Nature commits to working to end anti-Black practices in research.
The killing of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police department, and President Donald Trump’s crushing of protests across the United States, has angered the world, and led to marches in cities globally. The repeated killings of Black people in the United States serve as reminders — reminders that should not be needed — of the injustice, violence and systemic inequality that Black Americans continue to experience in every sphere of life.
Black people are more likely than white people to die at the hands of the police; more likely to become unemployed; and, as COVID-19 has laid bare, more likely to be burdened with ill health. Black people are similarly marginalized in most nations where they are in the minority.
Nature condemns police prejudice and violence, we stand against all forms of racism and we join others around the world in saying, unequivocally, that Black Lives Matter.
Such statements are necessary, but they are not sufficient. They need to be followed by meaningful action.
Tate’s commitment to active work to combat racism, in our own organisation and in society at large
In response to the tragic events of the past few weeks and the powerful anti-racism protests across the UK and around the world, we wanted to reaffirm Tate’s commitment to combating racism. We stand in solidarity with all those who are peacefully protesting and we hear the demands for change from our own visitors, supporters, artists, colleagues, partners, and the wider community. But making a statement isn’t enough. To address structural racism and the inequalities underpinning society, we have a responsibility to act.
Our role at Tate is to share art in all its complexity and diversity. In recent years we have made progress in better representing Black artists and other artists of colour in our collection and our programmes, but that work must go much further. We know, too, that not everyone has equal access to art and its benefits. We’re committed to changing this through our work, and to challenging ourselves to dismantle the structures within our own organisation which perpetuate that inequality.
As the highest-paid female athlete in the world, Osaka is standing up for Black lives while taking inspiration from her late mentor, Kobe Bryant.
By Elisa Lipsky-Karasz Aug. 25, 2020 8:29 am ET
This summer, when the eyes of the world were on Minneapolis in the days following George Floyd’s death, Naomi Osaka flew from Los Angeles to join the protests and commune with people at the street corner where he was killed. Without telling her agent-manager or coach, she decided to pick up and go with her boyfriend, the musician and rapper YBN Cordae. The only sign that she’d been there was a series of photographs she briefly posted on Instagram before removing them from her feed.
“Whenever I have a chance to see something for myself, I jump on it,” says Osaka, 22. “I’ve always watched protests on TV, and I never had the chance to go because I was always playing tennis.” The coronavirus shutdown was the first time she had taken any real time off—ever—she says, since she started playing under her father’s instruction at age 3.
Tennis star Naomi Osaka on why she flew to Minneapolis days after George Floyd's death—and why being "not racist" isn't enough.
By Naomi Osaka
Jul 1, 2020
My name is Naomi Osaka. As long as I can remember, people have struggled to define me. I’ve never really fit into one description—but people are so fast to give me a label. Is she Japanese? American? Haitian? Black? Asian? Well, I’m all of these things together at the same time. I was born in Osaka, Japan to a Haitian father and Japanese mother. I spent my formative years growing up in the United States. I’m a daughter, a sister, a friend, and a girlfriend. I’m Asian, I’m Black, and I’m female. I’m as normal a 22-year-old as anyone, except I happen to be good at tennis. I’ve accepted myself as just me: Naomi Osaka.
I honestly haven’t had the time to pause and reflect until now, which I think we can all relate to after the pandemic changed all of our lives overnight. In the past few months, I’ve re-evaluated what’s actually important in my life. It’s a reset that perhaps I greatly needed. I asked myself, “If I couldn’t play tennis, what could I be doing to make a difference?” I decided it was time to speak up. So what I will say here, I never would have imagined writing two years ago, when I won the US Open and my life changed overnight. I guess that when I read this piece back in the future, my evolution as a person will have continued. But for the here and now, this is who I am, and here are my thoughts.
The tennis phenom also reveals the one person who can calm her down in any situation.
Aug. 25, 2020 8:30 am ET
Who is the one person, alive or dead, you’d most like to have dinner with?
Toussaint Louverture.
＊＊＊＊＊
Who’s the one artist who’s had the biggest impact on you?
