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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. 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.
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."
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 Burchett expelled from Japan (the order was later rescinded), his camera mysteriously vanished while he was in a Tokyo hospital and U.S. officials accused him of being influenced by Japanese propaganda.
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.
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.
The real problem is the Radiation Sickness which probably killed more people then the bomb blast itself. And according to these two reporters and their stories from the places of impact - the ARMY ofcourse denied everything and tried to keep the lid on it for a long, long time. Truth is that they wanted to see what the effect would be on the Urban Area and the Population. Why didn't they drop the bomb on a Military target? Like a Military Port full of Ships? That's the Question that was always in my head, since I have heard for Hiroshima and Nagasaki A-Bombs.
Originally posted by Souljah
Why didn't they drop the bomb on a Military target? Like a Military Port full of Ships? That's the Question that was always in my head, since I have heard for Hiroshima and Nagasaki A-Bombs.
Truth is that they wanted to see what the effect would be on the Urban Area and the Population.
Why didn't they drop the bomb on a Military target? Like a Military Port full of Ships? That's the Question that was always in my head, since I have heard for Hiroshima and Nagasaki A-Bombs.
Pearl Harbor Conspiracy?
1. In the summer of 1940 Roosevelt ordered the Pacific to relocate from the West Coast to Hawaii. When its commander, Admiral Richardson, protested that Pearl Harbor offered inadequate protection from air and torpedo attack he was replaced.
2. On October 7 1940 Navy IQ analyst McCollum wrote an eight-point memo for Roosevelt on how to force Japan into war with U.S., including an American oil embargo against Japan. All of them were eventually accomplished.
3. On 23 June 1941 - one day after Hitler's attack on Russia - Secretary of the Interior and FDR's Advisor Harold Ickes wrote a memo for the President in which he pointed out that "there might develop from the embargoing of oil to Japan such a situation as would make it not only possible but easy to get into this war in an effective way. And if we should thus indirectly be brought in, we would avoid the criticism that we had gone in as an ally of communistic Russia."
4. On 18 October Ickes noted in his diary: "For a long time I have believed that our best entrance into the war would be by way of Japan."
5. The U.S. had cracked key Japanese codes before the attack. FDR received "raw" translations of all key messages. On 24 September 1941 Washington deciphered a message from the Naval Intelligence HQ in Tokyo to Japan's consul-general in Honolulu, requesting grid of exact locations of U.S. Navy ships in the harbor. Commanders in Hawaii were not warned.
6. Sixty years later the U.S. Government still refuses to identify or declassify many pre-attack decrypts on the grounds of "national security"!
7. On November 25 Secretary of War Stimson wrote in his diary that FDR said an attack was likely within days, and asked "how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without too much danger to ourselves. In spite of the risk involved, however, in letting the Japanese fire the first shot, we realized that in order to have the full support of the American people it was desirable to make sure that the Japanese be the ones to do this so that there should remain no doubt in anyone's mind as to who were the aggressors."
8. On November 25 FDR received a "positive war warning" from Churchill that the Japanese would strike against America at the end of the first week in December. This warning caused the President to do an abrupt about-face on plans for a time-buying modus vivendi with Japan and it resulted in Secretary of State Hull's deliberately provocative ultimatum of 26 November 1941 that guaranteed war.
9. On November 26 Washington ordered both US aircraft carriers, the Enterprise and the Lexington, out of Pearl Harbor "as soon as possible". This order included stripping Pearl of 50 planes or 40 percent of its already inadequate fighter protection. On the same day Cordell Hull issued his ultimatum demanding full Japanese withdrawal from Indochina and all China. U.S. Ambassador to Japan called this "The document that touched the button that started the war."
10. On November 29 Hull told United Press reporter Joe Leib that Pearl Harbor would be attacked on December 7. The New York Times reported on December 8 ("Attack Was Expected," p. 13) that the U.S. knew of the attack a week earlier.
11. On December 1 Office of Naval Intelligence, ONI, 12th Naval District in San Francisco found the missing Japanese fleet by correlating reports from the four wireless news services and several shipping companies that they were getting signals west of Hawaii.
12. On 5 December FDR wrote to the Australian Prime Minister, "There is always the Japanese to consider. Perhaps the next four or five days will decide the matters."
Originally posted by FredT
Kyoto
Hiroshima
Yokohama
Kokura Arsenal
Niigata (secondary target)
Originally posted by BLUBBER
So are you still on the pity-pod bus ? Why don't you do some simple research on the nightmare scenarios Japan created within China ? Thousands murdered for no reason, woman raped and on and on it went. American POW's treated like crap ( death marches ) and even beheaded for no reason. Remind you of somebody ? You won't a tear out of me for a war that was instigated by Japan. And please don't be racist by pretending that it was because of the Anglo Saxon that Japan decided to murder thousands Chinese citizens. This world we now live in is the conclusion of Germany, Italy and Japan. All 3 now seem to be fine and dandy these day's.
Originally posted by Souljah
OK I guess I understand Your Points and Opinions so far. But if you ask me for my Opinion, these two bombs were all about "Flexing Muscles".
Originally posted by Souljah
I know that the Invasion of Japan would be a Years Long Bloody Massacre and that probably ALL Cities would have been turned into Fortresses, so it's undestandable that you're responses are pro a-bomb being dropped. I belive that there were many other Factors that caused these bombs being dropped. Facts are that Japan was already completly Surrounded, with Russians Invading on the Mainland Chinese Territory, in Range of American B-29 Bombers and Completly Blocked by Naval Blockade