To Hell and Back by Charles Pellegrino
Reviewed by John Joseph Pack MD
A lone B-29 rumbles high overhead, contrails trailing in its wake. It’s August 1945. The war in Europe is over. The Japanese, despite being pushed to the limits of defeat, fight on for Emperor Hirohito, who is believed to be descended from the Sun God. Only the homeland remains of the vast empire. Many in Japan are near starvation, even though the government publicly contends they are winning the war. The people are being asked to manufacture wooden bullets and bamboo knives, and many suspect why. Few people notice the B-29 and those that do are comforted from experience that it represents only the usual military reconnaissance flight, or perhaps even just a lost American aircrew. Afterall, flyovers have become quite commonplace over Hiroshima in the last few months. It remains a city curiously untouched by arial bombing during the war. The insulated inhabitants have considered themselves lucky. The citizens of Hiroshima are about to find out for what horrible fate they were being spared.
The Bombay doors open and the gadget, known also as Little Boy, is released from the Enola Gay. Two other B-29’s, Necessary Evil and Great Artiste, trail behind. One with photographic equipment, the other with cylinders, dropped by parachute, and set to record scientific information at exactly 8:15:15 AM.
The detonated burst occurs at 1900 feet above ground zero, a very distinct T-shaped landmark known as the Aioi Bridge spanning the Motoyasu River, and near what has become known as the Hiroshima Dome, for its miraculous survival. Every one of the Uranium-235 atoms in the bombs core, measuring less than a tablespoon, have been forged billions of years ago in a furnace known as a supernova which once exploded into the vacuum of space, only to be collected and reassembled now by Man eons afterward for a very specific purpose; to end World War 2 and usher in a new age of destruction.
At one-hundred millionth of a second after detonation, the fission reactions have already begun to run down. At one ten-millionth of a second, a plasma bubble begins to form that is hotter in temperature than the sun’s core. At one-millionth of a second, the temperature is 1000 times above the boiling point of water, and the plasma bubble stretches 6 city blocks. After two-tenths of a second, the plasma bubble touches the earth and the bubble implodes, scattering radioactive neutrons and gamma rays in a gigantic concussion blast, generating massive destruction, high winds, and enormous fireballs which flow outwards over Hiroshima and upwards in the form of a monstrous, surreal mushroom cloud consisting of exploded debris, vaporized human beings, and radioactive fallout.
What follows next is the basis for Charles Pellegrino’s scholarly testament to the events occurring at Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. Pellegrino collects eyewitness accounts, documented and verified by scholars over decades, and expertly weaves in the story of a band of scattered, disparate survivors, who, in time, re-tell, and sometimes confess, their heartbreaking and horrible experiences for the posterity of the world.
Local doctors, themselves ill or about to become ill, and occupying the remnants of what remains of their devastated hospitals, and without any supplies, struggle to identify and treat Disease X, or what became known to the world shortly after as radiation sickness. Of those who survive the blast, many die horrible deaths within minutes or hours. Some endure days of suffering before the end. Still more seem fine and then gradually become ill over a period of days only to suffer the same fate, when they thought they were blessed and had survived. Others miraculously survive because they happened to be bending over at the time and were shielded by a wall, or walking past a large tree, or because they happen to be kids having fun by holding their breath and submerging themselves in the river at the time of the blast, only to surface with everyone and everything obliterated.
Those who lived through the experience would endure their own inner torture, suffering from severe PTSD and survivors’ guilt, many trying to understand why everyone in their family died except them or from being unable to help the scores of dying all around them, brothers and sisters included. They are unable to rid themselves of the horrible images of carbonized dogs and horses and people, of survivors wandering aimlessly, suffering feelings of extreme thirst, begging for the radioactive water that will ultimately kill them. Unable to clear their minds of the Images of de-gloved skin hanging from arms and legs, of severe flash burns, and of impressions of stripes or flowers from clothing that were seared permanently onto skin by the mega flash of heat after the detonation.
These “lucky ones” somehow endured until their days were ended years or decades later by what is known as a common long-term manifestation of atomic bomb disease: leukemia. Incredibly, there were even a few survivors of the Hiroshima bomb, who, sparked by the urge to see or warn family in Nagasaki, or report to their administrators, were twice victims of the atomic bomb, just days apart. They relate their story in great detail and Pellegrino is able to thread the stories together seamlessly in what must be one of the great historical records ever recorded.
Charles Pellegrino’s To Hell and Back is a landmark achievement and should be required reading for all of humanity. Just like those who endured the bomb, after reading this haunting book, your life too, will be changed forever.
