Hearing about Hiroshima

This is a passage from The Making of George Wyllie, which I have co-written with Louise Wyllie, about her father, renowned Scottish artist, George Wyllie (1921-2012). The book is due to be published at the end of this year.

HIROSHIMA

The news which finally signalled the end of the War in the Pacific came through to the Argonaut as she sailed off the coast of the island of Leyte in The Philippines in early August 1945. George and his mess-mates were lazing in their hammocks at the time; playing cards and half-listening to the radio, when they heard that a uranium-filled bomb known as Little Boy had been dropped on the city of Hiroshima in the south west of Japan at 8.15a.m. that morning. George knew instantly that this action signalled the end of the war. Three days later on the 9th August 1945, a plutonium-filled bomb known as Fat Man was dropped on Nagasaki. On 10 August, George writes in his diary ‘skipper pipes about peace news – kinda celebrate in mess & so turn in, in hammock.’

This is a photograph of a section of George's wartime photograph album dealing with a visit which George and some shipmates made to the city of Hiroshima in January 1946.