You turn to us for voices you won't hear anywhere else.

Sign up for Democracy Now!'s Daily Digest to get our latest headlines and stories delivered to your inbox every day.

“A Warning to the World” By Amy Goodman

ColumnMarch 16, 2011
Listen
Media Options
Listen

Media Options
Media Options

By Amy Goodman with Denis Moynihan

A reporter, describing the devastation of one city in Japan, wrote: “It looks as if a monster steamroller had passed over it and squashed it out of existence. I write these facts … as a warning to the world.” The reporter was Wilfred Burchett, writing from Hiroshima, Japan, on Sept. 5, 1945. Burchett was the first Western reporter to make it to Hiroshima after the atomic bomb was dropped there. He reported on the strange illness that continued to kill people, even a full month after that first, dreadful use of nuclear weapons against humans. His words could well describe the scenes of annihilation in northeastern Japan today. Given the worsening catastrophe at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, his grave warning to the world remains all too relevant.

Read More

Related Story

StoryAug 09, 201873 Years After U.S. Dropped Atom Bomb on Nagasaki, Survivor Warns About Threat of Nuclear Warfare
The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Non-commercial news needs your support

We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work.
Please do your part today.
Make a donation
Top