with all those bomb craters it looks more like Europe than a Nuke hit on Japan... and the picture properties say the title is Wessel_1945.
Posted on 08/06/2006 6:59:07 AM PDT by AirBorn
1945: US drops atomic bomb on Hiroshima
The first atomic bomb has been dropped by a United States aircraft on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. President Harry S Truman, announcing the news from the cruiser, Augusta, in the mid-Atlantic, said the device contained the equivalent of 20,000 tons of TNT and was more than 2,000 times more powerful than the largest bomb used to date.
An accurate assessment of the damage caused has so far been impossible due to a huge cloud of impenetrable dust covering the target. Hiroshima is one of the chief supply depots for the Japanese army.
The bomb was dropped from an American B-29 Superfortress, known as Enola Gay, at 0815 local time. The plane's crew say they saw a column of smoke rising and intense fires springing up.
We found the Japanese in our locality were not eager to befriend us - after all, they had not long ago had the most fearful weapon of all time dropped on their doorstep
People's War memories »
The President said the atomic bomb heralded the "harnessing of the basic power of the universe". It also marked a victory over the Germans in the race to be first to develop a weapon using atomic energy.
President Truman went on to warn the Japanese the Allies would completely destroy their capacity to make war.
The Potsdam declaration issued 10 days ago, which called for the unconditional surrender of Japan, was a last chance for the country to avoid utter destruction, the President said.
"If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air the like of which has never been seen on Earth. Behind this air attack will follow by sea and land forces in such number and power as they have not yet seen, but with fighting skill of which they are already aware."
The British Prime Minister Clement Attlee, who has replaced Winston Churchill at Number 10, read out a statement prepared by his predecessor to MPs in the Commons.
It said the atomic project had such great potential the government felt it was right to pursue the research and to pool information with atomic scientists in the US.
As Britain was considered within easy reach of Germany and its bombers, the decision was made to set up the bomb-making plants in the US.
The statement continued: "By God's mercy, Britain and American science outpaced all German efforts. These were on a considerable scale, but far behind. The possession of these powers by the Germans at any time might have altered the result of the war."
Mr Churchill's statement said considerable efforts had been made to disrupt German progress - including attacks on plants making constituent parts of the bomb.
He ended: "We must indeed pray that these awful agencies will be made to conduce peace among the nations and that instead of wreaking measureless havoc upon the entire globe they become a perennial fountain of world prosperity."
"Return of the Enola Gay"
Paul W. Tibbets
Published and distributed by Mid Coast Marketing,
1620 E. Broad St Columbus, Ohio, 43203.
www.theenolagay.com
Best regards,
A point that is often brushed aside by the "Japan was ready to surrender without the Atom Bomb being used" crowd.
It took a second hit before they were willing to surrender.
It was not the destruction that caused it. The firebombing of Tokyo caused far more destruction then then the two bombs. It was that we caused so much destruction with so little effort.
The firebombing was carried out by thousands of planes and required hundreds of thousands of people working together to pull off.
But the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima required no such effort. One plane,The Enola Gay, one crew of twelve, one bomb, Little Boy.
Being able to do so much with so little brought home to Japan that when you ran the numbers there was no way to win, no way to wear down your enemy with losses of men and equipment. No way to win.
And the Japanese still didn't surrender.
A point that is often brushed aside by the "Japan was ready to surrender without the Atom Bomb being used" crowd.<<
Lost in the "NO NUKES" crowd was the Japanese involvement in bio warfare in China.
>>Biological Weapons Program
Between 1932 and 1945 Japan experiments included testing biological weapons on humans, and attacked 11 Chinese cities with biological weapons. The Japanese, as the US learned at the end of World War II, had been making significant progress learning about traditional biological warfare agents like botulism and anthrax.
The US Army sent several investigators to Japan after the war to interrogate captured Japanese scientists. Leading the team was Dr. Norbert Fell and Lt. Col. Arvo Thompson. Working with Gen. Douglas MacArthur's intelligence team at Supreme Commander Allied Powers (SCAP), Dr. Fell and Thompson learned the full extent of the Japanese program headed by Lt. Gen. Shiro Ishii.
From 1938-1945 Ishii carried on experiments against POW's, including US forces at the Mukden POW Camp in northeast China. He directed Unit 731, the secret Japanese unit engaged in human experimentation. Ishii was initially given command of the "Togo Unit" of 300 men, which rapidly grew and acquired additional "cover" identities. The first major BW facility was built at Beiyinhe, some 70km outside Harbin, known locally as the "Zhong Ma Prison Camp. Open air testing on prisoners was conducted at the the officially named "Water Purification Unit 731" at Pingfan near Harbin, a remote, desolate area on the Manchurian Peninsula. Pingfan's 6 square kilometers housed more than 150 buildings, including administrative buildings, laboratories, workers dormitories, and barracks. By 1945, the Japanese program had stockpiled 400 kilograms of anthrax to be used in a specially designed fragmentation bomb. Studies continued there until 1945, when the Unit 731 complex was leveled by burning it. <<
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/japan/bw/
Japan needed a severe wake up call. They killed millions of Chinese people.
DK
****The firebombing was carried out by thousands of planes ...
But the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima required no such effort. One plane,The Enola Gay, one crew of twelve, one bomb, Little Boy.***
And this is the REAL reason liberals and handwringers bewail the A-bomb. No one cries about the firebombing of Tokyo because many planes carrying many bombs were used whereas Hiroshima had one plane carrying one bomb.
Kind of like the bewailment of the current Isralei response to Hezbullah.
Happy BOOMday!
But it is also true that even in a fanatical society you will find very few that are true fanatics. Even if the coup had momentary success they would have been quickly overthrown. The human instinct is to live, not die.
I shudder to think of what they might have achieved if we had delayed another six months. They were so very close. The only thing lacking was a delivery system. And a epidemic unleashed at that point would have hurt the US but it would have devastated Europe and Asia.
Thank God for the bomb.
Harry Truman is highly overrated.Now if we could only get Teddy Roosevelt in charge somehow---
with all those bomb craters it looks more like Europe than a Nuke hit on Japan... and the picture properties say the title is Wessel_1945.
While we were impressed with ourselves at the time, we probably wouldn't say that exactly that way now. The hydrogen bomb was still a few years away.
This is a good day! All kinds of Leftist morons will spout off about how evil we were and the great thing is they NEVER actually understand the situation at the time. The number of people we killed that day was less than the number of people starving to death each week because there was a war going on. With any luck, their argument will be slayed by facts and they will move on to explain how we started WW2 with a Japanese oil embargo and we knew Pearl Harbor was coming. I can play with some people for hours with this game.
Common reaction at the time: Wow! One bomb did all that!
If the coup had been successful they would have been over thrown when the third or fourth bomb had landed. Remember that only half of the die hards that made up the war council were willing to fight to the death. Their base of support was very small indeed. It would have delayed the outcome but probably by no more then a few weeks at most.
In that case you're father and his buds owe my cousin a beer. Oppenheimer gave him sole responsibility for one component of the bomb [detonators]. My cousin was twenty one years old at the time.
Another event that happen on this date.First use of the electric chair in the United States (1890)
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