Hiroshima Day Archival Special
In common history Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima represent the beginning and the end events of World War II suggesting that the attack on Pearl Harbor forced the US into war and the bombing of Hiroshima saved the lives of up to one million US soldiers who might have been killed in an invasion of Japan. With help from long ignored or classified information Arjun Makhijani re-analyzes both events. This talk, given to Nuke Free Now in August 2012 near the Los Alamos Weapons Lab, presents thought provoking information about why and how nuclear weapons were developed and who really was in control of their use.
Makhijani asks how it had been possible to exclude almost all military and civilian leaders of the WWII war effort from the Pentagon to the US government, including even the Vice President, and all but a handful of members of Congress, from knowing about and influencing the Manhattan Project.
Among the few in charge was the engineer and inventor Vannevar Bush. He was the first presidential science advisor and coordinated around 6,000 scientists working on war technologies. Bush was director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) in the Roosevelt White House, the very organization that initiated the Manhattan Project.
Notes:
Makhijani has written books and articles on the nuclear fuel cycle, weapons production, testing, workers’ exposure to radiation and nuclear waste. He is President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, in Maryland, their web site is http://ieer.org/
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:01 — 19.9MB)
