“Forgotten Bomb” at Moby Dickens, Sat. January 10, 7 pm

Erich Kuerschner  writes:

For those interested in nuclear weapons, and in particular, the myths surrounding these weapons and LANL’s role in promoting these weapons, there will be a showing of New Mexico’s Bud Ryan’s film, ”The Forgotten Bomb”  (no charge) at Moby Dickens Bookstore 124A Bent Street, Saturday, Jan. 10 from 7-9 pm.  The film producer, Bud ryan will be in attendance to answer questions.

The film’s website is here:  http://forgottenbomb.com/

Facebook is here:  https://www.facebook.com/forgottenbomb

The 2:09 minute trailer is here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjoIt3aoXHI

Steven Okazaki, Director, White Light, Black Rain, has called this “The best big view of the subject I’ve seen…an amazing piece of work.”

I concur, as this is one of the few films that give a sense of the secrecy, censorship, and misdirection the late Stewart Udall called ““the most long-lived program of public deception in U.S. history.” [“Myths of August”, 1998, p. 321]  In the same book he wrote:

“I learned that war leaders who are given complete power to manage “war news” usually try to control how the histories of wars—and their role in those wars—are written.  I learned to be wary of interpretations advanced by historians hired by generals to write official histories in the aftermath of wars. I learned also to be skeptical about self-serving statements in memoirs written by war leaders. And I finally learned that even after pertinent documents have been declassified there are instances when hidden decisions must be deduced from circumstantial evidence.”

In an earlier NYTimes [8 June 1993] interview of Stewart Udall stated:

“There is nothing comparable in our history to the deceit and the lying that took place as a matter of official Government policy in order to protect this industry,” said Mr. Udall. “Nothing was going to stop them and they were willing to kill our own people…. “The atomic weapons race and the secrecy surrounding it crushed American democracy,” Mr. Udall said in a interview. “It induced us to conduct Government according to lies. It distorted justice. It undermined American morality. Until the cold war, our country stood for something.”

If all this is of interest, this movie gives an excellent sense of the larger view of weapons, including interviews of Gar Alperovitz, Jonathan Schell, and George Shultz. In addition, the film explores the differing treatment of nuclear museums in the U.S. as opposed to overseas museums. It also documents how the “Myths of August”, the assertion that the atomic bomb helped end the war and save “a million lives” came into being, by using archival footage.