Taku Morisumi, "Children of the Gulf War in Iraq: What Depleted Uranium Bombs Brought" Summary and Impressions - The Terrifying Reality of Depleted Uranium Bombs, Also Used in the Bombing of Yugoslavia
This time we would like to introduce "Iraq: Children of the Gulf War" by Taku Morisumi, published by Kobunken in 2002.
Let's take a quick look at the book.
U.S. President George W. Bush has called Iraq an "axis of evil" and has flirted with the idea of another general strike. But - Mr. President. Before you give the order to attack, I urge you to look at this picture. A young child suffering from leukemia caused by depleted uranium shells. The little buns of earth spreading out in the children's cemetery. The unclosed eyes of an anencephalic child with a missing head.
Eleven years have passed since the Gulf War. The depleted uranium bombs shot by the U.S. military contaminated the whole of Iraq with radiation. The unknown photolpottage of Iraq.
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I read this piece by Motohiko Kimura in the article belowYugoslavia Soccer War: The Bad Guy Comes to the Frontwas the catalyst.
In this piece I came to a shocking realization.
In 1999, during the Kosovo War, NATO forces carried out heavy air strikes on Belgrade and Serb settlements on the grounds of "stopping the Serbian genocide. The weapons used were depleted uranium munitions. These weapons cause radioactive contamination in the area where they are fired. I was shocked to learn that NATO forces were shooting such dangerous weapons in large quantities, and I picked up this book because I thought, "I must know more about the realities caused by these weapons.
Iraq: Children of the Gulf War" is a horrific book...I don't know how to put it into words. I found myself involuntarily turning my eyes away from the horrific photographs taken by photojournalist Taku Morisumi in the field. The book makes you realize the reality of what is happening in Iraq in a way that you cannot face it.
In this article, we will use this book as a guide to what DU munitions are and what kind of harm they can do.
To begin with, we will look at the Gulf War, when these depleted uranium munitions were first used.
On August 2, 1990, Iraqi forces invaded and quickly occupied neighboring Kuwait. The U.N. Security Council immediately passed a resolution condemning Iraq, and pressed for the withdrawal of Iraqi troops. The U.S. rushed an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf and called for armed sanctions against Iraq by its allies.
Over the next six months, a multinational force, led by the U.S. military, assembles on the Persian Gulf coast and prepares to attack Iraq.
The next day, January 17, 1991, the multinational forces launched the offensive against Iraq. This was the beginning of the Gulf War. The Iraqi army was the most powerful among the Arab nations. However, the Iraqi army was defeated by a multinational force led by the U.S., a military superpower, with little to show for it. The war ended after only 43 days of one-sided attacks by the multinational force.
Eleven years later, destroyed Iraqi army tanks still lie abandoned in the desert on the Iraq-Kuwait border.
Since the invasion of Kuwait, Iraq has been under severe economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations. Iraq's economy, which relies on imports from abroad for many goods, was paralyzed, and the lives of the Iraqi people were exhausted. The greatest victims, in particular, were the children.
Even at a large hospital in the capital city of Baghdad, medicines have disappeared from the pharmacy shelves and medical equipment remains out of order. Even diarrhea and colds can lead directly to death for chronically malnourished children. Particularly noteworthy is the sharp rise in deaths from leukemia and cancer. The number of cancer deaths in the southern city of Basra, which was the scene of fierce fighting, was only 34 in the prewar year of 1988, but by 1996, five years after the war, the number had risen dramatically to 219, and has continued to increase every year since then, reaching 586 (17 times!) in 2000. In 1996, the fifth year after the war, the number of deaths from cancer increased dramatically to 119. Why then, did the number of deaths due to cancer increase so dramatically?
The cause of the problem is, as far as possible, suspected to be the depleted uranium ammunition used extensively by the multinational forces. DU, which is a byproduct of the production of nuclear weapons and nuclear fuel for nuclear power plants, is unquestionably a radioactive material, even though its content of uranium-235, which causes nuclear fission, has been reduced.
Artillery and machine gun shells using depleted uranium were used for the first time in the Gulf War. The total amount used was estimated at 300 to 800 tons, "14,000 to 36,000 times more radioactive atoms than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima were scattered over the Persian Gulf region," according to Katsuma Yarisaki, a professor at the University of the Ryukyus. The result was a dramatic increase in the number of leukemia and cancer patients.
The Gulf War was said to be a war of high-tech weapons, including missile tomahawks, but it was also a new kind of "nuclear war.
Koubunken, Taku Morisumi, "Iraq: Children of the Gulf War, What did the depleted uranium shells bring about?" p2-3
The first depleted uranium artillery shells and machine gun shells were used in the Gulf War. The total amount used was estimated to be between 300 and 800 tons, and "14,000 to 36,000 times more radioactive atoms than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima were scattered over the Persian Gulf region," according to Katsuma Yarisaki, a professor at the University of the Ryukyus. The result was a dramatic increase in leukemia and cancer patients.
I could not believe what I read in this passage. 14,000 to 36,000 times more radioactive than Hiroshima...
Japan has a strong image of being the only country in the world to have suffered an atomic bombing, but the world was already experiencing such nuclear attacks with impunity...
What kind of weapons are these extremely dangerous depleted uranium munitions? Let's take a look from the text. This is also shocking.
depleted uranium shell
DU is produced in the process of enriching natural uranium to produce fuel for nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants.
