Declassified official U.S. documents showed Tuesday the names and other detailed identification information of American troops who died in the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima after being held captive in Japan.
The latest revelation followed a recently discovered U.S. report that confirmed that 12 American troops were killed in the blast that reduced the western city in Japan to ashes on Aug. 6, 1945.
But the one-page investigation report did not contain information that identified the 12 individuals. Kyodo News made information disclosure requests to obtain detailed documents from the U.S. Department of the Army and the National Archives and Records Administration.
Information on all of the victims was disclosed, based on the names of the 12 that were made public through studies conducted by Shigeaki Mori, an 87-year-old Japanese historian and a survivor of the bombing.
The latest records, titled "Individual Deceased Personnel Files," compiled around 30 to 150 pages of information for each victim, including their dental identification results, lists of belongings, and death notices sent to family.
Staff Sgt. Charles Baumgartner, 29, was among two of the military personnel described as having "perished in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima," while three, including 2nd Lt. Durden Looper, 22, were "killed in action" in Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, according to the documents.
For two others, including 2nd Lt. James Ryan, 20, the papers said death while in action "on 6 Aug 45" had been established. Regarding Lt. Raymond Porter, 24, the papers included a death notice sent to his family, saying he died "as the result of the atomic bomb of Hiroshima."
The remains of eight of the servicemen were first buried en masse at a mausoleum that the U.S. military set up in Yokohama during its occupation of Japan following the end of World War II. They were then sent to a national cemetery in the United States for reburial in 1949, the documents showed.
Two other victims among the 12, including Normand Brissette, described in the report as a 19-year-old "3rd class Navy radio operator," died on Aug. 19, 1945 due to "Atomic Bomb Blast", the documents showed. Their remains were returned to the United States between 1948 and 1949 after being cremated in Hiroshima and shipped via Yokohama and the Philippines, the papers showed.
Regarding information on the remaining two victims, the disclosed records did not have any clear descriptions that linked their deaths with the atomic bomb blast.
The disclosed materials were analyzed by Hitoshi Nagai, a professor of modern Japanese history at the Hiroshima Peace Institute.
The atomic bomb that detonated over Hiroshima killed an estimated 140,000 people by the end of 1945. A second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, and Japan surrendered six days later, bringing an end to World War II.
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