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66 Years Ago Today: The Nuclear Age Arrived—and the 'Cover-up' Began
Sixty-years ago today, in the desert of New Mexico, the Nuclear Age arrived with the explosion of the first atomic device at the Trinity site. It was a success. As many know, the leader of the bomb project, J. Robert Oppenheimer was moved to quote the Gita, “I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds.” Less known is that the enormous explosion and “visual” impact of the blast made him re-consider an option he had long ruled out: a demonstration shot that might inspire Japan to surrender before The Bomb was dropped over a major city. But he believed the “mechanism”—that is, the momentum—for use of the bomb was unstoppable by that point, so he said nothing.
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Three weeks later, the atomic weapon was dropped over the center of the city of Hiroshima, killing 75,000 instantly (and dooming as many to death later). Three days after that a plutonium device exploded over Nagasaki, off-target, killing tens of thousands. More American POWs than Japanese military personnel were killed by the bomb in Nagasaki.
Right from start, at the Trinity test, the decades-long official cover-up of nuclear dangers began. Not surprisingly, in wartime, media coverage was blocked out and nearby residents left in the dark. But it went much beyond that: For one thing, a radioactive cloud drifted from the site, killed cattle and other animals, and possibly poisoned people, and no one was informed. And so it went, for years and years.
This policy extended to the atomic bombings of Japan, as my new book, Atomic Cover-up: Two U.S. Soldiers, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, and The Greatest Movie Never Made, just published yesterday, makes clear. I’ll be returning to this subject over the next few weeks, so far now I will simply direct you to a two-minute trailer (below) for the book, which unveils some of the reasons for the cover-up, including film footage suppressed by the United States for decades.
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Comments
Anti@4:45pm, You don't come off as a thinking human being when you write like that.
posted by: aznative at 07/17/2011 @ 10:26am
Why would you have wanted tens of thousands of US troops to die instead of using the Bomb?
I'm happy we used it and we should use it again if it's in our best tactical use to do so.
Or better yet, blhfish, inlist, and go fight useless wars, then see if you still believe that the "bomb" did ANY good.
blhfish@10:26pm, GROW UP, get out of your mothers basement and get a job.
THE BOMB ended the war and saved more lives than they took.
My father, who was in the Air Force, he use to tell stories of watching nuclear bombs go off in the New Mexico and Nevada deserts. Wish I had had the forethought to write his stories down. The tales he told where enough to keep a person up at night. We were stationed in Japan in the late 50's and early 60's, I use to go to the base library to read up on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as I look back, I realize that there wasn't anything but propaganda to read. What a sad and horrific time for the Japanese, and a awful and criminal time for the United States of America.
People here in northern Arizona can still be tested for free, and given compensation for the nuclear fallout of the 1950's.
