In his new book, which has gained national attention, award-winning author Greg Mitchell probes a turning point in U.S. history: the suppression of film footage, for decades, shot by a U.S. Army unit in Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- with staggering consequences even today. This is a detective story, and one of the last untold stories of World War II, and it has far-reaching impact. The shocking cover-up even extended to Hollywood -- with President Truman censoring an MGM film. Mitchell, co-author of the classic "Hiroshima in America" and eleven other books, now reveals the full story, based on new research, from the Truman Library to Nagasaki. Along the way the book tells the story of our "nuclear entrapment" -- from Hiroshima to Fukushima. David Friend of Vanity Fair calls it "a new work of revelatory scholarship and insight by Greg Mitchell that will speak to all of those concerned about the lessons of the nuclear age." "Atomic Cover-up" is also now available in an e-book edition here at Amazon. How did this cover-up happen? Why? And what did the two military officers, Daniel McGovern and Herbert Sussan, try to do about it, for decades? There was no WikiLeaks then to air the film. "Atomic Cover-up" answers all of these questions in a quick-paced but often surprising narrative. You can watch a trailer for the book, including some of the suppressed footage, here: http://bit.ly/r0AlZL Mitchell's classic Random House book "The Campaign of the Century" won the Goldsmith Book Prize and has just been published for the first time as an e-book. Robert Jay Lifton, author of "Death in Life" (winner of the National Book Award) and numerous other acclaimed books, writes: "Greg Mitchell has been a leading chronicler for many years of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and American behavior toward them. Now he has written the first book devoted to the suppression of historic film footage shot by Japanese and Americans in the atomic cities in 1945 and 1946. He makes use of key interviews and documents to record an extremely important part of atomic bomb history that deserves far more attention today."
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2020 New York Times bestselling author Lesley M.M. Blume reveals how one courageous American reporter uncovered one of the deadliest cover-ups of the 20th century—the true effects of the atom bomb—potentially saving millions of lives. Just days after the United States decimated Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear bombs, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. But even before the surrender, the US government and military had begun a secret propaganda and information suppression campaign to hide the devastating nature of these experimental weapons. The cover-up intensified as Occupation forces closed the atomic cities to Allied reporters, preventing leaks about the horrific long-term effects of radiation which would kill thousands during the months after the blast. For nearly a year the cover-up worked—until New Yorker journalist John Hersey got into Hiroshima and managed to report the truth to the world. As Hersey and his editors prepared his article for publication, they kept the story secret—even from most of their New Yorker colleagues. When the magazine published “Hiroshima” in August 1946, it became an instant global sensation, and inspired pervasive horror about the hellish new threat that America had unleashed. Since 1945, no nuclear weapons have ever been deployed in war partly because Hersey alerted the world to their true, devastating impact. This knowledge has remained among the greatest deterrents to using them since the end of World War II. Released on the 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, Fallout is an engrossing detective story, as well as an important piece of hidden history that shows how one heroic scoop saved—and can still save—the world.
Hiroshima is the story of six people—a clerk, a widowed seamstress, a physician, a Methodist minister, a young surgeon, and a German Catholic priest—who lived through the greatest single manmade disaster in history. In vivid and indelible prose, Pulitzer Prize–winner John Hersey traces the stories of these half-dozen individuals from 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, when Hiroshima was destroyed by the first atomic bomb ever dropped on a city, through the hours and days that followed. Almost four decades after the original publication of this celebrated book, Hersey went back to Hiroshima in search of the people whose stories he had told, and his account of what he discovered is now the eloquent and moving final chapter of Hiroshima.
Children of the Atomic Bomb is Dr. Yamazaki's account of a lifelong effort to understand and document the impact of nuclear explosions on children, particularly the children conceived but not yet born at the time of the explosions. Assigned in 1949 as Physician in Charge of the United States Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission in Nagasaki, Yamazaki had served as a combat surgeon at the Battle of the Bulge where he had been captured and held as a prisoner of war by the Germans. In Japan he was confronted with violence of another dimension - the devastating impact of a nuclear blast and the particularly insidious effects of radiation on children. Yamazaki's story is also one of striking juxtapositions, an account of a Japanese-American's encounter with racism, the story of a man who fought for his country while his parents were interned in a concentration camp in Arkansas.
"Nuclear weapons, since their conception, have been the subject of secrecy. In the months after the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the American scientific establishment, the American government, and the American public all wrestled with what was called the "problem of secrecy," wondering not only whether secrecy was appropriate and effective as a means of controlling this new technology but also whether it was compatible with the country's core values. Out of a messy context of propaganda, confusion, spy scares, and the grave counsel of competing groups of scientists, what historian Alex Wellerstein calls a "new regime of secrecy" was put into place. It was unlike any other previous or since. Nuclear secrets were given their own unique legal designation in American law ("restricted data"), one that operates differently than all other forms of national security classification and exists to this day. Drawing on massive amounts of declassified files, including records released by the government for the first time at the author's request, Restricted Data is a narrative account of nuclear secrecy and the tensions and uncertainty that built as the Cold War continued. In the US, both science and democracy are pitted against nuclear secrecy, and this makes its history uniquely compelling and timely"--
On August 9, 1945, on the tiny island of Tinian in the South Pacific, a twenty-five-year-old American Army Air Corps major named Charles W. Sweeney climbed aboard a B-29 Superfortress in command of his first combat mission, one devised specifically to bring a long and terrible war to a necessary conclusion. In the belly of his bomber, Bock's Car, was a newly developed, fully armed weapon that had never been tested in a combat situation. It was a weapon capable of a level of destruction never before dreamed of in the history of the human race, a bomb whose terrifying aftershock would ultimately determine the direction of the twentieth century and change the world forever. The last military officer to command an atomic mission, Major General Charles W. Sweeney has the unique distinction of having been an integral part of both the Hiroshima and the Nagasaki bombing runs. Now updated with a new epilogue from the co-author, his book is an extraordinary chronicle of the months of careful planning and training; the setbacks, secrecy, and snafus; and the nerve-shattering final seconds and the astonishing aftermath of what is arguably the most significant single event in modern history: the employment of an atomic weapon during wartime. The last military officer to command an atomic mission, Major General Charles W. Sweeney has the unique distinction of having been an integral part of both the Hiroshima and the Nagasaki bombing runs. His book is an extraordinary chronicle of the months of careful planning and training; the setbacks, secrecy, and snafus; and the nerve-shattering final seconds and the astonishing aftermath of what is arguably the most significant single event in modern history: the employment of an atomic weapon during wartime.
