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Wilfred Burchett: The Atomic Plague
August 27, 2014
Wilfred Burchett (1911-83) was an Australian journalist
whose career spanned the Second World War, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and
reporting from beh TO INFORM AND EDUCATE. YOUR DONATION IS TAX-DEDUCTIBLE.
Wilfred Burchett was the first reporter to
enter the city of Hiroshima after the bombing in 1945.
Wilfred Burchett’s “The Atomic
Plague” is often referred to as “the scoop of the century.” He was the first
correspondent to enter the city of Hiroshima after the bombing, arriving with
the first wave of US Marines on the USS Millett that landed in Japan on August
14, 1945. Armed with a pistol, a typewriter and a Japanese phrasebook, he
traveled through scenes of unparalleled destruction caused by US air raids,
onto “where Hiroshima used to be.” “There was devastation and desolation and
nothing else.”
Burchett was the first to expose
the devastating effects of radiation that was being denied by the Allied forces
at the time. His dispatch conveys the harrowing confusion and ignorance of the
victims as to what was done to them — it was thought the bombs contained a
poisonous gas, perhaps, and doctors hoped the Americans would provide an
antidote. By the end of 1945, some 140,000 were dead in Hiroshima and a further
70,000 in Nagasaki — a number that will continue to grow over the course of the
century.
Despite the Allied officials’
attempts to censor the story, Burchett’s dispatch was published in The Daily
Express on September 5, 1945. It is a piece of journalism that should be read
over and over again — “as a warning to the world” — because like no other
account, it brings home the inhuman reality of a nuclear holocaust.
“I Write This as a
Warning to the World”
The Daily Express,
London, September 5, 1945.
Express Staff Reporter
Wilfred Burchett was the first Allied staff reporter to enter the atom-bomb
city. He travelled 400 miles from Tokyo alone and unarmed carrying rations for
seven meals — food is almost unobtainable in Japan — a black umbrella, and a
typewriter. Here is his story from — HIROSHIMA, Tuesday.
In Hiroshima, 30 days
after the first atomic bomb destroyed the city and shook the world, people are
still dying, mysteriously and horribly — people who were uninjured by the
cataclysm — from an unknown something which I can only describe as atomic
plague.
Hiroshima does not look like a bombed
city. It looks as if a monster steamroller had passed over it and squashed it
out of existence. I write these facts as dispassionately as I can in the hope
that they will act as a warning to the world. In this first testing ground of
the atomic bomb I have seen the most terrible and frightening desolation in
four years of war. It makes a blitzed Pacific island seem like an Eden. The
damage is far greater than photographs can show.
When you arrive in Hiroshima you can look
around and for 25, perhaps 30, square miles you can hardly see a building. It
gives you an empty feeling in the stomach to see such man-made devastation.
And so the people of Hiroshima
today are walking through the forlorn desolation of their once proud city with
gauze masks over their mouths and noses. It probably does not help them
physically. But it helps them mentally.
I picked my way to a
shack [sic] used as a temporary police headquarters in the middle of the
vanished city. Looking south from there I could see about three miles of
reddish rubble. That is all the atomic bomb left of dozens of blocks of city streets,
of buildings, homes, factories and human beings.
Still They Fall
There is just nothing
standing except about 20 factory chimneys — chimneys with no factories. I
looked west. A group of half a dozen gutted buildings. And then again nothing.
The police chief of Hiroshima
welcomed me eagerly as the first Allied correspondent to reach the city. With
the local manager of Domei, a leading Japanese news agency, he drove me
through, or perhaps I should say over, the city. And he took me to hospitals
where the victims of the bomb are still being treated.
In these
hospitals I found people who, when the bomb fell, suffered absolutely no
injuries, but now are dying from the uncanny after-effects.
For no apparent reason their health
began to fail. They lost appetite. Their hair fell out. Bluish spots appeared
on their bodies. And the bleeding began from the ears, nose and mouth.
At first the doctors told me
they thought these were the symptoms of general debility. They gave their
patients Vitamin A injections. The results were horrible. The flesh started
rotting away from the hole caused by the injection of the needle.
And in every case the
victim died.
That is one of the
after-effects of the first atomic bomb man ever dropped and I do not want to
see any more examples of it. But in walking through the month-old rubble I
found others.
The Sulphur Smell
My nose detected a peculiar odour
unlike anything I have ever smelled before. It is something like sulphur, but
not quite. I could smell it when I passed a fire that was still smouldering, or
at a spot where they were still recovering bodies from the wreckage. But I
could also smell it where everything was still deserted.
They believe it
is given off by the poisonous gas still issuing from the earth soaked with
radioactivity released by the split uranium atom.
