Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War

by Susan Southard

Wada quickly credited the United States for the food staples it provided to Nagasaki, part of its effort to prevent both disease and civil unrest in postwar Japan. Additionally, for six years after the war, the Licensed Agencies for Relief in Asia (LARA), a coalition of thirteen U.S. relief agencies, shipped food, clothing, and other provisions to Japan. “LARA was like UNESCO or UNICEF today,” Wada explained, referring to the essential food staples LARA distributed to schools and families, including powdered milk, pineapple juice, bread, and canned goods. LARA also provided clothing, combs and brushes, soap, and toothpaste. “They saved a lot of children. It isn’t widely known now that America did this for us. Of course the atomic bombs were wrong,” Wada said, “but at the time, many hibakusha who hated America for dropping the bombs didn’t know that the food they were eating came from America.”