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Hiroshima Nagasaki

Paul Ham Robert Meldrum

$44.95

Audio

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English
Bolinda Audio Books
01 September 2012
′Nobody is more disturbed,′ said President Truman, three days after the destruction of Nagasaki in 1945, ′over the use of the atomic bombs than I am, but I was greatly disturbed over the unwarranted attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor and their murder of our prisoners of war. The only language [the Japanese] seem to understand is the one we have been using to bombard them. When you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him as a beast. It is most regrettable but nevertheless true.′

The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed more than 100,000 instantly, mostly women, children and the elderly. Many hundreds of thousands more succumbed to their horrific injuries later, or slowly perished of radiation-related sickness. Yet the bombs were ′our least abhorrent choice′, American leaders claimed at the time - and still today most people believe they ended the Pacific War and saved millions of American and Japanese lives. Ham challenges this view, arguing that the bombings, when Japan was on its knees, were the culmination of a strategic Allied air war on enemy civilians that began in Germany and had till then exacted its most horrific death tolls in Dresden and Tokyo.

The war in Europe may have ended but it continued in the Pacific against a regime still looking to save face. Ham describes the political manoeuvring and the scientific race to build the new atomic weapon. He also gives powerful witness to its destruction through the eyes of eighty survivors, from 12-year-olds forced to work in war factories to wives and children who faced it alone, reminding us that these two cities were full of ordinary people who suddenly, out of a clear blue summer′s sky, felt the sun fall on their heads.

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Imprint:   Bolinda Audio Books
Country of Publication:   Australia
Edition:   Unabridged edition
Dimensions:   Height: 122mm,  Width: 132mm,  Spine: 14mm
Weight:   73g
ISBN:   9781743119372
ISBN 10:   1743119372
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Audio
Publisher's Status:   Active

Paul Ham is the author of the highly acclaimed Kokoda and the Australia correspondent of the London Sunday Times. He was born and educated in Australia and lives in Sydney, having spent several years working in Britain as a journalist and publisher. Ham's Passchendale won the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction at the 2018 New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards. Robert Meldrum is an actor, director and teacher with over 35 years experience. His TV and film credits include Blue Heelers (1994) and Georgia (1988) and he is a highly respected teacher and director. Originally a member of the Australian Performing Group at the Pram Factory in Melbourne, he has performed with all the major Australian theatre companies, and was a lecturer in acting at the Victorian College of the Arts for eight years.

Reviews for Hiroshima Nagasaki

It is to Paul Ham's credit that his hefty new study, Hiroshima Nagasaki, never loses sight of the most central and most compelling aspect of the bombings. The book's strength lies in Ham's extensive interviews with survivors and in his imaginative and moral engagement with the two cities as living human communities. -- The Sydney Morning Herald


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