This was incredible to read. I love history but all too often in history classes or shows you learn about key dates and events rather than the in-depth detail on a subject. Going into this book, I knew nothing about what the first experiences were like going into Nagasaki after the bomb was dropped or about MacArthur's complete media lockdown. There is nothing enjoyable about this book and the stories it relates, and yet the amount of history you learn about various subjects that have gone 'forgotten' by history (largely because they were censored for so long that many falsities are more well-known that actual facts) makes this a must read for anyone interested in war history, US history, or the history of journalism.

An odd collection of writings of a famous WWII war reporter, cobbled together largely from dispatches surrounding a Nagasaki visit after the bombing. The flow is choppy, but quite readable. The content is riveting. There is the obligatory description of the horrors of the nuke's aftermath, but this is given context through the extensive reporting of prison camp atrocities and the Death Cruise. The stories of suffering were repetitive and troubling, but a thoughtful read of this is the least homage we can give to those here who endured or perished in representing our nation. I agree with another reviewer that it does remind us of the unforeseen results of war and our obligations in treating captives with humanity.

Having been an armchair student-historian of the European theater of WWII, I was anxious to read this volume about the two days that changed the course of the war in the Pacific. I've always maintained that every credible read possesses all three literary genres: Man vs Man (US POWs versus their Japanese captors), Man vs Nature (The People of Nagasaki vs The Bomb and its effects), and Man vs Himself (Author George Weller vs Inability to tell his story outright).

The fact that George's son, Anthony, was the one who resurrected his father's long lost transcripts- written from a typewriter late into the night under the most extreme conditions in the field- is a testament to one family's multi-generational ability to not only discover the truth of what really occured in Nagasaki after the bomb was detonated- but convey that truth in it's raw and poignant form in George's first person account of what he saw and experienced.

For some, this book will be very hard to read. It should be. It gives a non-glossy account of the effects of war and it's many ravages on both military personnel and the general populace. Too, it paints a very clear picture of the incredible censorship program that took place under General MacArthur's leadership. If it were not for George Weller and his intrepid sense of adventure and the need for absolute truth in his journalistic reporting, we would all be ignorant of some of History's most incredible acts and the witness of personal heroism and sacrifice under the most egregious of circumstances and mankind's cruelest devices.

Interesting accounts. Much more than a discussion of Nagasaki or "the bomb." Includes a lot of material from the recent POW's he found in the area surrounding Nagasaki. It's largely a contemporary narrative, which was censored during the war for a lot of reasons. It's interesting to guess at the author's judgement on the use of the atomic bomb. That question shows the author's restraint in his prose, so as not to try and bias the reader. It lacks depth. That's because the original source material was written for newspaper or news magazine publication and was not a history. The POW accounts can be quite disturbing. It's not a book that stands alone. If you lack any understanding of the Second World War, and the Pacific Campaigns, this will not be of much help. There wasn't that much work to put this all in context. A contemporary reader would have had no problem putting Wake Island, the Bataan Death March, and other events in context. I don't think that's a failing, as doing too much of that would have distorted the overall narrative.

It would be hard to say I liked this book based on its subject matter. I found it depressing and disheartening. My complaint being people will never learn, never stop being horrible to one another, and are terribly deceitful.

The book provides a good first hand account of WWII Japan. Not an easy read by any stretch. I also struggled a bit with the way the book is edited. Somehow, the material needed a better editor.

The title is a bit misleading--I was expecting more about Nagasaki. It ended up being about 25% about the bombing of Nagasaki and 75% about POWs in Japan. So if you're looking for info about the bombing, look elsewhere.

However, the accounts of the POWs were absolutely worth reading. I never realized how terribly the Allied POWs were treated there. It gets a little graphic in parts--definitely an eye-opener.

Not bad a little jingoistic but considering everything not as bad I had thought it would be

I don't use the term 'important' often to describe a book but I would consider this an important book. If only for the vivid descriptions of the seldom-described post-Nagasaki Japan and the POW mining camps in Japan. The ghost ships have been written about a fair amount lately, sometimes as a corollary to Bataan or Cabanatuan, but I suspect you'd have a hard time finding a more detailed description of the Japanese POW camps than in this work.

