Youth, 1904 - 1935

Marcel Junod was born on May 14^th 1904, in Neuchâtel, son of Richard Samuel Junod (1868-1919), citizen of Lignières (NE), of a family of Protestant clergymen[1], and Jeanne Marguerite Bonnet (1866 - 1952) of Geneva, from the Bonnet family of Thônex next to Geneva which gave birth to the famous naturalist Charles Bonnet[2].

Pastor R. S. Junod and their 7 children

His father started his pastoral work preaching in villages of miners in Belgium, sent there by the Independent Protestant Church of Neuchâtel. He then carried out his duties in poor rural and urban parishes, first at Chézard-St.-Martin, near Neuchâtel, and then at la Chaux-de-Fonds. Marcel Junod spent his childhood and school years there, with his six brothers and sisters[3] ­ he was the fifth child of his parents. Their life was frugal: aged fourteen, he spent his holidays working in a brick factory.

At the death of her husband in 1919, Mrs Junod decided to return to Geneva with her children. Her son Marcel and his two younger sisters obtained at once the Geneva citizenship of their mother, taking advantage of a law which no longer exists today. They settled in the residential quarter of Florissant, where Mrs Junod, to be able to feed her children, opened a family boarding-house, with the help of her sister Marie-Antoinette Bonnet and a small family capital (the Bonnet were reputed watch-case makers from father to son, and had been owners of the Juvéna watch factory in the early years of the century).

Student in Geneva

Marcel studied at the Collège Calvin (the State High school), where he showed himself to be intelligent and energetic. He had an original turn of mind and a great capacity for communication: he tamed a lizard which he called Chilpéric and which came when he called it. Much concerned by human misery, he took part in the foundation of the ‘Journées de la Faim’ and in 1922 was one of the directors of the Relief Movement for Russian Children. In 1923, the obtained his baccalaureate (‘Maturité’) in Latin and living languages (English, German and Italian). He absolutely craved to study medicine, and had preciously kept the manuscript of his father’s biology class, meticulously written and illustrated, which dates from 1883[4]. Thanks to the generous help of his uncle, Henri-Alexandre Junod[5], his wish came true: having finished his studies in Geneva and in Strasbourg, he obtained his medical degree in 1929 with a thesis on Psoriasis in the medicine of accidents[6]. He decided to specialise in surgery and became an intern in the surgical ward of Prof. E. Kummer at Geneva Cantonal Hospital (today University Hospital of Geneva), then spending four years (1931 - 1935) in the medico-surgical service of the civilian hospitals of Mulhouse, in France, first as intern and the last year, having obtained his diploma in surgery, as head of the surgical clinic, which counted 270 beds.

Intern at the civilian Hospital of Mulhouse

A keen sportsman[7], his free time was spent skiing, meandering down the river Rhône from Geneva to Marseille in a rowboat, on the Mediterranean, playing golf or on horseback. He was passionately fond of music and played practically any musical instrument with talent; later, his interest focused on the piano, and his teacher was to be his cousin, the great pianist Jacqueline Blancard.

The Great conflicts, 1935 - 1945

Arrival of Junod and Sidney Brown
in Addis Abeba railway station

1935. Italy invades Ethiopia. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is looking for a young doctor to send to the field. A friend in Geneva passes the information to Marcel Junod and a couple of weeks later the latter leaves for Africa with Sidney Brown and arrives in Addis Ababa.

His book, Warrior without Weapons (first published in French ­ Le Troisième Combattant ­ in 1947 and translated into half-a-dozen languages) is still today the bedside volume of all young ICRC delegates. Junod recounts, with talent and eloquence, the extraordinary odyssey which brought him first to Ethiopia, where he tried to structure the embryonic Ethiopian Red Cross and to assist the local and foreign Red Cross ambulances[8]. He witnessed the bombing by the Italian air force of the British, Swedish and other Red Cross ambulances which were trying to bring medical aid to civilian and military victims, and the use of poison gas ­ ‘mustard’ gas ­ in flagrant violation of international law[9]. He risked his life on many occasions.

When the Italo-Ethiopian war was over, he was immediately appointed Delegate-General of the ICRC in the murderous whirlwind of the Spanish Civil War[10]. In this capacity, he established with both sides the tenets for ICRC action and convinced them to sign ‘agreements’. He negotiated the first exchanges of hostages in the Basque country, and then countless others. He was then appointed delegate for Republican Spain, with Dr. Roland Marti, first in Valencia and then in Barcelona.

