66 Years Ago: When Truman Opened the Nuclear Era With a Hiroshima Lie

Lively discussion on the comments, too - so have a read.  THANK YOU GREG MITCHELL

Greg Mitchell

In a piece earlier this week I mentioned the decades-long U.S. "coverup" of facts and options related to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima 66 years ago today, including the Truman White House censoring the first Hollywood movie about The Bomb. But that shaping of the full impact, and ramifications, of the new weapons -- which would continue for years -- began within hours of the first use.

On Aug. 6, 1945, President Harry S. Truman faced the task of telling the press, and the world, that America's crusade against fascism had culminated in exploding a revolutionary new weapon of extraordinary destructive power over a Japanese city.

It was vital that this event be understood as a reflection of dominant military power and at the same time consistent with American decency and concern for human life. Everyone involved in preparing the presidential statement sensed that the stakes were high, for this marked the unveiling of both the atomic bomb and the official narrative of Hiroshima.

When the astonishing news emerged that morning, exactly 66 years ago, it took the form of a routine press release, a little more than a thousand words long. President Truman was at sea a thousand miles away, returning from the Potsdam conference. Shortly before eleven o'clock, an information officer from the War Department arrived at the White House bearing bundles of press releases. A few minutes later, assistant press secretary Eben Ayers began reading the president's announcement to about a dozen members of the Washington press corps.

The atmosphere was so casual, and the statement so momentous, that the reporters had difficulty grasping it. "The thing didn't penetrate with most of them," Ayers later remarked. Finally, they rushed to call their editors, and at least one reporter found a disbeliever at the other end of the line. The first few sentences of the statement set the tone:

"Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of TNT. ...The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold. ...It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe."

Although details were modified at the last moment, Truman's four-page statement had been crafted with considerable care over many months. If use of the atomic bomb was inherent in its invention, an announcement of this sort was inevitable. Only the timing was in doubt.
would be suppressed by the U.S. for decades. 
From its very first words, however, the official narrative was built on a lie. Hiroshima was not an "army base" but a city of 350,000. It did contain one important military base, but the bomb had been aimed at the very center of a city (and far from its industrial area). This was a continuation of the American policy of bombing civilian populations in Japan to undermine the morale of the enemy. It was also to take advantage of what those who picked the target called the special "focusing effect" provided by the hills which surrounded the city on three sides. This would allow the blast to bounce back on the city, destroying more of it, and its citizens.

The vast majority of the dead in Hiroshima would not be military personnel and defense workers but women and children. Also: at least a dozen American POWs. When Nagasaki was A-bombed three days later it was officially described as a "naval base." Film footage shot by the Japanese and later the Americans showing the full extent of the human damage would be suppressed by the U.S. for decades.

There was something else missing in Truman's announcement: Because the president in his statement failed to mention radiation effects, which officials knew were horrendous, the imagery of just a bigger bomb would prevail in the press. Truman described the new weapon as "revolutionary" but only in regard to the destruction it could cause, failing to mention its most lethal new feature: radiation.

Many Americans first heard the news from the radio, which broadcast the text of Truman's statement shortly after its release. The afternoon papers quickly arrived with banner headlines: "Atom Bomb, World's Greatest, Hits Japs!" and "Japan City Blasted by Atomic Bomb." The Pentagon had released no pictures, so most of the newspapers relied on maps of Japan with Hiroshima circled.

By that evening, radio commentators were weighing in with observations that often transcended Truman's announcement, suggesting that the public imagination was outrunning the official story. Contrasting emotions of gratification and anxiety had already emerged. H.V. Kaltenhorn warned, "We must assume that with the passage of only a little time, an improved form of the new weapon we use today can be turned against us."

It wasn't until the following morning, Aug. 7, that the government's press offensive appeared, with the first detailed account of the making of the atomic bomb, and the Hiroshima mission. Nearly every U.S. newspaper carried all or parts of 14 separate press releases distributed by the Pentagon several hours after the president's announcement.

