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The Lies of Hiroshima Live On, Props in the War Crimes of the 20th Century
John Pilger
Lew Rockwell.com
Thursday, Aug 7, 2008
When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open. At a quarter past eight on the morning of August 6, 1945, she and her silhouette were burned into the granite. I stared at the shadow for an hour or more, then walked down to the river and met a man called Yukio, whose chest was still etched with the pattern of the shirt he was wearing when the atomic bomb was dropped.
He and his family still lived in a shack thrown up in the dust of an atomic desert. He described a huge flash over the city, “a bluish light, something like an electrical short,” after which wind blew like a tornado and black rain fell. “I was thrown on the ground and noticed only the stalks of my flowers were left. Everything was still and quiet, and when I got up, there were people naked, not saying anything. Some of them had no skin or hair. I was certain I was dead.” Nine years later, when I returned to look for him, he was dead from leukemia.
In the immediate aftermath of the bomb, the allied occupation authorities banned all mention of radiation poisoning and insisted that people had been killed or injured only by the bomb’s blast. It was the first big lie. “No radioactivity in Hiroshima ruin” said the front page of the New York Times, a classic of disinformation and journalistic abdication, which the Australian reporter Wilfred Burchett put right with his scoop of the century. “I write this as a warning to the world,” reported Burchett in the Daily Express, having reached Hiroshima after a perilous journey, the first correspondent to dare. He described hospital wards filled with people with no visible injuries but who were dying from what he called “an atomic plague.” For telling this truth, his press accreditation was withdrawn, he was pilloried and smeared – and vindicated.
(Article continues below)
The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a criminal act on an epic scale. It was premeditated mass murder that unleashed a weapon of intrinsic criminality. For this reason its apologists have sought refuge in the mythology of the ultimate “good war,” whose “ethical bath,” as Richard Drayton called it, has allowed the west not only to expiate its bloody imperial past but to promote 60 years of rapacious war, always beneath the shadow of The Bomb.
The most enduring lie is that the atomic bomb was dropped to end the war in the Pacific and save lives. “Even without the atomic bombing attacks,” concluded the United States Strategic Bombing Survey of 1946, “air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion. Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that … Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”
The National Archives in Washington contain US government documents that chart Japanese peace overtures as early as 1943. None was pursued. A cable sent on May 5, 1945 by the German ambassador in Tokyo and intercepted by the US dispels any doubt that the Japanese were desperate to sue for peace, including “capitulation even if the terms were hard.” Instead, the US secretary of war, Henry Stimson, told President Truman he was “fearful” that the US air force would have Japan so “bombed out” that the new weapon would not be able “to show its strength.” He later admitted that “no effort was made, and none was seriously considered, to achieve surrender merely in order not to have to use the bomb.” His foreign policy colleagues were eager “to browbeat the Russians with the bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip.” General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project that made the bomb, testified: “There was never any illusion on my part that Russia was our enemy, and that the project was conducted on that basis.” The day after Hiroshima was obliterated, President Truman voiced his satisfaction with the “overwhelming success” of “the experiment.”
Since 1945, the United States is believed to have been on the brink of using nuclear weapons at least three times. In waging their bogus “war on terror,” the present governments in Washington and London have declared they are prepared to make “preemptive” nuclear strikes against non-nuclear states. With each stroke toward the midnight of a nuclear Armageddon, the lies of justification grow more outrageous. Iran is the current “threat.” But Iran has no nuclear weapons and the disinformation that it is planning a nuclear arsenal comes largely from a discredited CIA-sponsored Iranian opposition group, the MEK – just as the lies about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction originated with the Iraqi National Congress, set up by Washington.
The role of western journalism in erecting this straw man is critical. That America’s Defense Intelligence Estimate says “with high confidence” that Iran gave up its nuclear weapons program in 2003 has been consigned to the memory hole. That Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never threatened to “wipe Israel off the map” is of no interest. But such has been the mantra of this media “fact” that in his recent, obsequious performance before the Israeli parliament, Gordon Brown alluded to it as he threatened Iran, yet again.
This progression of lies has brought us to one of the most dangerous nuclear crises since 1945, because the real threat remains almost unmentionable in western establishment circles and therefore in the media. There is only one rampant nuclear power in the Middle East and that is Israel. The heroic Mordechai Vanunu tried to warn the world in 1986 when he smuggled out evidence that Israel was building as many as 200 nuclear warheads. In defiance of UN resolutions, Israel is today clearly itching to attack Iran, fearful that a new American administration might, just might, conduct genuine negotiations with a nation the west has defiled since Britain and America overthrew Iranian democracy in 1953.
In the New York Times on July 18, the Israeli historian Benny Morris, once considered a liberal and now a consultant to his country’s political and military establishment, threatened “an Iran turned into a nuclear wasteland.” This would be mass murder. For a Jew, the irony cries out.
The question begs: are the rest of us to be mere bystanders, claiming, as good Germans did, that “we did not know”? Do we hide ever more behind what Richard Falk has called “a self-righteous, one-way, legal/moral screen [with] positive images of western values and innocence portrayed as threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted violence”? Catching war criminals is fashionable again. Radovan Karadzic stands in the dock, but Sharon and Olmert, Bush and Blair do not. Why not? The memory of Hiroshima requires an answer.
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11 Responses to “The Lies of Hiroshima Live On, Props in the War Crimes of the 20th Century”
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August 7th, 2008 at 7:01 am
Revenge could be all theirs if they were to effectively bring out the truth of 9/11.
August 7th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Consider what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki as what will happen to you if the crazies go ahead with their plan to nuke Iran. Russia has already stated that it will not idly stand by and China is going to get cranky as well. And they have the missles to reach you and turn you into something you don’t want to be.
