KENNEY FLIERS RIDE TYPHOON TO JAPAN; B-29’S ALSO STRIKE (8/6/45)

Microfilm-New York Times archives, Monterey Public Library | 8/6/45 | Frank L. Kluckhohn, W.H. Lawrence, L.S.B. Shapiro, Tillman Durdin, Hanson W. Baldwin

[Homer_J_Simpson]

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[PeterPrinciple]

Air gunner lost on 108th mission.

What happens to the b-29 crews, these need to be read!:

http://www.pacificwrecks.com/people/visitors/moskow/face.html

Capture of a B-29 crewman by the Japanese was the worst of fates. … For those who came back [from combat missions] there was a cleaning shower and a clean bunk to purge their weariness. But for those who did not there were many possibilities, all of them brutal and tragic.

- Kevin Herbert
Maximum Effort

other stories:

http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19950604&slug=2124561
“It’s because the prisoners thought that we were doctors, since they could see the white smocks, that they didn’t struggle. They never dreamed they would be dissected.”

The prisoners were eight American airmen, knocked out of the sky over southern Japan during the waning months of World War II, and then torn apart organ by organ while they were still alive.

What occurred here 50 years ago this year, at the anatomy department of Kyushu University has been largely forgotten in Japan and is virtually unknown in the United States. American prisoners of war were subjected to horrific medical experiments. All of the prisoners died. Most of the physicians and assistants then did their best to hide what they had done.

http://b-29.org/313BW/6thbg/gore/peterson.html

http://darkandbizaarestories.blogspot.com/2012/01/downed-b29-crewmen.html

http://b-29.org/73BW/499BG/hap/jan27/jan27.html

But to be fair, I did find some acts of individual kindness by the Japanese but they were rare.

[AlaskaErik]

Looking forward to the headlines in tomorrow’s paper. I am not looking forward to all the war reports/newsarticles ending, however.

I'm sure Homer will have something for us on June 26, 2020 and for the next three years and one month thereafter.

[BroJoeK]

Thanks for very insightful comments!
On the question of apologies, many Americans are eager to continue apologizing for A-bombs, even though in the larger picture they were, net-net, life saving.

But almost no Americans still insist on more Japanese apologies.
We are instead pleased and honored they have been such loyal allies, and, yes, such worthy business competitors.
It has made our own manufacturers better than they would be otherwise.

Of course, we do want Japanese to buy more of our stuff.
So, no need for more apologies, if we can just make our balance of trade... well, more balanced.

[DeweyCA]

Thank you for doing this long series. I have not commented on it before, but I have read many of the articles and find them fascinating. My father served in Europe and even won a medal for bravery. Again, thank you for all of the work that you did to post these many many articles.

[Lurking Libertarian]

Thank you for all of your very educational posts about Japan. I’ve been learning a lot from you.

[colorado tanker]

Fascinating.

My first introduction to the Japanese was as a young man in a business meeting. I behaved like a typical American and the Japanese businessmen were all smiles. I thought the meeting had gone really well. A couple of hours later my boss called wondering what the hell I had done.

[Hebrews 11:6]

This Day in History: August 6th

American Revolution
1777: General Nicholas Herkimer falls at the Battle of Oriskany

Automotive
1991: Peugeot says au revoir to U.S. car market

Civil War
1862: Confederate ship blown up by crew

Cold War
1945: Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima

Crime
1902: Dutch Schultz is born
1930: [Judge] Joseph Force Crater becomes the missingest man in New York

Disaster
1997: Planes crashes in Guam jungle

General Interest
1787: First draft of Constitution debated
1890: First execution by electric chair
1928: Andy Warhol is born

Hollywood
1911: Lucille Ball born
2009: “Breakfast Club” director John Hughes dies

Literary
1996: George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones debuts

Music
1942: Isaac Hayes is born

Old West
1874: Belle Starr’s first husband slain

Presidential
1965: Johnson signs Voting Rights Act

Sports
1926: Gertrude Ederle becomes first woman to swim English Channel

Vietnam War
1964: Johnson Administration officials argue for resolution
1969: Green Berets are charged with murder
1971: First U.S. Army troops deployed to Vietnam stand-down for withdrawal

World War I
1915: Allies land at Suvla

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history

[21twelve]

A few weeks ago an article had our military say “We have enough targets to last us into October.” I had to re-read it, as I thought they must have meant we have enough bombs! (Nope - running out of targets!)

Two articles here are interesting. The one on page two talks about how the B-29 bombing doesn’t seem to be doing the trick. And we will probably have to invade. Unless the Soviets enter the war, or some other “sharp shock” is done to the enemy.

Farther down there is an article that says that a “blow far far worse” can be expected to Japan.

Of course that could just be editorial musings, or - I wonder if some of the reporters were told of the bomb? Especially the first article (page 2) where the writer goes on at length about how the war will drag on, tough fighting, etc. unless...

[21twelve]

Interesting little blurb there in the Nimitz Gray Book.

Mentions the bomb and how large it is in one sentence. The rest of the paragraph discusses other operations. I suppose the Gray Book is just all business - but surprising not to see more made of it. I wonder if Nimitz realized the magnitude of it? He must have.

[PeterPrinciple]

In February 1945, Ashworth traveled to Guam bearing a letter for Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz informing him of the Manhattan Project.[21]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Alberta

[Homer_J_Simpson]

I wonder if some of the reporters were told of the bomb?

