In September 1945 Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett defied US restrictions and snuck into Hiroshima by train. Burchett was the first to tell the world about the effects of radiation on the victims of the bombing, which the US denied both before and after his story was published.
Wilfred Graham Burchett (16 September 1911 – 27 September 1983) was an Australian journalist known for being the first western journalist to report from Hiroshima after the dropping of the atomic bomb, and for his reporting from “the other side” during the wars in Korea and Vietnam.
Burchett began his journalism at the start of the Second World War during which he reported from China, Burma and Japan and covered the war in the Pacific. After the war he reported on the trials in Hungary, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and on Cambodia under Pol Pot. During the Korean war he investigated and confirmed claims by the North Korean government that the US had used Germ warfare. He was the first western journalist to interview Yuri Gagarin afte… Continue Reading (20 minute read)
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5 thoughts on “In September 1945 Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett defied US restrictions and snuck into Hiroshima by train. Burchett was the first to tell the world about the effects of radiation on the victims of the bombing, which the US denied both before and after his story was published.”
OuTLi3R28
*In Hiroshima, 30 days after the first atomic bomb destroyed the city and shook the world, people are still dying, mysteriously and horribly – people who were uninjured by the cataclysm – from an* ***unknown something*** *which I can only describe as* ***atomic plague***\*. Hiroshima does not look like a bombed city. It looks as if a monster steamroller had passed over it and squashed it out of existence. I write these facts as dispassionately as I can in the hope that they will act as a warning to the world.
Burchett also was the first to report, years later, that the national liberation struggle in Cambodia had gone horribly wrong. At the time he was writing for [The Guardian, a now-defunct weekly newspaper that spoke to and for the independent left in the US](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Guardian) — not the UK, as the Wikipedia article wrongly cites.
*In Hiroshima, 30 days after the first atomic bomb destroyed the city and shook the world, people are still dying, mysteriously and horribly – people who were uninjured by the cataclysm – from an* ***unknown something*** *which I can only describe as* ***atomic plague***\*. Hiroshima does not look like a bombed city. It looks as if a monster steamroller had passed over it and squashed it out of existence. I write these facts as dispassionately as I can in the hope that they will act as a warning to the world.
\- **Wilfred Burchett**
Burchett also was the first to report, years later, that the national liberation struggle in Cambodia had gone horribly wrong. At the time he was writing for [The Guardian, a now-defunct weekly newspaper that spoke to and for the independent left in the US](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Guardian) — not the UK, as the Wikipedia article wrongly cites.
For a second I thought it would be that he snuck into Hiroshima by train the day before the bombs were dropped or something
Thankfully nowadays we can trust our governments completely.
I mean look how long it took the Radium Girls to get any justice.