# data[].attributes.body
Louie Zamperini who is 14 joins his high school track team after his older brother Pete convinces him to. After joining Louie is trained by his older brother and by the time Louie is 16 he is beating college runners. Running begins to be his main focus and without knowing it Louie has discovered his passion

# data[].attributes.body
Louie finds a love for running and spends everyday practicing and being trained by his older brother Pete. By 1934 at the age of 17 he breaks the country record with mile time of 4:21.3. He then joins the Olympic team at the age of 19.

# data[].attributes.body
Louie places 8th in the 5,000 meter and then joins the track team at the University of Southern California before leaving to join the Army Air Corps and is discharged because of his airsickness. After attempting to make it in Hollywood he is drafted into the Army Air Corps.

# data[].attributes.body
Their plane is declared missing and when Louie goes to find the chocolate he finds out that in a panic while they were asleep Mac ate all the chocolate. 2 different planes fly over the raft but don't see them. After several days of drifting at sea their water rations run out and Mac and Phil are dying of thirst. They are saved when a storm brews above them giving the crew enough water to survive. Along with dying of thirst Phil and Louie and starving because Mac at all the food. They finally get something to eat when a bird lands on the raft and they kill it using its meat to catch fish which they eat raw.

# data[].attributes.body
Louie trains to become a bomber on a B-24 plane, which are know to fail and be very dangerous. While he is training the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor. Louie finished training and is stationed in Hawaii. While stationed there he takes part in bombing Japanese forces. Life stationed in Hawaii is simple and boring for Louie until some of his friends are sent out for a training run, while out on the run the plain breaks down and crashes on a island killing all of the members on board.

# data[].attributes.body
Louie and his crew are now stationed on the island of Canton. The crew along with Louie take part in the bombing of the island of Nauru. While bombing the island their plane is hit with bullets from Japanese planes defending the island. One of the members of the crew had been killed with many others injured. The book states "There were 594 holes." (91) Their plane had been shot 594 times with only one casualty.

# data[].attributes.body
Louie and his crew go out to search for a that went missing the day before and are taking a new plane called "The Green Hornet", along with a new plane they have a new gunner named Francis or "Mac". While searching for the lost plane their plane experiences malfunctions and failures and ends up crashing in the ocean. Only 3 men survive the crash and make it onto the raft they are Louie, Mac, and Phil who is injured.The raft has little to no supplies with 2 pieces of chocolate as their only food. The raft is surrounded by sharks

# data[].attributes.body
On day 27 of drifting at sea the crew spots another plane. Thinking its someone there to save them they begin to wave their shirts around trying to get their attention only to have the plane shoot at them. They dive into they water only to find there are sharks all around them. They fight off the sharks and barley have the energy to make it back onto the raft only to have the plan swoop down and fire at the 2 more times. Eventually the plane leaves and no one is hurt but they have to repair the raft with a sewing kit while fighting off sharks.

# data[].attributes.body
The Japanese knew that Louie was an Olympic runner so they decided to use him as propaganda. The first  time he was allowed to say anything he pleased but the second time he was handed a script which he refused to follow, he was punished severely for this. These broadcasts showed Louie's family that he was still alive. While this is going on the prisoners of war spot new B-29 planes which is their first sign that the Americans are winning. This quote describes the first time they POW's had seen the new plane "A cheer rang out. Men began shouting, “B-29! B-29!” The bomber was the most beautiful thing that Louie had ever seen." (278)

# data[].attributes.body
They are now 4 weeks at sea and sharks are beginning to jump out at the raft trying to grab them. They fight them off but eventually Mac dies and they bury him at sea. Phil and Louie spot an island. And after surviving a strong storm they row to the island only to realize that its island occupied by the Japanese. They are treated kindly at first but are then blind folded and taken to a prison camp where they treated horribly and are abused by the guards. They are then stripped and blind folded and are put on a boat headed for the POW camp in Yokohowa, Japan

# data[].attributes.body
Louie and Phil are constantly beaten and teased during their 3 week voyage and while on the boat they are told that they are actually going to a secret interrogation center along with 200 other prisoners of war. When they reached the interrogation center they experienced worse conditions then they did on the boat constantly being mistreated by the guards. Louie Phil and the rest of the inmates found small ways of rebelling, using Morse code to communicate. Phil was sent to a slave labor camp.

