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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."
This isn't meant to be flamebait, and only meant to be a serious question.
Why did MacArthur give Japan only three days to respond after Hiroshima? Why not at least a week?
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Which makes sense as the bomb was a small one (for a nuke) with a yield of approx 15 kiloton and was detonated at an altitude of 500 meters. This would have prevented the fireball from actually touching the ground and contaminate the ground. Thus only neutron activation would have created any lasting radioactivity on the ground below the bomb, and that was also reduced due to the distance.
The only permanent radioactivity would be trapped in the fireball and would have been deposited downwind by the 'black rain' (which would be dangerous).
Yours Yazeran
Plan: to go to Mars one day with a hammer.
One thing I remember from history classes is that pictures of survivors of the atomic blasts were censored.
Makes me wonder what else has been censored within the last century, particular for historically significant events. Was there anything censored that could have been historically significant had it not been censored?
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Nagasaki wasnt the primary intended target. The intended target was Kokura, but the spotter planes that went ahead found it to be completely socked in with clouds, so the bomb plane diverted to their secondary target, Nagasaki.
It's very easy to go back 60 years into the past and play armchair quarterback using your own "modern" moral compass.
The fact of the matter is that Japan was fully prepared to fight an invasion of Japan to the last man/woman/child. The people who decided to pull the trigger on the atomic bomb had just seen firsthand what that kind of scenario was like in Germany.
Do I like the fact that those bombs were dropped on cities? No. Do I think it saved millions of Allied soldiers' (and Japanese soldiers/civilians) lives? Absolutely.
Does the military censor news? Absolutely.
Realistically speaking, what other options did the US have in the Pacific theater in WW2?
Japan had attacked us first. Japan indeed had brought us into the war. The fighting in the Pacific had been extremely bloody, with countless islands and other places won with much bloodshed and cost--and we weren't even to the Japanese mainland yet.
Kamikaze--divine wind--took a pretty rough toll. On the Japanese too for sure, but us as well. It's rather indicative of the extreme lengths to which some Japanese soldiers and commanders were willing to go to win.
Would you have rather we performed a manned ground invasion of the Japanese islands and subdued the entire place by force? The Japanese leaders PROVED by ignoring the nuclear bomb not only before it was detonated but more to the point, AFTER it was detonated, that they would not easily surrender.
Estimates I've read (and common sense as well) have point casualties and destruction on both sides from a ground invasion much higher than the nuclear bombings.
No side can be completely innocent in war. Dresden, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, and Tokyo for that matter were horrible. So too was the rape of Nanking, and the Japanese push throughout the Asia Pacific.
What choice did we have? This was not a war of our choice, or one that would end without a decisive victory or defeat. What better outcome could there have been?
General Patton once said something like 'no dumb bastard ever won a war by dying for his country--the trick is to make the other dumb bastard die for his.' Somewhat egalitarian if you really think about it.
For instance there are many spas (Bad Brambach, Schlema) in the Ore Mountains in Germany who offer Radon cures. You are basicly sitting in a tub filled with warm, Radon contaminated water. Radon is a radioactive noble gas, basicly a heavy version of Helium and Neon, and most of it is the product of the slow decay of Uranium-238 (via the alpha ray decay of Radium-226). The soil of the Ore Mountains is rich in Uranium, and so there are enough places everywhere, where Radon comes out of the earth. Radon is part of nearly all natural well water, you can even use Radon as a measurement of the relative amount of well water in water sources, because all surface water will loose their Radon within a short period (within 3,8 days half the Radon of a given amount has decayed, and additionally it is gaseous, and a noble gas, so it will leave the water without any chemical reaction), and rain water will not contain any Radon anyway, because it is to heavy to reach the clouds.
Because of its heavy weight cellars in the Ore Mountain may contain a high level of Radon, it enters the cellar through earth rifts and doesn't leave it anymore. It can reach levels where it really starts to be a health risk, leading to lung cancer because of the alpha rays (Helium cores), which destroy the tissue of the lung.
The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs did one simple service for the entire world, and all of humanity: they gave us all fear.
Imagine that you're a military type, and you've got this brand new, super-powerful toy, the Biggest Bomb in the World. It tooks millions to build, and the biggest aspect of all that work was that nobody really knew if it even could be built. But once it is known that one can be built, it's only a matter of time until others do it.
Further imagine that Hiroshima and Nagasaki had never happened, so the Bomb wouldn't be anything real in the public's mind, just another weapon, just another bomb. Military types are prone to exaggerate their own capability, so without having seen the Bomb used against a real city, it would have remained a bomb, not The Bomb. Seeing pictures of a devastated atoll just isn't the same as hearing reports of death from a devastated city.
