This day in history

[Jon Schmid]

[Joe 20]

The bomb was dropped for many reasons and I never knew a serviceman who was against it's use while I was growing up in the 50's and 60's.
_________________
"Someday the world is gonna be populated by nothing but Volkswagens'" Corporal Klairvoy

[Abscate]

That’s because you don’t know any Japanese service folks.

Visiting Hiroshima is a religious experience. Seeing 70,000 people in a mass grave is mind warping.

War brings out the worst and best in humankind. I’m resigned my view in the dropping of the bomb, which we call a device, as a decision with both good and bad consequences and neither wrong nor right
_________________
.ssS!

[Tram]

The problem is that the bomb didn't end the war. The Japanese were already prepared to die for their Emperor. The problem was the edict of unconditional surrender. They already knew they were badly beaten. Allowing the condition of letting them keep the Emperor caused the surrender. The Japanese considered the Emperor a deity on earth, and the thought of him being imprisoned or tried for war crimes was a hard stop no.

The decision on Hirohito was probably the one single smartest military decision we made in that war, because this totally aided the postwar Japanese recovery, too.

Arguments as to whether the bomb's use was right or wrong is just not productive. Unlike what we have done with our own indigenous peoples, slaves, and other people of color and Jewish citizens, we actually have done rather well on making things right with the Japanese people. We should use this as a blueprint for other marginalized groups. We can't fix the past but we can make the present better.
_________________
Немає виправдання для війни! Я з Україною.

[Cusser]

[Jon Schmid]

All I know is, my dad survived the war, likely because of the two big firecrackers. That's enough for me.

[Floating VW]

American bombers would drop leaflets on Japanese cities, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki, warning the civilian population to evacuate before the bombs dropped. The story I heard was the Japanese government threatened to put to death any Japanese citizen who so much as touched one of those leaflets.

An excerpt from the Hiroshima leaflet (from the Atomic Heritage Foundation):

"TO THE JAPANESE PEOPLE:

America asks that you take immediate heed of what we say on this leaflet.

We are in possession of the most destructive explosive ever devised by man. A single one of our newly developed atomic bombs is actually the equivalent in explosive power to what 2000 of our giant B-29s can carry on a single mission. This awful fact is one for you to ponder and we solemnly assure you it is grimly accurate.

We have just begun to use this weapon against your homeland. If you still have any doubt, make inquiry as to what happened to Hiroshima when just one atomic bomb fell on that city.

Before using this bomb to destroy every resource of the military by which they are prolonging this useless war, we ask that you now petition the Emperor to end the war. Our president has outlined for you the thirteen consequences of an honorable surrender. We urge that you accept these consequences and begin the work of building a new, better and peace-loving Japan.

You should take steps now to cease military resistance. Otherwise, we shall resolutely employ this bomb and all our other superior weapons to promptly and forcefully end the war.

EVACUATE YOUR CITIES."
_________________
"It's time you started treating people as individuals, rather than mathematically predictable members of an aggregate set, regardless of how well that works."

[Abscate]

We certainly did not offer prior warning of a bombing raid with the most expensive weapon known to man. There is a lot of Revisionist writing on this topic. There were a wide range of personalities from “ this is a terrible new weapon “ to “ nuke them till they glow “ in this decision process.

One of the good things that happened is the intelligence corps who visited the blast sites to gather weapon info saw the mass destruction, and that helped keep the Cold War cold.

On edit. We certainly did leaflet cities but we did not disclose locations. We also leafleted cities that we did not attack throughout the war. Trying to claim moral ground that the civilians were warned is soft at best , in my opinion.
_________________
.ssS!

[Zundfolge1432]

[Cusser]

Dec. 11, 1941: Hitler declares war on USA, making it "official" for USA to enter the European war, as on Dec. 8 USA had declared war on Japan only.

Hitler felt that USA was a "mongrel nation" and thus would not be able to even affect the European war, plus he felt that his Japanese alliance would keep Americans busy. He should've staying with painting, maybe 50 million lives would've been spared....
_________________
1970 VW (owned since 1972) and 1971 VW Convertible (owned since 1976), second owner of each. The '71 now has the 1835 engine, swapped from the '70. Second owner of each. 1988 Mazda B2200 truck, 1998 Frontier, 2014 Yukon, 2004 Frontier King Cab. All manual transmission except for the Yukon. http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/album_page.php?pic_id=335294 http://www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/album_page.php?pic_id=335297

[Xevin]

This day 2021. 4 Americans died by other Americans in the name of justice and freedom No need to comment. It all happened right in front of us.


Link

_________________
Keep on Busin'

[Zundfolge1432]

[KTPhil]

January 17th, 1994:

In a near replay of the earlier (February 9, 1971) Sylmar quake, Northridge was the center of a major 6.7 earthquake that killed 72.

Same 5/14 freeway interchange in Newhall pass collapsed, again.

