Left: Fujiko Sasaki, beside her husband Shigeo, holds a portrait of their doughter Sadako. Sadako was 2 years old when the bomb dropped and 12 years old when she contracted leukemia. She did not wish to die. She refused all medication and took tiny birds before she died.
Year Pointer Trist in the water to
the left of the tent.
Cheche 50 tons ride Me chil
Prom Chernobyl. The tavarian - contaminated with cesium 137 government has tried to: a) bury the powder, b) incinerate it, c) sell if to Egypt.
punch at what they'd accomplished'.
Meet Sam Cohen, the 'father of the neutron bomb'. Sam was at Los Alamos the night they bombed Hiroshima, This is what he saw: 'the scientists were a bunch of howling savages, ebullient beyond imagination, as pleased as
37
NICK ROBIN Robert Del Tredici, Al mort 1n the felds of the dumb, Harrap. 19:95 WHO MAKES nuclear weapons? Where are Lies made? How do they work? Roberr Del Trodici's astonishingly powerful new bouk. Al cort in Me felds of the bomb actempte to answer these questions, mosty in pictures.
Del Tredici's proposition ix that the frightening power ol nuclear wcapons has frozen our imagination, and that this frecze is reinderced by the secrecy surrounding bomb production. He therefore wishes to add some new basic images of the bomb to our limited visual vocabulary, After all, whar do you think of when you thunk of the bonh? A mushrom aloud? A city turned to ash? Missiles atreaking across the sky?. Perlaus you draw a blank?
It's unlikcly that you think of the factories that mass produce the nuclcar arsenal and all is wares. "My purpose, , writes Del Tredici, is to give the collective imagination something graphic and accurate to hang on to as it strives to come to terms with the bomb's realiry:
And it works. Del Treditils: phorographs and accompanying connients and interviews chable us to make that leap of imagination sec rhe preparations for cur own extermination, und to Tisten to some of the 36 protagonists, Ir could have failed, this book, tur thanks to the quality of the images and their curelul mixture - some sinister, others matter-of-fact, others extremely moving — al succeeds
The Juture! The muelear age bas robbed us ol our capacity to imagine one. For if thisis the story of the bombrand its makers/'We wanted to make something. What we wanted so make happened in he designed to kill as mariv people as possible" — Tbeodore Tavior.
the man who mamaturised the 15 nuclear arscmal? cen it as also the story of uraniutu-238 and is by-products. They. of course, have one hill of a future. 1.168.000.000 searvis the hall-life of uranium 230, Del Tredict informs us:
As the Windscale cover-up: becomes public, AlimE in thr fields of the bowed has an coric topicality. In a recent remarkable Soviet play about: Cherubyl, Sorophages, by the science correspondont of
Pause the 'bero", Bessmertis observes: the pyramuds of the pharahs have been there for a. mere five thousand vears. Bur do contaio the radiarion, your nuricar psramd thuse remaur for at least a hundred thousand vmins that's some Tame to cave 10 00T descendants, isn/t in?"
This book did not leave mo despairing: Utterleworked over and emotional, yes, But abc a little berter prepared to strugule bur the lucure • SDCIALISTOUTLOOK no January/February 1989