I’ve really enjoyed learning about Jean-Michel Basquiat. We’re both Haitian and lived in New York at some point in our lives. He was able to accomplish so much in a short amount of time, and I admire his work.
＊＊＊＊＊
What’s the one thing you’d most like to be remembered for?
Of course I want to be remembered for my tennis career, but equally important, I want people to remember me for what I’ve done off the court. I hope I inspire young players, especially biracial Japanese kids, that anything is possible if you put in the work and never give up.
＊＊＊＊＊
What’s the one thing you hope to see change in the world?
I think we are starting to see it, but I am passionate about the BLM movement and have been inspired by the response that most of the world has had this year. We all have to continue to encourage listening and learning.
Bryant helped Osaka find greater confidence, and the two also found common ground in their charitable pursuits. For Osaka these include supporting a school her father helped found in Jacmel nearly 20 years ago, designing and selling face masks in support of Unicef and launching Play Academy with Naomi Osaka (in conjunction with Nike and Laureus Sport for Good), an initiative to encourage girls in Japan—and eventually the world over—to take up sports.
As she gets older and her earning power only grows, giving back is becoming more important to her. “The best way I can say it is—when I was growing up, we weren’t exactly rich,” says Osaka. “So my grandparents from Japan would send a box of food every couple of months. And I just remember thinking that whenever the box came was, like, the best period of my life, because we had all these cool Japanese snacks. And so if I could just share that feeling of happiness that I had when I got that box with other people, then I think my role in life would be fulfilled.”
“The money is important. It allows you to do things,” says King, who says that players like Osaka are what she dreamed of for the sport back in the early ’70s when she first formed the WTA. “[This] is what we wanted—for tennis to make the world a better place.”
“I’ve been figuring out my voice more,” says Osaka. “I definitely think it’s time to start gaining confidence and taking on what you feel.”
There’s one conversation with Bryant that she replays in her head often these days. She once told her hero that she wanted to be just like him. He looked at Osaka and said, “No, be better.”
大坂なおみが袋叩きにあってしまったそうですが、男女テニス協会が以下のように声明を出していたんですね。As a sport, tennis is collectively taking a stance against racial inequality and social injustice とはっきりと表明しています。先ほどのスピーチではないですが、こういうのがメインストリームの問題になっていることに日本人が鈍感過ぎるようです。
As a sport, tennis is collectively taking a stance against racial inequality and social injustice that once again has been thrust to the forefront in the United States. The USTA, ATP Tour, and WTA have decided to recognise this moment in time by pausing tournament play at the Western & Southern Open on Thursday, August 27. Play will resume on Friday, August 28.
After advancing to the Western & Southern Open final, Naomi Osaka reflects on her decision to join the athlete-led protests, the impact of her decision, and the future of athlete activism.
By Courtney Nguyen - WTA Insider
Osaka was asked whether her decision to sit out on Thursday was a difficult one. The Western & Southern Open is Osaka's first event since the tour shut down in March and her first tournament since the Australian Open in January. Matches are at a premium as the players race the clock to find their form ahead of the US Open, which begins on Monday.
"It was hard because I felt like I put myself in a really good position," Osaka said. "When I was practicing during quarantine, all I thought of was playing tournaments. So just to be in the semis of a tournament I felt was something that I could really be proud of.
"It was also at the same time easy, because I felt like I needed to raise my voice. If withdrawing from a tournament would cause the most stir, then it's something that I would have to do.
"I don't feel like I'm being brave. I just feel like I'm doing what I should be doing. So honestly, when people say courageous or anything, I don't really resonate that well with it.
"I just feel like this is what I'm supposed to be doing in this moment."
キング夫人も賛同を示してくれているのを見て安心しました。
Billie Jean King @BillieJeanKing
A brave & impactful move by @naomiosaka, in support of the protest movement moving through the sports world.
A year on, Kaepernick and Bryant's influence continues with Osaka, who has vowed to use her voice and not "stick to sports".
"Honestly, I just hope Kobe would be proud of me," Osaka said.
"For me, I always felt like, in a weird way, I wasn't worthy of knowing him personally or having his number if I wanted to be able to text him. I always thought I should achieve more things before that.
"So that's, like, a big regret for me was that I didn't really talk to him as much as I wanted to."