In his office in Barcelona
with Dr. Roland Marti

He played a decisive role in the establishment of the system of circulation of family messages (over five million in total). He obtained the liberation of 5000 prisoners in Barcelona whose lives were threatened during the fighting which preceeded the fall of the city. Leopold Boissier[11] later wrote: “In such a conflict, the Geneva Conventions then in force did not give the delegates of the International Committee the means to fully carry out their mission as neutral intermediaries between the two adversaries. No matter… Marcel Junod, burning with faith, did more than his duty. By his constant intervention in both camps, by his appeal for humanity in what was until then a merciless conflict, he succeeded in saving thousands of lives. Thanks to him, the condemned were spared execution, and hostages, on death row, were saved and exchanged.[12]” Amongst many other such prisoners was Arthur Koestler[13]. It is on the basis of what Marcel Junod was able to wrest from the two sides that the norms of protection in the framework of civil wars were later developed.

On the Valencia road...

When the World War started in 1939, Marcel Junod was first incorporated into the sanitary troops of the Swiss army as medical Lieutenant, but a few days later the ICRC intervened and recuperated him in its service. He was first sent to Germany, where on September 27, 1939 he visited the first camp of Polish prisoners of war. Then, from Berlin, he radiated visiting the camps of allied prisoners of war and civilian internees in Germany, then in Belgium and in France, where he visited German prisoners of war as well. In June 1940, he went to France and then to Germany, to avoid reprisals the Germans threatened to take, claiming that their parachutists were being executed[14]. Soon after, he was able to introduce exchanges of information between French POWs and their families, often displaced, through the ‘clearing’ of the ICRC Agency for Prisoners of War. He then obtained agreement from Berlin that all prisoners be allowed to send a duplicate of the ‘Card of notice of capture’ to the Agency. In 1940, he went to London with Mlle Lucie Odier[15], at the moment of the aerial blocade and of the bombing, to organise the transport by sea of aid to the prisoners of war in Germany.

Visit to war prisoners in Germany

He also went to Sweden, where he organised, with the Swedish Red Cross, a huge relief action in favour of the starving Greek population. In September 1941, he went to Turkey to establish a subsidiary of the Agency dealing with the conflict in Eastern Europe; from there ­ he returned twice to Ankara ­ he was busy developing the transport by ship of famine relief to Greece. Off to Athens, he organised there an operation by which sick Greek children could be hospitalised in Cairo; from there he went to Crete, where he visited camps of POWs in the hands of the Italians. During his third mission to Turkey, he was mandated by the ICRC to try and resolve the problem of Soviet prisoners in Germany and German prisoners in the Soviet Union, due to the fact that the Soviet Union was not a party to the Geneva Conventions. Then back to Berlin, he fought constantly in favour of the respect of the rules of humanitarian law and their development.

Exhausted by four years without the slightest break, he left ICRC service and lived in Geneva, from 1943 to 1944, as a medical expert for the Swiss national insurance society for accidents and professional illnesses. But a few months later, he returned to the ICRC and worked for a year at the institution’s headquarters. In December 1944, he married Eugénie Georgette Perret (1915-1970).

At the ICRC headquarters, with Max Huber and
Pilet-Golaz (Swiss Foreign Minister)

In June 1945, he had to leave his wife ­ expecting a child ­ in Switzerland, as again the ICRC sent him on a mission. This time, as Head of the ICRC delegation to Japan, to replace Dr. Paravicini, who had died over a year earlier. He left for the Far East by the Trans-Siberian railway, and obtained from the Japanese on the way, in Manchuria, the authorisation to visit U. S. Generals Wainwright and Percival, as well as the other American prisoners held by the Japanese.

Hiroshima, 1945

On August 9, 1945, Marcel Junod arrived in Tokyo from Manchuria with his colleague, Margharita Straehler[16]. The ICRC delgation in Tokyo had been without a director for two years and was not functioning. Hearing rumours that two nuclear bombs have been dropped over Japan and that a humanitarian catastrophe existed in Hiroshima, he did not manage to obtain any precise information: the Allied High Command decreed a black-out on the events and the zone was forbidden to foreigners[17]. Swamped by the need to register and bring urgent assistance to the prisoners of war[18] ­ a priority protection task ­ Marcel Junod obtained permission to send to Hiroshima, on the 29^th of August, a Swiss businessman resident in Japan, asking him to report on the situation. The following day, August 30^th, he received a cable telling him of the extent of the catastrophe:

