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On August 6, 1945, the United States US Army Air Forces dropped the atomic bomb “Little Boy” on Hiroshima, killing over 70,000 citizens and leaving at least as many ill from radiation sickness. It was the beginning of a horrible madness that seized the American soul.

The United States government dismissed all reports from Japan of radiation sickness, and other conditions, in the months that followed that bombing, claiming that such reports were just conspiracy theories. It would take enormous battles within the US, and around the world, to finally get the US to admit that this atomic weapon was different from a conventional weapon.

But everyone in the War Department knew exactly what sort of a bomb had been dropped and what it did to people. The Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb had undertaken horrible human experiments to determine the influence of radiation on the body, after all.

Moreover, the US government has never formally recognized the pointlessness and the brutality of this massive bombing at a moment that the surrender of Japan was a matter of days.

I want to take this opportunity, as an American running for president of the United States, to do what every previous president of the United States has lacked the decency to do. I want to take responsibility for this atrocity.

My deep apologies to the people of Japan, and to the people of the world, for what the United States did on August 6, 1945. I pledge that the United States will declassify all materials related to the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb and to the Army Air Force that planned the bombings and that the entire story will be made public for the world.

I believe that there were corporations and other distinct actors at the time who can be singled out as legally liable and that I think such a process of pursuing legal liability is meaningful.

I also pledge that the United States will eliminate all nuclear weapons from its arsenal in the next ten years, and that the United States will lead the effort to eliminate these weapons around the world. Only when we make such a commitment, and act upon that commitment, can we hope that other countries will stop their dreams of nuclear arsenals.

We are on the edge of an even more horrible nuclear war at this very moment. The time for action in the United States cannot be put off.

It is also worth mentioning that the journalist John Hershey broke the story of the radiation poisoning in Hiroshima in his article “Hiroshima” that was published in the New Yorker August 23, 1946.

I seriously doubt the increasingly fluffy and trite New Yorker today, aimed more at wealthy upper West Side homes than at thoughtful citizens, would be capable of publishing such an article today.

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This article was originally published on Fear No Evil.

Emanuel Pastreich served as the president of the Asia Institute, a think tank with offices in Washington DC, Seoul, Tokyo and Hanoi. Pastreich also serves as director general of the Institute for Future Urban Environments. Pastreich declared his candidacy for president of the United States as an independent in February, 2020.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.