Nagasaki Plus One Month 1945

This rare photo of the Hiroshima mushroom cloud was taken on August 6, 1945. The Hiroshima bombing claimed approximately 120,000 lives and the subsequent leveling of Nagasaki annihilated 80,000. The US military strategists have long held that these two attacks saved over a million US troops by forcing the Japanese Empire to surrender to the Allies.

Over the years the various atomic powers have conducted nearly 2000 explosions.

Only two were on populated targets; Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

During my youth Uncle Russ told his nieces and nephews that he had been ready to parachute into Japan, when a flash appeared over the enemy's home island. The airborne troops watched the mushroom cloud consume Hiroshima. The pilot returned to base.

That how the story stood for years.

My brothers and sisters knew it wasn't true, but we loved our affable uncle's story and the idea of his being poised to invade Japan by air. I thought he was a hero.

The truth took its time coming and last year on Watchic Pond my uncle explained that after the Armistice he had been stationed to Nagasaki. It had been bombed three days after Hiroshima with the same result.

“One day a B-29 bomber caught fire in flight. Nine parachutes appeared in the sky. The bomber lose altitude and crashed into a nearby mountain. We searched for the four officers left on the plane. The aluminum fuselage had been melted by the fire. The only human remains we found was a half a skull. One of the sergeants said that the B-29 normally carried a crew of 11. Two more survivors should have floated to safety. No one ever heard any more of that story.”

Uncle Russ paused for a long moment.

"We headed into the city. "Everything was gone. Sometimes you'd see someone wandering in the streets, but there was nothing there and I saw shadows on the walls. They used to be people. I was 19 years old.

Uncle Russ never said more about those wasted cities.

People from wars rarely tell stories.

At least ones that are true.

My Mirror Image

Early last Thursday evening I was walking east on Houston Street towards Whole Foods. A tropical high had wandered up the Eastern Seaboard and a sweltering heat dome swarmed over the city. I sweat from every pore and my mind was sapped of efry thought by this demon. So lost in thought I strolled past the supermarket. As I approached Katz's Deli, I thought, "Damn , I walked past Whole Foods."

I stood poleaxed, as if heat-stroked and spotted an approaching young white bare-chested jogger. His path vectored to where I stood and he clearly had no intention of changing his course. Determined the young man atopped beforee me. I stood my ground. He stopped inches from my chest. I took off my sunglasses.

He was wearing ear phones and had shaved his chest.

An impasse and I asked which way are you going?"

"Straight ahead." He wanted me to step aside.

"I'm not moving." Not a chance.

"Me neither." An impasse.

But I pointed right. I believe in the right of way. We both slid to our rights

Nagasaki Day 2025 Gaza Now

The day after Hiroshima Japanese scientists returned to Tokyo and informed the Imperial Cabinet that the bomb had been atomic. The Army possessed intelligence that the US possessed two to three more bombs and they as samurai should fight to the bitter end to satisfy the bushi dignity of war. THe US received no message from the Japanese about peace negotiations. On August 9, 1945 the Bockscar B-29 was loaded with a Fat Man on Tinian Island and flew north from Tinian Island with escorts to Kokura, a large source of munitions.. That ancient fotress city was shrouded by a morning fog and the bomber proceeded to thhe secondary target, Nagasaki, an industrial center on the southern island of Kyoshu.

At 11:01 the clouds cleared beneath the bomber and the second atomic bomb was dropped on the city of over 200,000 people. The explosion cupped by the hills surrounding Nagasaki intensifying the destruction. The US reported 60,000. Mostly workers and civilians. Only one hundred and fifty soldiers died on the ground.

On August 9, the Imperial Cabinet met to discuss surrender. The Imperial Army argued against capitulation. The Emperor had the final say. As long as Kokutai or Japanese sovereignty could be preserved, he realized that surrender was the only honorable way out of this war without asking his people to die rather than accept defeat. Truman was bound to drop more bombs as they began available. The next for August 19. The Emperor accepted reality.

"Moreover, the enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed, incalculable, taking the toll of many innocent lives. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization."

After announcing the cessation of war, die-hard militarists staged a coup. Their insurrection failed and peace has reigned in Japan from 1945 to 2026. Eighty-one years. But not so for the USA, trapped as the world's superpower in Endless Wars everywhere in the world, especially in Gaza, where the Azraelis have killed over 300,000 Palestinians in revenge for the twelve hundred dead from Hamas' October 6, 2021 Attack. And they aren't stopping yet or in Syria or Yemen or the West Bank. And Azrael has yet to use a Nuclear Bomb. Of curse they can't, since they are basically bombing that which they want for themselves. Judah, and secondly Zion does not possess a nuclear bomb.

One day there will be peace.

Uncle Russ' Invasion of Japan - October 1945

Throughout our childhood in Maine and the South Shore of Boston, my Uncle Russell Gray told a story about almost parachuting out of a US Air Force plane on August 6. The tale ended with the jumpers seeing the mushroom cloud rising over the city. It wasn't true, but all stories are true, if interesting.

In actuality Uncle Russ had enlisted upon graduating from U Maine that spring and had been processed through the Fort Williams in South Portland. He completed his infantry training in Georgia, then was transported across country by train to San Francisco and shipped west to Japan. Today I asked about those particulars and Russ said that the troop transport had docked in Nagasaki late October 1945, more than two months after the second bombing, but immediately he and his fellow soldiers headed north to Honshu, where he spent the next year. At 98 his memory is a crystal radio signal from another century.

Two years ago Jack Haven recorded his VDO in Marblehead at Fort Edgecomb.

Another telling of the same story.

From a true New Englander.

225 US Steel Jobs In Gary

Throughout the end of the last century tens of thousands of workers were employed in the Indiana mills and ancillary jobs of supply and service. I recall driving through Gary past midnight in 1973. The flames of the blast flames lit the night sky. The jobs were shipped out of the country to cut labor costs. The price of steel never went down. The poverty rose throughout tge mill towns. 225 jobs ain't ____

Hiroshima Plus One Month 1945

This rare photo of the Hiroshima mushroom cloud was taken on August 6, 1945. The Hiroshima bombing claimed approximately 120,000 lives and the subsequent leveling of Nagasaki annihilated 80,000. The US military strategists have long held that these two attacks saved over a million US troops by forcing the Japanese Empire to surrender to the Allies.

My uncle Russ had passd through Hiroshima on his way to a US Army assignment in Nagasaki.

"Everything was gone. There was nothing left. Sometimes you'd see someone wandering in the streets, but there was nothing there."

Everyone else had been turned into shadows.

Hiroshima August 6, 1945

"There was a very strong flash and a heat wave. The whole world turned into something orange. I felt like I was thrown into an oven for a moment."

This quote comes from a Hiroshima survivor.

Only a few of dead had anything to say and that was merely with shadows.