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On August 6, 1945, 30-year-old U.S. Air Force pilot Col. Paul W. Tibbets Jr. took to the sky in the Enola Gay, his Boeing B-29 Superfortress heavy bomber. His destination, the Japanese city of Hiroshima, was not an especially notable target. His payload, however, a single bomb nicknamed “Little Boy,” would change the course of history. True watershed moments in history are rare — the agricultural revolution is one such example, as was the Battle of Salamis, the advent of Jesus Christ, and the fall of Western Rome. Yet in the last 1,500 years, no two distinct epochs of time...

Noah and Lot. The Lord described the days that would herald His return by using these two examples. In Noah's Day, people were blissfully ignorant of the worldwide tragedy that would befall them and they continued on in their daily lives. They married. They gave in marriage. They fell victim to the "Normalcy Bias" to which John has frequently referred. You know the one. Dig hole in sand, insert head, repeat. Then there's Lot. Remember his struggles? He's the guy who lived in a city where not only were they stuck in the "normalcy bias", every form of sexual perversion...

The “infamy” of December 7, 1941, is deeper than most Americans have ever imagined. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was almost certainly the result of a Soviet plot—“Operation Snow”—carried out by Harry Dexter White, a figure of enormous influence in the Roosevelt administration and a known Soviet spy. Americans remember Pearl Harbor as the work of a Japanese military machine hell-bent on a war of conquest. The truth is more complicated. The imperial regime had faced severe political shocks throughout the 1930s. Two attempts on the life of Emperor Hirohito—one by a Japanese communist whose father was a member...

How a Soviet mole in FDR's inner circle triggered Pearl Harbor – and its dire relevancy to our conflict today. ... On December 7, 1941, 353 Japanese aircraft delivered a shocking blow .. Nearly seven years later, Harry Dexter White, a senior official in the Roosevelt Administration, appeared to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities . Numerous witnesses, including Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley, had implicated White in involvement with the Communist Party and the Soviet Union. ... Harry Dexter White, a Harvard PhD and Assistant Treasury Secretary, had played a major role in creating the World Bank...

Japan’s Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso has retracted remarks suggesting that the country could learn from Nazi Germany’s constitutional reform. Mr. Aso said on Monday Japan could “learn the technique” Nazi Germany used to change the Weimar constitution. The remarks come amid debate in Japan over its pacifist constitution, which restricts the military to a self-defense role. …

An enraged Japanese guard, the flaps of his hat flying into the air, charges with his bayonet toward an exhausted American soldier on the ground. In other works by Ben Steele, a Japanese soldier strikes a captured American across the face with the butt of his rifle, several guards stand over a withered American digging his own grave, and GIs drink from a mud hole. Copies of these works are currently on display at the Brownsville Museum of Fine Art. "I just kind of want to give people an idea of what went on over there," said the 92-year-old Steele...

Via Goldfarb, the key exchange comes at around 5:50. Hundreds of thousands of lives saved by averting a U.S. invasion of the Japanese home islands, and all this tool can do is point a finger and mumble “yes” in response to whether Truman’s a war criminal or not. Behold the face of mindless anti-torture absolutism. Like what you see?

RUSSIANS REPORT ROUTING JAPANESE IN BORDER BATTLE Defeat of Invading Division in Changkufeng Zone Claimed – Its Losses Put at 400 NEW PROTEST IS ORDERED Tokyo Tells of Shooting Down 5 Soviet Bombers in Korea – High Command Confers By WALTER DURANTY Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES. MOSCOW, Aug. 1.-Soviet forces hurled back a Japanese division in the disputed Changkufeng zone on the Siberian-Manchukuoan border after a two-day battle in which artillery, tanks and planes were used, it was declared in a government communiqué issued here tonight. The communiqué said the Japanese casualties totaled 400 dead and wounded....

History, as Marx famously said (by way of paraphrasing Hegel), repeats itself -- "the first time as tragedy, the second as farce." A catchy concept, to say the least. And while there's definitely something to it, it's also true that sometimes history does not repeat itself. Take American wars in Japan, the Koreas, Vietnam and Iraq. President Bush, addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars, recently made a case -- a flawed case -- for a kind of core continuity linking these disparate conflicts. It's not that he didn't admit there are many differences among them ("There are many differences" among...

Did Hirohito play an active part in planning and conducting the war? Japanese emperor Hirohito expressed doubts about going to war with China in the 1930s and 40s, extracts from a diary of one of his advisers reveal. They show Hirohito was afraid the Soviet Union would intervene. The diary by Kuraji Ogura, who worked as a chamberlain to Hirohito in World War II, was found recently and parts have been published in Japan's media. The full text may help solve the debate about how much responsibility the emperor had for Japan's wartime action. South Pacific visit The document...

After more than 60 years of silence, World War II's most enduring and horrible secret is being nudged into the light of day. One by one the participants, white-haired and mildmannered, line up to tell their dreadful stories before they die. Akira Makino is a frail widower living near Osaka in Japan. His only unusual habit is to regularly visit an obscure little town in the southern Philippines, where he gives clothes to poor children and has set up war memorials. Mr Makino was stationed there during the war. What he never told anybody, including his wife, was that during...

The Euston Manifesto refers to a coming together of a group of British liberals who have come to understand the extent of the threat to civilized values represented by the Islamic fundamentalists. They proclaimed their public recognition of this threat and, while not all of them support the war in Iraq, they proclaim their support of the British government's anti-terrorism programs. A group of American liberals, seeing the Euston Manifesto, and coming to similar conclusions, have decided to issue an American version of the Euston Manifesto, and have created a website where American liberals can add their voices and their...

"A Strange War," observed a 20 July 1939 New York Times editorial about the fighting between the Soviet Army and the Japanese Army on the Mongolian steppes. The Times derided both combatants' claims as exaggerated but inadvertently touched on the distinctive feature of the fighting when it described the battle as "raging in a thoroughly out-of-the-way corner of the world where it cannot attract a great deal of attention."1 Geography, the combatants' compulsive secrecy, and the subsequent outbreak of World War II in September 1939 all combined to overshadow the most massive use of tanks theretofore recorded. The Soviets used...

These words apply today, but unfortunately people have forgotten. And they do not recognize that we are fighting an enemy within that is even worse: My brothers lie in state, In clear waters Of testimony, their willingness To answer our Nation's call. An angel bends down, whispers in my ear, Never forget. Never forget. Honor them. They Gave their lives for you. No man hath a greater love. Do them honor. And never forget.

The Yasukuni Shrine by itself isn’t placed among the obvious sights in Japan, a country rich in antiquities and rarities. It is not concealed from tourists, but not actively advertised either. The temple situated in Tokyo is open to everyone. It was built in 1869, and its original name was the Temple of Shokonsha. Later, it was renamed Yasukuni Shrine, which means “the temple of peace in the country”; the shrine belongs to the Sintoist church. When the Shrine’s name is read in the network of Japanese history and symbolism, the Yasukuni Shrine can be defined as a place for...

Remnants of Unit 731 Human Experiment Center in China TOKYO — A former soldier of a biological warfare unit of the Imperial Japanese Army believes he has a duty to tell the truth about Japanese war crimes committed in China during World War II as part of his effort to apologize for his deeds and because much of what happened is still unknown. Yoshio Shinozuka, 78, has spoken about his war experiences across the country over the decades, vowing not to remain silent about the activities of the notorious Unit 731. The secret unit is believed by some historians...