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A dragonfly flitted in front of me and stopped on a fence. I stood up, took my cap in my hands, and was about to catch the dragonfly when...’...when there was a flash of white light in the blue sky above Hiroshima. This was at 8.15 a.m. on 6 August 1945. Then followed a new kind of thunder and a new kind of hellfire. A minute later those who were still alive, those whose flesh was not falling off their bodies, blinked into a changed world, like a traveller waking and finding himself on a different planet. Through the glare...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - Herb Lehr hasn’t been to Trinity Site since the day a mushroom cloud filled the early morning sky in the New Mexico desert. Standing 12 miles from the blast, he looked toward the Oscura Mountains and watched as scientists detonated the first atomic bomb 60 years ago Saturday, ushering in the nuclear age. “All of a sudden this very bright light came out and where I was, it was intense enough that the whole mountain range itself was completely whited out,” he said. “I could see the ball and fire rising up. It was sort of awe-inspiring.”...

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. - The government is offering a rare glimpse of the massive machines used to enrich uranium for the "Little Boy" bomb - the first atomic weapon used in war, dropped 60 years ago in August on Hiroshima, Japan. Inside the high-security Y-12 nuclear weapons plant remain the last of 1,152 calutrons that once filled nine buildings. The machinery was part of the top-secret bomb-building Manhattan Project, which turned this rural countryside about 30 miles west of Knoxville into a "secret city" of 75,000 people between 1942 and 1945."Don't you know the people in Knoxville wondered what in...

What have we learned about J. Robert Oppenheimer? American Prometheus The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin Knopf, 736 pp., $35 ALL THE NEW EVIDENCE FROM long-closed Russian archives, and declassified American projects like Venona, has settled many of the most vexing espionage cases of the Cold War. The Rosenbergs were guilty of spying; so, too, were Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, and the dozens of government employees whom Elizabeth Bentley accused of being Soviet agents. The only major controversy that remains concerns Robert Oppenheimer, the brilliant scientist who oversaw the construction...

Tehran, 27 May (AKI) - Hojatolislam Gholam Reza Hasani, a representative of Iran's supreme spiritual leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, in Iranian Azerbaijan, has no doubts as to who to vote for in the next presidential elections on 17 June. "You need to vote for Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani," said Hasani. "This way we will finally be able to have for ourselves the atomic bomb to fairly stand up to Israeli weapons," said Hasani. "Freedom, democracy and stupidities of this type cannot be carried over to any part, and these concepts are out of sync with the principles of Islam,"...

The Aviator on National Review Online E-mail Author Send to a Friend <% printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%> Print Version February 25, 2005, 3:14 p.m. Howard Hughes's Last HurrahWhat The Aviator misses. by John Meroney Fifty-three years ago this week, Howard Hughes found himself locked in a battle against powerful political forces he believed were bent on undermining the free-market system. The billionaire industrialist, airplane manufacturer, and filmmaker became so passionate about the fight that he summoned all his emotional and physical strength to overcome a crippling fear of the public so he could make his case for what he saw as...

Iran Will Know How to Build Bomb in 6 Months - Israel Feb 16, 8:17 AM (ET) By Andrew Cawthorne LONDON (Reuters) - Israel said on Wednesday arch-foe Iran was just six months away from having the knowledge to build an atomic bomb, as Tehran accused the United States of using satellites "and other tools" to spy on its nuclear sites. The Israeli warning followed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's call last week for Iran to abandon any pursuit of nuclear weapons and meet its international obligations if it was to be sure of avoiding conflict. "The question is not...

OSLO, Norway -- A scientist considered the father of Iraq's nuclear program said Thursday that his nation would have developed atomic weapons in the early 1990s had Saddam Hussein not ordered the invasion of Kuwait. The invasion sparked the U.S.-led Operation Desert Storm in 1991, which drove Iraq out of Kuwait and marked the end of Baghdad's nuclear and biological weapons program, said Jafar Dhia Jafar, the scientific head of Iraq's nuclear weapons program. "By the end of 1990, about 8,000 people were involved directly or indirectly in the nuclear program," said Jafar, presenting his new Norwegian-language book, "Oppdraget", which...

We keep reading that there are "no good options" for diminishing the threat of Iran's nuclear program. And certainly preemptive military strikes are an imperfect solution at best, though the option has to be kept on the table. But that still doesn't explain why the Bush Administration has been so reluctant to support Iranians who want to overthrow the bomb-building mullahs. Opposition to the Islamic Republic remains alive and well in Iran, despite the best efforts of Supreme Leader Ali Khameini and his loyal ayatollahs to kill it. On Monday the ineffectual Mohammed Khatami, the outgoing "reformist" president, was heckled...

