{"id":217756,"date":"2022-08-08T12:00:11","date_gmt":"2022-08-08T11:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=217756"},"modified":"2022-08-08T05:12:23","modified_gmt":"2022-08-08T04:12:23","slug":"hiroshima-at-77-another-hiroshima-is-coming-unless-we-stop-it-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/08\/hiroshima-at-77-another-hiroshima-is-coming-unless-we-stop-it-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Hiroshima at 77: Another Hiroshima Is Coming \u2014 Unless We Stop It Now"},"content":{"rendered":"

3 Aug 2022 – Hiroshima and Nagasaki were acts of premeditated mass murder unleashing a weapon of intrinsic criminality. It was justified by lies that form the bedrock of 21st century U.S. war propaganda, casting a new enemy, and target: China.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

\u201cBaker Shot\u201d, part of Operation Crossroads, a U.S. nuclear test at Bikini Atoll in 1946.
U.S. Dept. of Defense<\/p><\/div><\/blockquote>\n

W<\/strong>hen 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.<\/p>\n

At a quarter past eight on the morning of August 6, 1945, she and her silhouette were burned into the granite.<\/p>\n

I stared at the shadow for an hour or more, then I walked down to the river where the survivors still lived in shanties.<\/p>\n

I met a man called Yukio, whose chest was etched with the pattern of the shirt he was wearing when the atomic bomb was dropped.<\/p>\n

He described a huge flash over the city, \u201ca bluish light, something like an electrical short\u201d, after which wind blew like a tornado and black rain fell. \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nine years later, I returned to look for him and he was dead from leukemia.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cNo Radioactivity in Hiroshima Ruin\u201d said a New York Times <\/i>headline on September 13, 1945, a classic of planted disinformation. \u201cGeneral Farrell,\u201d reported William H. Lawrence, \u201cdenied categorically that [the atomic bomb] produced a dangerous, lingering radioactivity<\/span>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Only one reporter, Wilfred Burchett, an Australian, had braved the perilous journey to Hiroshima in the immediate aftermath of the atomic bombing, in defiance of the Allied occupation authorities, which controlled the \u201cpress pack\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Wilfred Burchett (YouTube)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cI write this as a warning to the world,\u201d reported Burchett in the London Daily Express <\/i>of September 5,1945. Sitting in the rubble with his Baby Hermes typewriter, he described hospital wards filled with people with no visible injuries who were dying from what he called \u201can atomic plague\u201d.<\/p>\n

For this, his press accreditation was withdrawn, he was pilloried and smeared. His witness to the truth was never forgiven.<\/p>\n

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was an act of premeditated mass murder that unleashed a weapon of intrinsic criminality. It was justified by lies that form the bedrock of America\u2019s war propaganda in the 21st century, casting a new enemy, and target\u00a0\u2013 China.<\/span><\/p>\n

During the 75 years since Hiroshima, the most enduring lie is that the atomic bomb was dropped to end the war in the Pacific and to save lives.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven without the atomic bombing attacks,\u201d concluded the United States Strategic Bombing Survey of 1946, \u201cair supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion. \u201cBased on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey\u2019s opinion that \u2026 Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war [against Japan] and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.\u201d<\/p>\n

The National Archives in Washington contains documented 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 U.S. made clear the Japanese were desperate to sue for peace, including \u201ccapitulation even if the terms were hard\u201d. Nothing was done.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, told President Truman he was \u201cfearful\u201d that the U.S. Air Force would have Japan so \u201cbombed out\u201d that the new weapon would not be able \u201cto show its strength\u201d. Stimson later admitted that \u201cno effort was made, and none was seriously considered, to achieve surrender merely in order not to have to use the [atomic] bomb\u201d.<\/p>\n

Stimson\u2019s foreign policy colleagues \u2014 looking ahead to the post-war era they were then shaping \u201cin our image\u201d, as Cold War planner George Kennan famously put it \u2014 made clear they were eager \u201cto browbeat the Russians with the [atomic] bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip\u201d. General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project that made the atomic bomb, testified: \u201cThere was never any illusion on my part that Russia was our enemy, and that the project was conducted on that basis.\u201d<\/p>\n

The day after Hiroshima was obliterated, President Harry Truman voiced his satisfaction with the \u201coverwhelming success\u201d of \u201cthe experiment\u201d.<\/p>\n

The \u201cexperiment\u201d continued long after the war was over. Between 1946 and 1958, the United States exploded 67 nuclear bombs in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific: the equivalent of more than one Hiroshima every day for 12 years.<\/p>\n