“6 SUZUKI FOR JUNOD STOP VISITED HIROSHIMA THIRTIETH CONDITIONS APPALLING STOP CITY WIPED OUT EIGHTY PERCENT ALL HOSPITALS DESTROYED OR SERIOUSLY DAMAGED INSPECTED TWO EMERGENCY HOSPITALS CONDITIONS BEYOND DESCRIPTION STOP EFFECT OF BOMB MYSTERIOUSLY SERIOUS STOP MANY VICTIMS APPARENTLY RECOVERING SUDDENLY SUFFER FATAL RELAPSE DUE TO DECOMPOSITION OF WHITE BLOOD CELLS AND OTHER INTERNAL INJURIES NOW DYING IN GREAT NUMBERS STOP ESTIMATED STILL OVER ONEHUNDREDTHOUSAND WOUNDED IN EMERGENCY HOSPITALS LOCATED SURROUNDINGS SADLY LACKING BANDAGING MATERIALS MEDICINES STOP PLEASE SOLEMNLY APPEAL TO ALLIED HIGH COMMAND CONSIDER IMMEDIATE AIRDROP RELIEFACTION OVER CENTRE CITY STOP REQUIRED SUBSTANTIAL QUANTITIES BANDAGES SURGICAL PADS OINTMENTS FOR BURNS SULFAMIDES ALSO BLOODPLASMA AND TRANSFUSION EQUIPMENT STOP IMMEDIATE ACTION HIGHLY DESIRABLE ALSO DESPATCH MEDICAL INVESTIGATING COMMISSION STOP[19]…”

 The same day, Thursday August 30^th, Junod received from the Gaimusho[20] a series of photographs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki[21]. Saturday September 1rst, he saw Generals Wainwright, Percival. Fitch and Farrel as well as Colonels Marcus and Oughterman at the New Grand Hotel in Yokohama. The question of urgent relief for Hiroshima was raised[22], but he had to wait until Tuesday September 4^th to be able to have a formal appointment at the High Command with General Fitch and Chief Surgeon Colonel B. P. Webster. He asked them insistently to initiate a relief operation[23]. Thanks to the credibility he enjoyed resulting from the service he rendered to the Americans with Wainwright, Percival and the prisoners in Manchuria, he achieved that the question be urgently submitted to General MacArthur who, three days later, authorised him to go to Hiroshima with an American medical enquiry commission, two Japanese doctors, and twelve[24] tons of relief supplies. With six transport planes, he left on September 8^th:

“One hour after takeoff we followed the coast to the East of Fujiyama, not far from its imposing crater, and overflew the great cities of Japan, Nagoya, Osaka, Kobe which looked to me as huge stains of rust with here and there rare areas which had escaped the usual fire. But this view, although impressive, cannot be compared to the unbelievable sight of the desert of Hiroshima. From up in the sky, this city of 400,000 souls, the town of seven rivers, built on the delta of the Okatawa, seems to have been swept by a supernatural force. Nothing remains but a vast white spot, with a brown belt around it, a remnant of the incendiary fire which followed the atomisation. Far away, near the harbour, a few rare buildings seem untouched, as they were protected by a small hill. After overflying the city, the planes descended rapidly and ten minutes later we landed on the airport of Iwakuni, an old Japanese naval base. The medical supplies are unloaded and General Farrell, chief of the mission, hands them over to me. There is no inventory, but the weight is estimated at fifteen tons. I entrust them to a Japanese naval officer and go that same evening to the Japanese military district where the officers are preparing the visit of the city for the following day. Sunday, September 9^th, we visit the devastated city and listen to the accounts of various witnesses…[25]”.

Marcel Junod spent five days in Hiroshima, visiting all the hospitals, ensuring optimal repartition of the medical supplies, checking what was missing and obtaining further ones, and taking part himself directly in urgent medical care as a surgeon[26]. As the infrastructure of Hiroshima was completely destroyed, he slept on the beautiful island of Miyajima, spared by the bomb and also by a typhoon which killed a further 4000 people in Hiroshima a few days after the nuclear explosion…

This humanitarian action brought him the honour of being the only individual who has a monument to his memory in the Hiroshima Memorial Peace Park. The seventy-odd photographs he brought back to the ICRC are amongst the first images of the tragedy which reached Europe. In 1982, the ICRC published a text by Marcel Junod on this period in the Review of the International Red Cross entitled The Hiroshima disaster[27].

