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phies of two of them.

One is Kazuo, a gentle
and gifted lad of 14*whose
schoolboy aspirations and
standards of conduct were
twisted and ravaged by the
“Pikadon” as surely as the
city’s girders.

The second man Jungk tells
us about is Ichiro Kawamoto,
electrician, later casual labor-
er, humanitarian and peace
fighter.

Kawamoto embodies the in-
tense personal commitment
to the cause of peace which
the author urges upon all of
us.

* a *

The ordeal of Hiroshima’s
survivors began with a raging
hell of flames and tumbled
corpses. For days, Jungk tells
us, the city was “the site of

. a million agonies .
groans, screams, whimperings

. crowds of cripples.

“Byen in the unending
nights, beneath the blu ish
glow reflected from the piles
of corpses . . . this whimper
ing, helpless hurrying hither-
and-thither never stopped.”

The “Pikadon”’ was follow-
ed within weeks by the worst
floods the city had known in
centuries. After the floods, by
a bitter irony, came thirst,
for the water system had been
severely damaged by the
bomb.

Hunger, bordering on fam-
ine came next. Thousands
were reduced to a powder
made of potato leaves and
“railway grass”. “WE
STARVE!” cried Hiroshima’s
great 1946 May Day banner.

Meanwhile the radiation
sickness became ever more
serious among the survivors.
But efforts of doctors and
scientists to deal with it were
blocked by policies of the

U.S. Occupation. aie

These policies are the chief
political target of Jungk’s
book; and indeed they are a
study in undeviating cruelty

and oppression.
* *

To begin with MacArthur's

headquarters immediately
iron-curtained Hiroshima and
Nagasaki from the world.

In Japan, John Hersey’s
book and most Japanese writ-
ings on Hiroshima were sup-
pressed, aS was a documen-
tary filmed within weeks of

‘ the attack.

Worst of all, the Occupa-
tion silenced the handful of
scientists who knew what
was happening in the bodies
of the survivors. Until the
end of the MacArthur rule in
1952 “no exact reports on the
nature of the chronic radia-
tion sickness were available
even in Hiroshima,” Jungk
reports. ;

As a result, “thousands
went on living with the after-
effects of Pikadon at work
within their organisms.” The
symptoms ranged from retch-
ing and headaches to leuke-
mia, hemorrhage and eye
damage.

The ultimate cruelty came
when the U.S. Atom Bomb
Casualty Commission at last
set up in Hiroshima a superb
clinic, staffed with experts
on radiation diseases, to ex-
amine the victims, to diag-
nose and catalogue their
agonies, but not to administer
so much as an aspirin to a
single sufferer!

Jungk suggests that the
true purpose of the clinic was

purely military; to assess the

medical results of atomic at-

tack so as to gain advantage
in a contemplated future war.
* * 5
Not only medical care but
housing as well was denied
the survivors. Jungk contends
housing was and remains to-
day their primary need.
Yet these helpless thous-
ands are still jammed in the
“atomic slums,” an environ-
ment in which treatment is
useless and recovery impos-
sible. Again, the U.S. Occu-
pation bears responsibility.
Hiroshima was denied
funds for rebuilding, Jungk
notes, because MacArthur’s
headquarters held that any
special help would “imply
an indebtedness, perhaps
even an admission of guilt.”
Jungk’s basic thesis, im-
plicit throughout the book
and openly stated in its final

‘sentence, is that men and

women must dedicate them-
selves, as did his hero, Ichiro
Kawamoto, to. the fight
against atomic’ war: “Let
every man find his own way
to fight for the preservation
of life. Only: this must be
his most serious and even
sacred task.”’

To this thesis, decent peo-
ple can only say, “Amen.”
But what Jungk’s book does
not express, what he may not
even understand fully, is the
potential of the great mass of
the people. in motion, guided
and inspired by the most dis-

iroshima

ciplined section, the organ-
ized workers.

This is the engine—crude,
mixed in motivation, but
irresistible — that shapes
history; this is the force that
can muzzle the slavering dogs
of war.

