The Day Man Lost: Hiroshima, 6 August, 1945 (1972)

This is another book on the events leading up to the bombing of Hiroshima, and the bombing itself. I'll just cover a few of the points that the book makes.

Oddly enough, the book starts out attacking another book.

”I must conclude that Japan's Imperial Conspiracy is not a history but an unfounded character assassination based on one man's fantasy.”

Japan's Imperial Conspiracy is a massive two-volume work and, from what I have read in it, in my opinion, at least, it seems to be far from a “fantasy,” but a book that is backed up by a very great deal of evidence.

The author says that the Japanese people seemed to be united in their desire to fight to the end, although the air raids were “undermining that intention.”

The author says that several groups were working towards peace secretly since they did not want to be caught since Japan did not have freedom of speech at the time.

The author says that the neighborhood associations were extremely important in keeping the population under proper thought control.

The people of Hiroshima were depending on their rivers to help protect them from firebombing. They had heard stories from people from other cities that had been firebombed, but it was not safe to tell such stories since the thought control police, the Kempai tai, acted strongly against anyone saying anything bad about the situation.

The author notes that, as far as the “home guard” goes, not only were they going to use bamboo spears, but they were going to be given bows and arrows, sickles, and old-fashioned rifles (which sound like the flintlock muskets used in the US in the 1700's and early 1800's.)

There was also a plan to put people in holes with a two-day supply of food. They would have a bomb, and their duty was to run out and hurl the bomb at a tank. The bomb had only a three-second delay, so it was a suicide mission.



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