16 were killed in the collapse of the first floor of the Northridge Meadows apartments.

Both the left and right parts of this Northridge Meadows building are three stories. The first floor at the left utterly collapsed, crushing residents and cars. Emergency responders thought it was a two story building at first.

Faulty steel columns (made of too-thin material, incorrectly passed by careless L.A. City building inspectors) was a major cause of the collapse. None were prosecuted.

Water and gas pipes broke along Balboa Blvd., flooding and burning for days.

I lived and/or worked in the San Fernando Valley for both quakes.

We are overdue for another one...

[Abscate]

Was that top photo of the ChiP with the really poor timing on that ramp?

RIP, thanks for service.
_________________
.ssS!

[KTPhil]

[Zundfolge1432]

On January 23, 1957, machines at the Wham-O toy company roll out the first batch of their aerodynamic plastic discs—now known to millions of fans all over the world as Frisbees.

The story of the Frisbee began in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where William Frisbie opened the Frisbie Pie Company in 1871. Students from nearby universities would throw the empty pie tins to each other, yelling “Frisbie!” as they let go. In 1948, Walter Frederick Morrison and his partner Warren Franscioni invented a plastic version of the disc called the “Flying Saucer” that could fly further and more accurately than the tin pie plates. After splitting with Franscioni, Morrison made an improved model in 1955 and sold it to the new toy company Wham-O as the “Pluto Platter”–an attempt to cash in on the public craze over space and Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs).

In 1958, a year after the toy’s first release, Wham-O—the company behind such top-sellers as the Hula-Hoop, the Super Ball and the Water Wiggle—changed its name to the Frisbee disc, misspelling the name of the historic pie company. A company designer, Ed Headrick, patented the design for the modern Frisbee in December 1967, adding a band of raised ridges on the disc’s surface–called the Rings–to stabilize flight. By aggressively marketing Frisbee-playing as a new sport, Wham-O sold over 100 million units of its famous toy by 1977.

[Zundfolge1432]

Paul McCartney’s arrival at Tokyo’s Narita International Airport on January 16, 1980, marked his first visit to Japan since the Beatles tour of 1966. The occasion was a planned 11-city concert tour by his band Wings. Instead, Paul’s visit was limited to a nine-day stint in the Tokyo Narcotics Detention Center, which ended on January 25, 1980.

McCartney was found to be carrying nearly half a pound of marijuana in his baggage upon arrival at Narita—an amount that Paul would later assure Japanese authorities was intended solely for his personal use. The amount was large enough, however, to warrant a smuggling charge and a potential seven-year prison sentence. Given Japan’s reputation for rigorous enforcement of its strict anti-drug laws, it was by no means a foregone conclusion that McCartney would escape trial and possible imprisonment, yet he was released and quickly deported from Japan on January 25, 1980, prior to making any appearance in court.

That a celebrity of McCartney’s stature would avoid the consequences that a less-famous drug smuggler might have faced was hardly surprising. After all, who could blame Japanese authorities for applying a double-standard to a prisoner whose sing-alongs inside the jailhouse and screaming fans outside threatened to create a significant distraction from the normal workings of the justice system? The question that troubled the minds of observers at the time was, “What was Paul thinking?” Half a pound of marijuana was a prodigious amount for one man to carry around for personal use—particularly a man who had had reason to expect especially close examination of his person and his baggage by Japanese customs officials. After all, Paul had been denied a Japanese entry visa just five years earlier due to his numerous earlier drug arrests in Europe.

Twenty years after his 1980 arrest, Paul would opine that his psychological motivation may have been to find an excuse to disband Wings, which he in fact did immediately following his return to England. In another interview, however, Sir Paul offered an explanation that may be the more compelling for its simplicity: “We were about to fly to Japan and I knew I wouldn’t be able to get anything to smoke over there,” McCartney said in 2004. “This stuff was too good to flush down the toilet, so I thought I’d take it with me.”

[Bonesberg55]

This day in 1967 the three Apollo 1 astronauts Grissom, White, & Chaffee died in a flash fire in their capsule during a simulated launch. The Apollo program was set back about 18 months but was resumed on an accelerated schedule to still meet JFK's goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade. As a result, much testing was bypassed. Apollo 1 was supposed to be the first manned flight of the Saturn V but instead Apollo 7 had that honor. It took an amazing staff of talented people to pull that off & there was a lot of risk taking.

[Abscate]

[Bonesberg55]

This day in 1986 the space shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after liftoff. All crew members disintegrated along with the shuttle. I was home with the flu watching the launch and heard "Go ahead & throttle up". There was a flash of light & then nothing except a few embers falling to the ocean. Roger Boisjoly was a booster rocket engineer at NASA contractor Morton Thiokol in Utah and warned months in advance that launching in cold weather compromised the o-rings on the boosters. Morton Thiokol advised NASA to delay the launch but NASA told them to "rethink" their recomendation and the launch proceeded.