Jim Page (b. 1949)
Jim Page grew up in California and lived briefly in New York City from 1970 to 1971 to experience Greenwich Village firsthand. In 1971, he moved to Seattle, where he has lived ever since. He has played clubs, colleges, universities, and frequently on the street. He is still involved in politics and music.
The Best of Broadside: 12. "Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Russian Roulette"
Page played this song frequently while in Ireland in the early 1970s, where it became well known due to a hit cover version by the band, Moving Hearts. "Way back in the mid-70s we had a governor here in Washington state named Dixie Lee Ray. She had been chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission under Nixon. She loved nuclear power and hated environmentalists, and she invited everyone to send their waste here to Washington to be dumped at the Hanford site. Well, the Hanford site leaked, and every once in a while the news would hit the papers and the environmentalists would get on her case. One time after a particularly embarrassing incident, she made the announcement that she was going to close Hanford until this could be taken care of. It was a startling proclamation. The next day on the local news there was a doctor from the University of Washington cancer hospital saying that they would have to stop treating people because they now had no way to deal with the low-level isotopes that they used. Everybody's sick mother was held hostage, and the response was instantaneous. Hanford was immediately reopened.
Jim Page. Photo by Diana Davies.
"I was having a heated discussion about this with a friend of mine when it occurred to me that if you get exposed to too much radiation, you would likely get cancer and that they would then treat you with radiation. And that all these power plants, unstable and poorly built as they are, were accidents waiting to happen. It was like playing Russian roulette, that strange game where a gun is passed around with only one bullet in it and everybody puts it up to their head, bets are taken, and the lucky winner loses. Only this was a nuclear version. This was 'Hiroshima, Nagasaki Russian Roulette.' I wrote the song that night" (Jim Page, personal communication, 2000). The song was published in Broadside issue 134 in 1977.
Text and quotes extracted from the notes by Jeff Place accompanying The Best of Broadside.