Jon Meacham’s remarks at this week’s Democratic National Convention sprang from a long friendship with Joe Biden and a desire to add historical context to the present moment.
By Alexandra Alter Aug. 21, 2020
Last month, the historian and biographer Jon Meacham got an unusual request from Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s campaign. The campaign wanted him to speak at the Democratic National Convention — not to endorse Mr. Biden, but to put the stakes of this election in historical context.
“The request was, define the soul of America, and do it quick,” Mr. Meacham said.
Mr. Meacham is not a Democrat. He has voted for candidates of both parties, and his work has focused his attention on studying past presidents rather than endorsing modern-day ones. When he gave his four-minute address Thursday evening from his home in Nashville, he sat in his library with two portraits mounted behind him: one of Representative John Lewis and one of former President George Bush, painted by his son former President George W. Bush.
It was a rare, high-profile appearance in the political arena for a Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Mr. Meacham has spent much of his career steeped in the country’s past, studying the lives of presidents such as Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
バイデン大統領候補との仲も長く、指名受諾演説の相談も受けていたとか。
In addition to giving his own remarks, Mr. Meacham was involved in discussions about the themes in Mr. Biden’s acceptance speech.
Mr. Meacham and Mr. Biden got to know each other around 15 years ago, when Mr. Biden told Mr. Meacham how much he enjoyed his book “American Gospel,” about the founding fathers’ views on the role of faith in politics and public life. Mr. Biden had studied it in detail, printing out passages and laminating them, so he could have them on hand when he was campaigning with Barack Obama in 2008.
彼のスピーチでもAmerica is a mix of light and shadowと言ったりしてバイデンの演説を意識しています。
Humankind has long viewed the soul as the vital center, the core, the essence of existence. The soul is what makes us us. In its finest hours, America’s soul has been animated by the proposition that we are all created equal and by the imperative to ensure that we are treated equally. Yet, America is a mix of light and shadow. Seneca falls and Selma and Stonewall dwell in the American soul but so do the impulses that have given us slavery, segregation and systemic discrimination.
A village of west-central New York on the Seneca River east-southeast of Rochester. The first women's rights convention was held here in 1848.
Selma
A city of south-central Alabama west of Montgomery. A Confederate arsenal during the Civil War, it was the site of a major battle in April 1865. In 1965, a drive to register local voters, led by Martin Luther King, Jr., culminated in a protest march from Selma to Montgomery (March 21-25).
（オックスフォード）
Stonewall
(also the Stonewall riots) fighting between the police and gay people that took place after the New York police raided a gay bar, the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village in 1969. It was the first time that large numbers of gay people had resisted arrest and the Gay Liberation Front was formed soon afterwards. The riot is considered as the event that marked the beginning of the gay rights movement.
後半部分では地名ではなく人名、Harriet Tubman to Alice Paul, to John Lewisを挙げています。
Often we’d prefer to hear the trumpets rather than face the tragedies but an honest accounting of who we’ve been, can enable us to see who we should be. A country driven by the best parts of our soul, not by the worst. A country informed by reason and candor, not by ego and lies. A country that’s big hearted, not narrow minded. The struggle to be who we ought to be is difficult, demanding and ongoing. Justice can be elusive and change in America has been painful and provisional. The civil war led to segregation. The new deal to right wing reaction, civil rights to white backlash, yet history, which will surely be our judge, can also be our guide. From Harriet Tubman to Alice Paul, to John Lewis from the beaches of Normandy, to the rendering of the iron curtain, our story has soared when we’ve built bridges, not walls. When we’ve lent a hand, not when we’ve pointed fingers. When we’ve hoped not feared.
Alice Paulって誰っとピンとこなかったのですが、女性参政権で大きな役割を果たした女性のようですね。
（アメリカンヘリテージ）
Paul, Alice 1885-1977.
American feminist who founded (1916) the National Woman's Party and wrote (1923) the first equal rights amendment to be considered by the US Congress.
Every so often, I re-read Dr. King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. While some of the injustices may have changed, his poetic brilliance, moral clarity, and tests of conscience still reverberate today. Take a moment to reflect on his righteous call:
“We will reach the goal of freedom in Birmingham and all over the nation, because the goal of America is freedom.”
