Aug 6

[N8ETQ]

Aug 6 1945

      Boom!  This date now a days goes largely un-noticed by the lame
street media. The culmination of years of sacrifice of a once great
nation. Some may have said it was even "Historic".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_over_Japan_Day

/Dan

[W3RSW]

Funny, our parents couldn't wait to forget VE And VJ days and get along with the amazing fifties, make babies, buy cars again, you name it.

-a big however...
Thanks to them we're not speaking German east of the Rockies and Japanese west.

[N0WEK]

http://www.cnn.com/video/?hpt=hp_c3#/video/us/2012/08/04/intv-dutch-van-kirk.cnn

[KB2WIG]

My father was in the PI when the bomb(s) went off. I doubt that I would have been borne if he went to Japan.


klc

[Jeff W9GY]

I studied AC circuits under a prof that worked on the Manhattan Project.  Never knew any of this in the '60's, he never spoke a word of it.  Recently, however, the story has been told.  (Walter Anderson, W8ERB.  I'm told he is now in very frail health and living in a nursing home)

[KC2ZFA]

in the mid 80s I worked at Sandia Labs in Livermore...it was difficult getting to work between Aug 6 to 9...one time I had to swerve to avoid a platoon of baton-yielding security types rushing the protesters across East Av. and nearly plowed my '62 VW into a crowd of nuns and priests ! Almost hugged them with my nuclear arms !

[WA3VJB]

My father-in-law was on a ship as part of the military's Bikini Atoll atomic bomb tests in the late 1940s.

He's had a couple of types of cancer; each was operable and both are in remission as he prepares to turn 84 this October. A study 20 years ago found cancer mortality less than 5 percent higher for military veterans who were part of the project than the population at large. We are very glad about that.

[Jeff W9GY]

My good friend Fred, K9MXG SK, was on the aircraft carrier Ticonderoga in the Pacific during the closing days of the war.  He said that one of the radio ops was copying the news that day (presumably CW) and came out of the radio room with the news that they dropped an "automatic bomb" on Japan.  Fred said, " I wondered what an 'automatic bomb' was"?

[Bill, KD0HG]

Down in southern New Mexico, you can pick up (or buy) pieces of Trinitite, the melted green sand that the first test nuke they set off near Almagordo kicked up for miles around. The location was called Trinity Site by the nuke scientists. Trinitite will set off a Geiger, but is not dangerous any more.

Once a year, the military now allows an escorted vehicle convoy to visit ground zero, the radiation is now down to safe levels. I am planning on signing up for one of the tours.

I have read that the USA only had enough material to build three bombs, one a test in New Mexico, the other two which were dropped on Japan. No one knew that there was nothing left to build any more, including the Russians, but the bluff worked well enough to end the war.

I feel for HarryTruman, who had to make the decision to drop the nukes on Japan.

I have stopped in roadhouses in New Mexico that had newspaper clippings of the day the test nuke was detonated. Like a second sunrise, some residents said. Of course, no one in the area was warned ahead of schedule..About radioactive debris falling.

Let's hope that's the end of it all.

Bill

[kb3ouk]

My great grandfather was on his way to Japan when the bomb was dropped, then about a year there as an MP.

[Steve - K4HX]

Those were two momentous events. Too much emotion is put into them though. The conventional bombing of Tokyo and numerous German cities was just as bad, if not worse.

[KA2DZT]

One of my uncles was in the 1st Cavalry Div. and was one of the first troops to enter Japan after the surrender.

Another of my uncles was in the Navy.  Years back, I remember him telling me about the time they captured a German sub off the New England coast.  In the news this past month, a search group located the German sub U550 about 70 miles off the New England coast.  I'm thinking this may be the sub my uncle was telling about.  I've been trying to find crew lists of the three destroyers that were involved with this sub U550.  My uncle has past so I'm not able to asked him which ship he served on.

Fred

[Tom WA3KLR]

Here is the link to a related thread I started 5 years ago on the anniversary:

http://amfone.net/Amforum/index.php?topic=5238.0

Another book I recall now reading about 45 years ago which my parent's had was called "No Place to Hide" by Dr. David Bradley.  It was written by one of the science reporters on the Bikini test.

[KE5YTV]

Bill

Me and a group of friends took the " Atomic Tour " two years ago. We first went to Los Alamos and toured the Manhatten Project museum. We also did a walking tour of " The School " grounds. The small house that Oppenhimer lived in is now a private home. There was a Toyota in the garage. 

Then went to the Trinity Site to tour ground zero. They have a tour in April and October. We went in October. The tours last from 8 am- 2 pm. Although you come and go as you please. The test site is on White Sands Test Range. You have about a fifteen mile drive after you pass through the gate to the Trinity site. There is a parking lot at the site but you have to walk the last 1/4 mile. There are food and t shirt vendors along with restrooms.

There are signs posted everwhere not to touch or pickup Trinitite. It is federal property and they are watching. The funny thing is that when you leave there is a sign outside the gate pointing you to a rock shop four miles down the road that has it for sale. I did buy a piece.

We left there and went to Roswell to tour the Alien Museum although we arrived close to the closing time and had to do a quick walkthrough.

Everyone had a good time. It is a great trip.

Mike

P.S. When you are driving through the missle range there is nothing but scrub brush and cactus along the road. But if you look you'll notice that some of the cactus has cables attacked to it with sensors and cameras.
When you're there, Big Brother Is Watching. 

[K6JEK]

One of my uncles was in the 1st Cavalry Div. and was one of the first troops to enter Japan after the surrender.

Another of my uncles was in the Navy.  Years back, I remember him telling me about the time they captured a German sub off the New England coast.  In the news this past month, a search group located the German sub U550 about 70 miles off the New England coast.  I'm thinking this may be the sub my uncle was telling about.  I've been trying to find crew lists of the three destroyers that were involved with this sub U550.  My uncle has past so I'm not able to asked him which ship he served on.

Fred

My father-in-law was a physicist on the Manhattan Project. Uncle Axel was a Marine in the Pacific at the time and my now close friend Yuko was a toddler ten miles from Hiroshima. I'm glad they all survived.

The bomb served us well then but if there is one thing I could uninvent it would be nuclear weapons. It's the line from the old Tom Lehrer song: "And we know for certain that some lucky day someone will set the spark off and we will all be blown away" Or maybe we'll be lucky and the nuclear war will miss us and just be between Pakistan and India or Iran and Israel. The results still won't be pretty for us.

[KM1H]

One of my mothers younger brothers was stationed in Japan just after the war ended as part of the Army occupation forces. He met and married a Japanese girl and they both returned to the US and settled in San Antonio. Both are alive and neither would drive a Japanese car.

OTOH my #2 son, who is of German descent, had to go to CA so he could learn German so he could be transfered there.

He even drives a Beemer