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Thursday, November 15, 2012

Reply to 'NYT': Against the Atomic Bombings

UPDATE  I just interviewed Oliver Stone today and will be writing a piece for The Nation in about a week--mainly about Hiroshima, with his episode airing a few days later.  Also will be chatting with co-author of his book from the series, Peter Kuznick, also a Hiroshima expert. 

Earlier:  I presume no one here was shocked by Alessandra Stanley's harsh critique of the Oliver Stone "Untold History" series starting tonight on Showtime.  Apparently she would have been happier if it was titled "Re-Told History."  There's too much to rebut here, but let me just say that in one area of m actual expertise, the atomic bombings of Japan, she is way off the mark.  She also asserts that Stone's views were handled already in a couple of docs back in 1995--ignoring that most who view that episode of his series will no doubt feel much of it is new to them. 

A new online collection of arguments against use of the atomic bomb against Japan (right up to Eisenhower) is nothing new to anyone who has even loosely studied the issue which means it may be a shock to most Americans today if they's peruse it.   As some may know, I have written about this issue more or less continuously since the early 1980s for major newspapers and magazines, and when I was editor of Nuclear Times visited the two atomic cities in Japan for several weeks, then co-authored a book with Robert Jay Lifton and more recently my own book and ebook Atomic Cover-up.  And did this video below on a "coverup" that was deemed necessary to hide the truth of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

My books also probe Truman's outright censorship of the first Hollywood movie on the use of the bomb.  These coverups would have hardly been required if the use of the bomb was as necessary and unavoidable as Alessandra Stanley suggests.

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