Story by Martin Luther King Jr.
I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens’ Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
50年前の文章なのにLaw and orderを強調するトランプの顔が浮かんでしまいます（彼自身はwhite moderateなんかではないですし遵法精神も持ち合わせていませんが。。。）
I’ve spent almost two decades teaching in English primary schools, which serve multiracial, multicultural, multifaith communities. I want to explore two things I have noticed.
1) Almost without exception, whenever children are asked to write a story in school, children of colour will write a story featuring white characters with ‘traditional’ English names who speak English as a first language.
2) Teachers do not discuss this phenomenon.
Furthermore, simply pointing these two things out can lead to some angry responses in my experience.
Why are you making an issue of race when children are colourblind?”
is an example of the sort of question that sometimes gets asked.
Viet Thanh Nguyen June 25, 2020 Updated: June 25, 2020 6:37 AM
The face of Tou Thao haunts me. The Hmong-American police officer stood with his back turned to Derek Chauvin, his partner, as Chauvin knelt on George Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds and murdered him.
In the video that I saw, Tou Thao is in the foreground and Chauvin is partly visible in the background, George Floyd’s head pressed to the ground. Bystanders beg Tou Thao to do something, because George Floyd was not moving, and as he himself said, he could not breathe.
My presence here in this country, and that of my parents, and a majority of Vietnamese and Hmong, is due to the so-called Vietnam War in Southeast Asia that the U.S. helped to wage. The war in Laos was called “the Secret War” because the CIA conducted it and kept it secret from the American people. In Laos, the Hmong were a stateless minority without a country to call their own, and CIA advisers promised the Hmong that if they fought along with them, the U.S. would take care of the Hmong in both victory and defeat, perhaps even helping them gain their own homeland. About 58,000 Hmong who fought with the Americans lost their lives, fighting communists and rescuing downed American pilots flying secret bombing missions over Laos. When the war ended, the CIA abandoned most of its Hmong allies, taking only a small number out of the country to Thailand. The ones who remained behind suffered persecution at the hands of their communist enemies.
This is why Tou Thao’s face haunts me. Not just because we may look alike in some superficial way as Asian Americans, but because he and I are here because of this American history of war. The war was a tragedy for us, as it was for the Black Americans who were sent to “guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem,” as Martin Luther King Jr. argued passionately in his 1967 speech “Beyond Vietnam.” In this radical speech, he condemns not just racism but capitalism, militarism, American imperialism and the American war machine, “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” In another speech, he demands that we question our “whole society,” which means “ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation and the problem of war are all tied together.”
アジア系はthe model minority: the desirable classmate, the favored neighbor, the nonthreatening kind of person of colorのように扱いを受けることがあるようですが、これはあくまで向こうの調子が良い時で何かのきっかけで風向きが変わればAsian invasionと扱われてしまう不安定な状況を指摘します。
Unlike the engineers and doctors who mostly came from Hong Kong, Taiwan, China and India–the model minority in the American imagination–many Hmong refugees arrived from a rural life in Laos devastated by war. Traumatized, they were resettled into the midst of poverty and a complicated history of racial oppression of which they had little awareness. Even the Hmong who condemn Tou Thao and argue for solidarity with Black Lives Matter insist that they should not be seen through the lens of the model-minority experience, should not be subject to liberal Asian-American guilt and hand-wringing over Tou Thao as a symbol of complicity. Christian minister Ashley Gaozong Bauer, of Hmong descent, writes, “We’ve had to share in the collective shame of the model minority, but when have Asian Americans shared in the pain and suffering of the Hmong refugee narrative and threats of deportation?”
Like the Hmong, the Vietnamese like myself suffered from war, and some are threatened by deportation now. Unlike many of the Hmong, a good number of Vietnamese refugees became, deliberately or otherwise, a part of the model minority, including myself. The low-level racism I experienced happened in elite environments. By the time I entered my mostly white, exclusive, private high school, the message was clear to me and the few of us who were of Asian descent. Most of us gathered every day in a corner of the campus and called ourselves, with a laugh, or maybe a wince, “the Asian invasion.” But if that was a joke we made at our own expense, it was also a prophecy, for when I returned to campus a couple of years ago to give a lecture on race to the assembled student body, some 1,600 young men, I realized that if we had not quite taken over, there were many more of us almost 30 years later. No longer the threat of the Asian invasion, we were, instead, the model minority: the desirable classmate, the favored neighbor, the nonthreatening kind of person of color.
