sandwiches with people you’d been conditioned to see only as the enemy, as someone to be destroyed, I could almost feel the hate flow out of my system. It was like a wall had just dropped. It was one of those things that I can only describe as a spiritual experience.

“They were just little kids. You wanted to pick them up and hug them as you do with any kid.”

But Hatfield and his men were on a mission that day, and they soon set off on foot to explore the city--with several young and eager volunteer guides leading the way.

One boy in his teens gave Hatfield a ride on his bicycle along trails that Japanese authorities had cleared through the rubble. “I was sitting on the bicycle seat, and he was standing on the pedals pumping and steering,” Hatfield said.

What the American sailors saw was an assault on the senses.

Though most bodies had been removed, an arm or a leg could be seen sticking out of the wreckage of obliterated homes and businesses. The silence gave the city the feel of a mortuary.

“There was a total absence of life. It was like something before creation,” Hatfield said.

The bomb’s heat had fused glass bottles and, in one place, seared the blackened image of a bridge on adjacent concrete.

The sailors knew that the area still was radioactive, but they had been told there was little to worry about.

Once in a while, the sailors would use a stick to stir the ash and rubble to look for souvenirs. Hatfield found some sake cups and a pair of small ceramic figures known as household gods, which were supposed to offer spiritual protection and bestow good luck.

After four hours, the sailors left Hiroshima, amid waves and smiles from the children.

“We had a feeling that things were going to turn out for them,” Hatfield said, “that they were going to get back to normal.”

As for the sailors themselves, he recalled, “We sensed that our job was finished. We said, ‘We’ve had enough of this. It’s over now. Let’s go home.’ ”