Slashdot Mirror
Censored Nagasaki Bomb Story Found
EccentricAnomaly writes "In 1945 journalist George Weller snuck past the American occupying forces and became the first American Journalist to see the devastation left by the atomic bomb that fell on Nagasaki. His story infuriated MacArthur, who had it quashed. The Japanese paper, Mainichi, has now published Weller's account. CNN has a story discussing how it was found." From the Mainichi article: "As one whittles away at embroidery and checks the stories, the impression grows that the atomic bomb is a tremendous, but not a peculiar weapon. The Japanese have heard the legend from American radio that the ground preserves deadly irradiation. But hours of walking amid the ruins where the odor of decaying flesh is still strong produces in this writer nausea, but no sign or burns or debilitation."
I believe the article said he died in his 90s. If that's that radiation does to you, bring it on.
Actually, no.
He died in 2002, a whopping 57 years after his "walk in the atomic park".
Actually, he died 3 years ago having lived probably longer than you or me: he was 95.
The answer is in the text, from this doctor Nakashima, who appeared to be the only one around who was familiar with the symptoms of radiation disease.
The article says this (in part 4):
No matter how often you say it, it still doesn't make it true.
...the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.
i roshima_and_Nagasaki
The argument that it save a million lives has been refuted time and time again. First of all the casualty figures are far from certain and it's far from certain that these were indeed that casulty figures the US had to expect had an invasion taken place.
Further, there are rather strong arguments for the assumption that Japane would have surrendered without an invasion and without the use of atomic bombs.
Finally, you discard all the eveidence that has been brougth to light by historians that suggests that the US did indeed have at least some additional reasons for using the atomic bombs, namely the begining confrontation with the Soviet Union.
Just one quote for you:
""...in [July] 1945... Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act.
"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."
- Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380
In a Newsweek interview, Eisenhower again recalled the meeting with Stimson:
"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."
- Ike on Ike, Newsweek, 11/11/63 "
http://www.doug-long.com/quotes.htm
Finally:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_H
How about going there and learn yourself...
I believe the actual quote is Speak softly and carry a big stick.
. html
http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/tr26
This Like That - fun with words!
They tried, but the US wouldn't 'let them'. In fact, they tried surrendering to the soviets before the first one was even dropped...
If you found this interesting you might want to read John Hersey's account of the Hiroshima bomb. Published in 1946 and still in print, it's pretty much the definitive version.
It's written in an extraordinarily calm style, almost without emotion, but is strangly fascinating and moving.
Try a search for 'Hiroshima John Hersey'.
The Rest of the World will not deal with our stupidy much longer.
Much of this 'overgrown bully' stuff is true. The trouble is that the rest of the world is no better, indeed much of it is undeniably even worse. Don't expect that when America's luck runs out the next big kid will be nicer.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
I think one of the main reasons was to make sure the Soviets did not take over Japan. The Red Army had just defeated the main Japanese army in Manchuria [sp?], and after demonstrating that losing 20 million people in the war against Germany did not prevent them from marching to Belrin, it would have been very likely that they would have taken over Japan in due time.
Fat Man was 21 kt yield as I recall.. The fireball ascended into the wind and fallout was not over ground zero. The black rain fell over Nishiyama, to the east.
There is still some residual radiation but surpisingly, the vast majority of radioactive fall-out pollution in the region is due to US atmospheric testing in the 50's, and that was way off in the Pacific!
The neutron radiation is also negligable compared to the background pollution.
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
yes, it is urban legend. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are far apart and the man would not be working gin one town and living n another.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
That about them not knowing what happened at Hiroshima until after Nagasaki was bombed is a bold faced lie.
Many people noticed that suddenly virtually all telephone and telegraph lines leading to and from the city were cut, and that the city was no longer broadcasting Radio. The Japanese Military dispatched two Officers in a plane to go and see what had happened. Within 4 hours they had gotten there and had made report as to the damage. Keep in mind that by the time they got 100 miles away from the city, they could still see the mushroom cloud and could see the city burning. Still.
For information: The Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Hiroshima: The Bombing.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
There are even places in Scotland, and probably elsewhere, where the natural background radiation is so high that you can get more than the maximum recommended dosage just by walking around outside.
