This looks interesting: ATOMIC COVER-UP: Two U.S. Soldiers, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, and The Greatest Movie Never Made
On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb over the center of Hiroshima, killing at least 70,000 civilians instantly and perhaps 50,000 more in the days and months to follow. Three days later, it exploded another atomic bomb over Nagasaki, slightly off target, killing 40,000 immediately and dooming tens of thousands of others. Within days, Japan had surrendered, and the US readied plans for occupying the defeated country–and documenting the first atomic catastrophe.
But the Japanese also wanted to study it. Within days of the second atomic attack, officials at the Tokyo-based newsreel company Nippon Eigasha discussed shooting film in the two stricken cities. At this point, the American public knew little about conditions in the atomic cities beyond Japanese assertions that a mysterious affliction was attacking many of those who survived the initial blasts (claims that were largely taken to be propaganda). Newspaper photographs of victims were non-existent, or censored. Life magazine would later observe that for years “the world…knew only the physical facts of atomic destruction.”
Tens of thousands of American GIs occupied the two cities. Because of the alleged absence of residual radiation, no one was urged to take precautions.
Then, on October 24, 1945, a Japanese cameraman in Nagasaki was ordered to stop shooting by an American military policeman. His film, and then the rest of the 26,000 feet of Nippon Eisasha footage, was confiscated
Have you read the breakthrough novel of the year? When you are done with that, try:
or Paperback
*Please note:
Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.
Given that no American effort to bring the Second World War to a successful conclusion would have ever gained the approval of the post-Sixties American Left, I have no doubt this claim, whether proven true or not, will become yet another hammer with which to beat the nation and the military that beat back progressive- defended, Bosnian Serb rape culture.
Watching the video brought to mind what Jacob Bronowski wrote about entering Nagasaki.
Then suddenly I was aware that we were already at the centre of damage in Nagasaki. The shadows behind me were the skeletons of the Mitsubishi factory buildings,pushed backwards and sideways as if by a giant hand. What I had thought to be broken rocks was a concrete power house with it’s roof punched in. I could now make out the outline of two crumpled gasometers; there was a cold furnace festooned with service pipes; otherwise nothing but cockeyed telegraph poles and loops of wire in a bare waste of ashes. I had blundered into this desolate landscape as instantly as one might wake among the craters of the moon.
Wilfrid Burchett …” was the first Westerner into Hiroshima after the atom bomb was dropped, arriving alone by train from Tokyo on 2 September, the day of the formal surrender aboard the USS Missouri. His Morse code dispatch was printed by the Daily Express newspaper on 5 September 1945, entitled “The Atomic Plague”, the first public report to mention the effects of radiation and nuclear fallout.
Burchett’s reporting was unpopular with the U.S. military. U.S. censors killed a supporting story submitted by George Weller of the Chicago Daily News, and Burchett was accused of being under the sway of Japanese propaganda. William L. Laurence of The New York Times dismissed the reports on radiation sickness as Japanese efforts to undermine American morale.[2] Under General MacArthur’s orders, Burchett was for a time barred entrance to Japan. In addition, his camera mysteriously disappeared while he was documenting the persisting illness at a Tokyo hospital”
From wiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfred_Burchett
Then there was M.Gen. Leslie Groves who said he heard radiation poisoning can be quite pleasant; it’s a pity he was never exposed to much radiation while overseeing the Manhattan Project.
The US government lied to its own people claiming that radiation does no harm. The British government detonated a number of bombs within Australia, with both the British and Australian governments assuring people that there are no harmful after-effects. Our own soldiers were exposed to incredible amounts of radiation in a number of tests after the war (and so were British soldiers). Then there were the mentally incapacitated Americans who were secretly fed radioactive material, yet more soldiers exposed to radiation to get some idea of how much a human could withstand – those were the good old days without a need for those “ethics committees” to approve experiments.