And so the
people of Hiroshima today are walking through the forlorn desolation of their
once proud city with gauze masks over their mouths and noses. It probably does
not help them physically. But it helps them mentally.
From the moment that this devastation was loosed upon
Hiroshima the people who survived have hated the white man. It is a hate the
intensity of which is almost as frightening as the bomb itself.
“All Clear” Went
The counted dead number
53,000. Another 30,000 are missing, which means “certainly dead”. In the day I
have stayed in Hiroshima – and this is nearly a month after the bombing – 100
people have died from its effects.
They were some of the 13,000
seriously injured by the explosion. They have been dying at the rate of 100 a
day. And they will probably all die. Another 40,000 were slightly injured.
These casualties might not
have been as high except for a tragic mistake. The authorities thought this was
just another routine Super-Fort raid. The plane flew over the target and
dropped the parachute which carried the bomb to its explosion point.
Many people had
suffered only a slight cut from a falling splinter of brick or steel. They
should have recovered quickly. But they did not. They developed an acute
sickness. Their gums began to bleed. And then they vomited blood. And finally
they died.
The American plane
passed out of sight. The all-clear was sounded and the people of Hiroshima came
out from their shelters. Almost a minute later the bomb reached the 2,000 foot
altitude at which it was timed to explode – at the moment when nearly everyone
in Hiroshima was in the streets.
Hundreds
upon hundreds of the dead were so badly burned in the terrific heat generated
by the bomb that it was not even possible to tell whether they were men or
women, old or young.
Of
thousands of others, nearer the centre of the explosion, there was no trace.
They vanished. The theory in Hiroshima is that the atomic heat was so great
that they burned instantly to ashes – except that there were no ashes.
If you could see
what is left of Hiroshima you would think that London had not been touched by
bombs.
Heap of Rubble
The Imperial Palace, once an
imposing building, is a heap of rubble three feet high, and there is one piece
of wall. Roof, floors and everything else is dust.
Hiroshima has one intact
building – the Bank of Japan. This in a city which at the start of the war had
a population of 310,000.
Almost every Japanese
scientist has visited Hiroshima in the past three weeks to try to find a way of
relieving the people’s suffering. Now they themselves have become sufferers.
For the first fortnight after the
bomb dropped they found they could not stay long in the fallen city. They had
dizzy spells and headaches. Then minor insect bites developed into great
swellings which would not heal. Their health steadily deteriorated.
Then they found another extraordinary
effect of the new terror from the skies.
Many people had suffered only a
slight cut from a falling splinter of brick or steel. They should have
recovered quickly. But they did not. They developed an acute sickness. Their
gums began to bleed. And then they vomited blood. And finally they died.
All these phenomena, they told me,
were due to the radio-activity released by the atomic bomb’s explosion of the
uranium atom.
Water Poisoned
They found that the water had been
poisoned by chemical reaction. Even today every drop of water consumed in
Hiroshima comes from other cities. The people of Hiroshima are still afraid.
The scientists told me they have noted a
great difference between the effect of the bombs in Hiroshima and in Nagasaki.
Hiroshima is in perfectly
flat delta country. Nagasaki is hilly. When the bomb dropped on Hiroshima the
weather was bad, and a big rainstorm developed soon afterwards.
And so they believe that the uranium
radiation was driven into the earth and that, because so many are still falling
sick and dying, it is still the cause of this man-made plague.
At Nagasaki, on the other
hand, the weather was perfect, and scientists believe that this allowed the
radio-activity to dissipate into the atmosphere more rapidly. In addition, the
force of the bomb’s explosion was, to a large extent, expended into the sea,
where only fish were killed.
To support this theory, the
scientists point out to the fact that, in Nagasaki, death came swiftly,
suddenly, and that there have been no after-effects such as those that
Hiroshima is still suffering.
Postscriptum
“It so happened that step by
step and almost accidentally, I had achieved a sort of journalistic Nirvana,
free of any built-in loyalties to governments, parties, or any organizations
whatsoever. My loyalty was to my own convictions and my readers. This demanded
freedom from any discipline except that of getting the facts on important
issues back to the sort of people likely to act — often at great self-sacrifice
— on the information they received. This was particularly so during my
reporting from Vietnam, the most important of my career, far too important to
be swayed by dictates from outside or above. Over the years, and in many
countries, I had a circle of readers who did not buy papers for the stock
market reports or strip cartoons, but for facts on vital issues affecting their
lives and their consciences. In keeping both eyes and both ears open during my
forty years’ reporting from the world’s hot spots, I had become more and more
conscious of my responsibilities to my readers. The point of departure is a great
faith in ordinary human beings and the sane and decent way they behave when
they have the true facts of the case.”
— Wilfred Burchett, At the Barricades
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own
and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.
© Fair observer. All RIGHTS RESERVED.
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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