Pixelated Semantics

Entertainment for war criminals

A thorough and thoughtful article on [Australian journalist] Wilfred Burchett's coverage of the Hiroshima nuclear attack in 1945 appears in Zmag. Contrast with the revelation today that the United States shortly after ending the war with the A-bomb "gave money and other benefits" (including unspecified "entertainment") to former members of the Japanese germ warfare [Unit 731] to obtain data on human experiments the unit conducted in China during World War 2. Despite "the awful nature of Unit 731's activities", this was an apparent attempt to beat the Soviet Union in the arms race [although the justification, or otherwise of the "arms race" is in itself highly questionable]. "Awful" is a very mild word in the context of war crimes, though the Japan Times coverage only manages to describe the unit as "infamous", while Chinese stories use terms such as "butchers". One author notably explores the birth of WMD (biological and nuclear) with an article that begins describing the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as "nuclear terrorist attacks".

Item posted by AutoEditor at 1:15 pm ::