Or were we? A couple of Asian-American students talked to me afterward and said they still felt it. The vibe. The feeling of being foreign, especially if they were, or were perceived to be, Muslim, or brown, or Middle Eastern. The vibe. Racism is not just the physical assault. I have never been physically assaulted because of my appearance. But I had been assaulted by the racism of the airwaves, the ching-chong jokes of radio shock jocks, the villainous or comical japs and chinks and gooks of American war movies and comedies. Like many Asian Americans, I learned to feel a sense of shame over the things that supposedly made us foreign: our food, our language, our haircuts, our fashion, our smell, our parents.
TEXT BY ANNA PURNA KAMBHAMPATY | PHOTOGRAPHS BY HARUKA SAKAGUCHI FOR TIME
JUNE 25, 2020 6:32 AM EDT
Tsui says the current antiracism movements are important, but the U.S. has a long way to go to achieve true equality. “One thing’s for sure, it’s definitely not an overnight thing—I am skeptical that people can be suddenly woke after reading a few books off the recommended book lists,” he says.“Let’s be honest, before George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, there were many more. Black people have been calling out in pain and calling for help for a very long time.”
TEXT BY ANNA PURNA KAMBHAMPATY | PHOTOGRAPHS BY HARUKA SAKAGUCHI FOR TIME
JUNE 25, 2020 6:32 AM EDT
Since May, Sakaguchi has been photographing individuals in New York City who have faced this type of racist aggression. The resulting portraits, which were taken over FaceTime, have been lain atop the sites, also photographed by Sakaguchi, where the individuals were harassed or assaulted. “We are often highly, highly encouraged not to speak about these issues and try to look at the larger picture. Especially as immigrants and the children of immigrants, as long as we are able to build a livelihood of any kind, that’s considered a good existence,” says Sakaguchi, who hopes her images inspire people to at least acknowledge their experiences.
彼女自身も差別に直面した経験を語っています。
Haruka Sakaguchi
Before Sakaguchi started this photo project, she was waiting in line to enter a grocery store on March 21 when a man came up behind her, hovering and making her feel uncomfortable. She politely asked him for some space, to which he responded, “What’d you say to me, chink?” He then proceeded to cut in front of her.
“Before the Black Lives Matter protests, I had contextualized my incident as an act of aggression by a single individual—a ‘bad apple,’ so to speak,” she says. “But after witnessing the unfolding of the antiracism movements and encountering heated debates between police abolitionists and those who cling to the ‘few bad apples’ theory, I came to realize that I too had internalized the ‘bad apple’ narrative. I gave my aggressor—an elderly white man—the benefit of the doubt.
“As an immigrant, I have been so thoroughly conditioned to think that white Americans are individuals that I wrote him into an imagined narrative in a protagonist role, even while he had so vehemently denied me of my own individuality by calling me a ‘chink.’ The protests have brought public attention to the idea that individuality is a luxury afforded to a privileged class, no matter how reckless their behavior or how consequential their actions.”
The year 1945 is remembered differently in every country. For the Japanese, it is the year of the Jewel Voice Broadcast, when the emperor addressed his “subjects” for the first time after 14 years of conflict. For Americans, it is the year when WWII was punctuated by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which effectively curtailed many more American and Japanese deaths. For those in Manchuria, it is the year when governing hands abruptly switched from the Imperial Japanese Army to Soviet-backed communist regimes, resulting in tens of thousands of war-displaced peoples and orphans. For many other Asian nations, it is the year of liberation from Japanese colonial rule and brutalities.
