Hiroshima at 75. The Doomsday Clock and the Ongoing Threat of “Atomic Horror”
A Global Research News Hour Special
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This article was first published in 2020, in commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. We repost this important interview for the 76th anniversary.
“Not a particular country, not a particular city, and not a particular people.
The crux of the matter is whether total war in its present form is justifiable, even when it serves a just purpose. Does it not have material and spiritual evil as its consequences which far exceed whatever good might result? When will our moralists give us an answer to this question?”
John Hersey, Hiroshima [1]
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The two state of the art weapons released over the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki constituted the most devastating blasts of all time.
According to the best estimates of anti-nuclear weapons scientists, anywhere from 110,000 to 210,000 people died in the twin holocausts. Two thirds of the city of Hiroshima were wiped out in a single attack, the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT. [2]
These massive mushroom clouds would go on to become a symbol of the fate of humanity encapsulated in the threat of atomic horror. For all my life, I have contemplated the prospects of nuclear incineration and the aftermath that would follow if our leaders get caught up in a tragic misstep.
What has been the careful course of a wizened populace after 75 years of careful planning?
On January 23 of this year, the doomsday clock, created by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientist, announced the clock had revved up to 100 seconds before midnight. That is an all time record in the history of the time piece! Do the memories of the devastating attacks of Aug 6 and Aug 9, 1945 have some process of ever re-igniting the imaginations of a new generation of civilians and reversing the tide of Nuclear Armageddon? This is a subject we will explore on this special anniversary episode of the Global Research News Hour.
Our first guest is renowned academic and writer Professor Michel Chossudovsky. In the first half hour, he brings us up to date on how the U.S. has re-ignited interest in once again turning bombs like the ones dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki into “ready for use” weapons in the arsenal of conventional warfare.
Our second guest, Greg Mitchell, comes along in our second half hour. He elaborates on how early information about the nuclear warfare in Japan was concealed, and how a new blockbuster release from Hollywood served to falsify the news from the battlefields.
Professor Michel Chossudovsky is a professor of economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, and the Founder and Editor of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He is the award-winning author of numerous articles and of eleven books including Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War (2012) and The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity (2015).
Greg Mitchell is an author and journalist. He was editor of the magazine Nuclear Times and has become an outspoken expert and the role and build up of nuclear arms in Japan. His books include Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial (co-written by Robert J Lifton, 1995) , Atomic Cover-up: Two U.S. Soldiers, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, and The Greatest Movie Never Made (2011), and his latest: The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood—and America—Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (2020).
LISTEN TO THE SHOW
Click to download the audio (MP3 format)
The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM out of the University of Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .
Notes:
- Hersey, John (1946), Hiroshima (p 105), EFL Club
- https://thebulletin.org/2020/08/counting-the-dead-at-hiroshima-and-nagasaki/
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