Wilfred Burchett
Wilfred Burchett
Wilfred Graham Burchettwas an Australian journalist known for his reporting of conflicts in Asia and his Communist sympathies. He was the first foreign correspondent to enter Hiroshima after the atomic bomb was dropped, and he attracted controversy for his activities during the Korean and Vietnam Wars...
NationalityAustralian
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth16 September 1911
CountryAustralia
badly bomb burned heat men possible terrific whether
Hundreds and hundreds of the dead were so badly burned in the terrific heat generated by the bomb that it was not even possible to tell whether they were men or women, old or young.
anger atomic civilians cover effects military radiation shut tried
But the real anger was generated when the US military tried to cover up the effects of atomic radiation on civilians - and tried to shut me up.
bluff camp conditions ensure japanese necessary officially pows terms whatever
It was necessary to bluff the Japanese camp commanders, with whatever authority I could muster, that I had come officially to ensure that the surrender terms were being complied with and that living conditions for the POWs were being immediately improved.
Could anything justify the extermination of civilians on such a scale?
responsibility emotional intellectual
My emotional and intellectual response to Hiroshima was that the question of the social responsibility of a journalist was posed with greater urgency than ever.
demand france modesty
As in all his subsequent dealings with France, Ho Chi Minh's demands were a model of modesty.
profound hiroshima effects
Hiroshima had a profound effect upon me.
cities hiroshima-and-nagasaki doe
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.
party splits firsts
Ho, or Nguyen Ai Quoc, thus became the first Vietnamese communist and a founding member of the French Communist party, born out of the split.
ashes heat theory
Of thousands of others, nearer the centre of the explosion, there was no trace. They vanished. The theory in Hiroshima is that the atomic heat was so great that they burned instantly to ashes - except that there were no ashes.
men squares giving
When you arrive in Hiroshima you can look around and for 25 and perhaps 30 square miles you can see hardly a building. It gives you an empty feeling in the stomach to see such man-made devastation.
identity made feels
Vietnamese must be made to feel that they are racial inferiors with no right to national identity.
war years eden
In this first testing ground of the atomic bomb I have seen the most terrible and frightening desolation in four years of war. It makes a blitzed Pacific island seem like an Eden. The damage is far greater than photographs can show.
anger weapons firsts
My anger with the US was not at first, that they had used that weapon - although that anger came later.