Fallout Quotes

“the prognosis for civilization’s survival is grim; as Einstein said after the Japan bombings: “I do not know how the Third World War will be fought, but I can tell you what they will use in the Fourth—rocks.”
― Lesley M.M. Blume, Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World

“The opportunity to learn from history's tragedies has not yet passed.”
― Lesley M.M. Blume, Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World

“Yet the greatest tragedy of the twenty-first century may be that we have learned so little from the greatest tragedies of the twentieth century. Apparently catastrophe lessons need to be experienced firsthand by each generation. So, here are some refreshers: Nuclear conflict may mean the end of life on this planet. Mass dehumanization can lead to genocide. The death of an independent press can lead to tyranny and render a population helpless to protect itself against a government that disdains law and conscience.”
― Lesley M.M. Blume, Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World

“Ross had long instructed Shawn that “we don’t cover the news; we parallel the news”;”
― Lesley M.M. Blume, Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World

“I covered it up, and John Hersey uncovered it,” [McCrary] stated. “That’s the difference between a P.R. man and a reporter.”
― Lesley M.M. Blume, Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World

“What private hopes had his conscription snatched from him?”
― Lesley M.M. Blume, Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World

“The figure of the journalist was becoming more important than what was being written about.”
― Lesley M.M. Blume, Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World

“I think that what has kept the world safe from the bomb since 1945 has not been a deterrence, in the sense of fear of specific weapons, so much as it’s been memory,” [Hersey] said in 1986, in a rare interview. “The memory of what happened at Hiroshima.”
― Lesley M.M. Blume, Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World

“Hiroshimahad become the document of record about the true human cost of nuclear war, and was destined to remain so for decades.”
― Lesley M.M. Blume, Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World

“War is ethically totally different from peace,” [Conant] later stated”
― Lesley M.M. Blume, Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World

“History is history,” the Times concluded. “It cannot be undone. [But] [sic] the future is still ours to help make.”
― Lesley M.M. Blume, Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World

“The disasters at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were our handiwork,” the Times editorial stated. “They were defended then, and are defended now, by the argument that they saved more lives than they took – more lives of Japanese as well as more lives of Americans. The argument may be sound or it may be unsound. One may think it sound when he recalls Tarawa, Iwo Jima, or Okinawa. One may think it unsound when he reads Mr. Hersey.”
― Lesley M.M. Blume, Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World

“Every American who has permitted himself to make jokes about atom bombs, or who has come to regard them as just one sensational phenomenon that can now be accepted as part of civilization, like the airplane and the gasoline engine… ought to read Mr. Hersey,” the editorial read.”
― Lesley M.M. Blume, Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World

“After the war, the Germans had professed that they hadn’t known what happened in their concentration camps, the editorial pointed out; Americans were now in a comparable position and looked like “amoral fools.” Hiroshima had not been treated as a crime because it was a victor’s handiwork.”
― Lesley M.M. Blume, Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World

“Journalism allows its readers to witness history,” [Hersey] later said”
― Lesley M.M. Blume, Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World

“…Hiroshima terrified Hersey from the moment he arrived; the fact that a single bomb had caused this destruction would torment him throughout the duration of his assignment.”
― Lesley M.M. Blume, Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World

“Summoned by Congress that November to testify about use of the bombs on Japan and their after-effects, the [General Groves] eventually conceded that radiation had been responsible for some of the deaths in the atomic cities, but informed the Senate Special Committee on Atomic Energy that doctors had assured him that radiation poisoning “is a very pleasant way to die.”
― Lesley M.M. Blume, Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World

“How simple it is to scoop the world, even if a flock of other journalists have the same facts and the same opportunities,” [Ross] told Flanner.”
― Lesley M.M. Blume, Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World

“Hiroshima was a decimated “death laboratory” littered with the corpses of “human guinea pigs”…”
― Lesley M.M. Blume, Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World

“Upon hearing the news about Hiroshima, Hersey was immediately overwhelmed by a sense of despair.”
― Lesley M.M. Blume, Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World

“…Little Boy, was already considered primitive by the time Hersey wrote his 1946 story just months after the bomb’s detonation.”
― Lesley M.M. Blume, Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World

“But as the document of record – read over years by millions around the world – graphically showing what nuclear warfare truly looks like, and what atomic bombs do to humans, “Hiroshima” has played a major role in preventing nuclear war since the end of World War II. In 1946, Hersey’s story was the first truly effective, internationally heeded warning about the existential threat that nuclear arms posed to civilisation. It has since helped motivate generations of activists and leaders to prevent nuclear war, which would likely end the brief human experiment on earth. We know what atomic apocalypse would look like because John Hersey showed us. Since the release of “Hiroshima,” no leader or party could threaten nuclear action without an absolute knowledge of the horrific results of such an attack.”
― Lesley M.M. Blume, Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World

“The published images of Hiroshima’s demolished landscape gravely undersold the reality of atomic aftermath.”
― Lesley M.M. Blume, Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World

“The few journalists attempting to report on the atomic cities in the weeks immediately following the bombings were threatened with expulsion from Japan, harassed by U.S. officials, and accused of spreading Japanese propaganda…”
― Lesley M.M. Blume, Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World

“The United States – which had just won a painfully earned moral and military victory over the Axis powers – was not eager to “get the reputation for outdoing Hitler in atrocities,” as the country’s secretary of war put it.”
― Lesley M.M. Blume, Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World

“(The Ross editing experience could be like “being stung to death by an army of gnats,” one New Yorker writer recalled.)”
― Lesley M.M. Blume, Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World

“If our concept of… civilization was to mean anything,” he stated, “we had to acknowledge the humanity of even our misled and murderous enemies.” When he got into Japan, and then into Hiroshima—no small feat in an occupied country closely controlled by General Douglas MacArthur and his forces—Hersey managed to interview dozens of blast survivors.”
― Lesley M.M. Blume, Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World