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Eighty-five years ago the Japanese city of Hiroshima was devastated by the first ever use of an atomic bomb. Dropping such a terrifyingly powerful and experimental weapon on a largely civilian target presented the US authorities with a dilemma – what story to tell the world?

Initial US announcements of the attack claimed the bomb had been used on a military target, and there was no mention of the scale of the civilian casualties, or the deadly and lasting impacts of radiation.

But a month later – before Japan had even officially surrendered - Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett made a daring and unauthorised trip to Hiroshima, and in what has been described as the ‘scoop of the century’ became the first Western journalist to publish an uncensored eye-witness account from Ground Zero. He was the first to highlight the unimaginable suffering of the city’s population, and revealed the existence of a mysterious ‘Atomic Plague’ that even a month later was still killing hundreds of survivors daily.

The resulting front-page splash on the UK’s Daily Express reverberated around the world and presented a serious challenge to the US narrative that there was no lingering harmful radiation. The US authorities responded with a PR campaign to supress the truth. Front-page articles denied any deadly fallout, and dismissed reports such as Burchett’s as ‘Japanese propaganda’.

But the truth was too powerful to contain, and eventually the world came to know the realities of nuclear fallout and radiation sickness.

Filmmaker and journalist Steve O’Hagan tells the story of one an epic feat of investigative reporting, of the resulting struggle to control the narrative surrounding nuclear weapons, and of one of the most fascinating – and controversial – journalists of the 20th century.

Producer: Steve O’Hagan
Executive Producer: Robert Nicholson
A Whistledown production for ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½Â Radio 4