# data[].attributes.body
The Bird was transferred from the Omori POW camp and for a time things were better. The prisoners could receive and send letters and a friend Louie had made in a previous camp had been transferred over to his camp. The were still spotting B-29's and were now seeing bombings taking place in the distance. Then all of a sudden Louie along with another prisoner were transferred to the Naoetsu POW camp were they find The Bird waiting for them. The Naoetsu is a slave camp where the prisoners are forced to work in horrible conditions to support the war effort. The book describes Louie's 'meeting with The Bird as this "Louie would remember the moment he saw The Bird as the darkest of his life." (290)

# data[].attributes.body
Louie works as a barber in order to gain earn very small amounts of food which are keeping him from starving to death. The conditions are so harsh that Louie along with 3 other inmates decide to plan an escape which they eventually call off because they fear that the others will be punished for their escape.  In this quote "Every day,
the men were slapped, kicked, beaten, humiliated, and driven through forced exercise." (221) describes the abuse the prisoners had to go through everyday.

# data[].attributes.body
Louie is transferred to the Omori Prisoner of War camp and there he meets a disciplinary officer nicknamed "The Bird". The Bird is Louie's personal hell, constantly getting beaten for no reason. And receiving punishments for things that he didn't do. Louie became The  Birds personal obsession, Louie was so mistreated that he no longer wanted to live. The book describes The Bird or Officer Watanabe's actions as this "Watanabe beat POWs every day, fracturing their windpipes,
rupturing their eardrums, shattering their teeth, tearing one man’s ear half off, leaving men unconscious." (245)

# data[].attributes.body
400 New POW are entered into the camp and along with them comes the news that Germany has fallen. The Bird is now splitting his time between this camp and another. Some members were caught stealing fish and as punishment Louie and 2 other prisoners are ordered to receive 220 punches to the face from the other prisoners. Louie battling starving to death while also being sick is still being torments by The Bird. One day The Bird orders Louie to hold a heavy 6 foot long beam above his head and says that if he drops it he will be shot. Louie lasts a surprising 37 minutes and eventually falls after The Bird gets angry and beats him until Louie falls unconscious. A few days after this the first atomic bomb is dropped on Japan. In this quote the book describes how Louie felt during the time when he held the beam for 37 minutes. "Time ticked on, and still Louie remained in the same position, conscious and yet not, the beam over his head, his eyes on the Bird’s face, enduring long past when his
strength should have given out. “Something went on inside of me,” he said later. “I don’t know what it was.”" (324)

# data[].attributes.body
The guards admit that the war is over, and they withdraw from Louie's POW camp, the prisoners celebrate their freedom. In Phil's camp the US planes drop care packages filled with food and sweets. Louie boards a train leaving the POW camp on September 5. The joy and relief of that the prisoners felt was immense, the book reads "In the midst of the running, celebrating men, Louie stood on wavering legs,
emaciated, sick, and dripping wet. In his tired mind, two words were repeating themselves, over and over. I’m free! I’m free! I’m free!" (340)

# data[].attributes.body
Louie is taken to an American camp where he slowly gains back weight and then he is taken to Honolulu, then he returns to California where he is finally reunited with his family. Although he is home and the war is over it is still effecting Louie who suffers from suffocating anxiety which is no doubt caused by the mistreatment he went through during the time when he was held captive in the POW camps. He turns to alcohol in hops of calming his inner demons. He also meets a girl which he engages and marries against the wishes of her family. Phil returns back to Indiana to meet his family and his finace who has been waiting for him all these years, 4 weeks after he comes home they marry.  Although Louie experienced suffering and pain beyond belief he still thought that all he went through was worth it. The book says that when Louie finally came home he said "“This, this little home,” he said, “was worth all of it.”" (370)

# data[].attributes.body
Louie although home and with his family is still haunted by The Bird. He suffers from PTSD and nightmares about his time as a POW. He struggles to keep control and becomes and alcoholic all while one thought is always present in his mind. He wants to kill The Bird who is still in Japan running from authorities who seek to put him on trial for the war crimes he committed against the POW's during the war, if caught he will be executed for his crimes. This quote from the book describes Louie's first flashback "One day Louie was overcome by a strange, inexplicable feeling, and suddenly the war was all around and in him, not a memory but the actual experience." (400)

