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Wednesday, October 7, 2020

The MacArthur Memorial will host a FREE virtual event with New York Times bestselling author Lesley M.M. Blume to discuss her book Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World. Registration required. Fallout is the story of how New Yorker journalist John Hersey gained access to Hiroshima during the Occupation of Japan and uncovered one of the deadliest cover-ups of the 20th century—the true effects of the atom bomb. This information had been withheld from the public. The general in charge of the Manhattan Project had even assured a largely compliant press that radiation poisoning was a “very pleasant way to die.” Hersey’s detective work yielded a different story. When he published his exposé in August 1946, it became an instant global sensation, giving the public a clear understanding of the cost of using nuclear weapons. Today, this knowledge remains one of the greatest deterrents to using such weapons.