Posted on 08/07/2015 4:56:59 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
John Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945
Editorials – 24-26
Heard Round the World
Our Answer to Japan
Science and the Bomb
Veteran of Isolationism
Topics of the Times
http://www.etherit.co.uk/month/7/07.htm
August 7th, 1945 (TUESDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: The secret of Radio Direction Finding (RDF), now called radar, is revealed.
BURMA: Cocos Islands: The last bombing missions by RAF Consolidated Liberators are flown by eight aircraft of No. 99 and three aircraft of No. 356 Squadron. (22)
KOREA: TAEGU, South Korea - Flying crippled after an aborted night raid over Japanese-occupied Korea, the B-24 bomber “Lady Luck II” slammed into a mountain. All 11 aboard were killed when the bomber struck Mangwoon Mountain on Namhae island, off Korea’s southern coast.
The crew were Staff Sgt. Thomas G. Burnworth; Staff Sgt. Walter R. Hoover; 2nd Lt. Ronald L. Johnson; 1st Lt. Edward B. Mills Jr; Staff Sgt. James E. Murray; 2nd Lt. Joseph M. Orenbuch; Staff Sgt. Henry C. Rappert; 2nd Lt. Nicholus M. Simonich; Sgt. Warren E. Tittsworth; and Sgt. Steven T. Wales.
31-year-old Kim Duk Hyung witnessed the crash and was impressed by Japanese troops into going with them to find and loot the crash site. Kim later returned to bury the crew. He worked after the war to build a monument to the crew. This monument was finished on May 11, 1956, almost 11 years after the fatal crash. Made of hand-hewn, natural granite, it stands 11 feet tall.
It was unveiled at a ceremony Nov. 30, 1956. An envoy of then- President Eisenhower, and U.S. and South Korean officials attended.
At a Pentagon ceremony 30 years later, in November 1986, the U.S. secretary of the Army presented Kim a distinguished civilian service medal. (Brooke Rowe from http://ww2.pstripes.osd.mil/01/oct01/ed103101c.html)
Sea of Japan: The USS Billfish torpedoes a small freighter. (Henry Sirotin, 101)
JAPAN: The Japanese Supreme Council for the Direction of the War, meets to discuss the bombing of Hiroshima. The SCDW is know as the Big 6 of the Japanese Cabinet. PM, FM, War Minister, Navy Minister, Army CofS, Navy CofS. The Military members refuse to concede that this might be an atomic bomb. They insist on sending investigating teams. The Commander of Eta Jima Naval Academy is selected by the Navy and the Army sends Dr. Asada a professor of physics at Osaka University.
154 B-29 Superfortresses of the USAAF Twentieth Air Force fly a bombing mission during the day and 30 B-29s fly a mining mission during the night of 7/8 August; 1 B-29 is lost.
- Mission 317: 124 B-29s, escorted by VII Fighter Command fighters, bomb the naval arsenal at Toyokawa. 1 B-29 is lost. After escorting the B-29s on their bombing mission, P-51s attack railroad targets and shipping in and near Magarimatsu, Chofu, Atsugi, and Sagami.
- Mission 318: During the night of 7/8 August, 29 B-29s, escorted by FEAF P-47s, drop mines in Shimonoseki Strait, at Miyazu, Maizuru, Tsuruga, Obama and at Najin; 1 other mines an alternate target.
In Japan, FEAF B-24s and A-26 Invaders over Kyushu pound Tsuiki Airfield and other B-24s start fires at Omura; B-25s hit bridges and other targets at Matsubase and Kawajiri and bomb a convoy off Pusan, Korea; other B-25s hit Chiran and Izumi Airfields. fighter-bombers attack and considerably damage communications and transportation facilities throughout Kyushu.
The Nakajima Kikka, a Japanese copy of the Messerschmitt 262, makes its maiden flight.
KURILE ISLANDS: USAAF Eleventh Air Force dispatches 5 B-24s based in the Aleutian Islands to bomb Kataoka Airfield on Shimushu Island.
COMMONWEALTH OF THE PHILIPPINES: Organized Japanese resistance ends on the island of Mindanao.
Submarine USS Apogan left base for her eight war patrol in the Marcus Island area. While Apogan was on patrol Japan capitulated on 15 Aug 1945. On 2 Sept 1945 Apogan returned to Pearl Harbor.
CANADA: Minesweeper HMCS Suderoy V (ex whaler of same name) paid off.
Forgot about Major Bong dying in a crash of an experimental jet. Sad.
What a sobering moment.
Had we NOT dropped The Bomb we would have had to take Japan by force with a loss of millions on both sides. Nagasaki was (witness prior news releases) a center of war-making materiel and an exclamation point: Hiroshima was not a fluke and we could continue.
Hiroshima/Nagasaki saved millions of lives but sadly at the cost of thousands.
Today I say a prayer for the lives who, unknowingly, gave themselves up to save so many more.
I am sure God dealt with them each according to how they lived, as does He all.
My first reaction of the paper today is something of a surprise. There was a lot of detailed information published the day of the announcement regarding the development of the bomb, where it was built, and the like. Much more than I would have expected for immediate release of such a closely held secret. I wonder if the news people had not been given some advance notice.
The other thing I notice is how quickly people realized that the world had fundamentally changed forever but this one event.
Certificates like this were also issued...
My father worked on the Manhattan Project, and I have both his pin and certificate. This seemed like an appropriate day to post those images.
Yow.
"Little Boy" dropped on Hiroshima was a smaller "gun-type" assembly, which yielded "only" about 15,000 tons TNT equivalent.
"Fat Man" heading towards Nagasaki is the more advanced implosion type with plutonium core.
It will, indeed, yield around 21,000 tons equivalent.
A scale model of "Little Boy"
Contrast to "Fat Man"
It never ceases to amaze me that all these decades later, all the second guessing about whether we should’ve dropped the bomb ignores the very simple fact that our enemies were also racing to create and USE such a weapon themselves.
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They were about to get an answer from the Russians. To suggest this was the worst three days for Japanese diplomats in their lives would be an understatement.
Amazing! Your Dad helped save countless lives. Thank you for sharing.
God bless your Dad, my Dad and all the others who prevailed in that huge, horrible war.
Amen to that!
Normally as wise as they come, Baldwin loses it here.
He says, "Its use will probably save American lives, may even shorten the war materially, may even compel Japanese to surrender."
Baldwin does not begin to understand either the immediate effects -- Japanese surrender -- or the bigger picture of hundreds of thousands of American, and potentially millions of Japanese, lives saved.
Nor does he yet grasp that future terror of these weapons will help preserve the peace amongst rational human beings for generations to come.
Indeed, Baldwin seems already to be suffering from a severe case of what I yesterday called "victor's guilt" regarding the huge number of enemy civilian casualties inflicted by American bombing.
What he may never grasp is that deaths inflicted on Japanese by US bombing totaled only a small fraction of the deaths inflicted by Japanese on civilian populations they had conquered.
Doubtless Baldwin is concerned & feeling guilty about the fact that our civilians never suffered as Germans and Japanese did.
But our allies' civilians did suffer, terribly.
Overall the number of allied deaths (military & civilian) compared to axis deaths approached ten to one.
Seems like the New York Times had been given background stories on the bomb - regarding such subjects as the earlier New Mexico test and the names and backgrounds of key people involved in the Manhattan Project - well before it was actually used in Japan, and told by the government not to publish that information until the bomb was actually dropped. The Times apparently complied with such directives in the interest of national security. No way that could work nowadays.
What a contrast between the Times of that era and the Times of today! Over these 70 years, it has morphed from "the newspaper of record" into a leftist propaganda rag.
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