blast from the past

"A Nagasaki Report" is a real bit of journalistic archaeology. Written by George Weller in September 1945, it is just now seeing the light of day thanks to his son, Anthony. Way back when, George Weller snuck past the military and became the first reporter to view the devastation at Nagasaki, the site of the second atomic bomb drop in Japan:

The atomic bomb's peculiar "disease," uncured because it is untreated and untreated because it is not diagnosed, is still snatching away lives here.

Men, woman and children with no outward marks of injury are dying daily in hospitals, some after having walked around three or four weeks thinking they have escaped.

The doctors here have every modern medicament, but candidly confessed in talking to the writer - the first Allied observer to Nagasaki since the surrender - that the answer to the malady is beyond them. Their patients, though their skin is whole, are all passing away under their eyes.

The original report was censored by the military.