Posted on 07/16/2015 4:15:36 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
John Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945
Winston S. Churchill, Triumph and Tragedy
http://www.etherit.co.uk/month/6/16.htm
July 16th, 1945 (MONDAY)
GERMANY: Berlin: Truman and Churchill arrive for the Potsdam Big Three conference of Britain, the US and the USSR.
JAPAN: In the Kurile Islands, 2 Eleventh Air Force B-24s fly a negative shipping search mission to Shimushiru Island. 4 B-25 Mitchells on an enemy shipping sweep deck-level bomb and strafe an enemy freighter; 3 of the bombers then bomb and strafe Torishima Retto, the secondary target.
During the night of 16/17 July, 469 B-29 Superfortresses fly 4 incendiary raids against Japanese cities without loss.
- Mission 271: 119 B-29s attack the Namazu urban area destroying 1.4 sq mi (3.6 sq km), 89.5% of the city.
- Mission 272: 124 B-29s hit the Oita urban area destroying 0.555 sq mi (1.437 sq km), 25.2% of the city.
- Mission 273: 94 B-29s attack the Kuwana urban area destroying 0.63 sq mi (1.63 sq km), 77% of the city; 2 other B-29s hit alternate targets.
- Mission 274: 129 B-29s hit the Hiratsuka urban area destroying 1.04 sq mi (2.69 sq km), 44.2% of the city; 1 other hits an alternate target.
- During the day, five P-47s hit Yanagawa and 96 Iwo Jima-based P-51s hit targets (mainly airfields) at Kameyama, Kiyosu, Komaki, Okazaki, Suzuko, and Akenogahara; 22 air victories are claimed; 1 P-51 is lost.
Task Force 37, the British fast carrier unit, under the command of Vice-Admiral Sir Henry Bernard Rawlings, consisting of a battleship, 4 aircraft carriers (HMS Formidable, HMS Indefatigable, HMS Implacable and HMS Victorious), 8 light cruisers and 18 destroyers, joins the US Third Fleet.
A TBM Avenger of Composite Squadron Thirteen (VC-13) in the escort aircraft carrier USS Anzio (CVE-57) and the destroyer escort USS Lawrence C. Taylor (DE-415) sink Japanese submarine HIJMS I-13 at 34-28N 150-55E, about 540 miles (860 km) east of Yokohama, Japan.
Iwo Jima: VII Fighter Command, United States’ Seventh Air Force bases the 21st Fighter Group flying P-51Ds at South Field.
CANADA: Corvette HMCS Amherst paid off Sydney, Nova Scotia.
Corvette HMCS Whitby paid off Sorel, Province of Quebec.
HMC ML 091, ML 098 and 112 paid off.
U.S.A.: General Carl Spaatz assumes command of the U.S. Army Strategic Air Forces (USASTAF) on Guam. USASTAF will have administrative and operational control of all B-29 units, plus supporting fighter units, in the Pacific, i.e., the Twentieth Air Force in the Mariana Islands and the Eighth Air Force on Okinawa. To complete this order:
- The Eighth Air Force in England transfers without personnel and equipment to Okinawa and HQ and HQ Squadron XX Bomber Command, which moved from India to Okinawa, is redesignated HQ Squadron, Eighth Air Force.
Lieutenant General James H. Doolittle assumes command of the Eighth on 19 July. The first B-29 wing to be assigned to the Eighth Air Force departed the U.S. on 7 July but does not arrive on Okinawa until after VJ Day.
- Headquarters Twentieth Air Force is moved from Washington, DC, to Harmon Field, Guam and HQ and HQ Squadron XXI Bomber Command on Guam is redesignated HQ Squadron, Twentieth Air Force.
Thus the XX and XXI Bomber Commands are brought to an end as actual establishments and their wings pass to direct control of HQ Twentieth Air Force of which Major General Curtis Emerson LeMay takes command on this date.
Jornada del Muerto (Dead Man’s Trail), Alamagordo, New MEXICO: History was made here today in the New Mexico desert when the US tested a new kind of bomb, more powerful than any the world has yet known. In the instant of the explosion, Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the laboratory responsible for the “Manhattan Project”, thought of some words from the Bhagavad-Gita: “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst into the sky, that would be like the splendour of the Mighty One.” Now, he reflected, man could say like the god Krishna: “I am become death, destroyer of worlds.”