Between December 1943 and August 1944, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill ignited the Cold War, a superpower rivalry that would dominate the world over half a century, by building an atomic bomb and excluding their Russian allies. Peter Watson tells the pulse-pounding story of how two atomic physicists tried to counter this in two very different ways. While Niels Bohr sought to convince President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill to share their nuclear knowledge with Joseph Stalin, nuclear scientist Klaus Fuchs, a German Communist emigre to Britain, was leaking atomic secrets to the Soviets in a rival attempt to ensure parity between the superpowers. Neither succeeded in preventing the World War II allies from unleashing the atom bomb on the world. Fallout proves that the atomic bomb was not needed, and was made as a result of a series of flawed decisions. The Americans did not tell the UK that the atomic research was compromised by Soviet spies; the British did not tell the Americans that in 1943 they knew for sure that Germany did not have a nuclear bomb program. Neither country admitted to the scientists developing the bomb that it would never be used to counter the (non-existent) German nuclear threat. Had the scientists known, many of them would have refused to complete work on the bomb. This story shows how politicians fatally failed to understand the nature of atomic science and, in so doing, exposed the world needlessly to great danger, a danger that is still very much with us.
Presenting a monumental achievement: 50 years of data cataloging the immediate, long-term, and hereditary effects of atomic radiation on the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. Authored by one of the key members of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission founded in 1947, this unique work documents the critical findings and conclusions of the longest ongoing medical study in history; it will surely become the foundation for all future investigations and standards regarding the bioeffects of ionizing radiation. "In my opinion, Dr. Schull has written a very interesting and accurate account of the atomic bomb follow-up program in Japan. He writes extremely well, with areas of his particular scientific interest described in great detail. He also describes events and the social implications in a manner that has broad, general appeal." —Stuart C. Finch, MD University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey "A history of the Hiroshima/Nagasaki study is badly needed. I was very happy to hear that Jack Schull was working on such a project, and it is an understatement to say that I am anxious to see it published." —Seymour Jablon, PhD Bethesda, Maryland "Rarely in the history of a program will one have a nearly 50-year account from an eyewitness and major participant, beginning with the program's onset to the present. Jack's book offers the reader this extraordinary insight into the birth and development of the study of the A-bomb survivors. Moreover, he has served on all major national and international commissions dealing with radiation protection and risk assessment and he interweaves the Japanese studies into the radiation risk issues in a way that few, if any, other contemporary scientists can." —Seymour Abrahamson, PhD Radiation Effects Research Foundation On August 6 and 9, 1945, the only atomic bombs ever used in warfare were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The destruction and death caused by those bombings presented the world with a vivid portrait of the dangers of the atomic age. However, the thousands of bomb survivors have given scientists a massive, firsthand perspective on the bioeffects of radioactivity. It is the study of these survivors that forms the foundation of the modern understanding of the immediate, long-term, and hereditary consequences of exposure to ionizing radiation. Effects of Atomic Radiation: A Half-Century of Studies from Hiroshima and Nagasaki is the definitive account of the methods, findings, and conclusions of the 50-year study on the survivors of the atomic bomb blasts. It is a truly monumental work, surveying a colossal body of data to offer a comprehensive, unified, and authoritative summary of not only the scientific study itself, but the personal, social, and political factors that have shaped the investigation from its inception. The book goes beyond the simple compilation of facts, giving the reader unique insight into this unprecedented research project and exploring the complex web of subjective perceptions and fears that color popular, national, and even scientific views of radiation exposure in moderate and extreme cases. Authored by Dr. William J. Schull, perhaps the single most influential scientist involved in the studies, this book conveys both his authority and sensitivity. Dr. Schull arrived in Japan in 1949 and was instrumental in the development of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission. Since then, he has been one of the driving forces behind the largest medical follow-up study ever undertaken. His years spent working directly with bomb survivors imbue his narrative with a compelling personal history, and his service on numerous national and international committees studying ionizing radiation give him a broad, authoritative perspective on the implications of the ABCC's work. Effects of Atomic Radiation: A Half-Century of Studies from Hiroshima and Nagasaki is first and foremost a scientific work, summarizing the core findings of the definitive study on radiation exposure; while throughout the book, the author provides personal accounts that illustrate the human dimensions of the bombings. In a world where nuclear power is increasing and exposure to radiation is a daily occurrence, this book is essential reading for all scientists associated with public, private, or governmental institutions that set standards of acceptability for exposure.