This is so true, McNamara actually mentions this in relation to the excessive firebombing of japanese cities (which killed and destroyed more than the two H-bombs). Would you rather not firebomb the cities? And then have to send 500,000 american troops to land on the beaches of a country which evidently had a large portion of the population who were prepared to fight to the death? At what point is it permissible to do something in war because it is too henious?
McNamara goes through all this in "The Fog of War" documentary, and actually calls for restrictions to nuclear weapons and to "total war". And as General LeMay said, if they had lost the war, they would have been prosecuted as war criminals.
The documentary, Fog of war has 8.3 on IMDB http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317910/ which would put it in the top 50 movies of all time on IMDB http://www.imdb.com/chart/top - if they put documentaries in there.
Truely a great piece, must see. Get it now.
the Japanese regime were 100 times worse, and continue to deny or obfuscate their actions during WWII to this day.
I actually talked about this in a section of one of my latest blog entries. It's not a great scholarly piece, but for anyone a bit curious about the recent protests in China about the Japanese government, there's at least a modicum of insight in my writings, I hope. I had a professor lecture about US-China-Japan relations, and he covered this in part. I was shocked to know that many of my fellow Japanese classmates at university were not aware of the cause of the tensions. In any case, if you are curious or want to criticize it, it's maybe 1/2 way down the entry I've linked.
That being said, I'm going to go out and try to find a copy of this bomb story here in Japan.
A form of Pentagon-supported censorship...
l
http://www.democracynow.org/static/hiroshima.shtm
Summary:
After the bomb drop on Hiroshima, press are confined to a barge off the coast of Japan. Wilfred Burchett, an independent journalist, decides to go and see things first hand and writes about it ("I write these facts as dispassionately as I can in the hope that they will act as a warning to the world."). William L. Laurence of the New York Times, and on the Pentagon payroll, writes a series of stories discrediting Burchett and gets the Pulitzer Price. Democracy Now is trying to get the Pulitzer stripped from the NYT.
(sorry, accidentally pushed submit instead of preview)
the Japanese were likely not the first, and certainly not the last to use prisoners as hostages in this manner.
Actually, in 1864 during the American Civil War, the Union Army held 600 captured Confederate officers and men in front of Foster's Battery on Morris Island for 45 days, partly out of revenge for the relocation of 600 prisoners into Charleston City and partly in an effort to prevent the Confederates holding Charleston Harbor from mounting effective counter-fire. It didn't work -- the Confederates artillery fired back anyway and Charleston didn't fall until the end of the War -- but luckily none of the prisoners were killed.
I did some research on Radon when we found out our house had it. Seems that the acceptable dose was never really studied- but inferred from radon levels in mines which are much higher. Workers who worked in mines were in there 40 hours a week- and were fine until the amount of radon in the air reached 100ppm. In the home- they calculated 4ppm (in the us- 10ppm is allowable in Europe) to be safe based off of exposure times extrapolated from the data. Great math- but it could be poor science if this theory proves true.
Keep in mind though that the Americans were not entirely without their own ambitions to destroy the USSR. Patton, in particular, wanted to see an all-out invasion of Russia to take them out while they still had a massive army on the scene.
The display of the atomic bomb on Japan *might* (historical hypotheticals are slippery fish indeed) have prevented a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. Personally, I suspect a Soviet Army that had borne most of the heavy lifting involved with beating the Nazis and had suffered horrendous losses in so doing was just as eager to lay down their arms as anyone else... but with Uncle Joe in charge, that's hard to know for sure.
But I *also* think that the USSR's very rapid acquisition of nuclear weapons and the delivery system to employ them stopped a potential American -led invasion of the USSR.
And I think that the evidence provided by Hiroshima and Nagasaki as to just how horrible a nuclear war would be is what kept *both* sides, once so armed, from risking it anyway.
I totally do not buy into the theory that the atomic bomb saved lives in WW2; I think Japan would have found a way to surrender without requiring the oft-touted monsterous casulties associated with an invasion.
But I *do* think that the evidence of just how bad the destruction associated with even small atomic bombs was acted as deterrent through the 50's all the way to the present day. I think that without Hiroshima and Nakasaki we have no MAD, and it was MAD that prevented (and continues to prevent) WW3.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
and almost certainly would have cost Bush his re-election
Well if you want to get into that, President Bush wrongfully removed the restriction in early 2004(FYI the election was in late 2004).