The human and environmental consequences were catastrophic. During the filming of my documentary, The Coming War on China<\/i>, I chartered a small aircraft and flew to Bikini Atoll in the Marshalls. It was here that the United States exploded the world\u2019s first Hydrogen Bomb. It remains poisoned earth. My shoes registered \u201cunsafe\u201d on my Geiger counter. Palm trees stood in unworldly formations. There were no birds.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Bikini Atoll Nuclear Test Site Marshall Islands. (UNESCO)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I trekked through the jungle to the concrete bunker where, at 6.45 on the morning of March 1, 1954, the button was pushed. The sun, which had risen, rose again and vaporised an entire island in the lagoon, leaving a vast black hole, which from the air is a menacing spectacle: a deathly void in a place of beauty.<\/p>\n

The radioactive fall-out spread quickly and \u201cunexpectedly\u201d. The official history claims \u201cthe wind changed suddenly\u201d. It was the first of many lies, as declassified documents and the victims\u2019 testimony reveal.<\/p>\n

Gene Curbow, a meteorologist assigned to monitor the test site, said, \u201cThey knew where the radioactive fall-out was going to go. Even on the day of the shot, they still had an opportunity to evacuate people, but [people] were not evacuated; I was not evacuated\u2026 The United States needed some guinea pigs to study what the effects of radiation would do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Marshall Islander Nerje Joseph with a photograph of her as a child soon after the H-Bomb exploded on March 1, 1954<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Like Hiroshima, the secret of the Marshall Islands was a calculated experiment on the lives of large numbers of people. This was Project 4.1, which began as a scientific study of mice and became an experiment on \u201chuman beings exposed to the radiation of a nuclear weapon\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Marshall Islanders I met in 2015 \u2014 like the survivors of Hiroshima I interviewed in the 1960s and 70s \u2014 suffered from a range of cancers, commonly thyroid cancer; thousands had already died. Miscarriages and stillbirths were common; those babies who lived were often deformed horribly.<\/p>\n

Unlike Bikini, nearby Rongelap atoll had not been evacuated during the H-Bomb test. Directly downwind of Bikini, Rongelap\u2019s skies darkened and it rained what first appeared to be snowflakes. Food and water were contaminated; and the population fell victim to cancers. That is still true today.<\/p>\n

I met Nerje Joseph, who showed me a photograph of herself as a child on Rongelap. She had terrible facial burns and much of her was hair missing. \u201cWe were bathing at the well on the day the bomb exploded,\u201d she said. \u201cWhite dust started falling from the sky. I reached to catch the powder. We used it as soap to wash our hair. A few days later, my hair started falling out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lemoyo Abon said, \u201cSome of us were in agony. Others had diarrhoea. We were terrified. We thought it must be the end of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

U.S. official archive film I included in my film refers to the islanders as \u201camenable savages\u201d. In the wake of the explosion, a U.S. Atomic Energy Agency official is seen boasting that Rongelap \u201cis by far the most contaminated place on earth\u201d, adding, \u201cit will be interesting to get a measure of human uptake when people live in a contaminated environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

American scientists, including medical doctors, built distinguished careers studying the \u201chuman uptake\u201d. There they are in flickering film, in their white coats, attentive with their clipboards. When an islander died in his teens, his family received a sympathy card from the scientist who studied him.<\/p>\n

I have reported from five nuclear \u201cground zeros\u201d throughout the world \u2014 in Japan, the Marshall Islands, Nevada, Polynesia and Maralinga in Australia. Even more than my experience as a war correspondent, this has taught me about the ruthlessness and immorality of great power: that is, imperial <\/i>power, whose cynicism is the true enemy of humanity.<\/p>\n

This struck me forcibly when I filmed at Taranaki Ground Zero at Maralinga in the Australian desert. In a dish-like crater was an obelisk on which was inscribed: \u201cA British atomic weapon was test exploded here on 9 October 1957\u201d. On the rim of the crater was this sign:<\/p>\n

WARNING: RADIATION HAZARD<\/b><\/p>\n

Radiation levels for a few hundred metres<\/p>\n

around this point may be above those considered<\/p>\n

safe for permanent occupation.<\/p>\n

For as far as the eye could see, and beyond, the ground was irradiated. Raw plutonium lay about, scattered like talcum powder: plutonium is so dangerous to humans that a third of a milligram gives a 50 percent chance of cancer.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The only people who might have seen the sign were Indigenous Australians, for whom there was no warning. According to an official account, if they were lucky \u201cthey were shooed off like rabbits\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Enduring Menace<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today, an unprecedented campaign of propaganda is shooing us all off like rabbits<\/span>.\u00a0We are not meant to question the daily torrent of anti-Chinese rhetoric, which is rapidly overtaking the torrent of anti-Russia rhetoric. Anything Chinese is bad, anathema, a threat: Wuhan \u2026. Huawei. How confusing it is when \u201cour\u201d most reviled leader says so.<\/p>\n

