James Lerager

James Lerager is a social documentary photographer, author of the book ‘In The Shadow Of The Cloud: Photographs and Histories of America’s Atomic Veterans’ (Fulcrum Press, 1988), and the forthcoming books ‘Nuclear History – Nuclear Destiny’ and ‘Mexico: Portraits of Complexity.’ Penn State University Press published Paul Dosh and James’ book ‘Demanding the Land’ in 2010. James has mounted 35 solo photography exhibitions in the United States, Europe, and Latin America, and published in some 30 countries. He holds a Masters in Public Policy from the University of California, Berkeley. James received Fulbright Fellowships to teach and photograph in Medellín, Colombia (2004–2005 and 2007). He is currently director of the Documentary Photography and Research Project (webphotoessay.com) and photography editor for the academic journal ‘Latin American Perspectives.’

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A replica, exhibited in the Hiroshima Peace Museum, of the “Little Boy” atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. “Little Boy” was fabricated from uranium. The “Fat Man” bomb that was detonated over Nagasaki three days later used plutonium for its explosive power.

Tony and Diana Halliday live with their children on a small farm in the Lake Country of England, directly east of Britain’s Sellafield nuclear complex, where reactors create plutonium for nuclear weapons, and electricity for civilian power. The prevailing coastal winds blow over the nuclear facility toward their farm. Although British Nuclear Fuels claims that emissions from the complex are “below regulatory concern,” the Hallidays are aware of excess childhood leukemia rates in their region. They do not trust they would be warned in the event of a major nuclear accident. In the nearby valley where Diana grew up, three farmers from her father’s generation died from brain tumors, while still in their fifties.

A memorial with folded paper cranes in Hiroshima Peace Park. Sadako Sasaki, now a figure of legend, was two years old when Hiroshima was bombed. Ten years later Sadako was diagnosed with leukemia. She had faith in an ancient Japanese proverb, believing that if she folded 1,000 paper cranes, she would regain her health. When she died in 1955, she is had folded 650 cranes. Today, Sadako and her paper cranes have become an international symbol for peace, and the dream that nuclear weapons will never again be used in war. Many memorials in Hiroshima are covered with paper cranes, sent to Hiroshima from all over Japan and the world.

Frenchman’s Flat, on the Nevada Test Site, where the U.S. conducted most of its atmospheric nuclear weapons tests in the 1950s and early 1960s. Entire towns were constructed on the test site, and then subjected to nuclear attacks. This building, once a reinforced concrete bank complete with a vault, was destroyed by an atomic blast in the 1950s. During dozens of nuclear tests on Frenchman´s Flat, thousands of soldiers were ordered to witness nuclear tests from trenches dug into the desert floor, then ordered to march towards and ‘attack’ the rising mushroom cloud.

Albert Johnson, a Navajo Indian and former uranium miner, and his wife, Rosemary. The Johnsons lived in Shiprock, New Mexico. Many of the men who worked the uranium mines of the Southwest, which provided raw materials for America’s nuclear arsenal, were Native Americans—most of them Navajo. Johnson worked in uranium mines in Arizona and Colorado, primarily for Kerr-McGee, from 1950 to 1973. At age 38, Johnson’s lungs were extensively scarred and he was ruled disabled due to silicosis. “I traveled with my husband to the different mines,” says Rosemary. “There was no fresh water—we drank out of the mine and bathed in that water. We lost a little boy at age four to leukemia. He played in the mine tailings.” They had two other children, also born at the mines, who are severely mentally retarded. Their other eight children were healthy. Rosemary had six close friends from the mining days whose husbands died from lung and stomach cancers.

This young Kazakh girl, born in the village of Karaul bordering the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons test grounds in Kazakhstan, has a congenitally damaged central nervous system. Many of the region’s children lack the ability to control their nerves and muscles. The girl’s mother is a schoolteacher.

The Chernobyl Sarcophagus, built with the labor of 600,000 people and originally intended to stand for decades, was already buckling and disintegrating five years after construction was completed in 1987. Now in danger of collapsing, it is to be superseded by a much larger structure—arching over the entire reactor building and original sarcophagus—to be constructed by an international consortium at a cost estimated in 2004 at $800 million. Inside the cracking sarcophagus, the destroyed building still contains large quantities of the reactor’s radioactive materials.

National An the 1950s, Major Hank Henry was one of the top fighter-bomber pilots in the United States Air Force, and a member of the 4925th Test Group (Atomic). At the group´s 1986 reunion, he mounted one of “his” nuclear weapons, the casing for a 500-kiloton atomic bomb, on display at the National Atomic Museum.tomic Museum, Albuquerque, New Mexico

The Enola Gay, the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, was installed in the Smithsonian Institute’s National Air & Space Museum in Washington D.C. in the summer of 1995, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Japan. Some of the exhibition materials, prepared by historians, questioned whether, with the benefit of hindsight, dropping nuclear weapons on Japanese cities had been necessary or wise.