Hiroshima Report

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Wilfred Burchett's report on Hiroshima bombing in 1945 titled "Warning to the World" in the Daily Telegraph created a furore in the US military junta. They imposed sanction and restriction on all allied correspondents. They said henceforth all news would be supplied only by the Japanese news agency Damei as a result of which all the allied correspondents were driven to a press ghetto situated a mile away from Tokyo city. The newsmen were handed out censored English version of the Japanese press release. Allied newsmen totally became dependent on Damei for news coverage on bomb survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One month after the explosion in Hiroshima, a selected band of occupation press cops were allowed by the US military establishment to report on the devastating power of the explosion just to hoodwink the public sentiment at large. The team was led by the deputy Commander of the Manhattan project Brigadier General Thomas D Farrell. The team was also accompanied by a reputed science writer for the New York Times William L Lawrence, also a member of the inner circle of the Government's nuclear weapon Directorate. The leaders of the team treated burchett with suspicion. They were astonished to see that an indepedent correspondent could manage to to get to the very spot of 'atomic grave' even ahead of US War Department loyalists. Reporting of Lawrence in the New York Times and that of Burchett in the Daily Telegraph are ples apart in sense and sensivity. Lawrence's story provocatively titled as "No Redioactivity in the Hiroshima Ruin" published on 13th. Sept. 1945 in the New York Times presented the American views of the side : "Brigadier General TF Farrell denied categorically that it (atom bomb) produced a dangerous, lingering radioactivity in the ruins of the town (Hiroshima), caused a form of poison gas at the moment of explosion... "He said his group of scientists found no evidence of continuing radioactivity in the blasted area on Sept. 9...it was his opinion that there was no danger to be encountered by living in the area at present..." Lawrence left no stone unturned to prove that the claim of "atomic plague" or radiation in the bombed area was just unfounded. For his great services of this he was later awarded with Pulitzer Prize!