Sachiko: Chapters 1–5

Only the cicadas trilled their summer song outside the paper window.

After Mother left, Ichiro reached for his bamboo net and slipped out of the house to hunt for cicadas.

His reign was named Showa, meaning “Enlightened Peace.”

The only force that could stop Japan’s push for a larger empire was the US Pacific Fleet moored at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, then a territory of the United States.

December 7, 1941, he said, was “a date which will live in infamy."

In Japan and the United States, racism also played a divisive role during the war.

Long before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, anti-Japanese sentiment existed in the United States, particularly along the Pacific Coast where many Japanese American families lived.

The order called for the immediate imprisonment of approximately 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry in ten designated US camps. More than half of the incarcerated Japanese—62 percent—were nisei, or second-generation Japanese people, born in the United States, and therefore American citizens.

During World War II, "Jap" was used as a racial slur to refer to Japanese and Japanese American people.

We, the Japanese Forces, pay its deepest homage to those who died or wounded on the battle fields.

We pledge ourselves to make reprisal on our common enemy, America.

Sachiko waited as Father trudged up the hill from the Urakami Station toward home.

The options were starkly clear.

Reach out to the Soviet Union, a country still neutral with Japan, and try to negotiate a conditional surrender that would keep the emperor on the throne. Or fight to the end and risk the nation’s utter defeat.

Truman wanted to know how many American casualties could be expected. Perhaps thirty-one thousand dead, wounded, or missing?

With Japan on the verge of collapse, advisers wavered.

But Truman knew the American public wanted a total and unconditional defeat of Japan.

On July 26, the Allies issued Japan an ultimatum: We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces, and to provide proper and adequate assurances of their good faith in such action.

On July 26, the Allies issued Japan an ultimatum: We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces, and to provide proper and adequate assurances of their good faith in such action.

A siren reverberated from the city’s loudspeakers.

In the bomb bay was a 9,700-pound (4.4-metric-ton) uranium atomic bomb code-named Little Boy.

Every living thing within one-third of a mile (500 m) of the hypocenter was charred to death.

The particles, now radioactive, flew through the air as deadly fallout or as black rain.

The hen had sauntered into the house, clucking and pecking.

Clouds billowed.

Sweeney calculated Bockscar's fuel consumption. The bomber still had enough fuel to fly over the next target on the list—Nagasaki.

The Enola Gay and Bockscar were stripped of all guns except the tail gun to accommodate the weight of the atomic bombs they carried in their bomb bays.

Smoldering rubble rubbed out roads.

Writhing, roiling, the cloud climbed higher and higher into the sky, as if it were alive.

Smoke and the hot, acrid smell of burning rubber filled the air.