Chinese and Taiwanese survivors of atomic bombings sue Japanese government for medical assistance

Japanese public t.v. broadcaster NHK has reported that survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the U.S. in 1945 have sued the Japanese government for $15,000 due to having been denied medical assistance for over 65 years. Japanese courts have previously ruled that foreign Hibakusha, or survivors of the atomic bombings, are entitled to such compensation.

Mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki express alarm at U.S. nuclear weapons tests

The Mainichi Daily News of Japan has reported that Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue (photo left) and Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui (photo right) have expressed dismay at U.S. nuclear weapons tests carried out in November 2010 and March 2011. Citing U.S. President Barack Obama's epoch-making speech calling for a nuclear-free world in Prague in April 2009, Hiroshima Mayor Matsui said, "We call upon the U.S. to withhold from any actions that could generate misunderstandings among those who are sincerely hoping for the elimination of nuclear weapons." "We have yet to learn what significance the experiments have, but we cannot tolerate them if they are to lead to the development of new atomic weapons," said Nagasaki Mayor Taue. So-called "sub-critical" nuclear weapons testing has continued at the Nevada Test Site even after the September 1992 moratorium on full-scale underground nuclear weapons blasts announced by President George H.W. Bush. For example, on February 14, 2002 (Valentine's Day) -- the very same day George W. Bush's Energy Secretary Spence Abraham gave his thumbs up to Yucca Mountain's "suitability" as a radioactive waste dump, and announced the Nuclear Power 2010 Program -- a "sub-critical" nuclear weapons test was also carried out in Nevada. Using conventional explosives laden with plutonium, the data collected from these tests are fed into super computers, capable of "advancing" nuclear weapons designs without carrying out full-scale detonations.

Japanese survivors of A-bombs victimized for second time, by Fukushima Daiichi's radioactivity

The Mainichi Daily News of Japan has reported, in an article entitled "Lives of A-bomb victims thrown into turmoil yet again by radiation," that scores of Hibakusha (survivors of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945) residing in Fukushima have now been traumatized for a second time by radioactivity -- this time from a major nuclear power plant accident in their prefecture. (Note that Beyond Nuclear's Kevin Kamps was hosted at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant last August by a town councillor from Iitate, Mr. Sato, a long-time anti-nuclear activist working to shut down the Fukushima Daiichi and Daiini nuclear power plants).

"Hiroshima: Ground Zero 1945" photo exhibit at International Center of Photography, New York City, May to August 2011

Hiroshima: Ground Zero 1945
International Center of Photography
May 20–August 28, 2011

After the United States detonated an atomic bomb at Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, the U.S. government restricted the circulation of images of the bomb's deadly effect. President Truman dispatched some 1,150 military personnel and civilians, including photographers, to record the destruction as part of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey. The goal of the Survey's Physical Damage Division was to photograph and analyze methodically the impact of the atomic bomb on various building materials surrounding the blast site, the first "Ground Zero." The haunting, once-classified images of absence and annihilation formed the basis for civil defense architecture in the United States. This exhibition includes approximately 60 contact prints drawn from a unique archive of more than 700 photographs in the collection of the International Center of Photography. The exhibition is organized Erin Barnett, Assistant Curator of Collections.

icp.org/​museum/​exhibitions/​hiroshima-ground-zero-1945

A short video, produced and directed by Adam Harrison Levy, edited by Stephanie Gould, with music by Paul Brill, tells more about the exhibit.

The Four Horsemen of the Nuclear Apocalypse

By Eben Harrell in TIME.