The northern hemisphere will be turned into a grisly and gruesome mess that will last for a very, very, very long time. And the southern hemisphere will suffer very badly as well as the fallout and nuclear winter dust cross over the equatorial wind barrier.
August 7th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
There are three important facts that the author of the article chose to ignore.
The first fact is that the bombing of Tokyo with conventional incendiary bombs killed more people in one night than did the atom bombs dropped at Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
“Approximately 16 square miles (41 km²) of the city were destroyed and some 100,000 people are estimated to have died in the resulting firestorm, more than the immediate deaths of either Hiroshima or Nagasaki.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B.....rld_War_II
The second fact is that the Japanese troops had shown an almost universal tendency toward suicidal to-the-last-man defenses, at Iwo Jima, Saipan, Okinawa, with the Kamakazi attacks, and with the hopeless sortie fo the sitting-duck battleship Yamoto. A large part of the Japanese population had also been indoctrinated into the attitude and philosophy of suicidal defense.
The third fact is that the Japanese could have surrendered after the first atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, but they chose not to surrender until the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki three days later.
August 7th, 2008 at 8:03 pm
lol wow what a dumb name, Jesus would never say something like that, you are truelly a nutjob. we may not have known how long it would have taken japan to surrender but one thing is for sure the idea is contested thus the bombing of japan has no feasable defense.
August 8th, 2008 at 3:00 am
The next WW could be fought with Directed Energy Weapons - at least it makes no sense to start a nuclear war if you didn’t have something like that in your “back pocket”.
Their potential destruction power - with minimal input of energy - is beyond anything we’ve seen - yet DEWs were possibly used in a “small” scale demolition project right in front of our very own eyes on 9/11.
As described by Dr. Judy Wood:
http://www.drjudywood.com/
Presentation in Portland -
http://video.google.com/videop.....n+Portland
Dr Wood and Andrew Johnson discussing the issue on WPFW -
http://video.google.com/videop.....+Judy+Wood
August 8th, 2008 at 3:16 am
The presentation (by Dr. Wood)in Seattle has a better sound quality than the one filmed in Portland:
http://video.google.com/videop.....Judy+Wood+
August 8th, 2008 at 3:20 am
The presentation by Dr. Wood in Seattle with a better tone quality -
http://video.google.com/videop.....Judy+Wood+
August 8th, 2008 at 8:08 am
Not many know that a major hurricane - Hurricane Erin - was in the Atlantic Ocean in September of 2001. In fact, Erin was closest to NYC, and at its largest size, on 9/11 itself. But the TV news networks had little reporting on this hurricane. Contrary to Erin, however, 2005’s Hurricane Katrina had virtually 24 hour coverage, even before it hit land. Interestingly, the National Hurricane Center projected Erin to be stronger than it projected Katrina to be four years later. So why didn’t the media cover Erin, say, on September 10, when its speeds clocked Category 3 status? Shouldn’t they have prepared the upper-east coast for this major storm? Weather reports at JFK Airport indicated rain! The day after 9/11, Erin made a sharp right-hand turn (over 90°) away from NYC and back out to the Atlantic. An astronaut in the International Space Station commented on the WTC smoke plume, but made no mention of the monstrous hurricane next to it. How come? Those interested in learning the secret between hurricanes and Tesla Coils should see Dr Judy Wood’s new paper “9/11 Weather Anomalies and Field Effects”. She presents evidence suggesting Erin was part of the mechanism used to turn the Twin Towers to dust. The paper is chock full of photos and analysis and is highly recommended.
http://drjudywood.com/articles/erin
Magnetometer data from alaska.edu shows the earth’s magnetic field shifted with every 9/11 “event”. This includes the plane-shaped holes appearing in the towers. The World Trade Center was destroyed with directed energy weapons. See this analysis by former Clemson University Professor of Mechanical Engineering Dr Judy Wood for info on the magnetometer data:
http://drjudywood.com/articles/erin/erin5.html
August 8th, 2008 at 11:04 am
The first successful test of the atomic bomb occured at Trinity site and it’s creator, Robert Oppenheimer (Rothschild spawn) exclaimed “I am become Death, the Destroyer of worlds.”
less than a month later over 220,000 were murdered in Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined.
The Rothschilds are at the root of all wars.
The Japs never had a leg to stand on.
“Israel” is foaming at the mouth to nuke Iran because Ahmad my man questioned the holocaust and openly rebukes “Israel”.
“Israel” never forgives.
They want the Goy to “never forget” whilst they NEVER FORGIVE.
August 8th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
The Plutomium Files by Eileen Welsome is a must-read,
about the human experiments done in this country during
the cold war.
After reading this book, I may never trust this government,
scientists, or doctors again.
August 8th, 2008 at 10:34 pm
gravity holds so firmly to me now, to come here forced a soul as pawn….. all we are pawn and to that we should rise as knight….. the world is vegas and mouths filled-blood and dirt, bullits for babes and broken. the whole of everything in this place in askew.
imagine theres no heaven, then where would john lennon be. they kill our poets and lovers…. freedom marchers and knowers. its not as a snuffed candle i would leave this place….
and still gravity never held me like this before.
is this the nation that brought to me its birth with such pride and glowing? well the flame of that torch feels the same wieght as i do.
is this the best we can do? we are born of stars and the cosmos, this is not my shiney planet. this is someone elses stain on my isle.
we are infected and sick, the media a syringe of puss, crack, candy…. the schools feed flouride and twinkies and pavlov’s bell.
without greed and control…………..? thats like seeing the world with the eyes of a child.
what do i have to do to be that kid again? there in lies the crux.
whatever it is i would love to see some of you on the playground. mess with gravity and what not.