Many of them written by one man: W.L. Laurence, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times, "embedded" with the atomic project. General Leslie Groves, military director of the Manhattan Project, would later reflect, with satisfaction, that "most newspapers published our releases in their entirety. This is one of the few times since government releases have become so common that this has been done."

The Truman announcement of the atomic bombing on Aug. 6, 1945, and the flood of material from the War Department, firmly established the nuclear narrative (see much more on this in my new book, Atomic Cover-up and e-book).

One of the few early stories that did not come directly from the military was a wire service report filed by a journalist traveling with the president on the Atlantic, returning from Europe. Approved by military censors, it went beyond, but not far beyond, the measured tone of the president's official statement. It depicted Truman, his voice "tense with excitement," personally informing his shipmates about the atomic attack. "The experiment," he announced, "has been an overwhelming success."

The sailors were said to be "uproarious" over the news. "I guess I'll get home sooner now," was a typical response. Nowhere in the story, however, was there a strong sense of Truman's reaction. Missing from this account was his exultant remark when the news of the bombing first reached the ship: "This is the greatest thing in history!"

Greg Mitchell's new book is "Atomic Cover-up: Two U.S. Soldiers, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, and The Greatest Movie Never Made." Also in e-book editions. His email is epic1934@aol.com.

Kazuyoshi Saito anti nuke protest song w/English translation

Song loudly by protestors in Toyko 9 April.

Fukushima nuclar plant accident photos with propaganda posters by Japanese youngsters.
Song by Kazuyoshi Saito

Depleted Uranium - Compension for those affected by this poisoned legacy

Depleted Uranium - A Way Out? Compensation to those affected by this poisoned legacy by Felicity Arbuthnot

