Wilfred Burchett Quotes

In Hiroshima, bombed Aug. 6, 1945, no warning was given of the air attack, and thus no escape was possible for the mostly women, children and old people who fell victim.

Hiroshima had a profound effect upon me.

But when I went to Hiroshima and began to study or just listen to people's descriptions of their work, it was quite clear they were talking about death all the time, about people dying all around them, about their own fear of death.

To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.

I did not want to be labelled 'the designer who survived the atomic bomb,' and therefore I have always avoided questions about Hiroshima.

The police chief of Hiroshima welcomed me eagerly as the first Allied correspondent to reach the city.

The 509 Composite Group, 20th Air Force will deliver its first special bomb as soon as weather will permit visual bombing after about 3 August 1945 on one of the targets: Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata and Nagasaki. To carry military and civilian scientific personnel from the War Department to observe and record the effects of the explosion of the bomb, additional aircraft will accompany the airplane carrying the bomb.

Big bomb dropped on Hiroshima 5 August at 7:15 PM Washington time. First reports indicate complete success which was even more conspicuous than earlier test.

The development of atomic power will provide the nations with new means of destruction. The atomic bombs at our disposal represent only the first step in this direction, and there is almost no limit to the destructive power which will become available in the course of their future development. Thus a nation which sets the precedent of using these newly liberated forces of nature for purposes of destruction may have to bear the responsibility of opening the door to an era of devastation on an unimaginable scale.

In Nagasaki, American planes did drop warning leaflets - but not till Aug. 10, a day after the city was bombed.

I had hoped that going to Hiroshima would reveal something small, gritty, and precise to countervail the epic quality of historical accounts.

In 1945, there were more people killed, more buildings destroyed, more high explosives set off, more fires burning than before or since.

The great wars of the 20th Century made it into the worst Century ever.

The second stage set in ten or fifteen days after the bombing. Its first symptom was falling hair. Diarrhea and fever, which in some cases went as high as 106, came next.

What has kept the world safe from the bomb since 1945 has not been deterrence, in the sense of fear of specific weapons, so much as it's been memory. The memory of what happened at Hiroshima.

Hiroshima does not look like a bombed city. It looks as if a monster steamroller had passed over it and squashed it out of existence.

My piece in One World or None was the description of the effect of a single atomic bomb on New York City.

So much destruction in modern war takes place miles and miles away from the source of the destruction, the human being who has caused it.

The German experience, as you can see, did move me very much. Seeing that terrible destruction and seeing the miserable state of the people, how they had been beaten down by the war through no fault of their own probably.

All the things that human beings suffer from are how their environment treats them, and how the elements of their planet affects their mind and body - like radiation, cancer, and all.

Within 4 months, we shall in all probability have completed the most terrible weapon ever known in human history; one bomb which will destroy a whole city

Research in the realm atomic destruction, has now proceeded to point where its results may possibly be made use of in the conduct of the war. Tremendous destruction … can be wrought with a minimum of effort ….Modern technique places in the hands of human beings means of destruction that are simply incredible. German science is at its peak in this matter. It is essential that we be ahead of everybody.

Pearl Harbor was not as cruel as the atomic bombing. The atom bomb wiped out everything: people in church, children in kindergarten, even their dogs and cats. Pearl Harbor was terrible, but not as bad as that…. I think that the atomic bombings rank with the Holocaust as the greatest crimes against humanity in this century...

If the blood of France and of Germany flows again, as it did twenty-five years ago, in a longer and even more murderous war, each of the two peoples will fight with confidence in its own victory, but the most certain victors will be the forces of destruction and barbarism.

The war [WWI] has lasted more than a year. Millions of corpses cover the battlefields. Millions of human beings have been crippled for the rest of their lives. Europe is like a gigantic human slaughterhouse. All civilization, created by the labor of many generations, is doomed to destruction. The most savage barbarism is today celebrating its triumph over all that hitherto constituted the pride of humanity