US Navy photo/public domain photo Hiroshima as it appeared after the use of the atomic bomb in August 1945.

“Shell Containing More Power Than 20,000 Tons of TNT Answer to Jap Rejection of Terms”

“An atomic bomb which looses pent-up forces of the universe equivalent to more than 20,000 tons of TNT and represents one of the greatest scientific advances of history has been dropped on Japapn,” readers of the Warren Times-Mirror read on Aug. 6, 1945.

It’s clear from the reporting and editorials in the Times-Mirror around that time that the public knew little of this “shell” that we now know as the atomic bomb.

This August marks 77 years since the ferocious power of the atom was released for the first time.

Photo from the Warren Times-Mirror The second edition of the Warren Times-Mirror published in the wake of the atomic bombing at Hiroshima. It was clear by then that the specific impacts of the bomb would be difficult to determine due to government censorship.

And, in many ways, we still don’t know what to do with it.

But for our purposes here, the editorial writers for the Times-Mirror underwent a drastic transformation in the span of a week in August 1945.

So we’ll be looking into that transformation and that initial reporting for the next three weeks. This week will focus on the bombing of Hiroshima and the early editorial reaction. Next week we’ll see how the community learned about Nagasaki.

The week after that will focus on two editorials that show a deep, nuanced grappling with the atom, a debate that still percolates to the forefront today.

We now know that the bomb had been kept in strict secrecy. And from that early reporting it’s obvious that there was little prior knowledge to work with, that writers had to come up with ways to describe this “shell” and “destructive explosive” to their readers.

Note their use of adjectives in those first reports.

And forget what you know about Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, the Cuban Missile Crisis, North Korea and all other atomic confrontations since 1945.

“President Truman told today of the terrific destructive power packed into the missile which was dropped 16 hours ago on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base,” a report in the Aug. 6 edition from the Associated Press explained.

“This awful bomb is the answer” to Japanese refulals to surrender “or face utter destruction.”

The government disclosed that the bomb was the result of $2 billion in research and production costs and Truman called it “the great scientific gamble in history.”

A brief item on page one quotes Secretary of War Henry Stimson as saying that the bomb will “provide a tremendous aid” in shortening the war.

The following day the Times-Mirror revealed that a government censor had veiled the details of the bomb on Hiroshima.

As officials sought to determine the bomb’s effect, it was thought Tokyo might be next for the “terrifying new weapon – both on bringing this war to an end on shaping the world of tomorrow.

“From what has been announced publicly by President Truman and other American officials it is clear that old ideas of national defense and security – based even on weapons as modern as the rockets Hitler used against London – are due to undergo radical changes.”

It was thought that the technology unleashed in the bomb was “some years” away from “practical use” but that “it may revolutionize industry and trade of the future.”

That article proceeded to detail “principal points of both sides” as best understood at the time about the atomic issue.

A second article on the front page of the Times-Mirror on the day following the bombing included a headline that “HIROSHIMA HIDDEN IN TOWERING CLOUD OF DUST.”

“Iron censorship was clamped down on details of the atom bombing of Hiroshima by the U.S. Strategic Air Forces today,” that article explains, “but from the stunned enemy finally came admission that the terrific new weapon had done great damage.”

That report cited a broadcast in Japan that “hinted” Japanese officials were “scurrying about, trying to determine what hit the Hiroshima army base” and included language of “‘bombs.’ Their use of the plural indicating the blast was to shattering they could not believe only one bomb had struck.

“The Japanese have no adequate defense against this weapon anymore than against regular serial bombardment. They can only surrender or face destruction. The hour is the most critical in their national history.”

The first thing appearing like an editorial came on page four that day from a foreign affairs analyst.

“That atomic bomb bids fair to be the one to end all bombs,” DeWitt MacKenzie wrote. “On the whole it seems logical to expect that the atomic bomb may be the rainbow of peace rather than the sign of global suicide. Surely the world has too much horse-sense to challenge such a power. Even a gangster gunman doesn’t deliberately walk into machine gun fire.

World peace is the greatest boon that the discovery can bring us, so far as we can judge now. But with peace assured, there apparently are unlimited benefits for mankind in what the president describes as ‘harnessing the basic power of the universe.'”

MacKenzie, though, included one thought that seems quite prescient today, quoting an editor colleague of his: “It makes me sick to my stomach to think of it,” he said. “You wonder whether man isn’t getting too damned smart and won’t destroy himself.”