ATOMIC BOMB HAVOC

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26078, 15 February 1946, Page 6

ATOMIC BOMB HAVOC

HIROSHIMA A WASTE FEW SIGNS OF LIFE (New Zealand Official Correspondent with J Force) (Rec. 5.5 p.m.) HIROSHIMA, Feb. 12. When the New Zealand component of the occupation forces arrives in Japan next month, the major item of sightseeing interest will undoubtedly be the atomic bomb blasted ruins of Hiroshima. The old familiar pattern of aerial destruction which New Zealand troops have seen throughout Italy is completely altered here. The usual sagging roofs, shrapnel-pocked buildings, and half-demolished walls arc nowhere visible to-day, only acre after acre of fragmentary debris, the pulverised wreckage of a once-thriving city. Life is slowly creeping back into this dismal waste. The strangest sight is probably that of shabby, scorched trams clattering slowly along a few of the streets. It is difficult to know how the passengers find their destinations for one block is the same as the next. Wooden shanties are being erected, and the few remaining buildings of more substantial architecture ■which survived the explosion are, although gutted, being put back into temporary commission. To-day' I talked with probably the first reporter to chronicle what was perhaps the most important event in modern history. He is Mitsuo Une, the Kure representative of the great Osaka Quinchi newspaper, and he still does not realise that he “ scooped ” the world’s biggest story. He was the first man to send in a story of the bombing of Osaka. The sub-editors did not believe him. He was at Kure when an appalling explosion was heard from Hiroshima, followed by a great pillar of flame and smoke. He thought a military ammunition dump had exploded, and hitch-hiked to Hiroshima to collect information. His story, which is still on the file, is extremely naive. It commences; “At 8.20 a.m. three B29’s dropped a bomb something like a torpedo bomb, and as a result the whole city of Hiroshima is a mess.” The sub-editors phoned back sceptically for a check on the story, saying that no one bomb could destroy a whole city, or if it could, the course of the war had changed. Une, who is now busy collecting information about the Australians and New Zealanders for the edification of Quinchi readers, recalls that a contemporary reporter was caught by the explosion and literally flayed. The latter has very sensibly decided to give up journalism, and is now a Buddhist priest.