Joshua Baker

p.48-49 - emphasized text: "Thousands of people had nobody to help them. Miss Sasaki was one of them. Abandoned and helpless, under the crude lean-to in the courtyard of the tin factory, beside the woman who had lost a breast and the man whose burned face was scarcely a face any more, she suffered awfully that night from the pain in her broken leg. She did not sleep at all; neither did she converse with her sleepless companions. ... Mr. Tanimoto, after his long run and his many hours of rescue work, dozed uneasily. When he awoke, in the first light of dawn he looked across the river and saw that he had not carried the festered, limp bodies high enough on the sandpit the night before. The ride had risen above where he had put them; they had not had the strength to move; they must have drowned. He saw a number of bodies floating in the river."

p. 45 - highlighted text - Mr. Tanimoto found about twenty men and women on the sandpit. He drove the boat onto the bank and urged them to get aboard. They did not move and he realized that they were too weak to lift themselves. He reached down and took a woman by the hands, but her skin slipped off in huge, glovelike pieces. He was so sickened by this that he had to sit down for a moment. Then he got out into the water and, though a small man, lifted several of the men and women, who were naked, into his boat. Their backs and breasts were clammy, and he remembered uneasily what the great burns he had seen during the day had been like: yellow at first, then red and swollen, with the skin sloughed off, and finally, in the evening, suppurated and smelly. With the tide risen, his bamboo pole was now too short and he had to paddle most of the way across with it. On the other side, at a higher spit, he lifted the slimy living bodies out and carried them up the slope away from the tide. He had to keep consciously repeating to himself, "These are human beings." It took him three trips to get them all across the river.

This is a graphic and heartbreaking section. There is no justification for ever using these weapons again. A lot of people get paid a lot of money to tell you it's actually complicated and that there are scenarios where we could and should use them - but I promise, it's not complicated.

p.24-25: The lot of Drs. Fujii, Kanda, and Machii right after the explosion - and, as these three were typical, that of the majority of the physicians and surgeons of Hiroshima - with their offices and hospitals destroyed, their equipment scattered, their own bodies incapacitated in varying degrees, explained why so many citizens who were hurt went untended and why so many might have lived died. Of 150 in the city, 65 were already dead and most of the rest were wounded. Of 1780 nurses, 1654 were dead or too badly hurt to work. in the biggest hospital, that of the Red Cross, only 6 doctors out of 30 were able to function, and only 10 nurses out of more than 200. The sole uninjured doctor on the Red Cross Hospital staff was Dr. Sasaki." "Dr. Sasaki worked without method, taking those who were nearest him first, and he noticed soon that the corridor seemed to be getting more and more crowded. Mixed in with the abrasions and lacerations which most people in the hospital had suffered, he began to find dreadful burns. He realized then that casualties were pouring in from outdoors. There were so many that he began to pass up the lightly wounded; he decided that all he could hope to do was stop people from bleeding to death. Before long, patients lay and crouched on the floors of the wards and in the laboratories and all the other rooms, and in the corridors, and on the stairs, and in the front hall, and under the porte-cochere, and on the stone front steps, and in the driveway and courtyard, and for blocks each way in the streets outside. Wounded people supported maimed people; disfigured families leaned together. Many people were vomiting. A tremendous number of schoolgirls ... crept into the hospital. In a city of 245,000, nearly 100,000 people had been killed or doomed at one blow; a 100,000 more were hurt. At least 10,000 of the wounded made their way to the best hospital in town, which was altogether unequal to such a trampling, since it had 600 beds

Page 16 of Hiroshima - highlighted text - "Everything fell, and Miss Sasaki lost consciousness. The ceiling dropped suddenly and the wooden floor above collapsed in splinters and the people up there came down and the roof above them gave way; but principally and first of all, the bookcases right behind her swooped forward and the contents threw her down, with her left leg horribly twisted and breaking underneath her. There, in the tin factory, in the first moment of the atomic age, a human being was crushed by books.

I'm going to thread a few passages that jumped out at me (warning: some are heartbreakingly sad, some are grizzly and very graphic) but truly I encourage anyone who is seeing this to just read the book, as the impact of all of it at once is infuriating and oppressive in a terribly radicalizing way.

Inspired by this article, I finally sat down with John Hersey's Hiroshima this Saturday while at the river. In the book Hersey interviews a handful of survivors a year after Hiroshima, with follow ups 40 years later. The stories in that book will likely stay with me the rest of my life.

Bo Jacobs on Hiroshima 80th commemoration on Al Jazeera (Aug 5, 2025) This is "Bo Jacobs on Hiroshima 80th commemoration on Al Jazeera (Aug 5, 2025)" by Bo Jacobs on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people…

Was interviewed on Al Jazeera earlier today on the 80th commemoration of #Hiroshima and #nuclear weapons.

vimeo.com/1107535248?s...

Pentagon keeps a lid on Golden Dome The department has banned officials from publicly discussing Trump’s favorite weapons project at a major missile defense conference.

When your missile defense scheme is feasible and cost-effective www.politico.com/news/2025/08...