Finally, imagine the Cold War, where both sides have the Bomb, but the world lacked the fear generated by Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Imagine both sides with thousands of Bombs, each. Hiroshima and Nagasaki happened during that brief interval in history, when only one side had the Bomb, when there was no issue of retaliation, when Mutual Assured Destruction, wasn't even a possiblity, much less a deterrent policy.
What do you think our chances of surviving the last 60 years would have been, without the Fear from Hiroshima and Nagasaki permeating our culture. Sometimes I fear that that Fear is fading, but I hope that enough is left to keep us alive until we hopefully mature as a species.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Actually, in this case it did end. The Japanese surrendered, we (the US) spent millions rebuilding it, and Japan is now a thriving nation and respected world citizen. The US has a good relationship with Japan, and vice versa. Within the US citizenry, there is very little latent dislike or hatred of Japan. China, on the other hand, still remembers their brutal treatment by Japan, and they resent Japan's failure to really come to grips with and acknowledge their behavior.
Does that justify, then, the use of nuclear weapons? I don't know.
I would find it hard to believe that there was much talk about "justification" at the time.
My grandmother was in a Japanese prison camp. She was there simply because she wasn't Japanese. She was "different" from them and perhaps that's while they raped and tortured her every day for months. Apparently it didn't matter to the Japanese that she was pregnant at the time. Later her son was born, but babies can't work so they don't get fed. One of the other prisoners (I don't even know his name) smuggled in some food & medicine to try and keep the kid alive. Unfortunately they found him out. The Japanese assembled all the prisoners in the camp to make an example of him. They shoved a fire hose down his throat and pumped water into him at high pressure, his stomach exploded and his internal organs flew all over the place. The prisoners could only watch as he died in agony, trying to pick up all his bits and put them back in.
This is not a unique story and not a particularly bad one when it comes down to it compared to a lot of the stuff that went on. A lot of really awful shit went on in that war.
Dropping atomic bomb(s) on a (comparative) handful of people (compared to the millions dying and in danger) to end the war with Japan is a no brainer. It only seem "wrong" to a lot of people today because they aren't having their internal organs removed and fashioned as a hat.
A form of Pentagon-supported censorship... http://www.democracynow.org/static/hiroshima.shtml
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.
from http://archive.webactive.com/pacifica/demnow/dn200 10806.html
Soon after the bombing, as reporters converged on a ship off the coast of Japan to cover the surrender of the Japanese, one independent reporter named Wilfred Burchett took a train for 30 hours to Hiroshima. He couldn't believe what he saw: people with their skin melting off them, images of people engraved on the sides of buildings. He sat down with his Hermes typewriter in the rubble, and tapped out the words, "I write this as a warning to the world." He talked about something he called, 'bomb sickness', that he had never seen before. Another reporter did a ten-part series on the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He was William Leonard Laurence of the New York Times. He was also on the payroll of the Pentagon. One of his headlines was, "No Bomb Sickness Found." He won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting. Wilfred Burchett died of cancer decades later, but always traced it to Hiroshima.
There were hardly any civilians in Japan during World War Two.
Seriously. Read up on the war. The Japanese imperial government forced elementary-school children to drill with bamboo spears and take on military rank as preparations to 'defend the homefront'. Men unfit for military duty, as well as most women, were forced to work in factories making war materiel. The entire civilian population had been forcibly mobilized by the government into joining a military war effort. The entire population of Japan over age twelve were essentially military draftees. This is called "total war". Today, total war is considered by political thinkers to be a crime against one's own populace, because it makes the entire population a legitimate military target.
I agree that following orders specifically intended to result in civilian deaths is a war crime. I agree that giving orders specifically intended to result in civilian deaths is a war crime.
I just don't see there were very many civilians in Japan.
The reprint is still spoofing the truth ... as shown on part 4 of the article. There it says, quoting roughly, that Disease-X was being treated on an experimental basis with ... [illegible] drug.
The drug was opium. It helps the immune system, mainly kidneys and liver, organize formation, collection and elimination of salts which contain radiation minerals, and thus accelerates curing. Withing a few years after the bombings, the contaminated populations had completely recovered, including hair, reproductive and immune system capacity, and etc.
The reason this is still "top secret" is that the planet's annual production capacity in opium is limited (by geographic and political availability of alkaline soil, accessible mountainous exposures with cheap labor, supervised by loyal warlords, dark nights, for complete formation of plant alkaloids, etc.) to approximately one-tenth of the size of the "national medical reserve" the U.S. alone would require to stabilize its own "designated survivor" population, in the event of a nuclear wars between the U.S. and Russia, China, France, etc. If amongst the powers on this planet, the U.S. maintained exclusive control of the entire production of the planet's maximum production capacity in opium-based pain killers, it would take the U.S. alone ten years to acquire its required "two-balled" military "entirety" for a nuclear war.