The term “Gulf War Syndrome” is now known world-wide – but - after the 1991 Iraq war, as formerly A1 fit soldiers fell ill with debilitating symptoms, in their thousands, the cause was, for two years, a "mystery". It was in 1993, when a group of twenty-four affected soldiers approached Professor Asav Durakovic, one of the world's leading experts in the effects of radiation, that a cause came to light. They had many times the “safe” level of chemically toxic and radioactive depleted uranium (DU) in their bodies. Duracovic, although a senior officer in the US army during the first Gulf war, had been unaware that the weapons used had contained depleted uranium. “I was horrified”, he said: “I was a soldier, but above all I am a doctor.” By 1997, it was estimated that ninety thousand US veterans were suffering from Gulf War Syndrome. Durakovic, who is also medical consultant for the Children of Chernobyl project at Hadassah University, Jerusalem, lost his job as Chief of Nuclear Medicine at the Veteran's Administration Medical Facility at Wilmington, Delaware, as a direct result of his work with Gulf war veterans contaminated with radiation, he states. Two other physicians, Dr Burroughs and Dr Slingerland of Boston VA also lost their jobs when they asked for more sensitive equipment to better diagnose the soldiers referred to them by Professor Durakovic. Oddly, all the records pertaining to the sick soldiers at the Delaware VA went missing, a syndrome of another kind which has become familiar, both sides of the Atlantic. Two years before Durakovic's discovery, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) “self initiated” a Report warning the government that if fifty tones of the residual dust, from the explosions of the weapons on impact, was left “in the region”, they estimated it would generate “half a million” extra cancer deaths by the end of the century (2000.) Iraq's cancers and birth deformities have become an anomaly, compared to those in the Pacific Islands and amongst British troops after the nuclear testing in the 1950's. Further, “depleted” is a misnomer. These weapons are made from waste from the nuclear fuel cycle and thus contain the whole lethal nuclear cocktail. DU weapons (sold to seventeen countries that are known and possibly others - why let poisoning the planet and its population get in the way of numerous millions of quick bucks) are equivalent to spreading the contents of a nuclear reactor around the globe. And far from fifty tones and that chilling warning, in Iraq several thousand tones now cover this ancient, Biblical land and with the bombs raining daily, the audit rises nearly hour by hour. The US is currently by far the largest user of DU weapons. Over the past decade, they have brought more than sixteen million DU shells and bullets from Alliant Tech Systems alone. (Source: Janes.) Strangely, this time, there have been few reports of soldiers with the terrible effects of 1991, where they were only in the region for a few weeks. Although troops now remain for months or a year, Gulf War Syndrome mark 2 seems not an issue. Perhaps it is because, reportedly, doctors treating returning troops have been threatened with jail and or hefty fines if they say anything regarding DU-related symptoms. The implication regarding compensation to countries affected by this poisoned legacy (DU's lethality lasts for four and a half billion years) and troops is financially stratospheric. Since the 2003 invasion, US troops are denied entry to the International Atomic Energy Authority or any radiation experts to test ground and air levels. In Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia where DU weapons were used (with missiles also dropped accidentally in neighboring countries, by the US, to whom all the world's lives are seemingly cheap) the “Iraq Syndrome” became quickly apparent. Even European peacekeepers on relatively short tours of duty became ill, developed leukemia's and other cancers and a number died. A five man film crew from BBC Scotland all tested DU positive after filming for less than a week there. Afghanistan too was “liberated” in 2001, by uranium weapons, which continue to be routinely used, condemning generations yet to be born to deformities and the living - the new born and under fives the most susceptible - to cancers and other horrific DU-related conditions. Durakovic also found high levels of uranium in hospital patients there, as there will undoubtedly be in the occupying forces. He also found identical conditions to Iraq amongst the young: “Children born with no limbs, no eyes, or with tumors protruding from their mouths and eyes.” The latest country to fall victim to uranium weapons is Lebanon - but with a Difference; it transpires. Dr Chris Busby*, founder of the Low Level Radiation Campaign and Green Audit, is Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk and also sits on the (UK) Ministry of Defense Uranium Oversight Board. Israel is one of the countries with uranium weapons and: “The first evidence that the IDF (Israeli Defence Force) were using them” (in the July-August 2006 Israeli bombardment) “was a Getty Picture Library image of an Israeli soldier carrying a DU anti-tank shell”, says Busby. He then noted a report in Lebanon's Daily Star, that Dr Khobeisi, a scientist, had measured gamma radiation in a bomb crater at Khiam in the south of the country, at ten to twenty times higher (samples taken from different locations in crater) than naturally occurring background radiation. The following month, Dai Williams,** an independent researcher went to Lebanon on behalf of Green Audit, to investigate and bring back samples to the UK for testing. He also brought back an air filter from an ambulance. Tested at the Harwell UKAEA laboratory: “The results were astonishing.” Both soil and filter contained enriched uranium with the soil sample containing uranium about nine times higher than the natural background. (Remember how threatening the West has become towards Iran's efforts to enrich uranium?) The soil sample was also sent to the School of Ocean Sciences, in North Wales for a second test by a different method for certainty. The results were the same. Busby asks: “Why use enriched uranium? It is a bit like shooting your enemy with diamonds.” He contends it is possible that it is a “smokestream” for the wider use of depleted uranium, as the final contamination “when all gets mixed up after the war has a natural isotopic signature”. (ie: can be read as uranium which occurs naturally in nature.) There are two other chilling possibilities says Busby: a fusion bomb or a thermobaric bomb, both of which would need enriched uranium. Certainly, doctors were reporting bodies in conditions they could find in no medical manuals, as in the attack on Falluja, Iraq. Lebanese authorities denied the presence of enriched uranium; Israel denied using it. The bombardment had ended on