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Sixty-two years later, the memory of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima still holds such a grip on Japan that its defense minister has had to resign simply for suggesting the attack was "unavoidable." Now, in a sign of changing times, the task of spreading Hiroshima's message to the world has been entrusted to an American, a citizen of the country that dropped the bomb on Aug. 6, 1945.

1945 : Japanese sink the USS Indianapolis On this day in 1945, Japanese warships sink the American cruiser Indianapolis, killing 883 seamen in the worst loss in the history of the U.S. navy. As a prelude to a proposed invasion of the Japanese mainland, scheduled for November 1, U.S. forces bombed the Japanese home islands from sea and air, as well as blowing Japanese warships out of the water. The end was near for Imperial Japan, but it was determined to go down fighting. Just before midnight of the 29th, the Indianapolis, an American cruiser that was the flagship of...

Scotland Yard man jailed for terror leak By Megan Levy and agencies Last Updated: 6:51pm BST 27/07/2007 A senior Scotland Yard worker has been jailed for eight months for leaking sensitive information which detailed al-Qa'eda plans to carry out Hiroshima-scale attacks on British soil. Thomas Lund-Lack, 59, a retired detective inspector with the Metropolitan Police, admitted wilful misconduct in public office by disclosing a secret Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre report to a journalist. As a civilian working at Special Branch since 2003, he had been cleared to see the "inner circle of top secret material" on Britain's security threat levels,...

Hiroshima has preserved some of its ruins from the blast The nuclear bombs dropped by the United States on Japan in 1945 were the inevitable way to end World War II, Japan's defence minister has said. "I think it was something that couldn't be helped," said Fumio Kyuma in a speech at a university east of Tokyo. His comments sparked outrage from survivors of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The minister, who represents Nagasaki in parliament, said later that he was expressing the US view of events. In his speech, he said the US must have thought...

TOKYO — Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma said the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan by the United States during World War II was an inevitable way to end the war, a news report said Saturday. "I understand that the bombing ended the war, and I think that it couldn't be helped," Kyodo News agency quoted Kyuma as saying in a speech at a university in Chiba, just east of Tokyo. Kyuma's remarks drew immediate criticism from Japanese atomic bomb survivors. "The U.S. justifies the bombings saying they saved many American lives," said Nobuo Miyake, 78, director-general of a group of...

Let’s face it. He shouldn’t be hard to find, especially from a Predator, an aerial reconnaissance vehicle that can read the minute hands of a wristwatch from an altitude of twenty-six thousand feet. Bin Laden is very tall (slightly over 6’6”) and incredibly thin (less than 150 pounds). He wears shalwart kameez (the loose-fitting tunics and baggy pants of al Qaeda and Taliban soldiers) and, when the weather is cold, he dons a camouflage jacket. Although he was born in 1957 and far from retirement age, the Al Qaeda chieftain appears to be very old. His long scraggly beard is...

SEIZURES of smuggled radioactive material capable of making a terrorist “dirty bomb” have doubled in the past four years, according to official figures seen by The Times. Smugglers have been caught trying to traffick dangerous radioactive material more than 300 times since 2002, statistics from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) show. Most of the incidents are understood to have occurred in Europe. The disclosures come as al-Qaeda is known to be intensfiying its efforts to obtain a radoactive device. Last year, Western security services, including MI5 and MI6, thwarted 16 attempts to smuggle plutonium or uranium. On two occasions...

by Mark Finkelstein August 7, 2006 - 09:10 Because of shame over their sins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Americans were actually awaiting payback along the lines of 9/11. You say you were unaware of any such feelings? That's only because your feeling was 'subliminal.' Your shame was 'unconscious.' Well, that, or the fact that you just don't have the same exquisitely refined sensibilities of Boston Globe columnist James Carroll. Here's how Carroll spelled it out in his column, The Nagasaki Principle: "Thus, what I am calling the Nagasaki principle consists in momentum, which obfuscates responsibility before the fact, and denial,...

This Day In History | World War II August 6 1945 Atomic bomb is dropped on Hiroshima On this day in 1945, at 8:16 a.m. Japanese time, an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, drops the world's first atom bomb, over the city of Hiroshima. Approximately 80,000 people are killed as a direct result of the blast, and another 35,000 are injured. At least another 60,000 would be dead by the end of the year from the effects of the fallout. U.S. President Harry S. Truman, discouraged by the Japanese response to the Potsdam Conference's demand for unconditional surrender, made...

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....

OAK RIDGE - Eight peace activists were arrested Saturday after they refused to leave the entrance to the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant. They were demonstrating in remembrance of the civilians killed in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II and protesting the continued production of nuclear bombs. Y-12 enriched the uranium used in the A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima, and the Oak Ridge plant now manufactures replacement parts for the U.S. arsenal of nuclear weapons. About 275 people participated in a Saturday rally at Oak Ridge's Bissell Park and a march to Y-12, where protesters chanted, pinned paper...

