SCOTT NEARING and HIROSHIMA
-"I wrote President Truman: "Your goverment is no longer mine.
The event which finally tore me away from my emotional and habitual commitment to western civilization was the decision of Harry Truman to blot out the city of Hiroshima . It happened on my sixty-secondbirthday, August 6, 1945. On that day, I wrote President Truman: "Your goverment is no longer mine. From this day onward our paths diverge: you to continue on your suicide course, blasting and cursing the world. I turn my hand the task of helping to build a human society based on cooperation, social justice and human welfare."
The decision which led to HIROSHIMA was one of the most crusial ever made by modern man. The government of the United States decided to use atomic energy to annihilate an enemy and save American lives. The decision was the death sentence of western civilization.
I dissociated myself from the United States government after August 6,1945 because I felt that the use of atomic weapons against JAPAN was not only a crime against humanity but was a blunder which would lead to a gigantic build-up of the planet's destructive forces.
-- Scott Nearing "The Making of a Radical" 1972
