Mainichi correspondent honored for covering previously censored Nagasaki journalism

Mainichi correspondent wins major Japan-U.S. journalism prize

Sumire Kunieda, the Mainichi's Los Angeles correspondent, has won the prestigious Vaughn-Ueda International Journalist Prize for 2005, organizers said Wednesday.

Kunieda receives the prize in recognition of her 2005 coverage of unpublished reports by American reporter George Weller on the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in 1945. Her story on the reports was carried in the June 17, 2005, morning edition of the Mainichi Shimbun.

The unpublished reports were the first reports from a Western journalist following the U.S. nuclear attack, but Allied censorship prevented them from being published. They remained unpublished until Kunieda unearthed them.

"Her reports helped people both in Japan and abroad to recognize once again the misery of atomic bombs," the prize's selection commission said.

I heavily quoted Sid's remarks on the censored articles here.