# data[].attributes.body
Louie spirals downward and continues to drink in order to help him cope with his PTSD. He has a dream that he is killing The Bird only to wake up and find that he is strangling his pregnant wife. His wife files for divorce but is changed after finding Christianity. She decides not to divorce and instead brings Louie to religion which allows him to forgive his captures and put his life back together. After going to a certain sermon Louie returned hope and for the first time since he had gotten back from war he had a night free from the fear of The Bird. The book reads "In the morning, he woke feeling cleansed. For the first time in five years, the Bird hadn’t come into his dreams. The Bird would never come again." (447)

# data[].attributes.body
Louie spent the rest of his life devoted a religion and started a non-profit organization called "Victory Boys Camp" which was made in order to help at risk youth. Phil settled down became a teacher and had 2 years. The Bird died from old age never being tried for the crimes he committed during the war. Louie died in 2014 at the age of 97. This quote talks about Louie running the Olympic torch through the place that one used a POW camp where he was held ". Louie ran through the place where cages had once held him, where a blackeyed man had crawled inside him. But the cages were long gone, and so was the
Bird." (477)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
George Cooper had become a prisoner of the Japanese when HMS Exeter had been sunk in March 1942. Like most prison camps run by the Japanese conditions were not particularly good in his camp in Macassar, with very basic accommodation and an inadequate diet. It was around this time however that a particular individual joined the camp and circumstances became a great deal worse for the Royal Navy, U.S. Navy and Dutch civilian prisoners.

Cooper believed that Yoshida Tomano had been given the lead role in running the camp because of his capacity to run 'a campaign of terror'. He was only a low ranking seaman but 'Yosh' became notorious amongst all the men who encountered him. By these means the Japanese were able to keep order in a camp of over 3,000 men with only seventeen guards:

I used to call him "The Magnesium Flame" - he had only to be touched off to flare up into a white hot fury. But when it had burned itself out he would become quiet, subdued and on occasions even penitent and ashamed. He knew he lost "face" by these scenes, yet appeared unable to help himself.

When he was on the warpath he was very frightening. I have seen five or six hundred British sailors including myself standing stiff at attention, not daring to move an eyelid. A flood of Japanese would pour forth from his tongue; and the sound of this shouting was always the prelude to a scene. At night it was quite eerie and not unlike a mad dog. I doubt that anyone who lived in that camp could ever forget it.

Then would come the beat-up. First the punching in the face, usually with the inside of the clenched fist, to save his knuckles, then always the flogging on the backside with the victim leaning at an angle of forty-five degrees against a wall or tree.

Sometimes the victim would be strung up by his wrists tied behind his back with his feet just touching the ground. Yosh was a remarkably good shot and rarely hit off the target area except when he put a special low one across the thighs for spite.

Most of the guards gave a hand in the terrible beatings that prisoners had to endure, but it was Yosh who dealt out the majority. In the early months he used the baseball bat already mentioned - a wicked weapon; but later he devised one that was far worse a club of the same shape, but slightly lighter and about a yard long.

If this was not readily available, he soon found a suitable substitute. During a beating it was unwise to utter any sound, as this only inspired the Nip who was administering the flogging to even greater efforts; on the other hand to stick it quietly earned the victim the guards' respect - they would give him the thumbs up sign and say "Good" in Malay.

The great danger was in falling down. For some reason this made Yosh and any guards in the vicinity go quite wild, and they would rush round the victim kicking and stamping on his face and body with their hobnailed boots; they would in fact kick him back into the standing position. Serious injury was liable to be inflicted to the head, spine and limbs. Burst ear-drums were by no means uncommon.

