Sign in Subscribe
Blog

Portraits of Death

Portraits of Death
A survivor's illustration of the Hiroshima nuclear bombing

There are myriad facets of the the Manhattan Project's evils. They are so numerous that one could spend an entire career cataloguing and discussing them.

Last week, I took a break from my documentary's focus on the Radiological Weapons Group and dove a bit into the weapon's actual effect on its Japanese victims. I discovered this tweet by Anti-Imperialist researcher @gumby4christ:

I immediately sent an email to James Corbett with the linkā€”my mind kind of boggled that I had never heard of this before.

What do you think about this interview? Is it as disturbing and James and I found it? Do you think that the pilot of the Enola Gay should be given the opportunity to apologize? Do you think his apology should be heard and, possibly even accepted? Do you think it was fair of the show hosts to ambush Mr. Tanimoto with this confrontation?

For those of you cats on Tiktok, I made a little video posing these questions (as a correction, Mr. Tanimoto's immediate family survived the bombing, but he was at ground zero soon after providing aid to victims):

@patmacfarlane_

Man CONFRONTED WITH HIS NEIGHBORS' KILLER #hiroshima #wwii #oppenheimer #oppenheimermovie

ā™¬ original sound - Patrick MacFarlane

It ultimately made me thinkā€”for all the (righteous) American uproar over the bomb's use, there really isn't much focus at all on the actual victims of the bomb.

If you follow Gumby4Christ's above Twitter thread, you'll find a link to the harrowing little HBO documentary "White Light, Black Rain" that actually describes and documents the visceral terror that befell those poor, unnecesary souls.

As we approach the anniversary of Hiroshima, I think it might behoove us all to watch the documentary and remember that on the root of antiwar activism is the grotesque and barbaric slaughter of innocents.

Here are a few:

Like red devilsThree days later, the burned bodies in the fire cistern had turned red, like demons. I instinctively turned away. August 8, just after 11:00 a.m.250m / Nakajima-hon-machiSagami Ogawa https://hpmm-db.jp/list/detail/?cate=picture_en&search_type=detail&data_id=50563
People drinking black rainAugust 6, 1945, morningTomiko Miyaji When the black rain fell, thirsty people drank it, unaware of its radioactivity. https://hpmm-db.jp/list/detail/?cate=picture_en&search_type=detail&data_id=49863
I had no choice but to run, away from the voices calling for help 1,800m from the hypocenter Dambara Elementary School Kanaya-cho (now, Matoba-cho 2-chome) August 6, 1945, around 10:30 a.m. Drawn by Yoshinori Kato (age 17 at the time of the bombing) [Excerpt of artist comment]The elementary school had collapsed completely, and became engulfed in flames while its pupils remained trapped underneath. ā€œHelp!ā€ I could hear the shouts squeezed out with all their remaining strength, but had no choice but to run from the falling sparks of fire. https://hpmm-db.jp/list/detail/?cate=picture_en&search_type=detail&data_id=52257

To all you that just signed up for the email list, welcome to my membership website. Please take some time to view my members contentā€”there are over 90 posts. http://www.libertyweekly.club

If you think more people should be shown these horrors, please consider becoming a supporting memberā€”help me and my producer put out The Truth About Oppenheimer Part II:

Become a Supporting Member

Read next

Comments ()