Cover to Cover: Lesley Blume on Hiroshima Revealed

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World Affairs Councils Podcast

News & Politics


Listen now to WACA's Cover to Cover conference call from Thursday, August 6, at 2:00-2:30 PM ET, featuring Lesley Blume, award-winning journalist, historian, and New York Times bestselling author, on her book Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-Up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World. Just days after the U.S. decimated Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear bombs, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. But even before the surrender, the U.S. government and military had begun a secret propaganda and information suppression campaign to hide the devastating nature of these experimental weapons. The cover-up intensified as Occupation forces closed the atomic cities to Allied reporters, preventing leaks about the horrific long-term effects of radiation which would kill thousands during the months after the blast. For nearly a year the cover-up worked - until New Yorker journalist John Hersey got into Hiroshima and managed to report the truth to the world. Released on the 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, Fallout is an engrossing detective story, as well as an important piece of hidden history that shows how one heroic scoop saved - and can still save - the world.