Published one year ago, my 12th book and e-book: Atomic Cover-Up: Two U.S. Soldiers, Hiroshima & Nagasaki and The Greatest Movie Never Made (Sinclair Books). This is a haunting account of how the shocking cover-up even extended to MGM and Hollywood -- and to President Truman. See brief video with some of the footage below.
I interviewed the man who directed the U.S. filming and one of his top colleagues who tried for decades to get the footage released.
America's "nuclear entrapment" continues to this day. Atomic Cover-up takes a wide angle look at the use of the bomb in 1945--and its impact right up to 2011. It might be sub-titled "From Hiroshima to Fukushima." You can buy the e-book edition for Kindle, all phones, Blackberry, iPad, Macs and PCs (for just $3.99) via Amazon, and you do not need a Kindle. Print edition also now available via Amazon.
David Friend of Vanity Fair calls it "a new work of revelatory scholarship and insight by Greg Mitchell that will speak to all of those concerned about the lessons of the nuclear age." A lengthy piece summarizes key parts of the book at The Nation, where I am a daily writer. Major piece on Nagasaki, the "forgotten city."
And don't miss the wild Hollywood angle -- when the Truman White House censored the first major movie about The Bomb, from MGM, and even got the actor playing Truman fired! Atomic Cover-Up also charts my own visits to Hiroshima and Nagasaki and latest news and views right up to this summer.
Why did the cover-up of the film footage matter? While Americans were denied important truths about The Bomb -- filmed by their own military -- a costly nuclear arms race ensued, nuclear power became entrenched, and millions of Americans were exposed to dangerous levels of radiation in our own country. Email me at: epic1934@aol.com. The video trailer below:
4 comments:
thank you for posting this and sharing, heartbreaking to watch. the guilty always try to hide their actions. It is clear why they hid this from the world.
So the argument goes on. Were the Bombs Necessary? The better question might be, were they effective?
Some say there was some hidden agenda in the US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Permit me to present an alternate view and proffer an answer.
Some might be advised to listen to President Truman explain it in his own words. “Having found the bomb,” Truman said, ”we have used it…we have used it to shorten the agony of young Americans.”
Now there are those who say, including former Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith that the atom bombs were not necessary because the war was ending anyway. The A-bombs made he said, and I quote, “made a difference at most, of two or three weeks.” But at that time, with no surrender on the horizon, the kamikazes continued to strike, sinking American vessels – the Indianapolis was sunk taking the lives of 880 young Americans, and Allied casualties were running 7000 a week. Two more weeks meant 14,000 dead and wounded, three more weeks meant 21,000.
During the intervening period between the Nagasaki bomb and the final surrender on August the 15th, the war went on as usual. On August the 12th eight American fliers were executed (beheaded). The USS Bonefish went down with all of its crew. The destroyer Callaghan went down, and the destroyer Escort Underhill was lost. That’s just six days of allied agony that we are asked to disregard, if we accept the waiting period proposed by the bomb apologists.
It is also a forgotten reality today is that in 1945 the entire Japanese populace was held in the thrall of an immense military machine. The Japanese had a pre-invasion patriotic song, “One Hundred Million Souls for the Emperor,” and it meant just that. A Universal and National Kamikaze was a direct threat and the explicit intent.
Further to this debate, the Japanese government announced in 1945 that all Japanese women from the ages of seventeen to forty were to be called up to repel the Allied invasion.
Additionally, Japanese prison-camp commanders received a significant order in 1945 from Japanese Field Marshal Terauchi that unequivocally stated that the moment the Allies invaded the main Japanese islands; all prisoners were to be killed. This field command is also a matter of record. I submit the bombs saved not only the prisoners lives but also the lives of millions of truly innocent Japanese civilians who would have certainly perished in this failed attempt at empire – a lost cause.
Finally, the bomb was not dropped without warning. Fully two days before the bombings, over 700,000 leaflets were dropped over Japan warning the people to give it up (as was promised in Potsdam) or be utterly destroyed and obliterated. They failed to heed the warning.
No, I suggest people should reconsider this take on history. If we are to follow his line of reasoning, then we have to accept the preposterous assumption that it would have been better for America and its allies to suffer thousands of additional casualties, in order to save enemy lives.
Some wars are better lost than won. World War II is a classic example.
ThaiGold just forgot who was killed in H and N - civilians and not soldiers in combat; no difference for ThaiGold ...
Greg, Thanks for your good efforts here, but wasn't at least some of this previously released & known from the extensive work of the ABCC? I've seen still pictures of the devastation and injuries for decades. Is the novelty the perviously censored color films? Much of what was on the film I suspect has been available in one form or another. I imagine the shock of the whole thing on film for the 1st time is what was bothering the original censors, which was not uncommon for the time. And yes that sentiment carried on for 'quite awhile' too. Thanks again, JMP
Post a Comment