Three public events in Corvallis commemorate the 80th year since the atomic bombings of Japan. A Hiroshima Nagasaki Exhibit from the Hiroshima Peace Museum will be on display with art by local artist The Mandala Lady, at the Corvallis Museum July 26- August 10, 2025 (museum is closed M and Tu). Wed. August 6, 2025 the annual Corvallis Hiroshima Nagasaki Commemoration starts at 6:30 pm, Howland Plaza, 1st and Madison. From 6:30 to 7 join us for traditional Koto music by Masumi Timson, displays, and origami. Program begins at 7 pm featuring the Corvallis Mayor; Rev. Dr. Kelly Wadsworth of the National Board of Veterans for Peace and Pastor of Salem Westminster Presbyterian Church; and music by Halie Loren, internationally known singer and songwriter. The program closes with a community affirmation for peace and a flotilla on the river. Bring all ages on Saturday, August 9 from 1 to 3 pm for a Family Peace Day at the Corvallis Museum! Music by the Corvallis Peace and Justice Singalong with story telling of "Sadako and the 1000 Paper Cranes," origami peace crane folding, and movement by Universal Dances of Peace with a responsive art project in the museum. All events are free and open to the public. An ongoing fundraiser for this year's exhibit and future Commemorations is ongoing at the Corvallis Museum. Sponsors also include Our Revolution Corvallis Allies, Corvallis Interfaith Network, KORC FM 105.9, Veterans for Peace Linus Pauling Chapter , Corvallis Interfaith Network , Corvallis Daytime Drop-in Center , and OSU School of History, Philosophy and Religion. For accommodations or for more information, linda.richards@oregonstate.edu.

Visit the Hiroshima Peace Museum exhibit at the Corvallis Museum, now til Aug. 10 (closed Mon and Tues; always free for OSU students w/ID card). There's a commemoration at 6:30pm Aug. 6 at Howland Plaza @ First St. & Madison Ave & an all ages "Family Peace Day", 1-3 pm Aug. 9 at the Corvallis Museum

"ORGANIZATION FOR NATIONAL SECURITY," slide 11 of 41 [gallery]

The Declaration's final recommendation calls on scientists, academics, civil society, and communities of faith to help create the pressure needed to compel action from global leaders. Without action, it warns, “there can be no doubt that our luck will finally run out.”

Very excited to check this out

His answer is also again underlining the question of “if they could’ve easily assembled a nuclear weapon, and they chose not to, why did they get bombed?”

This Is The Beginning of The End of The 9/11 Era Capital and nativism will fight even harder against Zohran Mamdani now. But in capital's seat of power, socialism defeated barbarism. I fucking love New York

"And the advancement of that movement—for socialism, for freedom, for social peace, for the unity of the multiethnic working class—is how we end the 9/11 Era."

www.forever-wars.com/this-is-the-...

I guess blowing up Fordow and declaring Iran denuclearized is the new closing Yongbyon and declaring North Korea denuclearized?

Aren’t you all glad we have this thing called deterrence? Everyone seems deterred from attacking each other and I feel so much safer with nuclear weapons in the world.

We had a deal in place. It was working. Iran was not building nuclear weapons.

If the act of war is illegal you really and truly do not need a preamble about how you're glad the president who did the illegal thing picked a target you're happy to see hit

ICAN condemns the United States’ illegal military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
By joining Israel’s strikes, the US is violating international law and putting global non-proliferation efforts at risk.

President Trump’s decision to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites is reckless and draws the US directly into Israel’s war with Iran. This is a war that the American people do not want and the world does not support.

We call for Congress to intervene and halt this war.

Have to wonder why any country would ever engage in good faith diplomacy with the United States ever again.

missile defense is such a perfect money pit, in part, because both isolationists and expansionists can squint at it and find their preferred method of not funding a social safety net

reminding everyone there’s no such thing as a tactical nuclear weapon

Apparently this person was asked to provide medical documents that proved she needed to mask. This is why “health exceptions” to masks bans don’t work.

Trump upends historic Columbia River Basin agreement, bringing uncertainty to salmon recovery efforts President Donald Trump on Thursday pulled the federal government out of what Northwest tribes have hailed as a historic agreement to recover salmon in the Columbia River Basin.

"Trump reneged on more than a billion dollars the Biden administration promised to tribes for renewable energy and salmon recovery."

We warned the choice was between the Iran nuke deal and war. We were called extremists. Now we have been proven right. Trump killed the Iran deal. He and Bibi are to blame for this strike and the start of this war.

Virtually unrestricted nuclear launch authority.

A man you can bait with a Tweet…

Nationalize 'em

‪Katie Drummond‬ ‪@katie-drummond.bsky.social‬ · 3mo 🌐 Exciting @wired.com team news! I'm thrilled that @carolinehaskins.bsky.social is joining WIRED, starting Monday, as our newest business reporter. Caroline is a force of nature, exactly the kind of journalist you want on a team at this moment in time, and I know she'll kill it at WIRED. WOOH!

"three months later" spongebob meme

‪@wired.com‬ Palantir threatened to call police on a WIRED reporter and kicked out other journalists from a recent defense conference following reports of the data analytics firm's work with the Trump administration.

lol @carolinehaskins.bsky.social