When I was putting the August 7 post together I was surprised by the depth and breadth of information on the bomb that the paper was able to produce overnight. Almost like some of it had been prepared in advance.

[Hebrews 11:6]

First, thank you for your generosity in spending so much of your time educating us about the Japanese. Several besides Homer have also gone above and beyond in their contributions (henkster, EternalVigilance, BroJoeK, Peter Principle, et al), and you have certainly joined them despite your belated entrance.

Second, thank you for drawing such a clear contrast between the Japanese mindset and the Judeo-Christian. As I expressed previously, it's difficult for me to climb out of my skin to realize how others (Japanese, ISIS, Muslims, liberals, agnostics/atheists, etc., etc.) view the world, yet you have taken extra care to vividly and convincingly portray not only the fact of their worldview but also its origin and implications.

[henkster]

I’ll second that. The part about enlightening us about the Japanese mind-set, anyway.

chajin, we wish you had been here back in 1941...I mean 2011.

[PeterPrinciple]

Bomb Assembly Kit

---

Earlier I posted the following thinking it was a reference to the bombs alone but this appears to be a reference to complete physical facilities: buildings, furniture, tools, bomb parts etc. These “kits” were complete manufacturing/assembly plants. They had FOUR of these!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Alberta
Groves sent Kirkpatrick to supervise construction on Tinian by the Seabees of the 6th Naval Construction Brigade. Four air-conditioned Quonset huts of a type normally used for bombsight repair were provided for laboratory and instrument work. There were five warehouses, a shop building, and assembly, ordnance and administrative buildings. Ramsey overcame the problem of how to ship through the San Francisco Port of Embarkation. The port wanted a detailed list of what was being sent so it could track it to ensure delivery, but what needed to be shipped was still subject to last-minute change. He simply designated everything as a “bomb assembly kit”. Three of these, one for Little Boy, one for Fat Man and one spare, were shipped to Tinian,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Camel
The commander of Project Alberta, Captain Deak Parsons, had four bomb assembly kits produced. These kits were fully contained facilities, which included a number of Quonset huts with air conditioning. Two were shipped to the Pacific island of Tinian, where the atomic bombs were assembled. One was kept as a spare at Wendover, and one was erected at Inyokern, where it was used to assemble the explosive but non-nuclear pumpkin bombs for testing.[9]

There is a discrepancy of where the spare went. I would suggest that both are true. The spare from Tinian was shipped back after the war?

[chajin]

A memory came to me today as I was running errands around town. I was in my home in Japan: I was thinking that it would have to have been the summer of 1968, because we moved into the home the summer of '67, I had a summer job on the base in '69, and by the summer of '70 we were back in the states. Somehow the Japanese had obtained the original B&W footage of the aftermath of the atomic bombings, and at least one channel ran the footage, which took hours to view. I remember sitting on the wooden floor in front of the TV, glued to the screen, transfixed by the devastation that I was seeing.

So when I returned home I thought I would see what could be found on the internet. From an article posted in The Nation, which can be found here: "...in the summer of 1968, Erik Barnouw, author of landmark histories of film and broadcasting, discovered a clipping from a Tokyo newspaper sent by a friend. It indicated that the US had finally shipped to Japan a copy of black and white newsreel footage shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese had negotiated with the State Department for its return."

This must have been the footage that I was watching. It is available from the National Archives, and can be viewed here. It is 2'40" long. My memory tells me there was more footage than that being shown on the Japanese TV channel, which may or may not have been the case.

[EternalVigilance]

There is a discrepancy of where the spare went. I would suggest that both are true. The spare from Tinian was shipped back after the war?

Obama probably gave it to the Iranians.

[chajin]

1928: Andy Warhol is born
1911: Lucille Ball born
1942: Isaac Hayes is born

It would be interesting to know what each was doing on his/her birthday that year. Warhol would be entering Carnegie, and Ball would be in the middle of her movie career. (Hayes, according to Wikipedia, was born 8/20.)

[Hebrews 11:6]

For some reason it seems kind of hard to believe that Lucy was in her 40s during her TV program.

[henkster]

My recollection from Richard Rhodes “Dark Sun; the Making of the Hydrogen Bomb” is that the “demobilization” of the Manhattan Project was somewhat haphazard. While the reactors at Hanford continued to crank out Plutonium and the K25 gaseous diffusion plant at Oak Ridge continued to separate Uranium, the United States stopped the manufacture of atomic bombs. Other than the two 194 Bikini tests, atomic development slowed down and lacked direction. The human capital, with their technical knowledge, were scattered to various scientific and engineering endeavors. We just sort of took it for granted we had the bomb and nobody else did.

When the Soviets announced they had the bomb in 1949, people in Washington woke up and decided to take an inventory of our atomic stockpile. It was sobering; we didn’t have one single operational atomic bomb on hand. We had the components from which several could be built, and the materials for making many more. But if we’d needed one, it would have taken some time to get one in working order.

So based on all of that, the spare assembly kit could have gone anywhere. It was probably shiped back from Tinian, might have been used for the Bikini tests and then scattered to the winds just like the technicians who would have used it.

[EternalVigilance]

So the Soviets could have nuked as right out of the gate in ‘49. Wow.

“Peace through strength.” Or, in this case, peace through perceived strength.