Lapham’s Quarterly ran the English translation of the leaflets dropped on Japan along with the atomic bomb this week. While this isn’t strictly energy related, it’s too bizarre a document not to blog about.

The tone is direct, gentlemanly. It begins: To the Japanese People. It ends: EVACUATE YOUR CITIES. In between, the language is firm but something like sporting. “This awful fact is one for you to ponder, and we solemnly assure you it is grimly accurate.”

Who wrote this? How did they do it? What model of “Surrender now!” text did they use?

After a little poking around, it appears that the Office of War Information’s forward office in Saipan was responsible for the text. It was written by guys like Jack Maki, a Japanese man adopted by a white Tacoma family under the command of Richard Hubert, a Canadian with a fourth grade education. Hubert happened to have worked in China and Japan, so he’d become fluent in the language and had been pressed into service by the military’s desire to find white guys who could speak the language.

The leaflets were printed on the island by the men themselves with the help of Japanese prisoners. General Thomas Farrell signed off on the final draft.

The key point here is that the men were regular guys. And here they had the responsibility of informing another nation of its imminent destruction.

As I read through their leaflet over and over, I began to wonder if the authors had unconsciously drawn on the literature of science fiction and alien invasion in composing the work. If a weapon that could destroy the world called to their minds something from out of this world.

Or perhaps these words have reverberated down through science fiction and I absorbed them through dozens of bad sci-fi novels. They mutated into the monologue the alien invaders make to bend earthlings to their will, not the real address of one nation to another.

After the jump, I recast the letter with just a few changes* as a letter from Martians to Earthlings. I don’t mean to make light of what happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Rather, I wonder if the changes that I’ve made to the letter reflect something about the cosmic register in which the original leaflet was written.

TO THE EARTH PEOPLE:

Mars asks that you take immediate heed of what we say on this leaflet.

We are in possession of the most destructive explosive ever devised by Martians. A single one of our newly developed bombs is actually the equivalent in explosive power to what two thousand of our giant craft can carry on a single mission. This awful fact is one for you to ponder, and we solemnly assure you it is grimly accurate.

We have just begun to use this weapon against your homeland. If you still have any doubt, make inquiry as to what happened to Hiroshima when just one bomb fell on that city.

Before using this bomb to destroy every resource of the military by which they are prolonging this useless war, we ask that you now petition the emperor to end the war. Our president has outlined for you the thirteen consequences of an honorable surrender. We urge that you accept these consequences and begin the work of building a new, better, and peace-loving Earth.

You should take steps now to cease military resistance. Otherwise, we shall resolutely employ this bomb and all our other superior weapons to promptly and forcefully end the war.

EVACUATE YOUR CITIES

*I’ve replaced Japan/ese with Earth, man with Martians, America with Mars. B-29s with craft, and deleted the word atomic.