In his latest book, which has gained national attention, award-winning author Greg Mitchell probes a turning point in U.S. history: the suppression of film footage, for decades, shot by a U.S. Army unit in Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- with staggering consequences even today. This is a detective story, and one of the last untold stories of World War II, and it has far-reaching impact. The shocking cover-up even extended to Hollywood -- with President Truman censoring an MGM film.
Mitchell, co-author of the classic "Hiroshima in America" and eleven other books, now reveals the full story, based on new research -- from the Truman Library to Nagasaki. Along the way the book tells the story of our "nuclear entrapment" -- from Hiroshima to Fukushima.
David Friend of Vanity Fair calls it "a new work of revelatory scholarship and insight by Greg Mitchell that will speak to all of those concerned about the lessons of the nuclear age."
How did this cover-up happen? Why? And what did the two military officers, Daniel McGovern and Herbert Sussan, try to do about it, for decades? There was no WikiLeaks then to air the film. "Atomic Cover-up" answers all of these questions in a quick-paced but often surprising narrative.
"Atomic Cover-Up" opens this way: "This is the story of twenty hours of film footage, blazing with color, shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early 1946 by a U.S. military crew, that would change the lives of many people, including two American soldiers, and me. Its effect on us, and others, is deep and mysterious, because the film was hidden for decades and almost no one could see it, although that is also why its influence on each of us was so profound. While this unique and disturbing color film languished in obscurity, the atomic bombings fell into 'a hole in human history,' as the writer Mary McCarthy observed, and a costly nuclear arms race ensued. Nuclear threats of all kinds plague us to this day."
Mitchell's classic Random House book "The Campaign of the Century" won the Goldsmith Book Prize and has just been published for the first time as an e-book.. His most recent e-book, on the Occupy Wall Street movement, is titled "40 Days That Shook the World."
His other recent books and e-books are "The Age of WikiLeaks," "Bradley Manning," and "Dead Reckoning" (on the death penalty in America).
Robert Jay Lifton, author of "Death in Life" (winner of the National Book Award) and numerous other acclaimed books, writes: "Greg Mitchell has been a leading chronicler for many years of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and American behavior toward them. Now he has written the first book devoted to the suppression of historic film footage shot by Japanese and Americans in the atomic cities in 1945 and 1946. He makes use of key interviews and documents to record an extremely important part of atomic bomb history that deserves far more attention today."
Mitchell, co-author of the classic "Hiroshima in America" and eleven other books, now reveals the full story, based on new research -- from the Truman Library to Nagasaki. Along the way the book tells the story of our "nuclear entrapment" -- from Hiroshima to Fukushima.
David Friend of Vanity Fair calls it "a new work of revelatory scholarship and insight by Greg Mitchell that will speak to all of those concerned about the lessons of the nuclear age."
How did this cover-up happen? Why? And what did the two military officers, Daniel McGovern and Herbert Sussan, try to do about it, for decades? There was no WikiLeaks then to air the film. "Atomic Cover-up" answers all of these questions in a quick-paced but often surprising narrative.
"Atomic Cover-Up" opens this way: "This is the story of twenty hours of film footage, blazing with color, shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early 1946 by a U.S. military crew, that would change the lives of many people, including two American soldiers, and me. Its effect on us, and others, is deep and mysterious, because the film was hidden for decades and almost no one could see it, although that is also why its influence on each of us was so profound. While this unique and disturbing color film languished in obscurity, the atomic bombings fell into 'a hole in human history,' as the writer Mary McCarthy observed, and a costly nuclear arms race ensued. Nuclear threats of all kinds plague us to this day."
Mitchell's classic Random House book "The Campaign of the Century" won the Goldsmith Book Prize and has just been published for the first time as an e-book.. His most recent e-book, on the Occupy Wall Street movement, is titled "40 Days That Shook the World."
His other recent books and e-books are "The Age of WikiLeaks," "Bradley Manning," and "Dead Reckoning" (on the death penalty in America).
Robert Jay Lifton, author of "Death in Life" (winner of the National Book Award) and numerous other acclaimed books, writes: "Greg Mitchell has been a leading chronicler for many years of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and American behavior toward them. Now he has written the first book devoted to the suppression of historic film footage shot by Japanese and Americans in the atomic cities in 1945 and 1946. He makes use of key interviews and documents to record an extremely important part of atomic bomb history that deserves far more attention today."
