"Atomic Bomb Loosed On Japs": the Atlanta Daily World's single column on Hiroshima

The front page of the Atlanta Daily World, a Black-owned daily, for 7 August 1945. Its banner is about Okinawa and the heroism of Black soldiers there. The first atomic bomb gets one column, "Atomic Bomb Loosed On Japs," from the Southern News Service, quoting the White House statement.

The page

Content note: two headlines on this page use the wartime slur for Japanese people. They are quoted here as printed.

The banner is not about the bomb. Across the top the paper ran "WITHERING JAP FIRE REPULSED ON OKINAWA," over a correspondent's report on Black soldiers in the fighting there. The bomb is one narrow column toward the upper right. Elsewhere on the page are a story headed "Few Negro Officers To Be Left In Europe" and a call to vote that day.

Atomic Bomb Loosed On Japs

WASHINGTON — (SNS) — An atomic bomb has been loosed upon Japan.

President Truman disclosed in a White House statement Monday that the bomb, hailed as the greatest achievement of organized science, was dropped on Hiroshima, Japanese Army base. The supply city was said to have disappeared from the earth.

The bomb contains more power than 20,000 tons of TNT and produces more than 2,000 times the blast of the most powerful bomb ever dropped before.

Secretary of War Stimson predicted that the bomb would "prove a tremendous aid" in shortening the war with Japan.

Who printed it

The Atlanta Daily World was a Black-owned daily, published every morning except Monday; this is volume 17, number 318, the City Edition, five cents. The bomb story is credited to the Southern News Service (SNS). FRAME classes the paper as openly identified: the masthead says who is speaking.

How to read it

Almost every fact in the column comes from the government. It reports the White House statement and the Secretary of War, and it passes on the tonnage figure, the comparison with earlier bombs, "the greatest achievement of organized science" and Stimson's forecast without comment. The column also calls Hiroshima two things at once, a "Japanese Army base" and a "supply city" that "was said to have disappeared from the earth." The second phrase is the more honest one. A city is where people live, and the column says nothing about them.

FRAME tags the page name-calling and card stacking. The name-calling is the slur in two headlines, and printing it was wrong. The card stacking is the reliance on one official source for a weapon that, on this page, only the government describes.

The page's own priorities are the interesting part. An editor serving Black readers in Atlanta gave the banner to Black soldiers' courage, put the fate of Black officers on the same front page as the bomb, and printed a front-page appeal to vote that called voting both a "privilege" and a "duty." Those were claims about citizenship, printed beside a banner about Black soldiers' service. Washington's Evening Star of the same date gave the bomb its whole banner. Both front pages open the civil defense and atomic age hub.