earthling @appassionato@mastodon.social
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Nuclear Bodies: The Global Hibakusha
by Robert A. Jacobs
Yale University Press (2022)

In the fall of 1961, President Kennedy somberly warned Americans about deadly radioactive fallout clouds extending hundreds of miles from H‑bomb detonations, yet he approved ninety‑six US nuclear weapon tests for 1962. Cold War nuclear testing, production, and disasters like and have exposed millions to dangerous particles; these millions are the global .

Many communities continue to be plagued with dire legacies and ongoing risks: sickness and early mortality, forced displacement, uncertainty and anxiety, dislocation from ancestors and traditional lifestyles, and contamination of food sources and ecosystems. Nuclear Bodies weaves these seemingly distinct legacies into a comprehensive global history, examining the colonialism(s) with which nuclear weapon states "select the irradiated," the political use of medical models to render their harm invisible, and the millennia-long legacies of our embrace of nuclear technologies. https://nuclearbodies.com/
earthling @appassionato@mastodon.social
Public

Global hibakusha

Who are the “global hibakusha”? As many of us know, hibakusha is the Japanese word used to refer to those who survived the two nuclear attacks conducted by the United States against the people living in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Those attacks killed between 100,000 and 200,000 human beings instantly, and wounded as many.

apjjf.org/2022/7/Jacobs






Hundreds of thousands of survivors were exposed to radiation from the attacks. In the face of this horror, we calm ourselves with the reassuring thought that nuclear weapons have not been used since 1945. However, there have been over 2,000 nuclear weapon detonations since then, and because of the size of the weapons and the scale of their effects, millions of people have been exposed to radiation under their fallout clouds, even as the detonations are called “tests.” Millions more have been exposed from nuclear production and nuclear accidents. These millions are the global hibakusha. Global nuclear weapon test sites.
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