On August 6, 1945 the American Air Force incinerated Hiroshima, Japan with an atomic bomb. On August 9 Nagasaki was obliterated. The fireballs killed some 175,000 people. They followed months of horror, when American airplanes firebombed civilians and reduced cities to rubble. Facing extermination, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. The invasion of Japan was cancelled, and countless American lives were saved. The Japanese accepted military occupation, embraced a constitutional government, and renounced war permanently. The effects were so beneficent, so wide-ranging and so long-term, that the bombings must be ranked among the most moral acts ever committed. The bombings have been...

Those of us who enjoy military history usually just switch on the History Channel for our daily fix of guts, gore and armed conflict. But if you’re a serious war buff, and you want to relive one of the most horrifying moments in the deadliest war in human history, an Italian toy maker has just the thing. Brumm recently unveiled miniature models of “Little Boy” and “Fat Man.” Those names may conjure up images of cuddly cartoon characters, but they’re actually the codenames for two atomic bombs that the U.S. military dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the final days...

LAGUNA WOODS, Calif. (AP) - Air Force Lt. Col. Daniel A. McGovern, a combat photographer who filmed the aftermath of the atomic bomb detonations in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, has died. He was 96. McGovern died of cancer Wednesday at his home in Laguna Woods. Weeks after the bombs were dropped in August 1945, McGovern began taking photographs that have since appeared in history books, newspapers, television shows and movies. Earlier during the war, McGovern photographed President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the White House. In 1943, McGovern flew missions as a cameraman while stationed in Chelveston, England. He survived two...

“First call, first call to Colors.” Lieutenant Commander Thomas Carter stood at attention on the flight deck of USS RONALD REAGAN. He waited in silent anticipation for the first strains of the “Star Spangled Banner,” the signal for the petty officers of the watch to begin raising the extra large flag, only displayed on Sundays and holidays. Tom loved weekend duty—a heart-pumping bike ride up the Strand, bounding up to the Quarterdeck (“Good morning, Sir!), shower, uniform, coffee, Quarters and then observing Colors—that bright, broad and magnificent flag rising over the blue-green water of San Diego Bay under the sleek...

Like every other business, the business of war has changed. Centuries ago, a war ended when one army defeated another on the battlefield. But in the modern world of total war , a war isn’t over when one army defeats the other. A war is over when the population of the country whose army has lost abandons all hope; when the people have been crushed so thoroughly – when the daily business of staying alive is so god-awful – that they wish only to clean up the mess and re-start their lives. This is why no Nazi official was able...

Messianic madness of nuclear Osama Heavenly signs, bin Laden's Mahdi complex raise current threat of 'American Hiroshima' Posted: October 23, 20051:00 a.m. Eastern Editor's note: This exclusive report by Paul Williams first appeared in Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, the premium, online, intelligence newsletter published by the founder of WND. Subscriptions to G2 Bulletin are now available at half price – $99 a year or just $9.95 per month. © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com Signs in the heavens and a popular notion in the Islamic world that Osama bin Laden is the "Mahdi," a long-awaited messianic deliverer, increase this month's risk of mega-terror attacks on...

August 6th marked the 60th anniversary of America’s use of an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. While some still argue that President Truman’s decision to use the A-bomb was “controversial,” they are afflicted with the scourge of our time, the loss of a sense of moral proportion and certainty. Unfortunately, those with relativistic morals will lead us to see the day when nuclear weapons are used again – this time to end once and for all the barbaric savagery of Islamism. Green Left Weekly (GLW) calls the U.S. putting a swift end to WWII – using atomic...

On the 40th, 50th and 60th anniversaries of D-Day, Presidents Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush traveled to Normandy to lead us in tribute to the bravery of the Greatest Generation of Americans, who had liberated Europe. Always a deeply moving occasion. The 40th, 50th and 60th anniversaries of the dropping of the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, however, were not times of celebration or warm remembrance. Angry arguments for and against the dropping of the bombs roil the airwaves and fill the press. And the reason is obvious. While World War II was a just war against enemies...

OAK RIDGE - Protesters who briefly blocked the roadway next to the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant's main entrance on Hiroshima Day had their day in court on another nuclear anniversary - six decades after an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. "It's Nagasaki Day,'' demonstrator John E. Heid told Anderson County General Sessions Judge Ron Murch on Tuesday. "It's the 60th anniversary of the nuclear cloud that hangs over this community.'' Heid traveled from Luck, Wis., to join more than 1,000 other peace activists in the Oak Ridge demonstration Saturday. Scheduled to coincide with Hiroshima Day, the Y-12 peace...