Photograph from Atomic Veterans History Project, taken by Henry Dittmer in October 1945 as his unit
debarked and toured the ruins of Hiroshima.
"A month after the bombings [of Hiroshima and Nagasaki], two reporters defied General MacArthur and struck out on their own. Mr. Weller, of the Chicago Daily News, took row boats and trains to reach devastated Nagasaki. Independent journalist Wilfred Burchett rode a train for 30 hours and walked into the charred remains of Hiroshima."
Good stuff via Democracy Now by Democracy Now host, Amy Goodman and fellow journalist David Goodman, who have published an article in the Baltimore Sun describing the trials of journalists attempting to cover the bombing who's reports were dismissed as propaganda and censored outright by the US military. The Goodmans are also calling for the retraction of a Pulitzer Prize awarded to "embedded" New York Times journalist William Laurence:
Mr. Laurence had a front-page story in the Times disputing the notion that radiation sickness was killing people. His news story included this remarkable commentary: "The Japanese are still continuing their propaganda aimed at creating the impression that we won the war unfairly, and thus attempting to create sympathy for themselves and milder terms. ... Thus, at the beginning, the Japanese described 'symptoms' that did not ring true."
Mr. Laurence won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the atomic bomb, and his faithful parroting of the government line was crucial in launching a half-century of silence about the deadly lingering effects of the bomb. It is time for the Pulitzer board to strip Hiroshima's apologist and his newspaper of this undeserved prize.
Sixty years late, Mr. Weller's censored account stands as a searing indictment not only of the inhumanity of the atomic bomb but also of the danger of journalists embedding with the government to deceive the world.
The half century of silence, mentioned in the link you provided was definitely American. In 1970, the CBC broadcast a major documentary made for the 25th anniversary of the bombing, showing previously unseen footage of the casualties, eerie shadows on stone of people who were vaporized, kimono patterns burnt onto women's skin as well as footage of the birth defects that affected the next generation. (many of these children had been placed orphanages, at some point there had been a mood of shame on behalf of the survivors)
I was a kid and I was watching it with my family, cousins, aunts and uncles, some of which had fought in WW2. The room was deadly silent for the two hours or so of documentary. I recall that the voice over was rather deadpan, or maybe gently plain-spoken is a better description and the image quality was so much like the pictures that you have posted, the pacing was slow and relentless.
Fast forward to 2005 and the CBC broadcasted a new documentary a few nights ago, I saved the tape for you, Sally, if you missed it. This was a doc of a different sort, it used the more recent devices of re-enactments spliced with archival footage, interviews with survivors and air crews (including Paul Tibbets, unencumbered by any thoughts other than the satisfaction of a mission accomplished). In this film, the political background and military strategy was presented as if the debate was over. Several historians have argued that the actual military projection for numbers of US casualties (in the case of an invasion of Japan) was in the tens of thousands, not the 1,000,000 casualties that seems to be more widely quoted. (The Gerard DeGroot book that I sent you also claims that the "one million" was pulled out of someone's ass).
Further proofs of the necessity for dropping the bomb was shown by re-enactments of Imperialist Japanese Generals thumping their Imperialist Japanese war desks (Ikea), refusing all discussion of surrender. This could be based on the reluctance of Japan to surrender unconditionally, but it had been rather simplified for our tiny minds. Conflicting historical records aside, because there are too many examples to rant on upon, I was really pissed at the structuring of the information, almost a thriller type narrative, that had the viewer excitedly anticipating the actual bomb drop.
I didn't get to see the documentary, thanks for taping it!! As I mentioned elsewhere, we are embroiled in the copy of De Groot's A Bomb: A Life that you lent us. I have been reading it today with your post above in mind and I must say, part of what is engaging me on this atomic topic is exactly the tension between the bad, nauseating wrongness of nuclear weapons, and giddy, narrative pursuit of the bomb, both as a political rush to power and a scientific rush to knowledge. I am thinking that it is important for North Americans of my generation to purge the weird, nostalgic, introspective monster-in-the-closet nightmare of the bomb in order to look with blank eyes at the fact that while the coldwar fifties repression buttondown nameless fear is over, the bomb itself is more present than ever and it's deployment is much much more conscionable than it was in 1945. I recognise the attitude of Fermi, who said something to the effect that his Los Alamos colleagues were professing to have moral qualms over the bomb, he was simply relieved and excited when they got it working. But there were others then and early on, who were sickened by the potential destruction represented. I was particularly moved by one guy (who's name I"ll fill in when I next get my hands on the book) who said, after the first success of the Trinity blast, that "cities are no longer the place to live."
