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."

Comments

Why the second bomb?

[cablepokerface]

I never really got that. Was Japan gonna think; "Well one nuclear descruction we can handle! What? Another?? Ow then we surrender."

Such awful descruction. Never really knew as well if the US in those days really needed to end the war that way or did they just wanna see what happend. Maybe a bit of both.

Re:MacArthur

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi Richard,

I am glad the British bombed Dresden, I would go back and do it again... The Nazi's sent thousands of tons of stuff into London for years with no regret on their part, even today they act as if their buzzbombs were in some way 'retaliation' for a war they started with the UK. The current liberal apologies for bombings during that war sickens me to no end. The UK was doing it's best to merely survive in the face of a brutal and civilian oriented murder of it's civilians by the Nazis. I can fault them in no way for their handling of the Dresden issue.

An American (from the US so as not to confuse people as Canadians and Mexicans also live on that continent known as North America)

Britt...

Re:MacArthur

[Anonymous Coward]

Dresden was about retribution. Germany broke the pact to not bomb major cities. Germany bombed London on massive bombing raids, where you couldn't see the sky past the hundreds of bombers in the air.

So we went to Dresden, and we set about slaughtering the bastards. Fair? Absolutely.

What goes around comes around. Every single person in Germany was the enemy.

Re:"just following orders"

[HeX86]

In the case of WWII, if no one had opposed Hitler, then we still would have had concentration camps and the Holocaust.

WWII was Japan, WWI was Hitler...

Re:"just following orders"

[Anonymous Coward]

and b) try to make all war seem evil.

I don't know about "evil" (which is way too relative, for instance war is OK as a population growth deterrent; what is evil on getting rid of a few million humans that are depleting the place?) but all wars are a huge display of stupididy and incapacity of humans to work out differences and work together to solve problems. Like, instead of relying on war to do population growth control, we could ignore the popes and use contraceptives instead.

How is this "Your Rights Online?"

[Anonymous Coward]

I fucking hate Slashdot.

Re:"just following orders"

[Anonymous Coward]

then we still would have had concentration camps

We don't?

Are you sure?

Re:MacArthur

[Triskele]

Well as we keep on having to point out to you - you live in a democracy and must bear the responsibility whether you like it or not.

And just to pick on one point: you say "The American people are not warmongers. " and I say FUCKING BULLSHIT. The US has been continuously at war for 60 odd years now and shows no sign of ending its aggression. Particularly since it invariably picks on little, weak, underarmed and undertrained nations to attack and subsequently loot. All in the name of FREEDOM and DEMOCRACY.