Marcel Junod

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Marcel Junod : biography

May 14, 1904 – June 16, 1961
. . . For three weeks we impatiently awaited news that the Sturebog had arrived back safely in Alexandria. Geneva inquired vainly after her whereabouts in London, Rome, Berlin and Ankara. The Sturebog was lost at sea and we began to think that we should never learn anything about her fate.
. . . Then one morning on the coast of Palestine two Bedouins going along the shore found a body half buried in the sand. . . . He was the sole survivor of the Sturebog, a Portuguese sailor. Gradually he recovered and after a week he was able to tell his tale.
The day after the departure of the Sturebog from Piraeus two Italian planes flew overhead. They flew round in circles and had plenty of time to observe the huge red crosses painted on the ship’s white side. Nevertheless they dropped a bomb which cut the Sturebog in half. . . .
(Dr. Marcel Junod: Warrior without Weapons ICRC, Geneva, 1982, p. 202)

In December 1944, Junod married his wife Eugénie Georgette Perret (1915-1970). After a short break from being a delegate, during part of which he worked in the ICRC headquarters in Geneva, in June 1945 he was sent to Japan and arrived in Tokyo on August 9. His original mission involved the visit of POWs in Japanese camps and the supervision of the adherence to the Geneva Conventions in Japanese territory. His mission in Japan took place while his wife was expecting a child at home.

After the American dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9, 1945) and the subsequent Japanese surrender, Junod organized the evacuation of POW camps and the Allied rescue of the often severely injured inmates. On August 30, he received photographic evidence and a telegraph description of the conditions in Hiroshima. He quickly organized an assistance mission and on September 8 became the first foreign doctor to reach the site. He was accompanied by an American investigation task force, two Japanese doctors, and 15 tons of medical supplies. He stayed there for five days, during which he visited all of the major hospitals, administered the distribution of supplies, and personally gave medical care. The photographs from Hiroshima, which he gave to the ICRC, were some of the first pictures of the city after the explosion to reach Europe.

. . . On what remained of the station facade the hands of the clock had been stopped by the fire at 8.15.
It was perhaps the first time in the history of humanity that the birth of a new era was recorded on the face of a clock. . . . 
(Dr. Marcel Junod: Warrior without Weapons ICRC, Geneva, 1982, p. 300)