Wilfred Burchett Quotes

Wilfred Burchett — Australian Journalist born on September 16, 1911, died on September 27, 1983

Wilfred Graham Burchett was an Australian journalist known for his reporting of conflicts in Asia and his Communist sympathies. He was the first foreign correspondent to enter Hiroshima after the atomic bomb was dropped, and he attracted controversy for his activities during the Korean and Vietnam Wars... (wikipedia)

Hiroshima had a profound effect upon me.

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.

When you arrive in Hiroshima you can look around and for 25 and perhaps 30 square miles you can see hardly a building. It gives you an empty feeling in the stomach to see such man-made devastation.

Of thousands of others, nearer the centre of the explosion, there was no trace. They vanished. The theory in Hiroshima is that the atomic heat was so great that they burned instantly to ashes - except that there were no ashes.

Could anything justify the extermination of civilians on such a scale?

Wilfred Burchett Quotes

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