{"id":191621,"date":"2021-08-16T12:00:29","date_gmt":"2021-08-16T11:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=191621"},"modified":"2021-08-12T04:28:04","modified_gmt":"2021-08-12T03:28:04","slug":"the-black-reporter-who-exposed-a-lie-about-the-atom-bomb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/08\/the-black-reporter-who-exposed-a-lie-about-the-atom-bomb\/","title":{"rendered":"The Black Reporter Who Exposed a Lie about the Atom Bomb"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Charles H. Loeb defied the American military\u2019s denials and propaganda to show how deadly radiation from the strike on Hiroshima sickened and killed.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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As a war correspondent in World War II, Charles H. Loeb advanced with U.S. troops into the Philippines, survived a kamikaze attack and filed a number of detailed reports from Japan, including ones on Hiroshima\u2019s bombing and the nation\u2019s formal surrender. Here he gazes on Manila\u2019s ruins.
Credit…Loeb family photo<\/p><\/div>\n

9 Aug 2021 – <\/em>\u201cLoeb Reflects On Atomic Bombed Area,\u201d read the headline in The Atlanta Daily World<\/a> of Oct. 5, 1945, two months after Hiroshima\u2019s ruin.<\/p>\n

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In the world of Black newspapers, that name alone was enough to attract readers.<\/p>\n

Charles H. Loeb<\/a> was a Black war correspondent whose articles in World War II were distributed to papers across the United States by the National Negro Publishers Association<\/a>. In the article, Mr. Loeb told how bursts of deadly radiation had sickened and killed the city\u2019s residents. His perspective, while coolly analytic, cast light on a major wartime cover up.<\/p>\n

The Page 1 article<\/a> contradicted the War Department, the Manhattan Project, and The New York Times and its star reporter, William L. Laurence<\/a>, on what had become a bitter dispute between the victor and the vanquished. Japan insisted that the bomb\u2019s invisible rays at Hiroshima and Nagasaki had led to waves of sudden death and lingering illness. Emphatically, the United States denied that charge.<\/p>\n

But science and history would prove Mr. Loeb right. His reporting not only challenged the official government line but also echoed the skepticism of many Black Americans, who, scholars say<\/a>, worried that race had played a role in the United States\u2019 decision to drop the experimental weapons on Japan. Black clergy and activists at times sympathized openly with the bomb\u2019s victims.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n