Recommended reading:
Charles Pellegrinos' The Last Train from Hiroshima
reveiwed by Joseph Kanon, in The
Having worked on both scholarly and fictional books about the history of the Atom Bomb, I have always thought the moral tragedy was not in having dropped the Bomb to avoid an invasion, but in the way Americans did nothing to provide any information about radiation to the Japanese either between
The accounts of those on the ground about casualties who survived the explosion are far sadder than the death totals. We already knew the full danger of radiation because many of the scientists who had worked on the Bomb had already died from exposure.
Whether or not US could have forced surrender with minimal loss of life in any way than dropping this terrible new weapon on Hiroshima (and there is a lot of evidence that they could not have done so), our refusal to help the Japanese understand -- and be able to treat -- the "collateral" damage of this new weapon increased the human suffering without saving lives of combatants.
It would decades before Norman Cousins orchestrated aid for those still suffering from injuries and dying from cancer without the benefit of medical research treatments which were readily available but didn't share with the world. Not only the Japanese suffered, since many Americans were deceived about the health dangers of their exposure during the period of above-ground testing.
This new book out by Charles Pellegrino focuses on what happened to the people at ground zero gets a wonderful review in the Washington Post today. The reviewer, Joseph Kanon, has also written a very powerful novel about
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