Jacob Bronowski | The Bombing of Nagasaki | Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby?

RE: The Bombing of Nagasaki

TO: poo@cts.com

Dear Sir or Madam:

Once many years ago, I heard an interview with Jacob Bronowski by one of your contributors.

I have been trying to find a reading by him concerning the bombing of Nagasaki, and the Guilt of Scientists, and a song by Louis Jordan called "Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby?"

Evidently, Bronowski was sent by the English as an observer to that city shortly after the bomb went off.

He remembers getting off the U. S. Navy ship, going down the ramp, all the while hearing a song which the sailors were listening to on their radios, "Is You Is...?" etc.

Part of the problem is that I recall that song from 1945, and the son-of-a-bitch is driving me crazy. It goes, roughly,

Is you is or is you ain't my baby?
The way you actin' baby makes me doubt.
You was once my baby baby, but
The way you actin' lately makes me doubt.

Please advise.

Our Editors respond:

The song in question was indeed composed by Louis Jordan in 1944. It goes,

I'm gonna walk right up to her gate
And see if I can get it straight
Cause I want her
I'm gonna ask her

Is you is or is you ain't my baby?
The way you're actin' lately makes me doubt
You is still my baby-baby
Seems my flame in your heart's done gone out
A woman is a creature that has always been strange
Just when you're sure of one
You find she's gone and made a change
Is you is or is you ain't my baby
Maybe baby's found somebody new
Or is my baby still my baby true?

Is you is or is you ain't my baby?
The way you're actin' lately makes me doubt
Yous is still my baby-baby
Seems my flame in your heart's done gone out
A woman is a creature that has always been strange
Just when you're sure of one
You find she's gone and made a change
Is you is or is you ain't my baby
Maybe baby's found somebody new
Or is my baby still my baby true?

The reading that you refer to appears in the introduction to Bronowski's Science and Human Values. This is what he wrote:

On a fine November day in 1945, late in the afternoon, I was landed on an airstrip in Southern Japan. From there a jeep was to take me over the mountains to join a ship which lay in Nagasaki Harbour. I knew nothing of the country or the distance before us. We drove off; dusk fell; the road rose and fell away, the pine woods came down to the road, straggled on and opened again. I did not know that we had left the open country until unexpectedly I heard the ship's loudspeakers broadcasting dance music.
Then suddenly I was aware that we were already at the centre of damage in Nagasaki. The shadows behind me were the skeletons of the Mitsubishi factory buildings, pushed backwards and sideways as if by a giant hand. What I had thought to be broken rocks was a concrete power house with its roof punched in. I could now make out the outline of two crumpled gasometers; there was a cold furnace festooned with service pipes; otherwise nothing but cockeyed telegraph poles and loops of wire in a bare waste of ashes. I had blundered into this desolate landscape as instantly as one might wake among the craters of the moon.

The moment of recognition when I realised that I was already in Nagasaki is present to me as I write, as vividly as when I lived it. I see the warm night and the meaningless shapes; I can even remember the tune that was coming from the ship. It was a dance tune which had been popular in 1945, and it was called Is You Is Or Is You Ain't Ma Baby?