An investigative document written by the Allied occupation headquarters in Japan in 1948 revealed that 12 U.S. prisoners of war died in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in August 1945.

While the U.S. government hasn’t acknowledged the deaths of the American service members who were exposed to the atomic bombing, the official document written after the war clearly states it.

Researchers who have expertise in the atomic bombing in Hiroshima and atomic bomb victims investigated the number of U.S. POWs who died from the blast and concluded that it was 12.

The official document written by the General Headquarters (GHQ) of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers released at this time confirms that the number was accurate.

The document is the “Report of Investigation Division, Legal Section, GHQ, SCAP. No. 2779,” which is dated Dec. 20, 1948. It is titled, “Death of 12 American Fliers as a result of the Atomic Bombing on 6 August 1945, Hiroshima-shi, Hiroshima-ken.”

The National Archives in Washington, D.C., stored the document, and an Asahi Shimbun reporter obtained a copy through the National Diet Library in January.

After World War II, the Legal Section of the GHQ investigated the abuse of U.S. soldiers detained by Japan during the war in prosecuting class-B and class-C war criminals.

A document from the Legal Section read, “there was insufficient evidence to prove an atrocity and no prosecutive action was taken or will be taken,” and “this case is closed without further action.”

There is no list of the names of the 12 deceased U.S. POWs.

The U.S. government has never officially acknowledged that its nation's POWs held in Japan died because of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

In response to a question posed by an American historian, the U.S. military announced for the first time in 1983 that eight service members of the Army and two from the Navy died in the atomic bombing, but it didn’t disclose their names.

U.S. President Barack Obama who visited Hiroshima in May 2016 mentioned that the American POWs who died from the atomic bombing numbered a “dozen,” in his speech at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

Meanwhile, an investigation on the U.S. POWs who were exposed to the atomic bombing in Hiroshima was proceeding among private researchers.

The starting point of the investigation was “Ubuki’s list,” which was compiled in 1977 by historian Satoru Ubuki, now 78.

Ubuki was an assistant researcher at the Research Institute for Radiation Biology and Medicine, Hiroshima University at that time, and he continued visiting the Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Japan to make the list.

TELLING TRUTH TO BEREAVED FAMILIES

Ubuki found the names of 20 atomic bomb victims on the list of war prisoners captured in Japan.

The list was the one that Japan’s military headquarters across the nation submitted to the United States.

The 20 victims, however, included some of the deaths of POWs who died in the biological experiments conducted by Kyushu Imperial University but were misrepresented as having been killed in the atomic bombing.

So, further investigation was necessary.

Meanwhile, Ubuki received a letter from the father of Sgt. Hugh Atkinson, one of the deceased.

Atkinson was being detained near ground zero of the Hiroshima atomic bomb, after his B-24 Liberator crashed in Yamaguchi Prefecture.

The letter read, “All these years, the United States Government has given me no information concerning the death of my son,” adding that he wanted to know “any of the details concerning how long he lived after the bombing, or where he was, etc.”

The bereaved American family had no one but the Japanese to turn to learn the truth of their loved one’s death.

The investigation was handed over to historian and atomic bomb survivor Shigeaki Mori, 87.

Mori is known as the hibakusha who met Obama during his historic visit to Hiroshima in 2016. He was recommended to meet the president by the U.S. government.

Mori continued the investigation on the death of American POWs killed in the atomic bombing, hoping that, “I want to tell the truth to the bereaved families. I don’t see those American service members as enemies. I think that they are humans.”

He ended his investigation by concluding that the number of the deaths of U.S. POWs who died as a result of the atomic bombing was 12, and included it in his book titled, “The Secret History of the American POWs Killed by the Atomic Bomb.”

He determined from various documents that Atkinson died at Aioibashi bridge, the target of the atomic bomb, while being transferred.

Mori invited the daughter, grandchild and great-grandchild of Atkinson to Hiroshima in March 2023.

They mourned their fallen family member. Mori also asked an expert to confirm that Atkinson had died in the horrific blast, which the expert did.

Mori wrote to the bereaved families, reporting that his conclusion of “the 12 deaths” was proven to be accurate by the GHQ’s document.

“The official document means something important to the bereaved families, who seek clues of the deaths of their loved ones. I have been waiting for it for so long, too,” he added in his letter.