A silent prayer was held in Japan on Wednesday morning as it marked 80 years since the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima.
With the number of survivors rapidly declining and their average age now exceeding 86, this year's anniversary is considered the last milestone event for many of them.
-- NPR (@npr.org) Aug 6, 2025 at 1:05 PM
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This excellent book is a must for those who haven't read it: m.media-amazon.com
Hiroshima was adjudged the finest work of American journalism of the 20th century by a 36-member panel associated with New York University's journalism department.
From NHK ...
Hiroshima victims remembered 80 years on
www3.nhk.or.jp
... People across Japan are remembering one of the darkest days in the country's history. Wednesday marks 80 years since an atomic bomb devastated Hiroshima.
Hiroshima fell silent at 8:15 a.m. -- the same moment the bomb dropped in 1945. The heat and radiation from the blast destroyed the city, killing an estimated 140,000 people by the end of the year. ...
#19: Hi AU: My best friend's father was a post-war senior executive with Flying Tigers. He was an expert on air cargo movement and decades ago he explained to me how a Soviet nuclear reactor could be dismantled and flown to another location within the USSR. He knew the tarmac strength of the airports, the planes required, radiation testing equipment needed, man hours, fuel expenses, etc etc. He was a truly smart fellow.
BTW: My wife and I stopped watching movies years ago, but here is an excellent film on the immediate US occupation of Japan: youtu.be
And I'm sure you must have read this book (or watched the movie): static.oprah.com
#20 | Posted by C0RI0LANUS
I'll check out the film. Thanks!
My FIL stayed in when the Army Air Corp became the Air Force. I have some incredible photos he took during bombing runs in their B-25 Mitchells.
Since supplies were so scarce, everything having to be flown over "the hump" to China from India, they developed a bombing technique for accuracy called "GLIP bombing." Most times, when they were going after a bridge or railroad, they where 100=200' off the deck, taking small arms fire.
The GLIP bombing technique and the B-25 "Bridge Busters"He's memorialized at the Flying Tiger museum in China. We have his silk map, bomber jacket, and a whole lot of photos he took from the cockpit. Another cool one is my FIL playing poker with Chennault and some of the other guys from his bomb group.
www.youtube.com
This is an interesting and historically important story he told me:
The reason China is communist today is because of what happened in the immediate aftermath of the Japanese surrender. Chinese Nationalist leader, Chiang Kai Shek, and Gen. Claire Chennault (commanding general of the 14th AAC in China) were good friends. Chennault's commanding officer, Gen Joseph Stillwell, heard Chiang Kai Shek went over his head to President Truman to demand Chennault be reinstated as commander of the 14th AAC, and got a big case of resentment against Chennault. So, when the Japanese surrendered, and Chiang asked for weapons to fight Mao, Stillwell ordered that only rusty pieces of artillery, guns, mortars, and other rusty weapons from the Pacific and CBI be given to Chiang Kai Shek's Chinese Nationalist forces.
When Chiang got the weapons most of them didn't work. And that is why the Chinese Nationalists lost to Mao, who was outnumbered by them. True story.
#22: Good story, AU, thanks, many of your Chinese Civil War points rings bells in my memory cells. There were internal disputes within the US military that didn't help matters too. For example, US Army G2 didn't like or trust the OSS.
BTW: My late uncle who lived in China during the war told me that in the book Formosa Betrayed, a Japanese general on Taiwan readied his large unit for an honorable, formal surrender to a US military general or admiral. A USN NCO, possible a SeaBee, arrived on a landing craft with a small party of lightly armed sailors and asked who the general was: www.history.navy.mil
#33: Hi Corky: FYI: The Japanese are an extraordinarily clean people that enjoy long baths known as "onsen." After poo, the Japanese people wash themselves in a bidet. Each hotel I've stayed at in Japan have them built into the toilets. This wife was accurate, but impolite in her discourse. The normally polite Japanese people use the term "gaijin" for foreigners, derived from their word for 'crazy.' When someone is a little off, the Japanese quietly refer to them as "kichigai." i.ytimg.com
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