The Hiroshima Cover-Up

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http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0805-20.htm

 

Published on Friday, August 5, 2005 by the Baltimore Sun

The Hiroshima Cover-Up

by Amy Goodman and David Goodman

 

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.

© 2005 Baltimore Sun

 

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" Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit

are like men who are so afraid of being murdered

that they commit suicide to avoid assassination. "

President Harry S. Truman