George T. Cooper was to survive the war but his experiences at the hands of the Japanese are reflected in the title of his memoir: George T. Cooper: Never Forget, Nor Forgive . He was awarded the OBE for services to other PoWs and later became a Captain in the Royal Navy.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
George Cooper had become a prisoner of the Japanese when HMS Exeter had been sunk in March 1942. Like most prison camps run by the Japanese conditions were not particularly good in his camp in Macassar, with very basic accommodation and an inadequate diet.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Draft and WWII
On September 16, 1940, the United States instituted the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, which required all men between the ages of 21 and 45 to register for the draft. This was the first peacetime draft in United States' history. Those who were selected from the draft lottery were required to serve at least one year in the armed forces. Once the U.S. entered WWII, draft terms extended through the duration of the fighting. By the end of the war in 1945, 50 million men between eighteen and forty-five had registered for the draft and 10 million had been inducted in the military.
Although the United States was not at war, many people in the government and in the country believed that the United States would eventually be drawn into the wars that were being fought in Europe and East Asia. Isolationism, or the belief that American should do whatever it could to stay out of the war, was still strong. But with the fall of France to the Nazis in June 1940, Americans were growing uneasy about Great Britain's ability to defeat Germany on its own. Our own military was woefully unprepared to fight a global war should it called upon to do so. National polls showed a growing majority in favor of instituting a draft.
Take a look at some of the primary documents related to the draft from the Museum's Education Collection.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Research Starters: The Draft and World War II | The National WWII Museum | New Orleans

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Draft and WWII On September 16, 1940, the United States instituted the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, which required all men between the ages of 21 and 45 to register for the draft. This was the first peacetime draft in United States' history.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
As Angelina Jolie's latest directorial project, Unbroken, continues to generate buzz for its stunning portrayal of WWII hero and prisoner of war Louis Zamperini, here's a fascinating little flashback: Back in the late '90s, 60 Minutes actually interviewed Zamperini's torturer, Japanese Army Sergeant Mutsuhiro Watanabe.

For the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, the former POW Zamperini was set to carry the Olympic Flame torch past the prison where he was once held captive. As part of a CBS special on his achievements, the newsmagazine program tracked down his torturer for a fascinating interview that ultimately saw Watanabe refusing to apologize for his actions.

"I wasn't given military orders. Because of my own personal feelings, I treated the prisoners strictly as enemies of Japan," he told his interviewer, Bob Simon. Watanabe refused to meet with Zamperini as part of the piece.

Watanabe was known as "The Bird," and had gone into hiding during the American occupation of Japan. However, in 1952, the United States granted amnesty to Japanese war criminals, after which he emerged to become a businessman.

He died in April 2003, and Zamperini died earlier this year.

Watch below, via CBS:

- -
>> Follow Andrew Kirell (@AndrewKirell) on Twitter
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Mutsuhiro 'The Bird' Watanabe 60 Minutes Interview

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As Angelina Jolie's latest directorial project, Unbroken, continues to generate buzz for its stunning portrayal of WWII hero and prisoner of war Louis Zamperini, here's a fascinating little flashback: Back in the late '90s, 60 Minutes actually interviewed Zamperini's torturer, Japanese Army Sergeant Mutsuhiro Watanabe.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
After the Interim Committee decided to drop the bomb, the Target Committee determined the locations to be hit, and President Truman issued the Potsdam Proclamation as Japan's final warning, the world soon learned the meaning of "complete and utter destruction." The first two atomic bombs ever used were dropped on Japan in early August, 1945.

For a detailed timeline of the bombings, please see Hiroshima and Nagasaki Bombing Timeline.

Hiroshima

On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. The bomb was known as "Little Boy", a uranium gun-type bomb that exploded with about thirteen kilotons of force. At the time of the bombing, Hiroshima was home to 280,000-290,000 civilians as well as 43,000 soldiers. Between 90,000 and 166,000 people are believed to have died from the bomb in the four-month period following the explosion. The U.S. Department of Energy has estimated that after five years there were perhaps 200,000 or more fatalities as a result of the bombing, while the city of Hiroshima has estimated that 237,000 people were killed directly or indirectly by the bomb's effects, including burns, radiation sickness, and cancer.

The bombing of Hiroshima, codenamed Operation Centerboard I, was approved by Curtis LeMay on August 4, 1945. The B-29 plane that carried Little Boy from Tinian Island in the western Pacific to Hiroshima was known as the Enola Gay, after pilot Paul Tibbets' mother. Along with Tibbets, copilot Robert Lewis, bombardier Tom Ferebee, navigator Theodore Van Kirk, and tail gunner Robert Caron were among the others on board the Enola Gay. Below are their eyewitness accounts of the first atomic bomb dropped on Japan.

Pilot Paul Tibbets: "We turned back to look at Hiroshima. The city was hidden by that awful cloud... boiling up, mushrooming, terrible and incredibly tall. No one spoke for a moment; then everyone was talking. I remember (copilot Robert) Lewis pounding my shoulder, saying 'Look at that! Look at that! Look at that!' (Bombardier) Tom Ferebee wondered about whether radioactivity would make us all sterile. Lewis said he could taste atomic fission. He said it tasted like lead."

