Paul Virilio Quotes
... the blinding Hiroshima flash... literally photographed the shadow cast by beings and things, so that every surface immediately became war's recording surface, its film.
Virilio, Paul. War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception. Translated by Patrick Camiller, Verso, 1989, p. 68.
A few Americans who were too young to remember WWII hav in retrospect questioned the use of the Atomic Bomb against Japan. Young Japanese feel even stronger on this point. This quotation is very important because it comes for a senior Japanese official who knew the conditions at the time.
The letter was actually delivered to President Roosevelt on October 11. It was the stimulus for the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb. It had been drafted in large part by physicist Leo Szilard whose idea it was that Einstein sign the letter. As the world’s most prestigious scientist Einstein, Szilard felt, would make more of an impression on FDR than he, Fermi or other scientists even though Einstein was a theoretician and never did work on the development of the bomb. The military men did not understand Szilard and thought him a danger to the nation. So the two men who initiated the idea of the development of an atom bomb did not do any, of the work on it.
There were an additional 69 co-signers at the Manhattan Project "Metallurgical Laboratory" in Chicago
This was a political use of sarcasm and irony. Oak Ridge was the site of the largest facility for producing fissionable material in the world as the result of the Manhattan Project. And yet the problem of what to do with the radioactive waste has never been resolved. So Oak Ridge was producing more and more radioactive uranium in the area without a resolution in sight. The “joke” was that the people in the area were immune, so production could continue without a solution to radioactive waste.
The Scientific Project that developed the Atomic Bomb. In the development of the atomic bomb there was a hypothetical possibility that the Earth as we know it might be destroyed. Robert Oppenheimer the scientist who directed the bomb development and his staff framed the question which Oppenheimer presented to Arthur Compton. The decision was that Oppenheimer’s team would calculate every possibility and make sure that such a catastrophe was not within the realm of possibility. They did all the calculations, concluded that there was no possibility, the bomb was exploded, and the question was then finally answered in the negative.
During the meltdown of the Japanerse nuclear reactors at Fukashima, American sailors were deployed to provide critical assistance fram an American aircraft carrier in the area. They played a significant role in getting the reactors under control. Many of the Japanese at the emergency area had suffered serious illness from the radiation exposure abd a number died. The crew of the aircraft carrier had developed a highly unusual prevelance of serious illness assocated with radiation exposure. The U. S. Defense Department was "styding the matter" but had not decided that the unusual illness patern was related to their assignment assisting in th emergency. A number of the sailors had come to japan and asked for damages from the Raactor company which like most American Corporations would not do or say anything. The Japanese government also was silent on the issue when the sailors came to Japan, However, this former prime minister felt so strongly that he visited the Sailors and took up their cause in letting the Japanese public know what had happened and how the government and the electic company were acting. This was Koizumi's tearful response to the press covering the saolors and their request.
Paul Virilio was a French cultural theorist, urbanist, and aesthetic philosopher. He is best known for his writings about technology as it has developed in relation to speed and power, with diverse references to architecture, the arts, the city and the military.
