Hiroshima propaganda discovered
- From: "Halcombe" <halcombe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 10 Aug 2005 10:36:55 -0700
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.hiroshima05aug05,1,806243.story?coll=bal-oped-headlines&ctrack=1&cset=true
The Hiroshima cover-up
By Amy Goodman and David Goodman
Originally published August 5, 2005
A STORY THAT the U.S. government hoped would never see the light of day
finally has been published, 60 years after it was spiked by military
censors. The discovery of reporter George Weller's firsthand account of
conditions in post-nuclear Nagasaki sheds light on one of the great
journalistic betrayals of the last century: the cover-up of the effects
of the atomic bombing on Japan.
On Aug. 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima; three
days later, Nagasaki was hit. Gen. Douglas MacArthur promptly declared
southern Japan off-limits, barring the news media. More than 200,000
people died in the atomic bombings of the cities, but no Western
journalist witnessed the aftermath and told the story. Instead, the
world's media obediently crowded onto the battleship USS Missouri off
the coast of Japan to cover the Japanese surrender.
A month after the bombings, 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.
Both men encountered nightmare worlds. Mr. Burchett sat down on a chunk
of rubble with his Baby Hermes typewriter. His dispatch began: "In
Hiroshima, 30 days after the first atomic bomb destroyed the city and
shook the world, people are still dying, mysteriously and horribly -
people who were uninjured in the cataclysm from an unknown something
which I can only describe as the atomic plague."
He continued, tapping out the words that still haunt to this day:
"Hiroshima does not look like a bombed city. It looks as if a monster
steamroller has passed over it and squashed it out of existence. I
write these facts as dispassionately as I can in the hope that they
will act as a warning to the world."
Mr. Burchett's article, headlined "The Atomic Plague," was published
Sept. 5, 1945, in the London Daily Express. The story caused a
worldwide sensation and was a public relations fiasco for the U.S.
military. The official U.S. narrative of the atomic bombings downplayed
civilian casualties and categorically dismissed as "Japanese
propaganda" reports of the deadly lingering effects of radiation.
So when Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter George Weller's 25,000-word
story on the horror that he encountered in Nagasaki was submitted to
military censors, General MacArthur ordered the story killed, and the
manuscript was never returned. As Mr. Weller later summarized his
experience with General MacArthur's censors, "They won."
Recently, Mr. Weller's son, Anthony, discovered a carbon copy of the
suppressed dispatches among his father's papers (George Weller died in
2002). Unable to find an interested American publisher, Anthony Weller
sold the account to Mainichi Shimbun, a big Japanese newspaper. Now, on
the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombings, Mr. Weller's account can
finally be read.
"In swaybacked or flattened skeletons of the Mitsubishi arms plants is
revealed what the atomic bomb can do to steel and stone, but what the
riven atom can do against human flesh and bone lies hidden in two
hospitals of downtown Nagasaki," wrote Mr. Weller. A month after the
bombs fell, he observed, "The atomic bomb's peculiar 'disease,' uncured
because it is untreated and untreated because it is not diagnosed, is
still snatching away lives here."
After killing Mr. Weller's reports, U.S. authorities tried to counter
Mr. Burchett's articles by attacking the messenger. General MacArthur
ordered Mr. Burchett expelled from Japan (the order was later
rescinded), his camera mysteriously vanished while he was in a Tokyo
hospital and U.S. officials accused him of being influenced by Japanese
propaganda.
Then the U.S. military unleashed a secret propaganda weapon: It
deployed its own Times man. It turns out that William L. Laurence, the
science reporter for The New York Times, was also on the payroll of the
War Department.
For four months, while still reporting for the Times, Mr. Laurence had
been writing press releases for the military explaining the atomic
weapons program; he also wrote statements for President Harry Truman
and Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson. He was rewarded by being given a
seat on the plane that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki, an experience that
he described in the Times with religious awe.
Three days after publication of Mr. Burchett's shocking dispatch, 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.
Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, and David Goodman, a contributing
writer for Mother Jones, are co-authors of The Exception to the Rulers:
Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love
Them.
.
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