The Wounds of Hiroshima
Geltman, Emanuel
Claude Eatherly, as too few Americans yet know, is the pilot who led the bombing mission which dropped the first atom bomb on mankind over Hiroshima, and the second three days later over...
...Which is, of course, precisely the point: the frightful recollection...
...On page 94, Eatherly: "I even beat a case for a Negro soldier that I knew was guilty, but I was up against an inexperienced prosecution...
...In Japan his very name has acquired so compelling an aura that a United States Senator asked him to intervene when students' riots threatened to cancel, and finally did, Eisenhower's visit to Japan...
...A man so disturbed that he is frequently incoherent and sometimes, and for whatever motive, irrational...
...No doubt some drugs stupefy...
...As this is written, Eatherly is at liberty...
...There is no need to prove everything with the one man...
...However, stuffiness and mock pedantry to the point of excessive and sometimes ridiculous footnotes can only be endured...
...Other participants in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings have not tried to commit suicide, have not tried to emigrate, have not stuffed bills into envelopes and sent them to Japan, have not apparently suffered the same mental agony...
...Anders talks too much, talks about too many things, and tries to prove too many things...
...Can't you be disturbed and unbalanced, given tranquilizers to calm, all-too-nameable terrors, and still feel remorse, still have something to say that is worth listening to...
...But, conventional bomber raids in which Eatherly had participated had already produced such stresses on Eatherly himself...
...But the story has gotten around...
...White: he's of completely sound mind, and if his words are sometimes incoherent it is possible (footnote) he is in a "drugged state...
...Through acts of repentance, from trying to destroy the "hero" image by committing such antisocial aggressions as forgery and holdup (in which he took nothing...
...But it is too much to ask us to shoulder as well Anders' pretentiousness and ego...
...We are, so to speak, expected to perform a ritual which is essentially the exact reverse of that staged by the au thorities...
...Why are they so emotionally brutalized and unsound as not to crack up (if indeed they have not...
...In their distress, confusions, and exhortations, their touches of vanity and humility, they make a compelling document...
...Eatherly's letters are genuinely moving...
...The authorities, so to speak, prefer as little fuss as possible about the whole business...
...But here we get into the area which troubles me most about the book...
...This is not to minimize Anders' contribution, nor the service he performed in initiating his correspondence with Fatherly...
...Claude Eatherly, as too few Americans yet know, is the pilot who led the bombing mission which dropped the first atom bomb on mankind over Hiroshima, and the second three days later over Nagasaki...
...These are matters for psychologists, social and clinical...
...The space is overwhelmingly Anders' (better than three-to-one, I'd say...
...But we are also, in effect, asked to pass clinical judgment that he is really of "sound mind," that if he is incoherent it is because he may have been given too heavy a dose of tranquilizers...
...More and more articles have appeared in the world press...
...The impact of Eatherly's distress is muffled by the sodden pontificating of Anders—quite apart from whether we agree or disagree with any part of it...
...Gunther Anders read about the case, and began the correspondence reproduced in this volume...
...The premise, of course, has to be that here is a deeply disturbed man who wants you to understand the nature and cause of his disturbance...
...Most of us are only equipped to deal with the matter from a political, social, and humanitarian point of view...
...After all, there are other psychosocial problems in this very connection just as intrigu ing as Eatherly's...
...Unfortunately, what emerges is too much Anders, and too little Eatherly...
...Example of ridiculous footnote...
...We have to bear and share Eatherly's sorrow...
...Footnote: "This proves how unusually unprejudiced Eatherly was...
...Fatherly has been in and out of Army mental hospitals, sometimes officially released, and at other times—unable to overcome illegal commitment by legal means—escaping...
...Or that the anniversary of Hiroshima is approaching...
...But need we do more than face the issue as it is...
...This was at a time when the government was trying to prove that Eatherly was too irresponsible to be free...
...If it fails of its purpose, it will be, at least in part, because it was not slim enough...
...Perhaps the syntactical and grammatical incoherence did need to be corrected for the sake of clarity, though the footnoted example (page 70) could just as well have been left intact...
...Jungk writes in his introduction that "It was the 'Eatherly Case' that first opened our eyes to this 'delayed-action effect' of the new weapons"— that is, "mental burdens and stresses...
...And that would seem quite enough...
...No doubt it adds versimilitude to record the proposed division of royalties, but a verisimilitude about Anders and not about Eatherly...
...Anders' sense of self-projection is so strong that one can easily be misled into believing that what we are reading about is the Anders Case and not the Eatherly Case...
...Are you supposed to be of "sound mind" after killing...
...John Wain wrote a moving poem, first published in England and later reprinted here in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists...
...That is to say, the authorities know where he is, but are making no move to return him to the hospital from which he escaped...
...Some of it is essential for elucidating the facts, but much of it is tedious...
...This slim volume, it is to be hoped, will contribute to "spreading the word...
...If the case hasn't yet attracted the universal excitement and press coverage of the Chessman execution, in Europe and Japan it has already become a cause célèbre, and I would guess that, at least among those who concern themselves with the terrors of war, it is fairly well known here...
...to agonized appeals to his fellow-men, he has worked to contaminate our collective conscience with the dread of nuclear war...
...Eatherly's letters and behavior have forced him on public attention...
...Black: he's of unsound mind, safe only in incarceration, and what he says is not to be taken seriously...
...Eatherly's replies show that the letters from Anders meant much to him, and helped him to clarify his understanding of himself and his motivations...
...Ray Bell, a Texas reporter covering for the Waco News-Tribune Eatherly's arrest and commitment by a court composed only of psychiatrists appointed by the military authorities, did a firstrate job of exploring the facts, and examining the inconsistencies in the hearings...
Vol. 10 • January 1963 • No. 1
