The Wilmington morning star., 1945-08-07
Interpreting
The War
By JAMES d. WHITE

SAN E HA1NS1oOO, avg W W.
Japans immediate response to the
atomic bomb, if anything, is like
ly to be a snarling $50 what?"
With it's closely controlled channels
of information, the Tokyo war
machine is unlikely to say much
which would give the Allies any
hint of the real effect of this ter
rible new weapon the implications
of which must be as clear to Jap
anese leaders they are to the
American public.
One bomb has been dropped on
Hiroshima, a big Army quarter
master base on the Inland Sea
on Western Honshu. 1t is possible,
on the basis of early reports, that
nothing much is left of this city
of $4,000 people today.
1t is also possible that few if
any eyewitnesses are left in the
vicinity of this town which has
been made the center of an ex-
plosion more than 1000 times as
great as the biggest bomb ever
dropped on Germany.
BY now the japanese must be
practiced in the art OF isolating
such scenes of disaster and there
after allowing only such details
10 get out to the japanese public
as suits their own propaganda
purposes. Consequently it may be
that the Japanese public will not
hear of the bombs real affect. or
get anything like an accurate pic
ture of the damage it does, until
the Army Air Force is able to drop
enough leaflets-and enough more
bombs-,o tell them.
Even then, it is questionable how
much effect there will be on the
Japanese people. While more
than SO per cent of them can read,
they have read nothing but what
, their leaders wanted them to for
many years. They are taught to
discredit all else.
\ The very word "atomic'' holds
frightful possibilities for any edu-
Gated person in this country when
applied to weapons, and IN an
nouncing the new bomb President
Truman used words so grave as
to indicate clearly his feeling that
: he might be sounding the keynote
of all possible future conflict
with implication of destruction and
horror for the entire human race.
Many Japanese have varying
degrees of training in physics and
chemistry, but it remains to be
seen whether this training, direct
ed toward stimulating their crea-
tive ina gination, will let the word
"atomic' sound in their minds the
knen of doom it actually carries for
those attuned to hear it.
AS for the Jaapnese militarists
and leaders who are running the
war, they already know it is lost
in the long run, and this new de-
velopment does no necessarily alter
their fundamental l position, that
they can drag war out and thereby
gain a more favorable peace.
1t is of course possible that they
will be able to bring themselves to
say. This is too much; We plan
ned war with existing weapons.
This weapon is ore than even
the divine Japanese-could stand
up under" In this connection it
may be significant that for some
time Japanese propagandists have
been complaining to domestic
audiences that American technical
and material superiority can only
be overcome by the Japanese
fighting spirit
But such an admission would
not conform to their past be-
havior, when each succeeding
blow-giant BOB fire and ex-
plosive attacks, the loss of the
fleet, the bomba-dment of coastal
cities-failed to bring from Jap
anese leaders anything but further
expressions of defiance and the
charge that the new disasters were
staged as propaganda stunts.
The same old hurdle remains IN
the Japanese mind, pride and self
interest among the leaders in
power.
Give the atomic bomb a month
or SO to advertise itself in Japan.
Until the word gets around from
japanese to japanese, Tokyo is
likely to try to gloss it over, and
call history's most terrible dis
covery-the Harvesting of the
atom-just another propaganda
stunt.