The current phase of this campaign began not with Trump but with Barack Obama, who in 2011 flew to Australia to declare the greatest build-up of U.S. naval forces in the Asia-Pacific region since World War Two. Suddenly, China was a \u201cthreat\u201d. This was nonsense, of course. What was threatened was America\u2019s unchallenged psychopathic view of itself as the richest, the most successful, the most \u201cindispensable\u201d nation.<\/p>\n

What was never in dispute was its prowess as a bully \u2014 with more than 30 members of the United Nations suffering American sanctions of some kind and a trail of the blood running through defenceless countries bombed, their governments overthrown, their elections interfered with, their resources plundered.<\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s declaration became known as the \u201cpivot to Asia\u201d. One of its principal advocates was his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, who, as WikiLeaks<\/em> revealed, wanted to rename the Pacific Ocean \u201cthe American Sea\u201d.<\/p>\n

Whereas Clinton never concealed her warmongering, Obama was a maestro of marketing. \u201cI state clearly and with conviction,\u201d said the new president in 2009, \u201cthat America\u2019s commitment is to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Obama speaks about 60 years of the U.S.-Australian alliance in Darwin, Australia, Nov. 17, 2011.<\/p>\n

(Sgt. Pete Thibodeau\/Wikimedia Commons)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Obama increased spending on nuclear warheads faster than any president since the end of the Cold War. A \u201cusable\u201d nuclear weapon was developed. Known as the B61 Model 12, it means, according to General James Cartwright, former vice-chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that \u201cgoing smaller [makes its use] more thinkable\u201d.<\/p>\n

The target is China. Today, more than 400 American military bases almost encircle China with missiles, bombers, warships and\u00a0nuclear weapons<\/a>. From Australia north through the Pacific to South-East Asia, Japan and Korea and across Eurasia to Afghanistan and India, the bases form, as one U.S. strategist told me, \u201cthe perfect noose\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Unthinkable<\/strong><\/p>\n

A study by the RAND Corporation \u2013 which, since Vietnam, has planned America\u2019s wars \u2013 is entitled War with China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable<\/em>. Commissioned by the U.S. Army, the authors evoke the infamous catch cry of its chief Cold War strategist, Herman Kahn \u2013 \u201cthinking the unthinkable\u201d. Kahn\u2019s book, On Thermonuclear War<\/em>, elaborated a plan for a \u201cwinnable\u201d nuclear war.<\/p>\n

Kahn\u2019s apocalyptic view is shared by Trump\u2019s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, an evangelical fanatic who believes in the \u201crapture of the End\u201d. He is perhaps the most dangerous man alive. \u201cI was CIA director,\u201d he boasted, \u201cWe lied, we cheated, we stole. It was like we had entire training courses.\u201d Pompeo\u2019s obsession is China.<\/p>\n

The endgame of Pompeo\u2019s extremism is rarely if ever discussed in the Anglo-American media, where the myths and fabrications about China are standard fare, as were the lies about Iraq. A virulent racism is the sub-text of this propaganda. Classified \u201cyellow\u201d even though they were white, the Chinese are the only ethnic group to have been banned by an \u201cexclusion act\u201d from entering the United States, because they were Chinese. Popular culture declared them sinister, untrustworthy, \u201csneaky\u201d, depraved, diseased, immoral.<\/p>\n

An Australian magazine, The Bulletin<\/i>, was devoted to promoting fear of the \u201cyellow peril\u201d as if all of Asia was about to fall down on the whites-only colony by the force of gravity.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2018The Chinese Octopus\u2019,\u00a0The Bulletin<\/em>, Sydney 1886, an early promoter of the \u201cYellow Peril\u201d and other stereotypes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

As the historian Martin Powers writes, acknowledging China\u2019s modernism, its secular morality and \u201ccontributions to liberal thought threatened European face, so it became necessary to suppress China\u2019s role in the Enlightenment debate \u2026. For centuries, China\u2019s threat to the myth of Western superiority has made it an easy target for race-baiting.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the Sydney Morning Herald<\/i>, tireless China-basher Peter Hartcher described those who spread Chinese influence in Australia as \u201crats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows\u201d. Hartcher, who favourably quotes the American demagogue Steve Bannon, likes to interpret the \u201cdreams\u201d of the current Chinese elite, to which he is apparently privy. These are inspired by yearnings for the \u201cMandate of Heaven\u201d of 2,000 years ago. Ad nausea.<\/i><\/p>\n

