There were two reasons why Consortium News devoted so much space to the commemoration of the atomic bombings of Japan.
Over the past week, Consortium News published 15 articles related to the 75th Anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Some readers might think we overdid it.
But there are two reasons why we thought the expansive coverage was warranted.
The first is that the only use so far of nuclear weapons was one of the most momentous moments in history. In Biblical terms, it is equivalent to the Flood. In historic terms, it can be compared with the collapse of the Roman Empire, though that took centuries, while the bombings took just seconds.
It was momentous, because like the Flood and the fall of Rome, the bombings ushered in a new historical era. In ways so much larger than the 9/11 attacks, Hiroshima and Nagasaki really did change everything. It spawned the Nuclear Age, under which we have been living since, living with the threat of global annihilation haunting us.
The second reason is that even 75 years later, the myths concocted by the U.S. government about the reasons for dropping the bombs on civilian populations are still persistently believed by many Americans. A common theme throughout the series, beginning with the video press conferences of the leading historians on the issue, was to factually debunk the disinformation that the atomic bombings were necessary to end the war with Japan, save American lives and even that innocent Japanese civilians “deserved it.”
Seven of the eight five-star American generals at the time, including Dwight Eisenhower and Douglas MacArthur, thought the bombings were completely unnecessary and immoral. We believe it is high time that everyone else does too.
A fine series of articles.
I hope Consortium News will now do some articles about those organisations working to eliminate the nuclear threat.
They need our support.
This series is even more proof that there are some people, no matter how few, who can bear the title “journalist” or “newspaperperson” as a badge of honor of a noble profession!
THANK YOU!
you’ve offered a desperately need perspective as those weapons have ONLY been made easier to use NOT obliterated as they should have been. And a reminder that the Plowshares Seven–the seven courageous Catholic Workers who nonviolently & symbolically disarmed the Trident nuclear submarine base at Kings Bay, GA on 4th April 2018. Each of the five ballistic-missile submarines stationed at the base is capable of carrying up to 20 submarine-launched ballistic missiles with multiple warheads. The peace activists, including one 80 year old and one priest, go on trial in September for their effort in trying to bring to public notice the horror that sits awaiting orders.
I can claim that there is much ado about nothing here. Especially in light of a lack of focus by those making comments. Nothing but crickets on the mentality held by the leadership of the bomb project group, a very small group with respect to the vast number of individuals invested in and dedicated to producing the first, “Gadget” , A-bomb.
My observation here is that not many seem to be actually interested in what well may be the most heinous crime ever committed by representatives of the U.S. Government. The crime would be the total failure by those officials to do their duty to protect Americans and their treasure.
Whoever they are, those who looked the other way while Zalman Mordechai Shapiro diverted HEW (highly enriched uranium 235) from what appears to have been U.S. Navy contracts (enrichment ~ 97% for sub reactor fuel elements.) and shipped it to Israel crossed a line and should have been jailed for it.
SEE: google David Luzer Lowenthal archive.gov Read these and explain why no one was ever arrested.
Ignoring the truth because it’s controversial is tantamount to the original sin committed by those who looked the other way and by their inaction hinted legitimacy to this travesty. Those people broke every Safe Guards regulation on the books and they knew it.
And now the government and far too many of us refuse to deal adequately with the crime committed then because to do so might be inconvenient. Shame on us all.
Why not hear the true story about the USAEC’s leadership engaged in the black balling of J. Robert Oppenheimer.
No matter how this story is white-washed in the MSM the blood bleeds the truth through for all to see.
This series represents that “blood bleeding through the white-wash” to me. It is not enough for those of us here to stare at it and not look away, we need to push the government’s nose into the blood stains and make certain they give us their version of events. That version will not reflect well on many so-called nuclear bomb heroes. The rot was at the top, as usual.
Our friends here at CN have done a fantastic job. No mire nukes!
Call it what it really was: I N S A N I T Y !
