"My mission was to go to see the wounded Japanese, to meet and talk with their physicians, and to ask what the Marine Corps could do to help them." (Memoir, page 10)

Charles Summers Stevenson

Charles Stevenson at time of service War: World War, 1939-1945 Branch: Navy Unit: B Medical Company, 2nd Medical Battalion, 2nd Marine Division; USS Thomas Jefferson Service Location: Camp Lejeune, North Carolina; Boston, Massachusetts; St. Albans Naval Hospital, New York; Tinian and Saipan (Northern Mariana Islands); Nagasaki, Japan Rank: Lieutenant Commander

In August 1945, Lieutenant Commander Charles Summers Stevenson was stationed on Saipan, and positioned to take part in the imminent invasion of Japan. Instead, within weeks, he became the first physician to enter the city of Nagasaki after the atomic bombing. On September 24, 1945, he embarked on a “mission of mercy” to investigate the condition of the wounded Japanese; he toured an elementary school that had been repurposed as a hospital and spoke with the Japanese physicians serving there. Observing the vast destruction of the city and patients with no chance of recovery left him feeling utterly hopeless and helpless. Though he kept quiet about his experiences for many years after the war, in the 1980s, he began speaking out about the horrors of nuclear warfare, joining antinuclear groups such as Physicians for Social Responsibility.