Free Republic

The Robert L. Capp collection at the Hoover Institution Archives contains ten never-before-published photographs illustrating the immediate aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing. These photographs, taken by an unknown Japanese photographer, were found in 1945 among rolls of undeveloped film in a cave outside Hiroshima by U.S. serviceman Robert L. Capp, who was attached to the occupation forces. Unlike most photos of the Hiroshima bombing, these dramatically convey the human as well as material destruction unleashed by the atomic bomb. Mr. Capp donated them to the Hoover Archives in 1998 with the provision that they not be reproduced until 2008. Three...

Deliberately targeting civilians is widely considered terrorism nowadays, but during World War II both the Britain’s Bomber Command and the United States Army Air Force deliberately targeted civilians. The British philosopher A. C. Grayling, in his new book Among the Dead Cities: The History and Moral Legacy of the WWII Bombing of Civilians in Germany and Japan (Walker, $25.95), points out that the two air forces combined killed perhaps 600,000 German civilians and another 200,000 Japanese. He makes the case that at least by our current standards we were terrorists, and it logically follows that the attacks were war crimes....

S.J. author's death felt deeply on anniversary of Nanking atrocities By Jessie Mangaliman Mercury News More than 100 Bay Area residents gathered Saturday in Millbrae to commemorate the 67th anniversary of the "Rape of Nanking," atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers in China in the 1930s. But the already solemn occasion took on a sad and somber mood as organizers paid tribute to author Iris Chang, the most prominent voice of an international movement to force the Japanese government to apologize and pay wartime reparations. Chang, 36, author of the best-selling book "The Rape of Nanking," apparently took her own life...