Navigator Theodore Van Kirk recalls the shockwaves from the explosion: "(It was) very much as if you've ever sat on an ash can and had somebody hit it with a baseball bat... The plane bounced, it jumped and there was a noise like a piece of sheet metal snapping. Those of us who had flown quite a bit over Europe thought that it was anti-aircraft fire that had exploded very close to the plane." On viewing the atomic fireball: "I don't believe anyone ever expected to look at a sight quite like that. Where we had seen a clear city two minutes before, we could now no longer see the city. We could see smoke and fires creeping up the sides of the mountains."

Tail gunner Robert Caron: "The mushroom itself was a spectacular sight, a bubbling mass of purple-gray smoke and you could see it had a red core in it and everything was burning inside. As we got farther away, we could see the base of the mushroom and below we could see what looked like a few-hundred-foot layer of debris and smoke and what have you... I saw fires springing up in different places, like flames shooting up on a bed of coals."

Six miles below the crew of the Enola Gay, the people of Hiroshima were waking up and preparing for their daily routines. It was 8:16 A.M. Up to that point, the city had been largely spared by the rain of conventional air bombing that had ravaged many other Japanese cities. Rumors abounded as to why this was so, from the fact that many Hiroshima residents had emigrated to the U.S. to the supposed presence of President Truman's mother in the area. Still, many citizens, including schoolchildren, were recruited to prepare for future bombings by tearing down houses to create fire lanes, and it was at this task that many were laboring or preparing to labor on the morning of August 6. Just an hour before, air raid sirens had sounded as a single B-29, the weather plane for the Little Boy mission, approached Hiroshima. A radio broadcast announced the sighting of the Enola Gay soon after 8 A.M.

The city of Hiroshima was annihilated by the explosion. 70,000 of 76,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed, and 48,000 of those were entirely razed. Survivors recalled the indescribable and incredible experience of seeing that the city had ceased to exist.

A college history professor: "I climbed Hikiyama Hill and looked down. I saw that Hiroshima had disappeared... I was shocked by the sight... What I felt then and still feel now I just can't explain with words. Of course I saw many dreadful scenes after that-but that experience, looking down and finding nothing left of Hiroshima-was so shocking that I simply can't express what I felt... Hiroshima didn't exist-that was mainly what I saw-Hiroshima just didn't exist."

Medical doctor Michihiko Hachiya: "Nothing remained except a few buildings of reinforced concrete... For acres and acres the city was like a desert except for scattered piles of brick and roof tile. I had to revise my meaning of the word destruction or choose some other word to describe what I saw. Devastation may be a better word, but really, I know of no word or words to describe the view."

Writer Yoko Ota: "I reached a bridge and saw that the Hiroshima Castle had been completely leveled to the ground, and my heart shook like a great wave... the grief of stepping over the corpses of history pressed upon my heart."

Those who were close to the epicenter of the explosion were simply vaporized by the intensity of the heat. One man left only a dark shadow on the steps of a bank as he sat. The mother of Miyoko Osugi, a 13-year-old schoolgirl working on the fire lanes, never found her body, but she did find her geta sandal. The area covered by Miyoko's foot remained light, while the rest of it was darkened by the blast.

Many others in Hiroshima, farther from the Little Boy epicenter, survived the initial explosion but were severely wounded, including injuries from and burns across much of their body. Among these people, panic and chaos were rampant as they struggled to find food and water, medical assistance, friends and relatives and to flee the firestorms that engulfed many residential areas.

Having no point of reference for the bomb's absolute devastation, some survivors believed themselves to have been transported to a hellish version of the afterlife. The worlds of the living and the dead seemed to converge.

A Protestant minister: "The feeling I had was that everyone was dead. The whole city was destroyed... I thought this was the end of Hiroshima-of Japan-of humankind... This was God's judgment on man."

A six-year-old boy: "Near the bridge there were a whole lot of dead people... Sometimes there were ones who came to us asking for a drink of water. They were bleeding from their faces and from their mouths and they had glass sticking in their bodies. And the bridge itself was burning furiously... The details and the scenes were just like Hell."

