U.S. Marine Francis Anthony Boyle was poised to join the invasion of Japan but was sent to a devastated Nagasaki instead. What he never told his son might surprise you.
On Aug. 9, 1945, as Japan’s high command met on surrender plans, the U.S. dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki killing 74,000 people instantly, a decision that’s never been adequately explained, writes John LaForge.
After the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki On Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, 1945, there then ensued a U.S. propaganda campaign to claim the slaughter of more than 200,000 people saved lives, writes John LaForge.
On the 50th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1995 historians at the Smithsonian tried to present a truthful accounting of that U.S. decision-making but were stopped by right-wing politicians who insist on maintaining comforting myths, recalls Gary G. Kohls.
The first atomic bomb burst at 8:15 a.m. over the city of Hiroshima leaving its impression on a watch that disappeared 44 years later, reports Joe Lauria.
A dark secret behind the Hiroshima bomb is where the uranium came from, a spy-vs.-spy race to secure naturally enriched uranium from Congo to fuel the Manhattan Project and keep the rare mineral out of Nazi hands, reports Joe Lauria.
During this week’s commemoration of the attacks on Japan, Nozomi Hayase spotlights the courage of two journalists — Wilfred Burchett and Julian Assange — who sacrificed their own freedom to expose war crimes.
The head of the Manhattan Project said, “The purpose of the whole project was to subdue the Russians,” writes Scott Ritter in this excerpt from his book Scorpion King.