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A Surgeon With 300% Mortality Rate From a Single Operation and Other Historic Screwups

Khalid Elhassan October 11, 2020 32 min

Robert Liston - Surgery — Dr. Robert Liston operating. Wellcome Images

15. Mistake About Nuance Leads to the Deaths of Hundreds of Thousands

Mushroom clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Dunia History

The terms of the Potsdam Declaration were hotly debated within the Japanese government. Subsequently, Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki stated at a press conference that Japan’s policy towards the Potsdam Declaration would be one of “mokusatsu“. It was a Japanese word which meant that he had received the message, and was giving it serious consideration.

Translation of a leaflet dropped on Japanese cities after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Harry S. Truman Library

Unfortunately, Japanese is a subtle language, in which the same word could convey a variety of meanings. Another meaning for mokusatsu is to “contemptuously ignore“, and that was the meaning that translators gave to President Harry Truman. 10 days later, the B-29 Enola Gay flew from Tinian to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.