Japanese photojournalist Takashi Morizumi presented his pictures of the problems in southern Iraq since the Gulf War at USF.
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Photojournalist Tells of “Different Nuclear War”
As the first foreign journalist allowed into Iraq after the Gulf War, Takashi Morizumi has some devastating stories to tell. But he doesn’t use words.
“Please do not look away,” he said during an introduction to his slide presentation “Report Back from Iraq” at USF’s Lone Mountain campus Oct. 28. The photos that followed were indeed hard to look at. They depicted widespread environmental destruction, a child in terrible pain from infection caused by heavy metal particles used in bombs, another child suffering from advanced skin cancer, and babies born malnourished or with genetic deformities. All are results of depleted uranium, a treated element more dense than lead used in U.S. bombs during the Gulf War. Some of the approximately 80 students and community members in the audience wept as they looked and listened to Morizumi describe the extent of the Iraqis’ misery. Others thanked Morizumi for his “courageous work.”
“It was very eye-opening about what is going on in the world and it was very depressing to watch,” said Kate Alevizos, a sophomore at USF who watched the presentation. “I feel mainly very appreciative of what I have.”
The presentation and an exhibit of Morizumi’s photographs to be displayed at USF in the next few months were sponsored in part by the College of Arts and Sciences.
“The effects of depleted uranium is something that gets so little coverage in the United States, so any chance that we can discuss it is important,” said Yoko Arisaka, associate professor of philosophy, and the event’s campus organizer. “Even the government is aware of it, but it’s not something that gets picked up and made an issue.”
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A girl with leukemia was one of the many sick children Morizumi photographed in Iraq.
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Morizumi, a Japanese photojournalist who works for humanitarian organizations, has made forays since 1998 into the southern half of Iraq, where most of the Gulf War took place in 1991. The montage of life he brings back—of a country in deep poverty from economic sanctions and struggling with radiation poisoning and an abnormally high cancer rate it doesn’t have the medicines to fight—is an affecting portrait of the fall-out of war. Morizumi’s mission is to document the effects of depleted uranium weapons and he has also photographed the effects of bombing in Kosovo and other regions. Although the United States claimed its bombing pinpointed only military installations in Iraq, Morizumi found the human toll continues to climb.
“How could one not say that this was genocide?” he said through an interpreter as he showed a photograph of a wall bearing the imprint of the skin of a human eye. The wall is part of an underground shelter torn open by American bombs during the war. One of the bombs exploded a water main beneath the shelter, causing it to fill with water. The intense heat of another explosion made the water boil, killing all 1,500 victims inside, most of them children.
USF was one of several schools and libraries Morizumi visited in the San Francisco Bay Area as part of a kick-off of a national tour. For more information about his tour, log on to www.savewarchildren.org.
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