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Photograph from Atomic Veterans History Project, taken by Henry Dittmer in October 1945 as his unit
debarked and toured the ruins of Hiroshima.
Good stuff via Democracy Now by Democracy Now host, Amy Goodman and fellow journalist David Goodman, who have published an article in the Baltimore Sun describing the trials of journalists attempting to cover the bombing who's reports were dismissed as propaganda and censored outright by the US military. The Goodmans are also calling for the retraction of a Pulitzer Prize awarded to "embedded" New York Times journalist William Laurence:
- sally mckay 8-06-2005 8:08 am
The half century of silence, mentioned in the link you provided was definitely American. In 1970, the CBC broadcast a major documentary made for the 25th anniversary of the bombing, showing previously unseen footage of the casualties, eerie shadows on stone of people who were vaporized, kimono patterns burnt onto women's skin as well as footage of the birth defects that affected the next generation. (many of these children had been placed orphanages, at some point there had been a mood of shame on behalf of the survivors)
I was a kid and I was watching it with my family, cousins, aunts and uncles, some of which had fought in WW2. The room was deadly silent for the two hours or so of documentary. I recall that the voice over was rather deadpan, or maybe gently plain-spoken is a better description and the image quality was so much like the pictures that you have posted, the pacing was slow and relentless.
Fast forward to 2005 and the CBC broadcasted a new documentary a few nights ago, I saved the tape for you, Sally, if you missed it. This was a doc of a different sort, it used the more recent devices of re-enactments spliced with archival footage, interviews with survivors and air crews (including Paul Tibbets, unencumbered by any thoughts other than the satisfaction of a mission accomplished). In this film, the political background and military strategy was presented as if the debate was over. Several historians have argued that the actual military projection for numbers of US casualties (in the case of an invasion of Japan) was in the tens of thousands, not the 1,000,000 casualties that seems to be more widely quoted. (The Gerard DeGroot book that I sent you also claims that the "one million" was pulled out of someone's ass).
Further proofs of the necessity for dropping the bomb was shown by re-enactments of Imperialist Japanese Generals thumping their Imperialist Japanese war desks (Ikea), refusing all discussion of surrender. This could be based on the reluctance of Japan to surrender unconditionally, but it had been rather simplified for our tiny minds. Conflicting historical records aside, because there are too many examples to rant on upon, I was really pissed at the structuring of the information, almost a thriller type narrative, that had the viewer excitedly anticipating the actual bomb drop.
- L.M. 8-07-2005 12:12 am
I didn't get to see the documentary, thanks for taping it!! As I mentioned elsewhere, we are embroiled in the copy of De Groot's A Bomb: A Life that you lent us. I have been reading it today with your post above in mind and I must say, part of what is engaging me on this atomic topic is exactly the tension between the bad, nauseating wrongness of nuclear weapons, and giddy, narrative pursuit of the bomb, both as a political rush to power and a scientific rush to knowledge. I am thinking that it is important for North Americans of my generation to purge the weird, nostalgic, introspective monster-in-the-closet nightmare of the bomb in order to look with blank eyes at the fact that while the coldwar fifties repression buttondown nameless fear is over, the bomb itself is more present than ever and it's deployment is much much more conscionable than it was in 1945. I recognise the attitude of Fermi, who said something to the effect that his Los Alamos colleagues were professing to have moral qualms over the bomb, he was simply relieved and excited when they got it working. But there were others then and early on, who were sickened by the potential destruction represented. I was particularly moved by one guy (who's name I"ll fill in when I next get my hands on the book) who said, after the first success of the Trinity blast, that "cities are no longer the place to live."
- sally mckay 8-08-2005 5:53 am