Timeline
Sometimes the media obsession with anniversaries serves a purpose. In the great cycle of anniversaries, we stand poised between the 60th year since the atomic bombing of Japan (Aug. 6, Aug. 9) and the 60th anniversary of Japan's surrender (Aug. 14).
Count it off. Nagasaki was bombed on a Thursday. The following Tuesday the war was over.
POWs were being killed daily by Japanese guards in Borneo. Civilians were being slaughtered in Southeast Asia. Through all causes, noncombatants in Asia were dying at a rate of about 200,000 per month. Some 200,000 Dutch and 400,000 Indonesian citizens languished in Japanese concentration camps. At Pingfan in Manchuria, the Japanese government's experimental Biological and Germ Warfare Center, 4,500 flea-breeding machines produced 100 million infected fleas every few days. These fleas, infected with plague, typhoid, cholera, and anthrax, were to have been dropped on U.S. troops when the invasion began.
Nagasaki was bombed on a Thursday. The following Tuesday the war was over.
Count it off. Nagasaki was bombed on a Thursday. The following Tuesday the war was over.
POWs were being killed daily by Japanese guards in Borneo. Civilians were being slaughtered in Southeast Asia. Through all causes, noncombatants in Asia were dying at a rate of about 200,000 per month. Some 200,000 Dutch and 400,000 Indonesian citizens languished in Japanese concentration camps. At Pingfan in Manchuria, the Japanese government's experimental Biological and Germ Warfare Center, 4,500 flea-breeding machines produced 100 million infected fleas every few days. These fleas, infected with plague, typhoid, cholera, and anthrax, were to have been dropped on U.S. troops when the invasion began.
Nagasaki was bombed on a Thursday. The following Tuesday the war was over.
