A Foreign Doctor in Hiroshima
There is one foreign doctor who helped victims and the wounded in Hiroshima after the US atomic bomb attack on August 6, 1945.
Marcel Junod (May 14, 1904 – June 16, 1961) was a Swiss doctor and one of the most accomplished field delegates in the history of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)...
After the American dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9, 1945) and the subsequent Japanese surrender, Junod organized the evacuation of POW camps and the Allied rescue of the often severely injured inmates. On August 30, he received photographic evidence and a telegraph description of the conditions in Hiroshima. He quickly organized an assistance mission and on September 8 became the first foreign doctor to reach the site. He was accompanied by an American investigation task force, two Japanese doctors, and 15 tons of medical supplies. He stayed there for five days, during which he visited all of the major hospitals, administered the distribution of supplies, and personally gave medical care. The photographs from Hiroshima, which he gave to the ICRC, were some of the first pictures of the city after the explosion to reach Europe.
...On what remained of the station facade the hands of the clock had been stopped by the fire at 8.15.
It was perhaps the first time in the history of humanity that the birth of a new era was recorded on the face of a clock...
(Dr. Marcel Junod: Warrior without Weapons ICRC, Geneva, 1982, p. 300)The Japanese public TV station NHK broadcast this August 6 an animation film featuring Marcel Junod helping victims in Hiroshima, though the work was completed two years ago by a non-profit organization (NPO) of Hiroshima.
On September 1, the Japanese Foreign Ministry first showed Dr. Junod photographs of Hiroshima depicting the hell on earth that had been created when the city was consumed by a hot wind of 6,000 degrees. The next day a telegram arrived from an investigator who had been sent to Hiroshima. "Situation horrifying... Ninety percent of town razed... All hospitals destroyed or severely damaged... Have visited two provisional hospitals: conditions indescribable... Grave shortage of material, bandages, medicaments... Appeal allied high command asking supplies be parachuted immediately into center of town...Immediate action necessary..." More than 100,000 people had vanished in an instant, and another 100,000 were suffering and could not get proper treatment.http://junod.biz/
Dr. Junod raced to GHQ with the photographs and the telegram and negotiated a relief effort. The negotiations were difficult, but five days later he received a reply from Gen. Douglas MacArthur stating that the U.S. Army would not provide aid directly but that 15 tons of medicine and other medical supplies would be provided. There is no doubt that MacArthur's gratitude to Dr. Junod as benefactor of the Allied Forces in China lay behind his decision. On the morning of September 8, six U.S. Army planes took off from Atsugi Air Field carrying 15 tons of medical supplies. As they entered the skies over the city, Dr. Junod saw below him "the chalky desert looking almost like ivory in the sun."
While looking into the extent of the destruction, Dr. Junod also treated victims. Among the 15 tons of medical supplies that he had succeeded in getting to Hiroshima was penicillin, which had not yet been introduced to Japan. The Japanese doctors were astonished by its effectiveness. Many more victims would have died had Dr. Junod not provided medical supplies. He was without a doubt the right man to serve as Hiroshima's benefactor. Dr. Junod was unable to go to Nagasaki, but he spearheaded the effort to get medicine and other relief supplies to the city, and records show that the lives of many people were saved as a result.
The leader of the NPO that produced this animation is a wife of a medical doctor in Hiroshima. She was engaged in an international medical aid project. In 2004, she visited Iran where she met many citizens who were still suffering an aftereffect of gas shells Iraqi troops had used in the Iran-Iraq War. Those war victims asked her to tell the world this tragedy in Iran in a similar manner Japanese appeal to the world for the tragedy of Hiroshima.
After her trip to Iran, she started to think about a new way for her activities. Then she came to wonder who helped Hiroshima victims after the atomic bomb attack in 1945. And finally she focused on Dr. Junod to produce an animation film about his heroic work in Hiroshima.
In addition, the US occupation forces that controlled Japan after WWII tried to hide the real state of Hiroshima. They thought the horrible effect of the atomic bomb should be hidden from the world. If people in the world had been shocked too much at the degree of damage on human bodies, the US might have been criticized. The tragic states of Japanese survivors should not be known by the American public. So, it is said that the General Head Quarters of the occupation forces of the US and the Allies made some effort to cover and conceal the heroic work of Marcel Junod in Hiroshima in September 1945.
Actually, the GHQ soon forbade Dr. Junod to access Hiroshima for the nominal purpose of guarding military secret. Without this cruel measure, it is believed that lives of more Hiroshima victims should have been saved.
So, it took some time for the medical association of Hiroshima to rediscover the great contribution by the Swiss doctor. Yet finally, they raised a monument for him in 1979.
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Luk 8:24 And they came to him, and awoke him, saying, Master, master, we perish. Then he arose, and rebuked the wind and the raging of the water: and they ceased, and there was a calm.
Luk 8:25 And he said unto them, Where is your faith? And they being afraid wondered, saying one to another, What manner of man is this! for he commandeth even the winds and water, and they obey him.