Report of the British Mission to Japan
Chapter I
THE TWO CITIES BEFORE ATTACK
3. The cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki differed from western cities and from one another in plan, in development, and in industrial importance. These differences influenced the resulting damage and that to be expected elsewhere.
HIROSHIMA
4. Hiroshima is built on the islands and shores of the delta where the river Otagawa falls into the Inland Sea. Although hills rise to 700 feet and 800 feet to the immediate north-west and north-east, the city stretches over flat ground in all directions for roughly two miles from the centre. The city centre, once the Old Town, was dominated by a number of reinforced concrete buildings owned by banks, insurance companies, department stores, newspapers, and similar mercantile enterprises. Beyond the Old Town lay an industrial zone developed during the early part of this century, and consisting of many small wooden workshops set among dense Japanese houses. A few larger plants devoted to engineering and silk manufacture lay on the southern and western outskirts of the city. The city was a prosperous trading community having some contacts with the outside world, and its centre was spaciously planned, with fine streets and temples.
5. Like other Japanese cities, Hiroshima was growing rapidly before the war; its census population rose from 270,000 in 1930 to 345,000 in 1940. It remained at this figure for the greater part of the war, but began to fall in 1944, and at the time of the attack it was below 245,000. This fall was the result of evacuation, in the main compulsory and accompanied by the systematic destruction of houses to form fire breaks. This programme, which had been given impetus by the great incendiary raids on Tokyo and other Japanese cities in the second week of March, 1945, was only partly completed when the atomic bomb fell.
6. The census figures quoted are probably what Japanese call the " registered " population, used for such purposes as rationing. This is usually thought to be about 80 percent, of the actual population which, with about 10,000 troops, and perhaps 5,000 workers brought in to cut fire breaks, may therefore have been as high as 320,000 at the time of the attack. This is approximately the pre-war population of Hull or the Borough of Islington. But Hiroshima is naturally more straggling than the latter, and covers altogether an area of over ten square miles.
NAGASAKI
7. Nagasaki lies on the more southerly Japanese island of Kyushu, at the head of a long bay which forms its natural harbour. The western shore is occupied by port facilities, shipbuilding and repair, and the eastern shore by smaller shipyards, wharves and dwellings. The main commercial and residential area of the city lies on a small plain near the head of the bay on its eastern shore. From here the valley of the river Urakami runs north for three or four miles, and a smaller valley branches north-east for less than two miles, making a total area of about four square miles. Both valleys are narrow, and are separated and flanked by abrupt hills rising in places to 1,000 feet. The smaller valley is crowded with dwellings without plan, huddled around narrow roads, market streets and temple squares. The Urakami valley contained large steel, engineering, and armament works, together with smaller factories and a host of home workshops with an attendant jostle of workers' dwellings. These industries, controlled by the firm of Mitsubishi, plainly dominated Nagasaki, where everything which survives bears the stamp of a vast industrial slum. In the spring of 1945 some dispersal was begun to workshops set up for the purpose in tunnels and schools. The latter, constructed in reinforced concrete, were among the few imposing buildings in Nagasaki. The city did, however, possess a complex of modem hospital and medical school buildings of which any European city of its size might be proud.
8. Nagasaki had at one time been a naval base, and its importance had declined with the development of the base at Sasebo. Its population had risen only slowly between 1930 and 1940, when the census population was 253,000, but had gone on rising during the war, which gave new importance to its shipbuilding and its production of torpedoes and other armaments. As at Hiroshima, there was large-scale evacuation from March, 1945. Calculating in the same manner as at Hiroshima, it is estimated that the population actually in Nagasaki when the bomb fell was just over 260,000. This is roughly the pre-war population of Portsmouth or of Newcastle-on-Tyne.