the agreement that UN peacekeepers went in. Given their debilitation and mortality rate in the Balkans, this lethal presence might well have deterred them. To be certain the incident was not in isolation. Williams returned to Lebanon and brought back soil and water samples from Khiam and other sites. Enriched uranium was found in water samples from two separate craters in Khiam and in one of the soil samples. Then the money ran out. The samples tested had already cost £2,000. Donations from an Arab friend and Swiss supporters totaled £850 - and Dai Williams had paid the rest out of his own money. More work is needed, but it is now known that the IDF used enriched uranium in Lebanon. And: “Since it is in the ambulance air filter, it is also in the lungs of the inhabitants ... the Lebanese people have been sacrificed to cancers, leukemia's, birth defects, like the people of the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq”, says Busby, adding “and it may be worse: since we still do not know what the weapon was.” And have these weapons been used on the people of Gaza and the West Bank? Further, Israel is not alone decimating those she perceives as her enemies, but her own people, neighboring countries and even those further a field. In context, Green Audit studied airborne uranium at sites in the UK, between 1998 and 2004. There was only one period in which uranium in the air “significantly” exceeded the naturally occurring background presence: during the bombing of Iraq, in March and April, 2003. As with the radio nuclides from Chernobyl which affected Europe and the globe, and still contaminates agricultural land, the potentially deadly wave of invisible particles traveled on the wind from Iraq. “We are all Gulf war victims now”, commented Busby's colleague, Richard Bramhill. Can anything be done to halt the use of these genocidal weapons? Francis Boyle, Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois and author of The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence, thinks so. He has launched a campaign for a global pact against uranium weapons. Boyle points out that the 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibits: “the use in war of asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases and of all analogous liquids, materials or devices”. Clearly he says, DU is “analogous” to poison gas. The Government of France is the official depository for the 1925 Geneva Protocol. Boyle contends that rather than aiming for an international treaty prohibiting the use of DU, which would probably take years, pressure should be put on every state to submit a letter to the French government to enforce a ban. “All that needs to be done is for anti-DU citizens, activists and NGO's in every country to pressure their Foreign Minister to write to their French counterpart, drawing attention to the “Protocol for the Prohibition of the use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare”, of 17th June 1925, prohibiting uses as above. The letter should add that this Protocol is believed to: “already prohibit the use in war of depleted uranium ammunition, uranium Armour plate and all other uranium weapons”. A request should be made that the letter is circulated to all other High Contracting Parties to the 1925 Protocol and addressed to: His Excellency, The Foreign Minister, Republic of France, 37, Quai d'Orsay, 75351 Paris, France. Or Fax: 33-1-43-17-4275 Professor Boyle points out that: “As the Land Mines Treaty demonstrates, it is possible for a coalition of determined activists and NGO's, acting in concert with at least one sympathetic state, to bring into being an international treaty to address humanitarian concerns.” Such a sympathetic state exists: Belgium, last month, outlawed uranium weapons. If the rest of the world does not follow, what will happen is what Richard Bramhill calls “a DU-locaust” - of the children of the countries where these weapons have been used, of soldiers, of the uranium miners and of the munitions workers, as the living, dead and deformed prove. Notes * Author of Wings of Death and of Wolves of Water (2007) essential reading on radiation's horrors, published by Green Audit, available direct from admin@greenaudit.org Busby is also involved in Radioactive Times, the journal of the Low Level Radiation Campaign, a detailed quarterly update on nuclear industry shenanigans ( http://www.llrc.org ) ** http://www.eoslifework.co.uk for a wealth of DU related material. Felicity Arbuthnot is a journalist and activist who has visited the Arab and Muslim world on numerous occasions. She has written and broadcast on Iraq, her coverage of which was nominated for several awards. She was also senior researcher for John Pilger's award-winning documentary: "Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq". and author, with Nikki van der Gaag, of “Baghdad” in the “Great Cities” series, for World Almanac Books (2006.) Please also see: Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare http://www.opcw.org/html/db/cwc/more/geneva_protocol.html AMERICA'S GREATEST CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY / MILITARY USE OF DU http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2006/10/31.html The Queen's Death Star, by Leuren Moret http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2006/DU-Europe-Moret26feb06.htm "Perpetual Death From America" By Mohammed Daud Miraki, MA, MA, PhD Afghan-American Freelance Academic http://www.rense.com/general35/perp.htm Depleted Uranium - Poisoning U.S. Troops And The Planet http://uruknet.info/?p=m32443&hd=&size=1&l=e New study detects traces of uranium in South http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=1&article_id=78163 Dust Up, John Upton/Tracy Press http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout4.php&id=3422&blz=1 Depleted Uranium Situation Requires Action By President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, states Dr. Doug Rokke, Ph.D. http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout5.php&id=2158&blz=1 WHAT THE PENTAGON REALLY KNOWS ABOUT THE CRIMINAL USE OF POISONOUS URANIUM WEAPONS, by Christopher Bollyn http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout4.php&id=1902&blz=1 Iraqi Doctor Learns from Hiroshima's Past, note Shinya Ajima and Shinsuke Takahashi http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout4.php&id=1851&blz=1 DEPLETED URANIUM: THE WAR CRIME THAT HAS NO END, by Paul Rockwell http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout5.php&id=1462&blz=1 TV Not Concerned by Cluster Bombs, DU: 'That's just the way life is in Iraq', from FAIR http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout5.php&id=882&blz=1 Hazards of Uranium Weapons in the Proposed War on Iraq, by Dai Williams http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout4.php&id=575&blz=1 Pandora DU Research Project http://stopuraniumwars.blogspot.com

