Free Republic

TOKYO - Japanese World War II leader Hideki Tojo wanted to keep fighting even after U.S. atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, accusing surrender proponents of being "frightened," a newly released diary reveals. Excerpts from the approximately 20 pages written by Tojo in the final days of the war and held by the National Archives of Japan were published for the first time in several newspapers Tuesday. "The notes show Tojo kept his died-in-the-wool militarist mentality until the very end," said Kazufumi Takayama, the archives curator, who confirmed the accuracy of the published excerpts. "They are extremely valuable."

On this day in 1945, a second atom bomb is dropped on Japan by the United States, at Nagasaki, resulting finally in Japan's unconditional surrender. The devastation wrought at Hiroshima was not sufficient to convince the Japanese War Council to accept the Potsdam Conference's demand for unconditional surrender. The United States had already planned to drop their second atom bomb, nicknamed "Fat Man," on August 11 in the event of such recalcitrance, but bad weather expected for that day pushed the date up to August 9th. So at 1:56 a.m., a specially adapted B-29 bomber, called "Bock's Car," after its...

Hiroshima Day remembrance. In California, Moonbats will be ragging on America again for defeating Japanese fascism. Corner of Seal Beach Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway. Sunday, August 3, 2008. Counters are needed. From 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM.

Excerpt - A 60-year-old gangster was sentenced to death Monday for fatally shooting Nagasaki Mayor Itcho Ito during his election campaign in April last year. Tetsuya Shiroo shot Ito, 61, twice with a pistol on the evening of April 17 near the mayor's election campaign office in front of JR Nagasaki station, according to prosecutors' closing argument at the Nagasaki District Court. Ito died six and a half hours later in hospital. The crime ''was extremely outrageous and heinous,'' Presiding Judge Yoshimichi Matsuo said. ''It infringed people's right to vote and destabilized democracy from its roots.'' ~ snip ~

Even though Barack Obama has "moved on" from the messy association that he has recently been forced to explain to man who had been his pastor for 20 years, it is clear - the voters haven't. There are legitimate questions being raised about a relationship that spans a generation and the beliefs of a man who has on multiple dozens of occasions issued some of the most vitriolic, bigoted, racism imaginable in America today. No doubt one of the most infamous video moments recently unearthed was Jeremiah Wright's use of what he cleverly believed to be a cute play on...

For most white folks, indignation just doesn't wear well. Once affected or conjured up, it reminds one of a pudgy man, wearing a tie that may well have fit him when he was fifty pounds lighter, but which now cuts off somewhere above his navel and makes him look like an idiot. Indignation doesn't work for most whites, because having remained sanguine about, silent during, indeed often supportive of so much injustice over the years in this country--the theft of native land and genocide of indigenous persons, and the enslavement of Africans being only two of the best examples--we are...

Japanese bishops in Rome for their five-yearly visit to the Pope said they are already preparing for the beatification of 188 martyrs from Nagasaki next year, an event expected to be the largest-ever gathering of Japanese faithful.Archbishop Joseph Mitsuaki Takami of Nagasaki visited Benedict XVI on Monday and later spoke with L'Osservatore Romano about preparations under way for the Nov. 24, 2008, beatification ceremony.This June 1, the Pope approved the beatification of Jesuit Father Pietro Kibe Kasui, and 187 of his companions murdered between 1603 and 1639. Of the 188 martyrs, four were religious. "All the others were laity, and...

"Read this carefully as it may save your life or the life of a relative or friend. In the next few days, some or all of the cities named on the reverse side will be destroyed by American bombs. These cities contain military installations and workshops or factories which produce military goods. We are determined to destroy all of the tools of the military clique which they are using to prolong this useless war. But, unfortunately, bombs have no eyes. So, in accordance with America's humanitarian policies, the American Air Force, which does not wish to injure innocent people, now...

The Religious Left, in its historical commemorations, rarely if ever recalls the great holocausts committed by the totalitarian tyrants of the 20th century. The tens of millions slain by Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Tojo, not to mention the hundreds of thousands killed by Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Kim Il Sung, among others, never have reached a high level of importance. But never do the anniversaries of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on August 6 and August 9, go by that the Religious Left does not mournfully don its sack cloth and ashes to atone for the mass murders...

On this day in 1945, a second atom bomb is dropped on Japan by the United States, at Nagasaki, resulting finally in Japan's unconditional surrender. The devastation wrought at Hiroshima was not sufficient to convince the Japanese War Council to accept the Potsdam Conference's demand for unconditional surrender. The United States had already planned to drop their second atom bomb, nicknamed "Fat Man," on August 11 in the event of such recalcitrance, but bad weather expected for that day pushed the date up to August 9th. So at 1:56 a.m., a specially adapted B-29 bomber, called "Bock's Car," after its...