Oddly, or contrary to our Hollywood-created popular opinion, survival ("continuity of government") in a nuclear war is not determined by the bombing phase, which is relatively shortlived, using missiles which the media generally portrays as "sexy" and/or "terrifying. Survival in a war by mass contamination, and diplomacy by threat of mass contamination (read: state-sponsored terrorism), is based on not on the bombing phase, but on the longer and economically more arduous restoration phase. This more crucial phase starts with medication-stabilization programs of the government/military/fema, to treat the "designated survivors." The only know treatment for 500rem+ radiation sickness, on a mass contamination basis, is by production control and medical delivery of opium-based painkillers and treatment alkaloids.
That was the purpose of the experiments on Tuskeegee prisonors. (The controlled contamination and experimental treatment of black prisoners was for national-security dosage determinations, required for determination of (a) the size of the designation population which could be expected to survive (with any degree of continuing political stability), and then the ten-year annual production capacity of the planet, for treatment of the U.S.'s designation survivor population alone.
Is it by accident that this article just happens to blotch out and make that word illegible, while be bomb and control the most critical of the opium production areas of the planet, Afghanistan?
Lots of people have already pointed out he lived 57 years after his visit to post-nuke Nagasaki.
I would like to post a comment as someone who knows some people who were there that day.
There certainly is a strange thing about the effect of the bomb to people. I have no statistics, but my anecdotal experience shows that those who are still alive 60 years after their experience are extremely healthy.
My father was 14 and was 2.5km from the ground zero. He, obviously unscathed, visited the ground zero after a day or two. He is 74 now and plays tennis every day. He does get his conditions checked every year as a survivor. He is apparently an interesting case because he does have half the amount of white blood cells compared to normal. This is somewhat consistent with the well-known effect of radiation. Still, he doesn't even catch cold.
And my father is not an exception. There is a rather well known view among Nagasaki population that some survivors are extremely healthy. This may simply mean that they survived because they are extremely strong. There might be a correlation but it would be really hard to tell which is the cause and which is the effect. Some people may be just lucky that their damaged genes have better ability to repair itself.
On the other hand, people are now starting to talk about the effect on the third generation. There seem to be some concern that instead of the second generation, symptoms are appearing in the third generation. The effect of the bombing in terms of how much the radiation affects the genes is understandably hard to prove. There are many many other factors, and it is practically impossible to isolate the experience in a nuked environment as the major cause of mutation.
Personally, I don't have an opinion whether dropping the a-bombs is justified. It's history and that's what happend, we cannot change it. But if I'm pressed, I'd personally think because of the bomb, I'm here. If there had been no bomb in Nagasaki that day, my father may not have survived till the end of the war. It's well-known that teenager boys had been recruited to become Kamikaze attacker. An elder brother of his was being trained to be one. Another year or so, my father would probably have become one.
Every time I think about the bomb, I have a strange feeling. If my father had been killed on that day, I would not be here to think about the bomb. It was obviously a major event in his life although he always talks about it in a calm manner. I think he is a cool guy.
The real question to ask is why on God's Green Earth (or blue once you actually see it from space) did the Japanese intermix their civilian population with military manufacture? No one else did that as much as was possible (though the Brits did have secret aircraft factories in populated areas.)
The reason is multi-part but basically that was simply how Japan worked. Instead of big, mega factories, often you had small cottage industry that served the greater factory. Its actually a very nice model in peacetime.
The casualties were even worse than they needed to be. Fearing incendiery attacks, the Japanese organized to pull down wooden structures. However, they did not organize to haul away said piles of wood which ended up burning more efficiently that way.
If you look at what the japanese were doing to prepare themselves for the inevitable invasion by the Allies (including the Russians) you will no doubt come to the conclusion that dropping two atomic bombs was by far better than having a poorly armed population attempting to fight it out. They were trainng young women to fight with bamboo spears. It would have been a sensless slaughter that Japan probably would not have recovered from. I think the question is quite well answered in the book "Downfall."
Also, there is a film put out by Showtime in 1995 called "Hiroshima" that I thought was very well balanced. It does portray the Emperor in a more heroic light than I think he deserves but for the most part I think it does show the intentions of everyone involved quite well. Its 3 hours long. I got a copy off of Half.com. Its hard to find but well worth it.
--Pete