Consortium News has become my most trusted source of accurate information. Your series on the atomic bomb should be taught in all educational institutions. The myths that shape the thinking of the public, promulgated and reinforced by the complicit media abound. One of the most recent surrounds Julian Assange and the revelations by Nils Melsor that he, a worldly educated adult, allowed his own opinions to be shaped by the media & broad public narrative about Assange (traitor, rapist, etc). That you published the film (Not In Our Name), the following Q & A and then the subsequent op ed written by Nils Melsor that every major newspaper has refused to publish only confirms the reasons why so many of the public base their opinions on propaganda promulgated by those in power and dutifully circulated by the media secretaries who glorify themselves as reporters. This created and supported by huge inequalities of both wealth and power in the pretense of a democracy that has never been fully realized.
We can only hope that those courageous individuals, those truth tellers among us will open the minds and hearts of all and bring about the many significant changes in governmental structure, policies (both domestic and foreign), that are being brought forward and are much needed.
The megalomania that characterizes much of U.S. leadership since the war may also be traced to the use of this terrible weapon that gave leaders an unbridled sense of power.
Very true. Which is one of the key reasons why Washington absolutely despised the USSR for acquiring nukes and setting about some semblance of multilateral deterrence.
The megalomania tht characterizes much of U.S. leadership since the war can be traced directly back to the practices established before CIA officially became an entity.
The use of the bomb validated the sense of power a group of madmen assumed the authority for.
Congress approves the expenditures of money, they financed the bomb project. I want to know who it was that assumed the authority to okay the USAEC, CIA and FBI engage in espionage, deceit and treachery that occurred when Special Nuclear Materials such as HEU and plutonium were diverted to the Israeli bomb project.
Those people are not heroes. They are the worst of mankind and their actions speak to this truth.
Truth is we can write out our opinions about what happened ad nauseam but we will not move forward until our government comes clean with what rogues in our government have done despite it’s citizens.
These people were not behaving as they were being responsible handling and securing the most vile of all man made weapons.
Maybe we need to demand that Israel inform us all of the number of thermo nuclear weapons the have in their possession. You see one would be too many.
Time for many to wake up and smell the death in the air.
The Atomic Age began with destruction, deception and denial and that continues to this day. The Japanese were the first guinea pigs and were soon followed by Pacific Isladers, supposedly our “wards.” But the American population was soon to follow. Above ground testing in Nevada and intentional radioactive releases from Hanford spread cancer, death and the ruination of many lives across the American heartland. Isotopes were released that could be easily traced in milk of all kinds. The government, especially the military, denied responsibility and spread disinformation for decades. Finally, after decades, documentation was produced that could not be refuted. No one, as far as I know, went to jail. National security after all. Anyone who thinks we are free and live in a democracy is deluded.
It would be really great if you could put those 15 articles into a hard copy pamphlet for sale. Any chance of that? I’d buy several and give them to people. So important.
Great idea.
And let’s give everyone who receives a packet a copy of John Hersey’s HIROSHIMA.
Or the link to it online:
hXXps://www.newyorker.com/books/double-take/john-herseys-hiroshima-now-online?source=search_google_dsa_paid&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIhfvYwYiR6wIVBbLICh3ATQxoEAAYAiAAEgKzu_D_BwE
I read most of your articles. Last night I watched Countdown to Zero – with horror, with disbelief that adult Homo sapiens could have taken each of those separate steps to destroy this world without ever appearing to understand what they were doing in creating something that was no longer under their control once it was made, and ready to use. Only Yeltsin came off well, when he intuitively refused to push the button.
At the end of the 93rd year of my life, I’ve been able to ‘let go’ of what was really unimportant to it with a welcome increase of physical and mental comfort. Also gone, is most of the sense of being able to ‘do something’ that would make ‘a difference,’ and its accompanying sense of relief, understanding what is and isn’t under my control
There are all my beloveds, however, the youngest still in the first year of their lives. I expect to die rather soon, to escape much of what is coming, and secure in that if I don’t, I will do my best to deal with grace and courage with whatever comes. Secure? I was born into the middle class in Providence, RI, and am untested in the myriad skills need for survival. A Polish Shoah survivor once told me that the Polish Jews survived the camps because it wasn’t much different from their lives in Poland – they had experience, they knew what to do. I don’t have that. I have only a little faith in myself. It will do – because that’s all there is.