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...

Yakuza arrested for murder of Nagasaki mayor said 4th term would be 'unbearable' NAGASAKI -- The yakuza under arrest for gunning down former Nagasaki Mayor Itcho Ito during his election campaign committed the crime to prevent the mayor from being re-elected to a fourth term, local police allege. "It'd be unbearable to see the former mayor re-elected to a fourth term," Tetsuya Shiroo, 59, was quoted as telling investigators. Shiroo harbored a grudge against Ito after the introduction of an anti-gang public works policy, and a dispute with the municipal government over a demand for compensation after a car accident...

The mayor of Nagasaki City, Iccho Ito, has been shot by an unidentified gunman. No details are yet known about his condition. He was shot near Japan Railway's Nagasaki station on Tuesday evening. The attacker has reportedly been caught.

Filed at 1:25 a.m. ET TOKYO (Reuters) - The mayor of Nagasaki criticized Iran and North Korea for their nuclear programs and had harsh words for the United States for failing to halt nuclear proliferation as the Japanese city marked the 61st anniversary of its atomic bombing. Elderly survivors, children and dignitaries bowed their heads at the city's Peace Park near ``ground zero'' for a moment of silence at 11:02 a.m. -- the moment when a U.S. bomber dropped the world's second atomic bomb on August 9, 1945. Earlier, others attended masses at Urakami Cathedral in the city, home to...

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,...

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...

SANTA FE, N.M. - Frederick L. "Dick" Ashworth, the weaponeer aboard the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945, has died at 94. He died Saturday while undergoing heart surgery in Phoenix, family friend Glen Smith said. Ashworth, who retired in 1968 as a Navy vice admiral, was assigned to the Los Alamos-based Manhattan Project that built the A-bomb. Three days after the bombing of Hiroshima, he was aboard the bomber that dropped a weapon nicknamed Little Boy on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945. Ashworth was assigned as the weaponeer, responsible for arming the bomb during...

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...

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...

NAGASAKI, Japan (AP) -- A siren wailed and a bronze bell rang out through the air Tuesday as Nagasaki marked the exact moment 60 years ago that an American airplane appeared in its skies and dropped the plutonium bomb "Fat Man," killing some 80,000 people and sealing Japan's defeat in World War II. About 6,000 people, including hundreds of aging bomb survivors, crowded into Nagasaki's Peace Memorial Park, just a few hundred meters (yards) from the center of the blast, for a solemn remembrance and moment of silence. When the silence ended, Nagasaki Mayor Iccho Itoh had some angry words...

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...

LIVERMORE - Dozens of activists were arrested this morning in front of the west gate at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory as part of a protest honoring the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. The march and rally, entitled "Nagasaki Never Again!," drew nearly 100 protesters -- about half of the number that showed up for a similar rally Saturday evening at the lab. That protest was one of four nationally coordinated rallies held that day at major U.S. weapons labs or test sites. All of the protests called for abolition of nuclear weapons and marked the 60th anniversary of...

In 2005, when you say "Fat Man and Little Boy," you could be referring to Michael Moore and Robert Reich, but 60 years ago, devices sporting those seemingly innocuous monikers caused historically unmatched destruction, and ended a long war. Poll questions surrounding the 60th anniversary of the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan contained a universal question: "Was it necessary?" The polls that I've seen don't ask, "Was it the best option?" but rather focus on an absolute necessity for the bombings. Most things aren't absolutely "necessary." There are always other options – options that may seem especially viable while...

August 6 marks the sixtieth anniversary of the devastating atomic bomb attack against the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later, a second atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. For the most part, up until the 1960s the predominant view was that the U.S. was justified in its decision to use nuclear weapons against the Japanese. There was a general consensus to accept, at face value, that American leaders had determined that Japan would not surrender, and that their determination to fight to the death against an invasion would have cost the lives of hundreds of thousands,...

I have always despised authors who write books outing dead people who can’t defend themselves. I feel the same way about the books that come out every August castigating President Truman for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Once again, let’s review some facts. Truman was facing intelligence estimates that an invasion of Japan would cost a million American and many more than a million Japanese casualties. These estimates were based on known plans of Japanese defenders and the bloody results of the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Okinawa, a home island of Japan, resulted in more than...

August 6, 1945, a bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later a second bomb was dropped on the City of Nagasaki, thus marking the end of the bloodiest war in human history. In all there were 60 million military and civilian casualties from all countries involved. Germany had been defeated and Hitler had committed suicide in his bunker, however in the Pacific war raged on with no end in sight. The Japanese Emperor Hirohito vowed not to surrender as long as there was a single Japanese standing. The only other way to defeat Japan was...

