Lesley M.M. Blume - fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World

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Copyright 2020 by Lesley M.M. Blume

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First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition August 2020

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Blume, Lesley M. M., author.

Title: Fallout / Lesley M. M. Blume.

Description: First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition. | New York : Simon & Schuster, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: New York Times bestselling author Lesley M.M. Blume reveals how a courageous reporter uncovered one of greatest and deadliest cover-ups of the 20th centurythe true effects of the atom bombpotentially saving millions of livesProvided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020000055 (print) | LCCN 2020000056 (ebook) | ISBN 9781982128517 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781982128531 (paperback) | ISBN 9781982128555 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Hiroshima-shi (Japan)HistoryBombardment, 1945Press coverageUnited States. | World War, 1939-1945JapanHiroshima-shiPress coverageUnited States. | Atomic bomb victimsJapanHiroshima-shiPress coverageUnited States. | Hersey, John, 19141993. | Hersey, John, 19141993. Hiroshima. | JournalistsUnited StatesBiography. | World War, 1939-1945Press coverageJapan. | Atomic bombUnited StatesPublic opinion. | Atomic bombGovernment policyUnited StatesHistory20th century.

Classification: LCC D767.25.H6 B58 2020 (print) | LCC D767.25.H6 (ebook) | DDC 940.54/2521954dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020000055

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020000056

ISBN 978-1-9821-2851-7

ISBN 978-1-9821-2855-5 (ebook)

For Koko Tanimoto Kondo

What has kept the world safe from the bomb since 1945 has been the memory of what happened at Hiroshima.

JOHN HERSEY

John Hersey later claimed that he had not intended to write an expos. Yet, in the summer of 1946, he revealed one of the deadliest and most consequential government cover-ups of modern times. The New Yorker magazine devoted its entire August 31, 1946, issue to Herseys Hiroshima, in which he reported to Americans and the world the full, ghastly realities of atomic warfare in that city, featuring testimonies from six of the only humans in history to survive nuclear attack.

The U.S. government had dropped a nearly 10,000-pound uranium bombwhich had been dubbed Little Boy and scribbled with profane messages to the Japanese emperoron Hiroshima a year earlier, at 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945. None of the bombs creators even knew for certain if the then experimental weapon would work: Little Boy was the first nuclear weapon to be used in warfare, and Hiroshimas citizens were chosen as its unfortunate guinea pigs. When Little Boy exploded above the city, tens of thousands of people were burned to death, crushed or buried alive by collapsing buildings, or bludgeoned by flying debris. Those directly under the bombs hypocenter were incinerated, instantaneously erased from existence. Many blast survivorssupposedly the lucky onessuffered from agonizing radiation poisoning and died by the hundreds in the months that followed.

The city of Hiroshima initially estimated that more than 42,000 civilians had died from the bombing. Within a year, that estimate would rise to 100,000. It has since been calculated that as many as 280,000 people may have died by the end of 1945 from effects of the bomb, although the exact number will never be known. In the decades since, human remains have been regularly uncovered in the citys ground, and are still uncovered today. You dig two feet and there are bones, says Hiroshima Prefecture governor Hidehiko Yuzaki. Were living on that. Not only near the epicenter [of the blast], but across the city.

It was a massacre of biblical proportions. Even todayseventy-five years after the bombingthe name Hiroshima conjures up images of fiery nuclear holocaust and sends chills down spines around the world.

However, until Herseys story appeared in the New Yorker, the U.S. government had astonishingly managed to hide the magnitude of what happened in Hiroshima immediately after the bombing, and successfully covered up the bombs long-term deadly radiological effects. U.S. officials in Washington, D.C., and occupation officials in Japan suppressed, contained, and spun reports from the ground in Hiroshima and Nagasakiwhich had been attacked by the United States with the plutonium bomb Fat Man on August 9, 1945until the story all but disappeared from the headlines and the publics consciousness.

At first, the government appeared to be forthright about its new weapon. When U.S. president Harry S. Truman announced to the world that an atomic bomb had just been dropped on Hiroshima, he pledged that if the Japanese did not surrender, they could expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth. Little Boy had packed an explosive payload equivalent to more than 20,000 tons of TNT, the president revealed, and was by far the largest bomb ever used in the history of warfare. Reporters and editors given text of this presidential announcement in advance received the news with disbelief. Young Walter Cronkitethen a United Press war reporter based in Europeupon receiving a bulletin from Paris about the bomb, thought that clearly those French operators [had] made a mistake, he recalled later. So I changed the figure to 20 tons. Soon, as updates to the story came in, my mistake became abundantly clear.

Also, it seemed at first that the press was adequately reporting on the fates of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As the implications of the worlds entrance into the atomic age began to sink in, it became apparent to editors and reporters everywhere that the atomic bomb was not just one of the biggest stories of the war but among the biggest news stories in history. After millennia of contriving increasingly horrible and efficient killing machines, humans had finally invented the means with which to extinguish their entire civilization. Humankind was stealing Gods stuff, as E. B. White wrote in the New Yorker.

Yet it would take many monthsand the bravery of one young American reporter and his editorsbefore the world learned what had actually transpired beneath those roiling mushroom clouds. What happened at Hiroshima is not yet known, reported the New York Times on August 7, 1945. An impenetrable cloud of dust and smoke masked the target area from reconnaissance planes. In many respects, the impenetrable cloud didnt truly lift until Hersey got into Hiroshima in May 1946 and, weeks later, managed to publish an account of his findings there. Even though the