1945 is a documentary project by photographer Haruka Sakaguchi. What began as a portrait series of atomic bomb survivors in Hiroshima and Nagasaki – also known as hibakusha – evolved into a web project with in-depth testimonies, a historical timeline and resources to honor a rapidly aging hibakusha community. Although seven decades have passed since the bombing, the events of 1945 still affect international relations today. In fact, key aspects that led to the culmination of the atomic bomb attacks – ultranationalism, unilateralism, vast military spending – have reemerged in the previous decade. With current nuclear weapon stockpiles reaching over 15,000 – some over 3,000 times as powerful as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima – there is an ever pressing need to revisit the hibakushas’ testimonies.
「つながり」に関する本が英語教材界隈を賑やかにしているようですが、言葉の繋がりには一般的なものと固有なものとに分けられますね。あくまで予想通りだった民主党の副大統領候補に選ばれたKamala Harris。Bidenはfearless fighter for the little guyと形容していました。
I have the great honor to announce that I’ve picked @KamalaHarris — a fearless fighter for the little guy, and one of the country’s finest public servants — as my running mate.
Suffice it to say, I saw the little guy get shafted over and over again with high fees, poor service, lack of communication, incompetent financial advice, or just plain bad luck.
This guide will help regular people learn the ins and outs of investing and financial planning.
WASHINGTON — President Trump rarely misses a chance to offer himself up as the champion of “forgotten” Americans, men and women who feel ignored or derided by elites and believe, as he frequently says, that the “system is rigged” against them.
“You will never be ignored again,” he said this month at a campaign-style rally in Pensacola, Fla., a phrase that became the banner headline the next morning in the local newspaper.
******
Being the champion of the “little guy” is a staple of presidential rhetoric, and wealthy occupants of the Oval Office like Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy have used it to great effect. But Mr. Trump has taken it to a new level, and Democrats have been quick to note that there is little in his background to suggest any basis for empathy for those who live paycheck to paycheck.
******
Mr. Trump’s campaign-style rallies, like the one in Pensacola, are packed with supporters who sign up for tickets in advance, and he rarely hears dissident voices. He knows his audience, and he almost always returns to the theme of being the guardian of the working class.
But others see a yawning gap between the emerging list of winners in the Trump era and the little guy he pledged to help.
When Detroit, filmmaker Kathryn Bigelow’s take on that city’s violent summer of 1967, arrives in movie theaters on Friday, 50 years will have passed since the events it depicts took place. Since then, the world’s understanding of the social factors that lead to a race riot — or rebellion, as many see it — has evolved. The stories that began that summer have continued to gain chapters. Yet, as the film notes, some of the details from the eruption in Detroit remain unclear.
It was less than a year after the summer of ’67 when the first major attempt was made to distill the events that make up the film’s centerpiece. The moments in question earned only three sentences in TIME’s original report on the riots, but the writer John Hersey began work almost immediately on what would become the 1968 book The Algiers Motel Incident. (You may want to stop reading here if you consider the history a spoiler for the movie.) By the time the book was released around the first anniversary of the riots, the incident in question was well known — it was “something of a local cause célèbre” when Hersey arrived in Detroit about two months after it happened, TIME noted in reviewing the book, and was extensively covered in the local press. But Hersey’s work, and his ability to win the trust of the witnesses he interviewed, won praise for processing a complex and tragic series of events in poignant fashion.
Hersey pioneered a radically new form of journalism. But he grew convinced that his higher calling was fiction, and nobody could persuade him otherwise.
By Nicholas Lemann
April 22, 2019
Reviewers often found his novels fact-stuffed, overexplained, didactic, and lacking in vibrancy and humor. In Treglown’s view, Hersey’s return to form was “The Algiers Motel Incident” (1968), a work of nonfiction about the 1967 Detroit riots, which Kathryn Bigelow’s 2017 film, “Detroit,” drew upon. It demonstrates his astonishing talent for eliciting oral history and forensically reconstructing the experiences of people who have endured a major disaster. But it doesn’t have the pure-gold narrative structure of “Hiroshima.” In effect, Hersey ceded what may be the greatest technical advance in the history of nonfiction to others—as if, like the atomic bomb, it deserved to be renounced immediately after its unveiling.
