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June 20, 2005
WWII Unembedded Journalist's Papers Finally See The Light of Day
An American journalist who sneaked into Nagasaki soon after the Japanese city was leveled by a U.S. atomic bomb found a "wasteland of war" and victims moaning from the pain of radiation burns in downtown hospitals.Censored 60 years ago by the U.S. military, George Weller's stories from the atom bombed-city surfaced this month in a series of reports in the national Mainichi newspaper.
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Though he skirted American authorities to get into Nagasaki, Weller submitted his reports the first was dated Sept. 6 to the censors. The stories infuriated MacArthur and he personally ordered them quashed. The originals were never returned to him.
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[George Weller's son] Anthony Weller told Mainichi he thought wartime officials wanted to hush up stories about radiation sickness and feared that his father's reports would sway American public opinion against building an arsenal of nuclear bombs.
How many years will we have to wait for the truth from Iraq?
Posted by zeynep at June 20, 2005 06:02 AM