Radiation: Now You See It, Now You Don’t
Little is known about Wilfred Burchett, author of Shadow of Hiroshima. He was an independent Australian journalist who wanted to travel to Hiroshima after the US had dropped their Atomic Bomb, destroying the city. General Douglas MacArthur had declared southern Japan off-limits, barring the press. Wilfred Burchett was determined to see what the effects of the nuclear bomb had been, so he defied orders and boarded a train to Hiroshima. What he saw shocked him to his core. His dispatch was printed by the Daily Express newspaper in London on September 5, 1945, entitled “The Atomic Plague”, the first public report to mention the effects of radiation and nuclear fallout.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0810-01.htm
This article by Amy and David Goodman explains Wilfred Burchett’s trip to Hiroshima. The damage is far greater than any photograph can take. “When you arrive in Hiroshima you can look around for twenty-five and perhaps thirty square miles. You can see hardly a building. It gives you an empty feeling in the stomach to see such man-made destruction.” (Wilfred Burchett Quote).
Before and After pictures of Hiroshima
As expected, Burchett’s reporting was unpopular with the U.S. military. The military accused Burchett of being under the sway of Japanese propaganda. William L. Lawrence of The New York Times dismissed the reports on radiation sickness as Japanese efforts to undermine American morale. The official narrative of the atomic bombings severely underestimated civilian casualties and categorically dismissed reports of the deadly lingering effects of radiation.
In a time of Propaganda running rampart on all sides of the war, the American people did not know who was telling the truth. No information at all was coming from the US Military. After General MacArthur found out about Wilfred Burchett, he ordered him to be expelled from Japan , and his camera with photos of Hiroshima mysteriously vanished while he was in a Japanese hospital.
Propaganda was really the best way for countries to control their populace. Government’s were able to suppress journalists and only let the people read what they wanted them to. There was no internet, an amazing tool of free speech, or any way at all to get reliable information. Wilfred Burchett never won any prizes nor was recognized at all until much later. It was very clear upon entering Hiroshima the effects of Nuclear weaponry. The American government had no intentions of revealing to the American people the absolute horror of what they had just done.
Wilfred Burchett before entering Hiroshima.
Plutonium Pandemonium 