For my beloveds?
I sympathize, being 91 myself, realizing that it is for others to continue the necessary struggle. But they can be supported with whatever means are available, and you can talk of your opinions and experiences to your acquaintances, friends and family members, even if that can be awkward, as it may.
It was an organized crime operation, typical mafia stuff. Washington unleashed those atomic bombs as a lesson to everyone in the city, “This is what could happen to you if you cross the don…”
Thank you!
We were taught in school (1960s) that the atomic bomb was necessary to prevent the deaths of millions more people. S0me people recite those lines in social media today. As we certainly learned from “Iraq’s stockpiles of WMD” and “Russian election interference,” once Americans get a simplistic notion in their heads, no amount of facts and reason can budge it.
It would seem that a large number, if not most, Americans believe the white washed version. Well, how could any American be allowed to think otherwise about its country???
Apparently the Brits, too, are of like belief – i.e. that not only was Pearl Harbor a totally surprise attack and not, as it truly was, already expected, allowed to happen because FDR wanted a reason for going to war against the fascist allies; but that also the Japanese were only brought to surrender by the use of the two atomic bombs, that Truman did it to prevent mass slaughter of US troops on invading Japan. At least this continues to be the tale that the BBC World Service has been broadcasting on a daily basis since early last week.
Not that NPR strives to ensure that the US listening population is accurately informed, either.
Repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat……And succeeding generations will and do continue to believe the lies…we only do these things for humanitarian reasons. (Oddly enough – somehow I doubt that there will be ANY mention of the Marshall Islands, Bikini Atoll…nooo, sirree.)
Well said.
This series has been very much appreciated and I have passed it along to a number of friends and family members.
It is interesting to read the comments from 2014.
Clearly, there has been some incremental shift away from knee-jerk jingoistic unwillinglyness to admit the truth.
It has been suggested that only about fourteen percent of the U$ population care deeply about the range of topics to which CN and those who comment here pay close attention and seek to educate the disinterested majority.
If this series on Hiroshima and Nagasaki have opened the eyes, minds, and hearts of even several thousand human beings, in the U$, to the layers of lies which have been used to hide and bury the actual truth (and the supreme moral failure it represents), then it must be counted a tremendous success.
Unfortunately, DWB, while every thou is good, that still leaves some 350 million to inform of the truth…
Yes, AnneR, we live in a time when the truth, whether it.be about what happened 75 years ago, as this series describes, or since January 05, 2017, when the FBI and CIA were officially invited to play out the Russiagate hoax,to join with the corporate media and political class (also owned by corporate “interests”) in fulfilling the desire that “everything the public believes is a lie”.
Ray McGovern, a number of articles back asked us, those who comment, how we all might more successfully, ” … get the word out.”
He was talking about the truth of Russiagate.
Which continues to be “resurrected”, as it is something that will just not be let go of, by certain parties and government actors, in a fully bipartisan fashion.
Just as the truth about using atomic bombs has remained hidden and obscured by the “official” lie, touted by the media, academia, the gummint, and far too many believers in the mythology of U$ exceptionalism and indispensableness, Russiagate is become an article of “faith”, a cherished myth of explanation and evasion.
Perhaps, we must ponder why the many are so terribly wedded to the lies, to the excuses, and the evasions?
We share, as a society, a mindset comparable to that enjoyed in Israel and, frankly, to that of “Good Germans” who chose the bliss of ignorance, because to have accepted the truth would have forced German society to examine what it tolerated, cheered, and identified itself as being.
How do we get that awareness to dawn?
In fact, can such awareness even be considered unless things within in U$ society continue to worsen to the point of collapse and, also, in terms of international disgust (perhaps even something more) WITH U$ hubris, destructive behavior, and unwillingness to accept International Law, for more than 75 years?