The restriction had been put in place in late 1980 and in place during the 1990 except for small incidents and primarily used for Kosovo, Bosnia and a few places.
I read this as a schoolboy, just weeks before the Cuban Missile Crisis (October 1962). It was pretty sobering. It made the prospect of nuclear war pretty real.
Later, it turned out that friends of my family were prisoners of the Japanese, and suffered horribly. Later still, it turned out that a classmate of my father (in Holland) had fled Holland in 1939 for the safety of the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia. The Japanese put him in a prison work force in -you guessed it- Nagasaki. He was in the bowels of a ship that was under construction when the bomb went off. He said it was the loudest sound he'd ever heard. He also said he just "ran like hell".
Anyone interested in what a "loose nuke" from Iran, or N Korea can do should read Trumbull's book. I guarantee that you'll never think about the subject in quite the same way as you did before the read.
I would say that walking around in a heavy fallout zone is an extremely unhealthy activity
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both classical airburst detonations. These typically produce low local fallout as the radioactive material is mostly swept up into the stratosphere as the fireball rises. Although there were certainly many cancer cases, most of these were caused by prompt radiation (ie gamma and neutrons directly from the nuclear reactions in the fireball), and that prompt radiation dies away very quickly (hours rather than days).
I wouldn't like to walk around in a heavy fallout zone either, but those are generally associated with groundbursts or radiological devices rather than airbursts. So I think this reporter was probably okay. See the FAQ at nuclearweaponarchive.org for more info.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
"Nine Who Survived Hiroshima and Nagasaki" by Trumbull [1957] documents the stories of nine refugees from the Hiroshima bombing. These poor sods wound up in Nagasaki. Got bombed again there, and lived to tell the story. An incredible read.
Basically, that 4 ppm (picoCuries/L, as they say) seems to be a really low number here in the US. According to the EPA, if you don't smoke and your house is tested and comes in at 4 pCi/L, then there is a 0.2% chance that you MIGHT get lung cancer. (By the way, radon is the second leading cause of lung cancer).
It's not that I don't think that radon is bad (I run a radon inspection business), it's just that I think that the US has way too high of standards when it comes to "acceptable" levels. Europe's standards are a lot better at 10 pCi/L (though if you don't smoke there's still only a 0.4% chance you might get lung cancer), but at least they're being reasonable.
You can choose definitions of "good" and "evil" so that the notion of the lesser evil makes no sense, but I don't think those definitions serve the greater good as well as definitions that force us to agonize over fine differences in shades of gray.
We should really abolish romantic notions of good and evil, because they simply muddy the debate and polarize people on the issues which don't matter. In your case, they will instead argue whether the ends justify "evil" means, rather than debating the facts of whether one choice really will lead to a better outcome than the other.
Poorly defined meanings in debate is just asking for trouble. There is no circumventing debate in such charged circumstances, but at least putting it on a clearly understood foundation helps us see the real issues.
Furthermore, I understand your concerns regarding losing sight that we are committing a horrible act simply because it's justified. But labeling a horrible act we are forced to take as 'good', doesn't automatically erase from our minds the fact that it was horrible. I may have to kill someone in self-defence, but I'm sure will never forget it, despite that I was justified in defending myself. People who have been through such scenarios will testify to the truth of this.
Ultimately, good and evil can only be determined by justification. Are we rationally justified in such actions? If we can answer in the affirmative, then we are not committing evil. Good and evil are loaded terms, so justification is perhaps a better term that helps us focus on the real issues.
For instance, the initiator of violence is always wrong, but when are justified in acting on a threat? This is particularly poignant with the "war on terrorism" and Bush's Iraq invasion. I think there are enough real issues to concern ourselves with that we shouldn't get tripped up by poor definitions.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Hmmm...
Japan did not start the war "entirely unprovoked." The US had an embargo in place against Japan that stopped some 90 percent of incoming oil shipments to Japan.
We were knee-deep in the war, without actually being in the war (or so we tell ourselves). But we basically forced the hand of the Japanese. Our embargo crippled them. They would have been unable to keep fighting the war had they not attacked Pearl Harbor, cause they would have run out of oil.
Our hands were not entirely clean at all before we jumped into WWII. Many more anecdotes like this detail why the Japanese actually believed that we expected and knew that they were going to attack and were actually surprised at the ease at which they bombed Pearl Harbor.