Broadcast on October 14, 2017 Available until August 16, 2020
American journalist John Hersey (1914-1993) opened the eyes of much of the world to the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. In this program, Cannon Hersey retraces his grandfather's footsteps and considers the domestic climate in the United States since the start of the Trump presidency. In 1967, amidst racial strife, John Hersey wrote that every white person bore some degree of responsibility for violence against African-Americans. Half a century later, racial and religious prejudices are again spawning attacks. The program explores the seeds of hate and what they might grow into.
For nearly 70 years, until he turned 85, Lee Jong-keun hid his past as an atomic bomb survivor.
By Associated Press, Wire Service Content Aug. 4, 2020, at 4:21 a.m.
“I can’t live for another 50 years,” said Koko Kondo, 75, who was an 8-month-old baby in her mother’s arms when their house collapsed from the blast about a kilometer (half a mile) away. “I want each child to live a full life, and that means we have to abolish nuclear weapons right now.”
Even after so many years, too many nuclear weapons remain, Kondo said, adding, “We are not screaming loud enough for the whole world to hear.”
Kondo, who survived the blast as a baby, is the daughter of the Rev. Kiyoshi Tanimoto, one of six atomic bomb survivors featured in John Hersey’s book “Hiroshima.” She struggled for decades until she reached middle age to overcome the pain she experienced in her teens and the rejection by her fiance.
She was almost 40 when she decided to follow her father’s path and become a peace activist. She was inspired by his last sermon, in which he spoke about devoting his life to Hiroshima’s recovery.
Just days after the United States decimated Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear bombs, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. But even before the surrender, the US government and military had begun a secret propaganda and information suppression campaign to hide the devastating nature of these experimental weapons. The cover-up intensified as Occupation forces closed the atomic cities to Allied reporters, preventing leaks about the horrific long-term effects of radiation which would kill thousands during the months after the blast. For nearly a year the cover-up worked—until New Yorker journalist John Hersey got into Hiroshima and managed to report the truth to the world.
As Hersey and his editors prepared his article for publication, they kept the story secret—even from most of their New Yorker colleagues. When the magazine published “Hiroshima” in August 1946, it became an instant global sensation, and inspired pervasive horror about the hellish new threat that America had unleashed. Since 1945, no nuclear weapons have ever been deployed in war partly because Hersey alerted the world to their true, devastating impact. This knowledge has remained among the greatest deterrents to using them since the end of World War II.
Released on the 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, Fallout is an engrossing detective story, as well as an important piece of hidden history that shows how one heroic scoop saved—and can still save—the world.
Katie Hafner is a journalist and author of six works of non-fiction, including “Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet” (with Matthew Lyon). She hosts the weekly podcast Our Mothers Ourselves.
August 7, 2020 at 9:00 p.m. GMT+9
But here’s a hint that Hersey might have approved of Blume’s book. Among the dozens of people Blume thanks in her acknowledgments is one Koko Tanimoto Kondo. Kondo is the daughter of the above-mentioned Rev. Tanimoto. Kondo was an infant in her mother’s arms when the bomb hit. Both were buried under heavy wood and rubble. Her mother managed to scratch out a hole in the debris big enough to push the baby through. When Blume traveled to Hiroshima for research, Kondo was her guide through the city. It seems fitting that Blume dedicated her book to Kondo, a gesture to the shining light of humanity that infused Hersey’s original article. It’s a gesture Hersey is likely to have appreciated.
Hersey pioneered a radically new form of journalism. But he grew convinced that his higher calling was fiction, and nobody could persuade him otherwise.
Immigration reform is often talked about as a way to address Japan's demographic challenges. In late 2018, Japan revised its immigration law to attract new foreign workers and deal with labor shortages in key sectors. In April 2019, the revision went into effect, and since then, Japan has been accepting foreign workers under two types of “specified skills” visas. Is Japan’s new approach working, and has Japan done enough to strengthen immigration?
In the seventeenth issue of the Debating Japan newsletter series, the CSIS Japan Chair invited Mina Pollmann, a doctoral candidate in political science at MIT, and Dr. Naohiro Yashiro, vice president and a professor of economics at Showa Women’s University, to share their perspectives on Japan’s immigration policy since the April 2019 reforms.