REMEMBERING HIROSHIMA : AUGUST 6, 1945 All over the world today, people are coming together to tell us how awful it was we dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They have their memories – and I have mine. Sixty years ago, I was with my Dad and my brothers : haying in the hot August sun. We had a portable radio with us, and we stopped work to listen to the broadcaster – who spoke of a bomb – hotter than the sun – that had been dropped on, and that had utterly destroyed the entire city of Hiroshima....

Reuters reports: “As the world prepares to mark the 60th anniversary of the dropping of the 1st atomic bomb on Saturday, some American media experts see uncomfortable echoes between the suppression of images of death and destruction then, and coverage of the war in Iraq today.” Reuters cites an article in Editor & Publisher by Greg Mitchell, claiming American officials seized film after the “atomic attacks” on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to prevent us from seeing the devastation. Mitchell compares this to Iraq: “The chief similarity is that Americans are still being kept at a distance from images of death, whether...

E-mail Author Author Archive Send to a Friend Version August 05, 2005, 7:14 a.m. 60 Years Later Considering Hiroshima. For 60 years the United States has agonized over its unleashing of the world’s first nuclear weapon on Hiroshima on August 6, 2005. President Harry Truman’s decision to explode an atomic bomb over an ostensible military target — the headquarters of the crack Japanese 2nd Army — led to well over 100,000 fatalities, the vast majority of them civilians. Critics immediately argued that we should have first targeted the bomb on an uninhabited area as a warning for the Japanese...

Today--or August 6 in Japan--is the 60th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, which killed outright an estimated 80,000 Japanese and hastened World War II to its conclusion on August 15. Those of us who belong to the postwar generations tend to regard the occasion as a somber, even shameful, one. But that's not how the generation of Americans who actually fought the war saw it. And if we're going to reflect seriously about the bomb, we ought first to think about it as they did. ...No surprise, then, that when news of the bomb reached...

US bishops mark anniversary of atomic bombings, condemn ‘total war’Washington DC, Aug. 04, 2005 (CNA) - The 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki provides an opportunity to reflect on the lessons of the Second World War and to recommit to efforts for a lasting peace built on justice, said the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). “Hiroshima and Nagasaki are permanent reminders to the entire human family of the grave consequences of total war,” said USCCB president Bishop William Skylstad yesterday in a letter to Bishop Augustinus Jun-ichi Nomura, president of the bishops’ conference of Japan.The...

EACH AUGUST THE DEBATE RETURNS, this year won masterfully by my Front Page Magazine brother columnist Ronald Radosh: Should the United States on August 6, 1945, have dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima?  Given that the alternative would have required invasion of Japan and the deaths of perhaps a quarter-million Americans, a million or more Japanese, and prolonged suffering on both sides, most moral people answer Yes, we should have dropped the bomb.  We had only three bombs, one to test and two to use and none to spare on a demonstration for the Emperor. But we should also ponder...

In August 1945, two atomic bombs fell on Japan, killing tens of thousands of people instantly. Yet all 24 Australian POWs in Nagasaki - close to ground zero - survived. Patrick Carlyon reports. The August sun hangs like a red balloon. Smoke smudges the sky, as it has since the American planes began dropping bombs. The Japanese expansion had spread like an angry tumour across Asia and the Pacific. Now, after 14 years, the aggressors are losing. An Allied invasion appears certain. In the hills of Nakama, a small Japanese mining town, Australian prisoners-of-war dig pits to store potatoes. They...

How many nations could genuinely say that they had the real potential to conquer the world or destroy it? How many nations had an arsenal capable of obliterating any other nation without risking retaliation? How many nations, with an army and navy superior to any others, an industry and economy capable of producing more weapons and material than any other, with forces already deployed for conquest, how many nations would try to conquer the world while they had such advantages? Sixty years ago, this was exactly situation in which the United States of America found itself. American military forces were...

How many nations could genuinely say that they had the real potential to conquer the world or destroy it? How many nations had an arsenal capable of obliterating any other nation without risking retaliation? How many nations, with an army and navy superior to any others, an industry and economy capable of producing more weapons and material than any other, with forces already deployed for conquest, how many nations would try to conquer the world while they had such advantages? Sixty years ago, this was exactly situation in which the United States of America found itself. American military forces were...

How many nations could genuinely say that they had the real potential to conquer the world or destroy it? How many nations had an arsenal capable of obliterating any other nation without risking retaliation? How many nations, with an army and navy superior to any others, an industry and economy capable of producing more weapons and material than any other, with forces already deployed for conquest, how many nations would try to conquer the world while they had such advantages? Sixty years ago, this was exactly situation in which the United States of America found itself. American military forces were...