Uranium is used in nuclear power plants and nuclear bombs, but naturally occurring uranium contains only 0.7 percent of the usable component (uranium 235). Most of the naturally occurring uranium contains only 0.7 percent uranium 238, which is not easily fissionable. Therefore, in order to make uranium usable in nuclear power plants and nuclear bombs, the proportion of uranium 235 must be increased. The process of increasing the proportion of uranium 235 is called "enrichment. Enrichment produces a residue of uranium 235. This is depleted uranium (impaired uranium). The composition of this depleted uranium is about 99.881 TP3T of uranium 238.
The total amount of depleted uranium produced in the process of producing nuclear weapons and nuclear fuel over the past half century is more than 110,000,000 tons. The breakdown is as follows: the United States, 470,000 tons; Russia, 430,000 tons; France, 22.5 thousand tons; and Japan, 2,600 tons. These must be strictly managed and stored as radioactive waste. The cost to do so is enormous.
Uranium is the heaviest substance found in nature in terms of specific gravity. It is seven times heavier than lead. The U.S. weapons industry, which had its eye on the "hard and heavy" nature of depleted uranium, a byproduct of the manufacture of nuclear bombs and nuclear fuel, began researching its use in weapons in the 1970s and considered using it to make armor for tanks and artillery shells. The idea was that if uranium could be used as a weapon in war, it would save the time and trouble of storage.
When a DU shell hits a tank, it penetrates the tank's thick armor and burns at once due to the frictional heat, burning the occupants and at the same time creating an aerosol. The aerosolized radioactive uranium is spread over a wide area by air currents. Field tests conducted by the U.S. Army have shown that DU particles floating in the air can be carried downwind for more than 25 miles. Once inside the human body, "micron-sized particles remain in the lungs for years or decades, exposing surrounding tissue to gamma, beta, and alpha radiation. Ciliary action, which eliminates large particles, has difficulty eliminating micron-sized particles that are lodged deep in the alveoli. In some cases, uranium particles can be absorbed into the bloodstream and cause problems in organs other than the lungs. The liver, lungs, and reproductive organs are particularly vulnerable to this material.
On the other hand, particulates that fall to the ground contaminate soil and groundwater. Combatants and non-combatants, friend and foe alike, are affected. If they enter the body, they can cause cancer, leukemia, liver damage, kidney damage, tumors, and the birth of children with birth defects, in combination with metal poisoning. Moreover, radioactive uranium damages genes, affecting generations to come.
The advent of depleted uranium munitions "has transformed the form of warfare. Existing weapons in the Third World are now scrap," said an American strategist. DU is such a powerful weapon. That is why they were used in Bosnia and Kosovo after the Gulf War, and the damage they caused is becoming increasingly clear. There is a strong possibility that they were also used in the "retaliatory" war against Afghanistan.
It is deplorable that the United States is faced with the problem of disposing of hundreds of thousands of tons of radioactive uranium waste by dumping it in someone else's yard. When we use their precious land and people as a dumping ground for our own radioactive uranium waste, contaminating their country for billions of years, it sends a terrible signal to the world," said American scientist Michio Kaku, who denounced the inhumanity of the practice ("DU Munitions," Japan Review).
Koubunken, Taku Morisumi, "Iraq: Children of the Gulf War: What Did Depleted Uranium Bullets Bring?" p. 124-126
What do you think?
I was immensely impressed when I read this passage ...
This is the weapon used by the NATO forces that "protect justice in the world".
I could do nothing but be stunned ...
And through his field interviews, the author states the following.
As we drove toward the Saudi Arabian border, we saw tanks that had been destroyed and were rusting bright red, exposing their cruel appearance. There are Soviet-made T55 and T62 tanks, as well as T74 tanks from the Iraqi Republican Special Defense Force, considered the strongest in the Arab world.
As I approached, I saw a round hole four or five centimeters in diameter in the thick armor several centimeters thick. When I brought a radiation meter close to it, the readings kept rising. The reading was immediately more than ten times the normal level. It was the mark of a depleted uranium shell.
In general, conventional bullets cannot make such round holes in the armor of a tank. The holes looked as if they had been made by vigorously piercing soft clay with a stick. I felt as if I had been shown the tremendous destructive power of depleted uranium shells.
Koubunken, Taku Morisumi, "Iraq: Children of the Gulf War, What did the depleted uranium shells bring about?" p. 128.
DU is such an overwhelming weapon. And with the added benefit of being able to dispose of their own nuclear waste in the name of justice...
I couldn't get my head around the fact that this was the reality of war.
In addition to the sections introduced here, the book provides a detailed explanation of the tragic reality of Iraq, where DU bombs were fired. In particular, the section on the effects of depleted uranium shells on children is a must-read. The increase of cancer and leukemia, and children born with birth defects one after another.... Radiation contamination will not allow the next generation of children to live in the future. The tragedy does not end when the bomb explodes, but continues to accumulate for generations to come. We will see such a reality in this book.
And it is still a terrific photo... I would just like to say "you will know it when you see it". Some people may be traumatized by it, so please be careful about that.
I think this book is a very significant work, as the Russia-Ukraine war has brought a lot of focus on NATO forces. Why is Russia afraid of NATO? And what kind of army is NATO in the first place?
Although it is a painful book, I would highly recommend it.
The above is "Taku Morisumi, "Iraq: Children of the Gulf War," What are depleted uranium shells, which were also used in NATO's air strikes on Yugoslavia - an ongoing threat of radioactive contamination.
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