YESの立場の研究者の抜粋です。the Japanese government has not done enough to bolster immigration.と否定敵ですね。
Homogenous and insular, Japan is not an immigrant-friendly nation-state. Despite demographic trends that necessitate increasing the labor force through increased immigration, the Japanese government has not done enough to bolster immigration.
こちらはNOの研究者。the government is making positive changesと肯定的な表現を盛り込んでいます。
In summary, though Japan needs more immigration if it wants to offset the declining population, the government is making positive changes to increase immigration by gradually widening the door for urgently-needed blue-collar and labor-intensive jobs.
On January 16, 2020, Japan announced its first case of Covid-19 and continues to coordinate a response to the pandemic. On April 7, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared a partial state of emergency and expanded it nationwide on April 16. He lifted the state of emergency last week in all but eight of the country’s prefectures and could soon cancel the remaining restrictions as the government tries to address public health concerns and promote economic growth.
In the fifteenth issue of the Debating Japan newsletter series, the CSIS Japan Chair invited Dr. Kazuto Suzuki of Hokkaido University and Dr. Hiromi Murakami of the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies to share their perspectives on Japan’s response to the coronavirus.
YESの立場はmany people have confidence in Japan’s strategyとポジティブな評価です。
Although there is strong public dissatisfaction with the current economic compensation package and the lack of political leadership, many people have confidence in Japan’s strategy to fight against Covid-19.
一方NOの立場はLow death tolls are not due to prudent measures, but rather pure luckと手厳しい。
Low death tolls are not due to prudent measures, but rather pure luck. There should be no more hesitation, disorganization, and wishful thinking. It is time for the Abe administration to think through what needs to be done to prepare for the coming waves of this pandemic.
But there is a difference between morality and reality. Using the facts laid out in this book and counting down the events, it appears President Truman made the correct decision. After all, it is the Japanese government that should be blamed. First, America gave a warning to the Japanese with the Potsdam Declaration, stating if Japan did not surrender, it would face “prompt and utter destruction.” Leaflets over populated Japanese cities were dropped warning of the devastation. Then the first atomic bomb was dropped on August 6th, 1945. But Japan still did not surrender. Russia entered the war on August 8th, 1945, yet Japan still did not surrender. Three days after the first bomb was dropped the second bomb was dropped on August 9th, 1945.
Wallace noted, “I came away with the belief that Truman really had no choice. In fact, even after the second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki the Japanese government still did not want to surrender. It was only after Emperor Hirohito going over the head of the militants and telling the Japanese people it is time to surrender that they finally did. A number of people, including Dwight Eisenhower, who was against dropping the bomb, pointed out that even after the dropping of the first bomb the Japanese still did not surrender. As horrific as it was, the Japanese were given a demonstration, the bombing of Hiroshima, and they still did not surrender. So why would someone think with just a pure demonstration that they would have surrendered. As I point out in the book, we gave the Japanese plenty of opportunities, especially days before dropping of the bomb.”
BY ANNA PURNA KAMBHAMPATY AUGUST 6, 2020 9:15 AM EDT
It was sunny and beautiful in Hiroshima on the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, recalls Hideko Tamura Snider: “It was the happiest morning.”
Just a day earlier, Snider and her best friend Miyoshi had convinced their mothers to let them return to the Japanese city from a mountain village where they had gone to avoid potential air raids from Allied forces in World War II. Snider, who was then in sixth grade, was elated to be home when she parted ways with her friend, looking forward to playing with each other soon. The next day, at 8:15 am, the world’s first deployed atomic bomb was dropped over Hiroshima by the U.S. aircraft Enola Gay, instantly killing an estimated 70,000 people—including Snider’s mother.
“From the outside of the city, I understand a mushroom-shaped cloud developed,” Snider says. “We were inside of the mushroom, where it was pitch dark.”
原爆投下がどのようになされたのか、当時の状況を知っておくことは重要なことでしょう。
この著者の立場に対して日本人として不満に思う方もいるでしょうが、一番重要なメッセージとしてレーガン大統領のA nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.を引いていましたのでコアの部分では共感できるでしょう。今の若い子たちには冷戦時代の核の恐怖も合わせて伝えられると良いのですが。。。