Felicity Arbuthnot is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Felicity Arbuthnot

Much of US US Nuclear Arsenal Capable of Launch in Minutes

U.S. Official Is Faulted for Nuclear Weapons Claim

Experts Call 'Hair Trigger' Denial Misleading, Say Much of Arsenal Is Capable of Launch in Minutes

By Colum Lynch

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 1, 2007; Page A17

UNITED NATIONS -- The Bush administration has come under fire for stating before a United Nations conference that the U.S. nuclear arsenal is not on "hair-trigger alert" -- an assertion that arms-control experts criticized as "inaccurate" and "misleading."

The allegations follow efforts by Washington to assure the United Nations that it is meeting its obligation -- under the 1970 Non-Proliferation Treaty -- to shrink its nuclear arsenal. They also come on the eve of a U.N. General Assembly vote on a resolution calling on the world's nuclear powers to take their nuclear weapons off "high alert."

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The nonbinding resolution calls on states to "decrease the operational readiness" of their nuclear weapons. "The maintenance of nuclear weapons systems at a high level of readiness increases the risk of the use of such weapons, including the unintentional or accidental use," the resolution warns.

Speaking at an Oct. 9 U.N. conference, Christina Rocca, the U.S. representative to the United Nations Conference on Disarmament, dismissed concerns that American nuclear missiles are ready to launch on a moment's notice. "U.S. nuclear forces are not and have never been on hair-trigger alert," she told U.N. delegates.

Her comments sparked rapid criticism. "It's plain wrong," said Hans Kristensen, director of nuclear information at the Federation of American Scientists. "There are forces on alert, and whether they are on 'hair-trigger alert' or 'launch on warning,' they are capable of launching in minutes."

The NPT requires the world's original nuclear powers -- the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain -- to engage in "good-faith" negotiations aimed at dismantling their nuclear weapons program.

In exchange, other states pledge to limit their development of nuclear energy to peaceful purposes.

Developing countries have accused Washington and other nuclear powers of reneging on their obligations. The United States maintains that it has been meeting its side of the bargain, but that other states have not done enough to prohibit countries -- such as North Korea and Iran -- from developing clandestine nuclear weapons.

Rocca cited U.S.-Russian arms-control agreements over the past two decades that shed more than 3,000 tactical warheads and 1,000 strategic missiles and bombers from the U.S. stockpile. "The NPT never envisaged complete nuclear disarmament without regard to the international security environment," she said. "Nuclear weapons continue to have relevance."

A senior U.S. official said the claim that thousands of U.S. nuclear weapons can be launched within minutes is incorrect, but added that the information on launch time is classified. "The idea we are on Cuban-missile-crisis posture, sitting on the silo ready to push the button, is false," said the official, who was unauthorized to speak publicly. "The essence of deterrence strategy is having some element of ambiguity."

Bruce Blair, a nuclear weapons expert and president of the World Security Institute, said the United States and Russia keep about one-third of their strategic arsenals on launch-ready alert and that "hundreds of missiles armed with thousands of nuclear warheads can be launched within a very few minutes."

"There has been long history of denying U.S. forces are on 'hair-trigger alert' . . ." Blair said. "Some of that is based on lack of knowledge, and some of it is an evasion, and some of it is just an outright lie."