A sociologist: "My immediate thought was that this was like the hell I had always read about... I had never seen anything which resembled it before, but I thought that should there be a hell, this was it-the Buddhist hell, where we were thought that people who could not attain salvation always went... And I imagined that all of these people I was seeing were in the hell I had read about."

A boy in fifth grade: "I had the feeling that all the human beings on the face of the earth had been killed off, and only the five of us (his family) were left behind in an uncanny world of the dead."

A grocer: "The appearance of people was... well, they all had skin blackened by burns... They had no hair because their hair was burned, and at a glance you couldn't tell whether you were looking at them from in front or in back... Many of them died along the road-I can still picture them in my mind-like walking ghosts... They didn't look like people of this world."

Many people traveled to central places such as hospitals, parks, and riverbeds in an attempt to find relief from their pain and misery. However, these locations soon became scenes of agony and despair as many injured and dying people arrived and were unable to receive proper care.

A sixth-grade girl: "Bloated corpses were drifting in those seven formerly beautiful rivers; smashing cruelly into bits the childish pleasure of the little girl, the peculiar odor of burning human flesh rose everywhere in the Delta City, which had changed to a waste of scorched earth."

A fourteen-year-old boy: "Night came and I could hear many voices crying and groaning with pain and begging for water. Someone cried, 'Damn it! War tortures so many people who are innocent!' Another said, 'I hurt! Give me water!' This person was so burned that we couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman. The sky was red with flames. It was burning as if scorching heaven."

Nagasaki

Three days after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9 - a 21-kiloton plutonium device known as "Fat Man." On the day of the bombing, an estimated 263,000 were in Nagasaki, including 240,000 Japanese residents, 9,000 Japanese soldiers, and 400 prisoners of war. Prior to August 9, Nagasaki had been the target of small scale bombing by the United States. Though the damage from these bombings was relatively small, it created considerable concern in Nagasaki and many people were evacuated to rural areas for safety, thus reducing the population in the city at the time of the nuclear attack. It is estimated that between 40,000 and 75,000 people died immediately following the atomic explosion, while another 60,000 people suffered severe injuries. Total deaths by the end of 1945 may have reached 80,000.

The decision to use the second bomb was made on August 7, 1945 on Guam. Its use was calculated to indicate that the United States had an endless supply of the new weapon for use against Japan and that the United States would continue to drop atomic bombs on Japan until the country surrendered unconditionally.

The city of Nagasaki, however, was not the primary target for the second atomic bomb. Instead, officials had selected the city of Kokura, where Japan had one of its largest munitions plants.

The B-29 "Bockscar", piloted Major Charles Sweeney, was assigned to deliver the "Fat Man" to the city of Kokura on the morning of August 9, 1945. Accompanying Sweeney on the mission were copilots Charles Donald Albury and Fred J. Olivi, weaponeer Frederick Ashworth, and bombadier Kermit Beahan. At 3:49am, "Bockscar" and five other B-29s departed the island of Tinian and headed towards Kokura.

When the plane arrived over the city nearly seven hours later, thick clouds and drifting smoke from fires started by a major firebombing raid on nearby Yawata the previous day covered most of the area over Kokura, obscuring the aiming point. Pilot Charles Sweeney made three bomb runs over the next fifty minutes, but bombardier Beahan was unable to drop the bomb because he could not see the target visually. By the time of the third bomb run, Japanese antiaircraft fire was getting close, and Second Lieutenant Jacob Beser, who was monitoring Japanese communications, reported activity on the Japanese fighter direction radio bands.

Running low on fuel, the crew aboard Bockscar decided to head for the secondary target, Nagasaki. When the B-29 arrived over the city twenty minutes later, the downtown area was also covered by dense clouds. Frederick Ashworth, the plane's weaponeer proposed bombing Nagasaki using radar. At that moment, a small opening in the clouds at the end of the three-minute bomb run permitted bombardier Kermit Beahan to identify target features.

At 10:58 AM local time, Bockscar visually dropped Fat Man. It exploded 43 seconds later with a blast yield equivalent to 21 kilotons of TNT at an altitude of 1,650 feet, about 1.5 miles northwest of the intended aiming point.

