The Mainichi Shimbun has a special today about the lost articles of Pulitzer Prize-winner George Weller - the first Western journalist to see Nagasaki after the nuclear bombing 60 years ago. Weller snuck in despite a Gen. MacArthur ban, and wrote 25,000 words detailing what he saw. He sent them to Tokyo by hand, where the military refused to release or return them. Weller thought they were lost forever, but his son, Andrew, found carbon copies a year ago in his father's Rome apartment.
An Editor & Publisher article quotes Weller's son saying that Weller thought he was censored because MacArthur wanted all the credit for winning the war, while others suggest the U.S. didn't want details of the horrific effects of radiation affecting world opinion. At the time, the standard line was that anyone not killed in the blast of the bombs was fine - there was no such thing as radiation sickness, which Weller named "disease X" in the pieces.
The Mainichi has four of the articles online. The second and fourth go into disturbing detail about what's happening to the people who "survived" the blast.
Friday, June 17, 2005
Lost news articles from the WWII bombing of Nagasaki
Sid posted today:
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