I hope someone takes those reels, copies and edits them and puts them out. What is seen in the few seconds put up in the links are people suffering severe burns to their bodies due to the incredible amount of energy put out at the moment of detonation. That’s only part of the story of course; the “fallout” is another part which is better documented elsewhere. I think that aside from the cover-ups (of which I thought many were already exposed by the likes of Einstein and even J.R.Oppenheimer), there’s also some denialism happening: “oh no, our government couldn’t have done *that*!”
Few people know that the three biggest crimes in World War II allies committed. These crimes are almost forgotten today, only from time to time be remembered in Germany and Japan. In the west these events are celebrated as a triumph over Nazism and as a deserved punishment for the Germans and Japanese, and it is this penalty cost the Germans and Japanese hundreds of thousands of lives of innocent civilians. The reason for forgetting is simple: the winners write history.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Science-News/183084708403986
@ Baric
Cites or STUFU. The Nanking Massacre resulted in 200,000 deaths, which would be more than the the firebombings of Toyko and Dresden combined. And that doesn’t count the three alls policy that the Japanese were pursuing on mainland china, or the freaking holocaust, for that matter.
The allies did do some truly awful things, but the imperial Japanese and the Nazis were almost cartoonish in their villainy.
It was more than Dresden.
In “Among the Dead Cities”, A C Grayling makes a strong case for the both the immorality and the ineffectiveness of the Allied bombing of civilian targets in WW II.
“It was worse than a crime, it was a blunder.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/mar/04/highereducation.news
This is of course not to justify or condone the much worse things the Nazis and Japanese did.
History Punk, here’s your porcupine. For further instructions, visit Pharyngula.
@6, but also 4-8 GBM–you guys always like to diminish what the US did in Japan, Nanjing and Dresden while always conveiniently forgetting to remember that the worst holocaust ever happened in Russia.
I mean, counting deaths is one thing–but how do we count the destruction of cultures? Japanese women and Japanese society is relatively demolished right now.And it’s waaaay easy to say that they were evil during their expansion–but what drove their expansion? It’s notlike they cam looking for Judeo_christian culture first.
And really, this type of dialogue is bordering on semite baiting, and anti-semite responses, I think. The real issue of all this discussion of body counts, and political culpability for these wars, death, and mayhem is this: don’t ever ask if Jewish people were responsible too.It was always those half Jews, the Christians and now, the Muslims.
And all of that combined pales in comparison to death, holocaust and human rights violations under Kissinger’s development policies after the war, and the latest, Wolfowitz, et al. in the Middle east.
I mean, do Jewish people just conveniently show up at the highest seats of power, destruction and death when decision making time comes? Or is it one of those weird unexplainable phenomenon that we have to explore on the history channels “conspiracy week” broadcast?
and zackoz: war is a condition of society, not an isolated incident of periods of history. So how do you feel about the people who are dropping depleted uranium all over the middle east right now? It is even killing Jewish babies now.
When and at what time do we stop minimizing, comparing, and by virtue of that, enabling this idea that some life is less precious? That it is o.k. to rape them, but not for them to rape us? It’s counterproductive to peace, and real prosperity.
I suspect that #9 just said what #6 was thinking all along. I’ve never ever encountered someone carrying a weepy chip on their shoulder over Dresden who didn’t also turn out to be a Jew-hater.
TTT@10– Oh shit–here comes Yagoda, ne~ TTT, apologizing for the Russian holocaust!
Frankly, I could give a damn, other than for posterity and historical accuracy–and notice how you cleverly( like all of you phony right-wing-liberal Jew card tossers do–avoided the Stalin ‘thingy’).
I have an escape plan for next time you neo-Nazi’s and Jew-panderers get your groove on–you guys make it hard for all the rest of us with your endless black and white religious-race wars.
I have never met someone who says the type of thing you just said who isn’t 1) a wannabe Jew, or just Jew pandering, or 2) intentionally clueless.
Exactly what is a Jew hater anyways–Bobby Fischer? Freud?
How about Kissinger, and Wolfowitz? Do Jews have to be hard core Zionists or Mossad agent to qualify as Jewish these days?
Yeah, I guess in that context you are sort of right–you idiot.
I have no idea what you are babbling about, and I doubt you do either.