Effects Of The Atomic Bomb

Murakami puts a bomb under his compatriots' atomic complacency

The American author of the best-sellers "On Thermonuclear War" (1960) and "Thinking about the Unthinkable" (1962), Kahn believed that nuclear war was both probable and winnable.

He told me that "tolerable" levels of victims would be in the "ballpark" of the tens of millions.

In fact, Kahn — one of the prototypes that Stanley Kubrick used to create the crazed character Dr. Strangelove (played by Peter Sellers) in his 1964 antiwar film, "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" — was urged on during that visit, and subsequently, by elements in the government here who would have liked nothing more than to see Japan armed with nuclear weapons.

At the time, two things struck me about Kahn's pithy comment concerning a Japan with atomic weapons: the words "allergy" and "outgrow."

By labeling Japan's staunch stance against possessing such weapons or even allowing them to enter its territorial waters as an "allergy," the inference was that, with some testing and remedial care, this condition could be cured. By using the word "outgrow," Kahn was explicitly calling Japanese convictions "immature."

However, Japan's government, virtually synonymous in those days with the Liberal Democratic Party (which held nearly unbroken power until 2009), had forged ahead with the nuclearization of the power industry in the decades of growth after the war without any national debate on the multifarious issues of safety related to it.

This railroading through of lax laws and permissive regulations indicated that the sleepers had been laid; and all that was then needed was to lay the tracks toward nuclear weaponry — and Japan would have come of age.

I was reminded of this history by Haruki Murakami's brilliant speech on June 9 in Barcelona, Spain, delivered in acceptance of the International Catalunya Prize. In January 2009, in his acceptance speech for the Jerusalem Prize in Israel, the author had used his podium time to deliver a keenly aimed attack on the Israeli occupation of Palestine. In Barcelona, by turning his sights to "peaceful uses of atoms," he again gave voice to the Japanese conscience of our era.

"This massive earthquake (on March 11) delivered a severe shock to practically all Japanese," he told his audience in Barcelona. "We think of ourselves as generally being used to earthquakes, but this one has thrown us for a loop. We feel helpless and even insecure about the future of the country. ... What brought about this disastrous situation?

Atomic Bomb Tested on US Troops (part 2) | Heliobiology Predicts ...

The Fukushima nuclear power plant witnessed another explosion on Monday mounting fear of a major nuclear radiation. Officials had warned about the explosion but the Japanese government tried to allay fears of a major nuke leak. This despite the fact that 22 people have already tested positive for radiation and the number is only likely to grow. Al Jazeera’s Florence Looi reports.

@insertswear Search for A-Bomb Blast Effects 1959 Vintage Atomic Bomb Film – Silent and you can see the original one. Sorry, but, the Elite knew about it, scientists knew it about radiation. They only wanted to know the effects of radiation over the soldiers. That is why this project was named Manhattan Project. All the population of the zone were radiated with it before the nuke test.

@ancientmariner1984 The US Military want answers too, they sent out questionnaires to soldiers that were part of these tests until at least the 1990′s asking medical questions to those who were on site during the tests, I know this to be fact, my dad was in the army stationed at Fort Huachuca, AZ and participated in one of the tests. Even he stated “They still want me to be one of their guinea pigs.” He threw away the last card they sent in the 90′s, then died of cancer in 2001.

@insertswear Search for A-Bomb Blast Effects 1959 Vintage Atomic Bomb Film – Silent and you can see the original one. Sorry, but, the Elite knew about it, scientists knew it about radiation. They only wanted to know the effects of radiation over the soldiers. That is why this project was named Manhattan Project. All the population of the zone were radiated with it before the nuke test.

@ancientmariner1984 The US Military want answers too, they sent out questionnaires to soldiers that were part of these tests until at least the 1990′s asking medical questions to those who were on site during the tests, I know this to be fact, my dad was in the army stationed at Fort Huachuca, AZ and participated in one of the tests. Even he stated “They still want me to be one of their guinea pigs.” He threw away the last card they sent in the 90′s, then died of cancer in 2001.

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A social history of science and technology in contemporary Japan, Road to Self-reliance 1952 - 1959