The post-war period, 1945-1952

Marcel Junod stayed several more months in Japan, until April 1946, to continue his task as head of the ICRC delegation, dealing with the evacuation of prisoners, before returning to Switzerland. His son was born on October 26^th 1945, while his father was still in the Far East[28]. In the summer of 1946, like all delegates out of a job as the war was over, he left the ICRC and returned to his profession as a doctor, to further his specialisation as a surgeon. From September 1946 to July 1947, he did a training period at the Laënnec hospital in Paris, in the department of tuberculosis and thoracic surgery of Professor Robert Monod. To reduce his expenses as much as possible ­ he was not the sort of person who accumulated savings ­ his wife and son remained in Switzerland and he stayed in Paris with his sister Mado and her husband, Dr. Maurice Cord. Through the latter ­ a very cultivated person with many contacts in the art world ­ Junod met the Russian painter Pavel Tchelichev, the writer Cilette Ofaire, Colette, and many others. It is during this period that he wrote Warrior Without Weapons, typing the text himself as he had no secretarial help. Max Huber[29] accepted to write the preface and the book was published by Payot in French and by Europa-Verlag in German, followed closely by a Swedish edition, and later by British and American editions (1951)[30]. The book was widely commented on and reviewed in the Swiss and International press and the first edition in French was out of print within three months.

At the end of his training in Paris, Marcel Junod obtained a scholarship from the Swiss -American Foundation to continue his studies in thoracic surgery and left for the USA with his family in October 1947[31]. However, just after his arrival, he met Maurice Pate[32], whom he knew from Geneva, at Lake Success close to New York. Pate convinced him to give up his scholarship and enter UNICEF as a Liaison Officer.

Three months later, in January 1948, Maurice Pate sent Junod as the representative of the world institution for children in China. His family joined him in Nanking by boat via the Philippines. They moved to Beijing, and then to Shanghai, while Marcel Junod tried to accomplish his mission in the complicated context of the Chinese Revolution[33]. It was common knowledge that UNRRA, the most important UN organisation active in the field of relief in China at the time, had squandered its two-year budget ­ 500 Mio US$ ­ because of the civil war, the post-WW2 disorganisation, the Chinese administration, inflation, corruption, etc.. Junod had a 12 Mio US$ budget at his disposal… to assist and bring relief to 67 million children, a number which increased each year by 16 million, minus four to five million new-born babies who died of lock-jaw (tetanus) at birth from lack of basic hygiene. Funds were used essentially to support actions by the best implanted humanitarian organisations. But the situation was desperate: one doctor for 30,000 inhabitants, of which none outside the cities; 15,000 hospital beds (less than the number in London at the time) for 450 million inhabitants. Marcel Junod wanted to organise a campaign for the vaccination of children against tuberculosis, which was causing ravages… but he had only five teams of capable doctors and nurses. He saw nothing but cases of dilapidation of resources: for example five hundred superb units of American X-ray equipment imported by UNRRA at the request of the Chinese Government, of which four hundred and eighty were rotting in a warehouse because there were only 20 Chinese doctors who knew how to use such equipment. Moreover, he was frustrated not to be able to do more for children living in communist territory.

In February 1949, Marcel Junod fell ill of a presumed arterial calcification in the left leg; as his three-and-a-half year old son was also seriously ill from amoebic dysentry, Pate ordered the family back to New York. Junod brought back from China 10 Mio US$ of his budget ­ out of twelve ­ and told Maurice Pate that he would have needed ten years and a budget one thousandfold greater to be able to do something really useful.

Marcel Junod worked another two months at UNICEF, and his son was taken care of at the Mayo clinic. But in April, he was practically no longer able to walk and was urgently brought back to Europe, as all medical checks in New York had drawn a blank. In Geneva, it was his friend the radiologist Pierre Bardet who at last identified an enormous cholesterol cyst in the femoral region, doubled with a calcification of the illiac artery. May 12^th 1949, Junod underwent major surgery at the hands of Sir Horace Evans, in London. His convalescence was slow, and he had to renounce the possibility of a job at the World Health Organisation. He understood that he would never recuperate completely and that his ailment would prevent him from working as a surgeon, as he could no longer stand for long hours in an operating theatre. He thought the matter through and found a branch of medicine which he could work in while sitting down: anaesthesia, which was at its beginnings in continental Europe.

