ABSTRACT
A month to the day after the bombing of Nagasaki, critic and editor Henry Seidel Canby called upon scientists, public relations experts, and even Hollywood filmmakers to “make the atomic bomb real in the imagination of the world’s people.” Like many postwar columnists, Canby feared that “the world” did not truly appreciate the threat posed by atomic weapons. In part, that concern reflected the little then known outside Japan about conditions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. At the time Canby’s editorial went to print, no non-Japanese reporter had yet filed a story from either of the two cities, although Australian Wilfred Burchett would do so before the piece appeared on newsstands and Japanese reports had long since made their way into American newspapers.