Oppenheimer’s awe was inspired by the successful explosion of the first atomic device. It worked by “imploding” segments of the element plutonium to form a critical mass in which neutrons would split the atomic nuclei, releasing enormous energy in a chain reaction. In this morning’s test experiment, codenamed “Trinity” from a poem by John Donne, the “Gadget”, the experimental plutonium bomb, explodes at 5:29:45 a.m. Mountain War Time, the explosion vaporized the steel tower to which the nuclear device was fixed. Exploding with a force equivalent to 19,685 tons of TNT, it fused sand into glass and sent a mushroom cloud 41,000 feet (12,497 metres) into the sky. All life in a 1 mile radius had ceased to exist. Scientists who forgot to shield their eyes were momentarily blinded by the light, which was visible for 125 miles.
See The Unofficial Trinity Site (Russ Folsom)
Escort carrier USS Bairoko commissioned.
Destroyer USS Witek laid down.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch.......
THE FATHER.
FATHER of Heaven, and Him, by whom
It, and us for it, and all else for us,
Thou madest, and govern’st ever, come
And re-create me, now grown ruinous:
My heart is by dejection, clay,
And by self-murder, red.
From this red earth, O Father, purge away
All vicious tinctures, that new-fashioned
I may rise up from death, before I’m dead.
II.
THE SON.
O Son of God, who, seeing two things,
Sin and Death, crept in, which were never made,
By bearing one, tried’st with what stings
The other could Thine heritage invade ;
O be Thou nail’d unto my heart,
And crucified again ;
Part not from it, though it from Thee would part,
But let it be by applying so Thy pain,
Drown’d in Thy blood, and in Thy passion slain.
III.
THE HOLY GHOST.
O Holy Ghost, whose temple I
Am, but of mud walls , and condensèd dust,
And being sacrilegiously
Half wasted with youth’s fires of pride and lust,
Must with new storms be weather-beat,
Double in my heart Thy flame,
Which let devout sad tears intend, and let—
Though this glass lanthorn, flesh, do suffer maim—
Fire, sacrifice, priest, altar be the same.
http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/litany.php
I wonder how thoroughly the Soviets had it bugged.
Minimum Wage =$0.65
in 2015 Dollars = $8.59
The hiragana reads "kayou," short for "kayoubi," meaning Tuesday. That's the easy part :-)
こないだニュースでやってた、釜石が戦時中に攻撃受けたっていう話の、アメリカ側の記事かな？これ？ 何書いてあるかは、さっぱりわからんが。
I'm going to be guessing at some of this, but I think it means something like, "I was watching the news the other day, and it mentioned how Kamaishi had been attacked during the war, What is being said about this in America? I can't understand what was being written [about this]."
Probably not. And there would be three reasons for this, I think.
First, the American relationship to the Axis differed from the relationship of any of the other Allies. To put it as simply as possible, there are no Japanese-British, or German-French, or Italo-Russians, but there were, and are, German-Americans, Italian-Americans, and Japanese-Americans, so while there would be no sympathy for the perpetrators of the Axis powers (Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, the Gestapo, the "Japanese militarists," etc.), there would be sympathy felt by some Americans, perhaps most Americans, towards the common German, Italian, or Japanese. (Less so towards the Japanese, but that changes very quickly from 1945-50, certainly by the end of the Korean War.)
Second, the Americans, alone among the Allies, genuinely wanted an idealistic solution to the problems caused by the war. The Soviets wanted land, money, and payback; the French and Italians wanted to prove that they weren't wimps; the British wanted to keep their empire. The Americans wanted a peaceful, prosperous world where everyone worked together in harmony--as if WWII were some global version of the Civil War, and that after some Global Reconstruction the unity of the world could occur. (Go back to the editorial cartoons concerning the UN Charter a few days ago: they veritably reek of this sentiment.)
Third, within 2-3 years of the end of the war, what should have been clear in 1945 became crystal clear: the Next Scourge was going to be communism, the Soviets and the Chinese were going to be our enemies, and to keep the communists at bay we would have to block their advances in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and over the pole on their way to America. This required a SAC to watch over the pole, a continued Good Neighbor policy in Latin America...and keeping the Soviets from expanding west and the Chinese from expanding east. Those meant we were going to have to station garrisons in West Germany and Japan, who suddenly had to become our allies.
The course of the war changed today with the successful test of Fat Man. Little Boy wasn't tested because the scientists knew it would work. And almost no one knew about either one.
Thanks for the correction.
Homer, I echo the sentiments expressed by henkster. This project has been immensely educational and entertaining for me. Experiencing the War day by day has given me a completely new perspective on the War. I now have some feeling for how the people on the home front experienced the war - although my meat, coffee, sugar and gas weren’t being rationed!
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