It's emotionally troubling. I'd read Nicholson Baker's, "Human Smoke" a few months ago and put it down feeling like it might have made me think of WWII less like a great, worthy war and more a necessary evil to combat evil. This books is a wonderful companion to that book and takes you places emotionally where you can easily find yourself agreeing with the soldiers who felt the bomb didn't kill half enough. Soldiers were dying of starvation, dehydration, suffocation, freezing, malaria, dysentery, resorting to cannibalism, all while food, medicine, and water was sometimes a few yards away but withheld out of cruelty. To say nothing of those beat to death for no reason or for not working hard enough in the dangerous (unsupported) mines.

The book is, unfortunately, sort of awkward. It could've used a better editor as you have these powerful threads of history somewhat lacking in cohesion. It's basically a section on Weller getting into Nagasaki, a section on the mines/POW camps, a section on the ghost ships, and a few other pieces on Nagasaki. They're all powerful on their own, sure, but I think it maybe could've been a stronger book (and got out to more people to let them know about these terrors) had it been constructed a bit better.

What a book. I spent five weeks on it, but not because it's a slog. I do a lot of reading in bed after the lights are out, which works great for ebooks but not so well for paper editions, which is what my copy of First into Nagasaki was. Nonetheless, there is a lot of material between the covers of this book.

It's hard to read any history of war and not come away feeling sad and depressed about the way people are capable of treating their fellow humans. First into Nagasaki is no different. It's brutal. It's also fascinating and engrossing, with the type of memorable details that paint a vivid picture of what the war was like for GIs fighting and being held captive by the Japanese. Although we're all familiar with the atomic bomb and Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I'd bet most people who weren't alive at that time will find the accounts of the hell voyages, the death marches, and the POW mining camps to be revelations. Personally, I'd never heard any of it before.

I also enjoyed the way George Weller revealed the controlling and weasely aspects of MacArthur. Certainly every war is full of government propaganda and censorship, and the view we have of MacArthur here does nothing to convince us he wasn't deep in it.

For me this book is illuminating as a narrative of details of the war with Japan that I didn't know. I lived in Japan for eight years as a boy, and we met elderly people there whose bodies had been burned by the bombings during the war. In some parts of Japan, there was still bitterness about the war when we lived there (and undoubtedly there still is now).

If you're not a fan of war, the things witnessed by and recounted to George Weller won't do anything to dissuade you of your pacifist ways. If you are a fan of war, hopefully this book will at least get you to consider the brutality of it rather than whip you into a frenzy to punish some other enemy, real or imagined. Regardless, what's inside this book is instructive and important. How men behave during war and how leaders try to shape the narrative at the expense of the truth is something that hasn't changed throughout human history. George Weller may have died frustrated and dissatisfied with his apparent lack of success in getting his stories out there, but in fact his mission has now been accomplished, and admirably so.

A must read, especially given that we are currently waging a war where serious questions are being asked about detainee treatment - and no answers are being given to us by the goverment.

Another installment in my “Further Erosion Of Our American Patriotism Series”

The journalism of George Weller included in this volume is written with an awareness of being the "first draft of history", but remains tied to its purpose of conveying immediate impressions to its intended audience of Anglophone, primarily American readers.
The title is a bit misleading; while it does include Weller's impressions of Nagasaki a month after the atomic bomb was dropped, most have the reporting here deals with the experiences of American POWs in the hands of Japanese captors. Those experiences were horrifying and are little mentioned in subsequent accounts of the war. The best piece in the book is an extended account of a "Death Cruise" from Manila to Japan during which 1,600 prisoners suffered unthinkable privation and cruelty, as well as attacks by American bombers, the combination of which resulted in the deaths of about 3/4 of the prisoners.
An extensive afterword by Weller's son Anthony is valuable in giving context to the reports.
It is interesting that, even in the immediate aftermath of the war, while the exact nature of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were still largely unknown and classified, some Japanese who spoke to Weller attempted to claim the moral high ground as victims of the unjustifiable use of a weapon that in itself amounted to a crime against humanity. Weller, at least, was having none of it, maintaining through the years that, "The worst crime of any war is to begin it."