[Mb-civic] The Hiroshima Cover-Up

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

Published on Friday, August 5, 2005 by the Baltimore Sun
The Hiroshima Cover-Up
by Amy Goodman and David Goodman
 http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0805-20.htm

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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