Warning: graphic.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 11 - President Bush and his top advisers have received intelligence reports in recent days describing a confusing series of actions by North Korea that some experts believe could indicate the country is preparing to conduct its first test explosion of a nuclear weapon, according to senior officials with access to the intelligence. While the indications were viewed as serious enough to warrant a warning to the White House, American intelligence agencies appear divided about the significance of the new North Korean actions, much as they were about the evidence concerning Iraq's alleged weapons stockpiles. Some analysts in...

It was the afternoon of August 5, 1945. To a group of six hundred army officers assigned to the Hiroshima garrison, Professor Yoshitaka Mimura of Hiroshima Bunri University, a theoretical physicist, was explaining the scientific possibilities of new weapons which might reverse the tide of war. Japan had little Navy or Air Force left. Within months a massive invasion of the home islands seemed likely. “Could you tell us, sir”, a young lieutenant colonel asked, “what an atomic bomb is? Is there any possibility that the bomb will be deployed by the end of this war?” Mimura chalked a rough...

Friday, August 6, 2004 at 08:51 JST HIROSHIMA — Hiroshima on Friday morning marked the 59th anniversary of the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing of the city. An estimated 40,000 people attended the ceremony that started at 8 a.m. at the Peace Memorial Park in the downtown part of the western Japan city that was devastated in the world's first nuclear attack Aug 6, 1945, three days before the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. In his peace declaration, Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba voiced serious concern over the "egocentric worldview" of the United States and moves in Japan to revise the country's pacifist...

Lord, Keep our Troops forever in Your care Give them victory over the enemy... Grant them a safe and swift return... Bless those who mourn the lost. . FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer for all those serving their country at this time. ...................................................................................... ........................................... U.S. Military History, Current Events and Veterans Issues Where Duty, Honor and Countryare acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated. Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should feel...

By DAVID GERMAIN, AP Movie Writer PARK CITY, Utah - Few filmmakers examining their family history in a documentary would find themselves in the thick of the Academy Awards (news - web sites) race. When your grandparents are Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, though, the subject resonates far outside the immediate family. Ivy Meeropol's "Heir to an Execution" chronicles her effort to come to terms with the lives and deaths of her father's parents, executed as traitors in 1953 after being accused of relaying the secret of the atomic bomb to the Soviets. "I grew up with this. It was always...

"Inquiry Suggests Pakistanis Sold Nuclear Secrets" By THE NEW YORK TIMES Published: December 22, 2003 "Western agencies have been investigating Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's bomb." This article is by William J. Broad, David Rohde and David E. Sanger. "WASHINGTON, Dec. 21 — A lengthy investigation of the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, by American and European intelligence agencies and international nuclear inspectors has forced Pakistani officials to question his aides and openly confront evidence that the country was the source of crucial technology to enrich uranium for Iran, North Korea and other nations. Until...

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Libya made clear on Saturday it wanted to come in from the cold after decades as a pariah state, and the United States and Britain promised to reward its decision to abandon banned weapons programs. Almost 15 years to the day since its agents brought down a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie, Muammar Gaddafi's state opened the prospect of an end to sanctions and a return of U.S. oil firms with a pledge on Friday to stop seeking weapons of mass destruction. Britain said it had been close to an atomic bomb. Some U.S. officials cautioned that...

The Smithsonian's display of the Enola Gay bomber sidesteps any controversy over the atomic attacks on Japan. By Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin are co-authors of a forthcoming biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, to be published by Alfred A. Knopf. This week, the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum unveiled a fully restored, finely polished artifact of World War II — a Boeing B-29 "Superfortress." This particular airplane — the Enola Gay — is the centerpiece of the museum's sleek new $311-million annex. [snip] Of course there is, and the museum's brief label provides a...

Smithsonian 'Enola Gay' Exhibit 'Bombs Again' As Anti-War Activists Decry Hiroshima Omission Criticism Meets New Exhibit of Plane That Carried A-BombBy ELIZABETH OLSON WASHINGTON, Oct. 31 — When officials at the Smithsonian Institution unveiled a new home for the World War II bomber the Enola Gay in August, they had hoped to avoid the kind of controversy that had previously plagued efforts to exhibit the airplane that carried the first atomic bomb. Not likely. Now a group of scholars, writers, activists and others have signed a petition criticizing the exhibit for labeling the Enola Gay as "the largest and...

From: elder@chesapeake.net Date: Wed Sep 24, 2003 2:58 pm Subject: Enola Gay Protest Set for Dec 15 - Next Meeting at AU 10/2 A determined group of academics and activists drew up plans at American University last night to organize opposition to the public unveiling of the Enola Gay set for December 15 at the Air and Space Museum's new complex in Dulles, Virginia. The Enola Gay is the Boeing B-29 Superfortress that dropped the atomic bomb over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, incinerating the city and killing an estimated 140,000 Japanese. Representatives from Peace Action, Catholic Worker, DC Antiwar...