|
John,
“The envelope, please!”
As the Academy Awards prepare to honor the blockbuster movie, Oppenheimer, in amongst the filmmakers’ self-congratulations and thank-you speeches, there are other important voices who also must be heard.
What about the cultures and peoples who felt the full impact of the testing and development, and deployment, of nuclear weapons?
First, of course, the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where anywhere between 130,000 and 250,000 people, mostly civilians, died within seconds of the bombs’ detonations, and another 150,000 to 230,000 died of radiation poisoning over the following weeks and months.
How did the experience of surviving nuclear annihilation affect the Japanese people’s understanding of war, and their commitment to peace?
Then there are the tens of thousands of people in the Pacific and the American southwest, native islanders and Indigenous peoples, servicemembers, and uranium miners, who had little or no choice regarding their exposure to above-ground and underwater testing.
Tell the Academy to dedicate a segment during this year’s Awards ceremony to acknowledge the human cost and impact of nuclear war and weapons testing now.
People who have experienced the effects of nuclear weapons testing and war first-hand, or through hearing the stories of their elders, deserve to have their stories told -- and the world deserves to hear them.
When nuclear weapons were first tested, above-ground testing spread the effects of toxic radiation far and wide, exposing humans to deadly levels of carcinogens and teratogens, and causing birth defects, infant deaths, cancers, malformations, and deformations.
Nearly 500,000 people, including many Indigenous peoples and Latinos, lived within 150 miles of the New Mexico testing site, some only 12 miles away. They were not warned of the dangers of the detonations or even that they would be occurring. In the following decades, they referred to themselves as “downwinders,” the first shock troops of the nuclear era.
How did people cope with this new knowledge of the effects of these terrible and terrifying weapons of mass destruction? How will the world manage the ticking of the doomsday clock, the awareness that life on Earth is precious and so easily destroyed? As Oppenheimer himself said, “The people of this world must unite, or they will perish.”
The Academy needs to tell these stories. It’s not enough for Hollywood to make millions of dollars from promoting a hit movie. We need to hear the human stories of the era’s first nuclear victims and survivors in order to improve our chances of preventing nuclear war in the future.
Sign the petition: With Oppenheimer taking center stage, the Academy has a duty to tell the broadcast audience the human story of nuclear testing and war.
Thank you for helping provide the human context for this blockbuster movie, to understand better its impact on humanity.
- Amanda
Amanda Ford, Director
Democracy for America
Advocacy Fund
|
