When word of widespread radiation sickness began to circulate in occupied Japan and the first Western press reports slipped by the censors, the accounts were categorically denied.

He was outraged therefore when three days later the United States nuked Nagasaki he called that second bombing a criminal action.įor weeks afterward little was known about the consequences in Hiroshima and Nagasaki beyond reports of impressive physical devastation.

The bombing, he guessed, would end the war one such hit would prove to be plenty. Hersey despaired when he heard Truman’s Hiroshima announcement on the radio: He understood the ominous implications for humanity. Days after the bombings a Gallup poll found that 85 percent of Americans approved of the attacks, and another survey, made after the war, indicated that 23 percent wished that more such weapons had been dropped before the Japanese surrender.īut first there was this matter of the atomic bombs. And so what? In the United States the hatred for the Japanese far exceeded that of the hatred for the Germans racism aside, the Japanese had dared to bomb Americans on American territory. Afterward, as part of a clampdown on information - an extension of routine wartime censorship - little mention of realities on the ground was allowed by American authorities beyond the obvious fact that with one bomb each, two cities had been smashed. Three days after Hiroshima the United States dropped additional evidence on Nagasaki, and Japan surrendered. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.” It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of TNT. Augusta, a battle-weary cruiser, he said: “Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese army base. Returning from the Potsdam Conference, and broadcasting mid-Atlantic from the U.S.S. The numbers are necessarily approximate, but even from within the deadliest conflict in history, such devastation from a single, airdropped device raised the stakes of war from conquest into the realm of human annihilation.įor a moment the Japanese had no idea what had hit them. 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, immediately killing 70,000 people, and so grievously crushing, burning and irradiating another 50,000 that they too soon died. Seventy-five years ago, on the bright clear morning of Aug. FALLOUT The Hiroshima Cover-Up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World By Lesley M.

Fallout by Lesley M.M. Blume