Despite his poor state of health, he went to Paris and did training periods in anaesthesia at the Cochin and Brousset hospitals. He obtained his diploma in anaesthesiology from the Faculty of medicine in Paris, but in February a second operation on his leg proved necessary, and was carried out by Professor Leriche in Paris. Knowing that the Americans, and even more so the British, were far ahead on the rest of the world  (and particularly the French) in the field of anaesthetics, he renounced a scholarship to go to the USA and in May 1950 settled in London, living at his sister Milou’s and her husband Victor Ceresole’s[34], until his wife and son joined him. He studied at the Middlesex Hospital with Professors Bernard Johnson and A. J. H. Hewer, becoming their clinical assistant in November 1951, at which time he obtained his F.F.A.R.C.S[35]. diploma.

Return to Geneva, 1952-1961

Marcel Junod had the great honour of receiving in 1950, the Gold Medal for Peace of Prince Carl of Sweden in recognition of his humanitarian work[36]. In 1951, he returned to Geneva, obtained his FMH and opened his cabinet as anaesthesist[37]. In 1953, he succeeded in convincing the medical authorities that it was essential to create a department of anaesthesiology at the Cantonal Hospital, and suggested a structure allowing young anaesthesists to be trained[38]. His proposal was accepted[39] and he directed the department, and practiced medicine ­ his first vocation ­ until his death[40]. He took part in a great number of medical congresses, published numerous articles on research and gave many conferences on his specialty, as well as on the medical effects of atomic radiation.

When he managed to escape for holidays, he returned to Spain where he had friends in Barcelona from the time of the Civil War[41].

On December 12^th 1960, he gave his inaugural lecture as Professor of Anaesthetics at the Faculty of Medicine of Geneva University, on Fluothane, its pharmacological action and clinical applications. He started all the preparations for a first major Congress of Anaesthesiology in Geneva, bringing together the Swiss, German and Austrian anaesthesists’ societies. The Congress took place on September 8-10, 1961[42].

On October 23^rd, 1952, the ICRC co-opted him into its Committee; his knowledge of field work and qualities as a doctor brought him to be elected Vice-President of the institution in 1959. Early 1953, he settled in Lullier near Jussy[43], a country village near Geneva, and the tranquility he found there enabled him to face the daunting task of a double life between the hospital and the ICRC.

Though he had difficulty walking and used a walking-stick, in 1957 Marcel Junod carried out a mission for the ICRC in Budapest and Vienna, from June 11 to 19, in the framework of relief after the crushing of the Hungarian uprising of 1956. The same year, went on a mission to Cairo and took part in the International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent in New Delhi. He was present at the commemorative ceremonies of the battle of Solferino in 1959 and the same year carried out a mission for the ICRC in Japan, in the framework of the operations of repatriation of Korean prisoners of war. In 1960 he accompanied President Boissier on an official ICRC visit to the Soviet Union, and carried out a long mission ­ his last ­ in the Far East (Taiwan, Thailand, Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan), Canada and the U. S. A. visiting national Red Cross societies.

On June 16^th, 1961, as he was bringing a patient out from an anaesthesia at the hospital, Marcel Junod succumbed to a massive heart attack. He was buried, as he wished, in the cemetry of the municipality of Jussy[44]. The ICRC received over 3000 messages of sympathy from all over the world. Having earlier been awarded a great number of decorations from national red-cross societies, he was posthumously decorated of the Order of the Sacred Treasure of Japan[45].

The monument in Hiroshima dates from 1979, when with time it was clearly established that Marcel Junod had gone beyond his simple duty in mobilising relief for the victims of the atomic bomb[46]. Since then, the anniversary of his death is the object of a commemorative meeting in front of the monument each year, where the town authorities, the association of doctors of Hiroshima, the boys’ choir of the town and the victims who are still alive ­ the dwindling hibakusya ­ take part.

At Marcel Junod’s funeral, Léopold Boissier wished to “bear witness to the man who was the most accomplished delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross. I say the most accomplished, because in the large phalanx of those who have served or are still serving the cause of relief for the victims of wars and internal strife, none has had so many opportunities to reveal his gifts of self-sacrifice, courage, and humanity.”

BJ

Bibliography:

Courvoisier, Raymond. Ceux qui ne devaient pas mourir, Laffont ed. Paris 1978 (Vecu Coll.)

Junod, Marcel. Warrior Without Weapons, Jonathan Cape ed. London 1951

Marqués, Pierre. La Croix-Rouge pendant la Guerre d’Espagne (1936-1939) Les missionaires de l’humanitaire, L’Harmattan, ed. 2000

(to be continued)