1. 17 June 2005

    1910 days ago

    Report on Nagasaki just after the atom bomb hit

    As one whittles away at embroidery and checks the stories, the impression grows that the atomic bomb is a tremendous, but not a peculiar weapon. The Japanese have heard the legend from American radio that the ground preserves deadly irradiation. But hours of walking amid the ruins where the odor of decaying flesh is still strong produces in this writer nausea, but no sign or burns or debilitation. 1

    Men, woman and children with no outward marks of injury are dying daily in hospitals, some after having walked around three or four weeks thinking they have escaped. 4

    Disease X, as it was called, baffled most Japanese Doctors, because in certain cases it resembled radiation poisoning, but in others light burns just kept spreading over the skin and eventually killed the patient.

    At first the a-bomb didn’t appear so impressive…

    The U.S. government at the time wanted to play down the effects radiation had on health and feared that Weller’s story would affect American public opinion and it possibly affected development of a nuclear arms race. >

    On the same day, Weller visited two Nagasaki hospitals and realized the symptoms peculiar to radiation poisoning. He wrote of seeing a woman who had initially suffered only a minor burn, yet was now unable to speak and her legs and arms were speckled with tiny red spots. >

    via Kjell Olsen1910 days ago

  2. 16 May 2005

    1942 days ago

    Guardian Unlimited | Life | 'This is how science is done'

    The sky was lit up with a bright yellow light — the earth appeared white. The yellow gradually became darker, turning gradually to orange. In the sky I saw white clouds from above the gadget caused by the sudden expansion following the blast wave — the expansion cools the air and fog clouds form — we had expected this. The orange got deeper, but where the gadget was, it was still bright, a bright orange, flaming ball-like mass. This started to rise, leaving a column of smoke behind, below looking much like the stem of a mushroom. The orange mass continued to rise, the orange to fade and flicker. A great ball of smoke and flame three miles across it was, like a great oil fire billowing and churning, now black smoke, now orange flame. Soon the orange died out and only churning smoke, but this was enveloped in a wonderful purple glow.
    Another after-image I thought, but on closing my eyes it did disappear, and appeared on opening them again. Others said they saw it too, probably caused by ionised air produced in the great heat. Gradually this disappeared, the ball of smoke rising majestically slowly upward, leaving a trail of dust and smoke. Richard Fenyman, on the detonation of one of the first atom bombs in the New Mexico desert.

    At almost 13 I dropped out of Sunday school just before confirmation because of differences in religious views but mainly because I suddenly saw that the picture of Jewish history that we were learning, of a marvellous and talented people surrounded by dull and evil strangers was far from the truth.The error of anti-Semitism is not that the Jews are not really bad after all, but that evil, stupidity and grossness is not a monopoly of the Jewish people but a universal characteristic of mankind in general. Most non-Jewish people in America today have understood that.The error of pro-Semitism is not that the Jewish people or Jewish heritage is not really good, but rather the error is that intelligence, good will, and kindness is not, thank God, a monopoly of the Jewish people but a universal characteristic of mankind in general.
    Therefore, you see at 13 I was not only converted to other religious views but I also stopped believing that the Jewish people are in any way “the chosen people”.

    I am glad that I am not so teased because I am sure of nothing, and find myself having to say “I don’t know” very often. After all, I was born not knowing and have only had a little time to change that here and there. It is fun to find things you thought you knew, and then to discover you didn’t really understand it after all.

    via Kjell Olsen1942 days ago

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