* * *

But Jungk’s book serves
the cause of peace well, and
the cause of peace today is
the single great cause.

His moving account of the
toll of a single primitive A-
bomb exposes the fraud of
the civil defense experts who
propose to issue helmet liners
against Hell.

Hiroshima teaches us that
a new atomic. war would
deny mankind even the
mercy of sudden death, could
make of the earth not “a
totally dead desert,’ but “a
single huge hospital, a world
in which everyone was sick
or wounded.

For decades, and even for
centuries . . the survivors
would go on dying .. .”

In the unique heat of the
Pikadon, Jungk tells us in
a quiet, charged passage, the
very stones of the city “wept”
or “bled.”

That is, the inner core
forced its way through the
lighter surface material ‘‘to
merge as boils or sores.’

Here is the measure of
atomic war; even inorganic
rock undergoes a_ frightful
transformation.

And thus even the mute,
tragic, leprous stones of Hiro-
shima find utterance in this
powerful book, joining the
cry of the Children of the
Ashes for peace and an end
forever to nuclear explosions
everywhere in the world.

—FRANKLIN DAY,
PEOPLE’S WORLD

The Czechoslovak Skoda
works was recently granted
an order for trolley-buses in
Brazil. The firm won the
order over bids from Ameri-
can, British, West German,
Italian and Japanese firms.

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how it
at ordinary
a © in all walks

of life committed and toler-
ated the appalling crimes per-
petrated during the Hitler
period; at a second level the
film poses a question | which
is perhaps even more import-
ant for today: Given that the
western world must defend
itself against communism
(and this idea is accepted as
self-evident), can it do so. if
it relies on the aid and assist-
ance of the.old nazi war crim-
inals?

The film ends with the
bleak statement on the
screen: “Of the 99 war crim-
inals sentenced in 1949 in the
second Nuremberg Trials, not
one is today serving his sen-
tence.”

Here are some short ex-
tracts from reviews of the
film “Judgment at Nurem-
bere” in the British press:

“The Times”: “This is a
film which, while it appeals.
as it cannot help doing, to
the emotions, is primarily a
matter of intellectual argu-
ment — and the argument,
of vital importance then, is
still of vital importance today
_, . A film which. judged hv
any standards. is a brave and
formidable achievement.”

“Daily Express’: “From
America to Nuremberg comes
a small lawyer (Spencer
Tracy) to preside over the
trial of four Nazi judgeson
charges of having manipulat-

| Hollywood film faces the

4 @

ed Hitler’s foul judicial sys-
tem and sent scores of people
to their deaths. And once he
reaches Nuremberg the Am-
erican military mission is
quick to hint what is expected
of him. . ee

‘The Germans are our
allies now, don’t stir up too
much mud’, he is told. From
all sides the pressures begin
to squeeze. : :

Marlene Dietrich, widow of
a nazi general hanged for. war
crimes ... gently assures him
that though the Nazi leaders
were beasts the German peo-
ple knew absolutely nothing
about what was going on. I
shall not forget this film for
a long time.”

May 25, 1962—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 9

facts

“Daily Worker’: At last —
a really powerful film that
takes an uncompromising
stand, not only against naz-
ism, but against the apologists
for nazism in West Germany
today.

There are many formula-
tions -in this film with which
readers of this paper will not.
agree ._.. but these are sub-
Sidiary issues compared with
the overwhelming force of
the film’s unshakable and
dramatic attack on the policy
of ‘forgive and forget’.
‘Judgment at Nuremberg’ is
the outstanding American
film of the year.”

And here is a comment
from the West Berlin news-
paper “Der Tagesspiegel”:
“Did Stanley Kramer realise
that the film will make it
difficult for millions of people
to avoid being unfairly influ-
enced against the Germany of
today. This film is a bitter
dish. One must ask oneself
for whom it was prepared.”
(The writer of this review,
Karl Silex, was himself a
leading nazi journalist).