To combat this \u201cmandate\u201d, the Australian government of Scott Morrison has committed one of the most secure countries on earth, whose major trading partner is China, to hundreds of billions of dollars\u2019 worth of American missiles that can be fired at China.<\/p>\n

The trickledown is already evident. In a country historically scarred by violent racism towards Asians, Australians of Chinese descent have formed a vigilante group to protect delivery riders. Phone videos show a delivery rider punched in the face and a Chinese couple racially abused in a supermarket. Between April and June, there were almost 400 racist attacks on Asian-Australians.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not your enemy,\u201d a high-ranking strategist in China told me, \u201cbut if you [in the West] decide we are, we must prepare without delay.\u201d China\u2019s arsenal is small compared with America\u2019s, but it is growing fast, especially the development of maritime missiles designed to destroy fleets of ships.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the first time,\u201d wrote Gregory Kulacki of the Union of Concerned Scientists, \u201cChina is discussing putting its nuclear missiles on high alert so that they can be launched quickly on warning of an attack\u2026 This would be a significant and dangerous change in Chinese policy\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

In Washington, I met Amitai Etzioni, distinguished professor of international affairs at George Washington University, who wrote that a \u201cblinding attack on China\u201d was planned, \u201cwith strikes that could be mistakenly perceived [by the Chinese] as pre-emptive attempts to take out its nuclear weapons, thus cornering them into a terrible use-it-or-lose-it dilemma [that would] lead to nuclear war.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2019, the U.S. staged its biggest single military exercise since the Cold War, much of it in high secrecy. An armada of ships and long-range bombers rehearsed an \u201cAir-Sea Battle Concept for China\u201d \u2013 ASB \u2013 blocking sea lanes in the Straits of Malacca and cutting off China\u2019s access to oil, gas and other raw materials from the Middle East and Africa.<\/p>\n

It is fear of such a blockade that has seen China develop its Belt and Road Initiative along the old Silk Road to Europe and urgently build strategic airstrips on disputed reefs and islets in the Spratly Islands.<\/p>\n

In Shanghai, I met Lijia Zhang, a Beijing journalist and novelist, typical of a new class of outspoken mavericks. Her best-selling book has the ironic title Socialism Is Great! <\/em>Having grown up in the chaotic, brutal Cultural Revolution, she has travelled and lived in the U.S. and Europe. \u201cMany Americans imagine,\u201d she said, \u201cthat Chinese people live a miserable, repressed life with no freedom whatsoever. The [idea of] the yellow peril has never left them\u2026 They have no idea there are some 500 million people being lifted out of poverty, and some would say it\u2019s 600 million.\u201d<\/p>\n

Modern China\u2019s epic achievements, its defeat of mass poverty, and the pride and contentment of its people (measured forensically by American pollsters such as Pew) are wilfully unknown or misunderstood in the West. This alone is a commentary on the lamentable state of Western journalism and the abandonment of honest reporting.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s repressive dark side and what we like to call its \u201cauthoritarianism\u201d are the facade we are allowed to see almost exclusively. It is as if we are fed unending tales of the evil super-villain Dr. Fu Manchu. And it is time we asked why: before it is too late to stop the next Hiroshima.<\/p>\n

_________________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>John Pilger has won an Emmy and a BAFTA for his documentaries, which have also won numerous US and European awards. His articles appear worldwide in newspapers such as <\/em>The Guardian, The Independent, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Mail & Guardian (South Africa<\/em>), Aftonbladet (Sweden<\/em>), Il Manifesto (Italy). He writes a regular column for the <\/em>New Statesman, London. In 2003, he was awarded the prestigious Sophie Prize for \u201930 years of exposing injustice and promoting human rights.\u2019 In 2009 he was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize. His earlier film is <\/em>The War You Don\u2019t See<\/a> (2010). His new film,<\/em> The Coming War on China, is available in the U.S. from www.bullfrogfilms.com<\/a>. He can be reached through his website www.johnpilger.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 consortiumnews.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

3 Aug 2022 – Hiroshima and Nagasaki were acts of premeditated mass murder unleashing a weapon of intrinsic criminality. It was justified by lies that form the bedrock of 21st century U.S. war propaganda, casting a new enemy, and target: China.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":217760,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[853,1347,179,429,450,2298,112,70,581],"class_list":["post-217756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analysis","tag-atomic-weapons","tag-hiroshima-and-nagasaki","tag-japan","tag-nuclear-ban-treaty","tag-nuclear-weapons","tag-nuclear-weapons-illegal","tag-pentagon","tag-usa","tag-wwii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}