The radius of total destruction from the atomic blast was about one mile, followed by fires across the northern portion of the city to two miles south of where the bomb had been dropped. In contrast to many modern aspects of Hiroshima, almost all of the buildings in Nagasaki were of old-fashioned Japanese construction, consisting of wood or wood-frame buildings with wood walls and tile roofs. Many of the smaller industries and business establishments were also situated in buildings of wood or other materials not designed to withstand explosions. As a result, the atomic explosion over Nagasaki leveled nearly every structure in the blast radius.

The failure to drop Fat Man at the precise bomb aim point caused the atomic blast to be confined to the Urakami Valley. As a consequence, a major portion of the city was protected from the explosion. The Fat Man was dropped over the city's industrial valley midway between the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works in the south and the Mitsubishi-Urakami Ordnance Works in the north. The resulting explosion had a blast yield equivalent to 21 kilotons of TNT, roughly the same as the Trinity blast. Nearly half of the city was completely destroyed.

Bockscar's copilot Fred J. Olivi published a detailed account of the effects of the atomic explosion over Nagasaki. Here are some of his reactions:

Olivi: "Suddenly, the light of a thousand suns illuminated the cockpit. Even with my dark welder's goggles, I winced and shut my eyes for a couple of seconds. I guessed we were about seven miles from "ground zero" and headed directly away from the target, yet the light blinded me for an instant. I had never experienced such an intense bluish light, maybe three or four times brighter than the sun shining above us."

"I've never seen anything like it! Biggest explosion I've ever seen...This plume of smoke I'm seeing is hard to explain. A great white mass of flame is seething within the white mushroom shaped cloud. It has a pinkish, salmon color. The base is black and is breaking a little way down from the mushroom."

"The Mushroom cloud was coming right at us. I immediately looked up and could see that he was right, the cloud was getting close to Bockscar. We had been told not to fly through the atomic cloud because it was extremely dangerous to the crew and aircraft. Knowing this, Sweeney put Bockscar into a steep dive to the right, away from the cloud, throttles wide open. For a few moments we could not tell if we were out-running the ominous cloud or if it was gaining on us, but gradually we pulled away from the dangerous radioactive cloud before it engulfed us, much to everyone's relief."

Tatsuichiro Akizuki: "All the buildings I could see were on fire... Electricity poles were wrapped in flame like so many pieces of kindling... It seemed as if the earth itself emitted fire and smoke, flames that writhed up and erupted from underground. The sky was dark, the ground was scarlet, and in between hung clouds of yellowish smoke. Three kinds of color-black, yellow, and scarlet-loomed ominously over the people, who ran about like so many ants seeking to escape... It seemed like the end of the world."

Aftermath

On August 14, Japan surrendered. Journalist George Weller was the "first into Nagasaki" and described the mysterious "atomic illness" (the onset of radiation sickness) that was killing patients who outwardly appeared to have escaped the bomb's impact. Controversial at the time and for years later, Weller's articles were not allowed to be released until 2006.

Controversy

The debate over the bomb - whether there should have been a test demonstration, whether the Nagasaki bomb was necessary, and more - continues to this day.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - 1945

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
After the Interim Committee decided to drop the bomb, the Target Committee determined the locations to be hit, and President Truman issued the Potsdam Proclamation as Japan's final warning, the world soon learned the meaning of "complete and utter destruction." The first two atomic bombs ever used were dropped on Japan in early August, 1945.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Louis Zamperini Youth Ministries is honored to continue the legacy of Victory Boys Camps, 66 years after it's inception!

We now partner with a strong contingent of camps, foster-care programs, inner city outreach, military schools, and youth correctional facilities , each tailored to fit the unique needs of at-risk youth. It was always Louis' intention to give assistance, both spiritually and financially, to kids, all with the goal of bringing their experiences back home with them. Louis Zamperini Youth Ministries equips kids with the tools required for commitment, perseverance, character, and a charitable heart toward others. We work together to plant the seeds of faith, hope, purpose and direction, changing their lives forever.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Victory Boys Camp - The Louis Zamperini Foundation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Louis Zamperini Youth Ministries is honored to continue the legacy of Victory Boys Camps, 66 years after it's inception! We now partner with a strong contingent of camps, foster-care programs, inner city outreach, military schools, and youth correctional facilities , each tailored to fit the unique needs of at-risk youth.

# data[].attributes.body
Hillenbrand, Laura. Unbroken: a World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. Ballantine Books, 2018.