Saturday, August 06, 2005

Hiroshima...plus 60 years

Another Storytelling Saturday is upon us:

Once upon a time, after learning of the carnage wrought upon Japan, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific director at Los Alamos, began to harbor second thoughts and he resigned in October 1945.

In March of the following year, Oppenheimer told Harry Truman:

“Mr. President, I have blood on my hands.”

Truman’s reply: “It’ll come out in the wash.”

Later, the president told an aide, “Don’t bring that fellow around again.”

...and no one lived happily ever after.

Anyone else wanna tell us a story?


The first “shock and awe”

“Why did we drop [the bomb]?” pondered Studs Terkel. “So little Harry could show Molotov and Stalin we’ve got the cards. That was the phrase Truman used. We showed the goddamned Russians we’ve got something and they’d better behave themselves in Europe. That’s why it was dropped. The evidence is overwhelming. And yet you tell that to 99 percent of Americans and they’ll spit in your eye.”

P.S. For more on WWII, you can pre-order my upcoming re-release, “There is No Good War: The Myths of World War II,” by clicking on the image in the right-hand column.

That book will be published by Vox Pop:
http://www.nypress.com/18/31/food/alexanderzaitchik.cfm

+++

Selected readings and viewings:

“The Atomic Bombers Speak”
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/05/1548248

“The Atomic Café”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083590

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Posted on 08/06 at 07:07 AM
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