Hiroshima and Nagasaki While most may not remember the details, they do know about that famous B-29 bomber which dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan, for all practical purposes ending World War Two. The Smithsonian has completed a cosmetic restoration of the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the bombs, and is now on display. As expected, a large sized hullabaloo has arisen over the way Harry Truman decided to end the war. Various old saws are paraded about, such as the hackneyed and untrue one that, "The Japanese had already sued for peace," "Atomic weapons shouldn't...

OSLO (Reuters) - Sixty years after the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima, guardians of the Nobel Peace Prize could confirm a once-a-decade trend in 2005 by honoring work to prevent nuclear Armageddon. The five-member awards committee, which will hold several meetings before announcing the winner of what many see as the world's top accolade in October from a field of 199 candidates, declines even to give out names on its short-list. Yet if history is a guide, the anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima on Aug. 6 and of Nagasaki on Aug. 9 may help decide the winner. About 200,000...

NAGASAKI (Kyodo) The Japan Map Center has found 29 negatives of aerial photographs of Nagasaki taken by the U.S. military a day after it dropped an atomic bomb on the city in 1945, in a discovery expected to help reveal the immediate effects of the attack. The pictures, taken by a U.S. reconnaissance plane flying over the devastated city Aug. 10, 1945, were found at the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. They are believed to be the first aerial photos of Nagasaki taken a day after the bombing to be made public. The oldest such photos, taken Aug....

American George Weller was the first foreign reporter to enter Nagasaki following the U.S. atomic attack on the city on Aug. 9, 1945. Weller wrote a series of stories about what he saw in the city, but censors at the Occupation's General Headquarters refused to allow the material to be printed. Weller's stories, written in September 1945, can be found below.

Today is the second atomic weapon was dropped on Nagasaki Japan - August 9, 1945. Yes, I proudly say Thank God! Yes, America is the only nation to ever use atomic weapons! And you should thank your God as well - no matter where you are from! Although there are many on the left who claim that using this weapon not necessary (let alone developing Atomic weapons in the first place) looking at the truth in the history will show that it's use was not only justified, warranted, but was a humanitarian move on the part of the United States....

THE NUCLEAR bomb dropped on Hiroshima became an icon of the nuclear age, seared into the collective consciousness of postwar Americans by John Hersey's classic book. Fewer Americans remember much about the destruction of Nagasaki three days later on Aug. 9, 1945, and fewer still have reflected on lessons it offers for threats we face today. The bomb dropped on Nagasaki remains the single most powerful weapon ever used. Dubbed "Fat Man," it produced an explosion greater than all conventional bombs dropped by Allied forces on both Germany and Japan in the war. Within four months, the blast and thermal...

Thank you Harry Truman for preventing my father from becoming a possible statistic in an invasion of the Japaneese mainland .

Fox News just reported that a great American hero, Major Charles Sweeney, has died. Maj. Sweney was the pilot who dropped the bomb on Nagasaki, Japan to help bring an end to WW2.

MILTON - There was a break in the clouds, and Charles W. Sweeney, a young pilot, changed history. His B-29 bomber dangerously low on fuel, Sweeney finally captured a glimpse of the target below and delivered the atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki during World War II. It was the second and last time an atomic weapon had been used, and the Japanese surrendered a few days after the Aug. 9, 1945, bombing. Sweeney, a retired Air Force general, died Thursday at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He was 84. He was a Milton resident and a graduate...

SHINKOLOBWE, Congo (AP) - Business is booming in the mining zone that supplied uranium for the atomic bombs unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - despite a decree by Congo's president banning all mining activity here. President Joseph Kabila ordered the zone closed three months ago amid growing concerns that unregulated nuclear materials could get into the hands of so-called rogue nations or terrorist groups. Yet 1,000 miles away from the capital, Kinshasa, thousands of diggers are still hacking away at a dark cavity of open earth in this southeastern village, filling thousands of burlap sacks a day with black soil...

"An investigation, based on newly released documents, into President Truman's controversial decision to drop the A-bomb. Concludes that the real reason the U.S. dropped the bomb was to intimidate the Soviet Union." Several 'experts' explained that dropping the A-bombs on Japan were unnecessary [there were no dissenting points of view aired]. The announcer -- bearing an English accent -- explained that the reasons that Truman decided to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki were: 1. A raving desire for revenge on the part of the American people. 2. To use the opportunity to 'experiment' the new weapon on an expendable population. 3....

Lord, Keep our Troops forever in Your care Give them victory over the enemy... Grant them a safe and swift return... Bless those who mourn the lost. . FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer for all those serving their country at this time. ...................................................................................... ........................................... U.S. Military History, Current Events and Veterans Issues Where Duty, Honor and Countryare acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated. Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should feel...