The Bombs of August

namvet · Aug 13, 2015

on aug 6 an 9th the world is witness to the most destructive weapon ever conceived by man. and the wait for Japan's answer begins. not long. tomorrow the Emperor will broadcast to the empire that the most destructive war in history will end

waltky · Sep 2, 2015

Surviving WWII veteran radioman helped get word out that Japan surrendered...

WWII vet transmitted news of Japanese surrender 70 years ago
2 Sept.`15 Stephen Dennis enlisted in the Navy soon after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. Less than a year later, the raw 19-year-old recruit was thrust into fighting off the Solomon Islands and survived one of the fiercest naval battles in the South Pacific.

By the end of the war, the young sailor from upstate New York was a shipboard radioman helping news organizations get the word out to the world that the Japanese had officially surrendered on Sept. 2, 1945. As Wednesday's 70th anniversary of the surrender approached, Dennis reminisced recently about his military service, which began aboard the ill-fated USS Atlanta. "I was fighting all the time," Dennis, 93, said inside the public library in Mechanicville, his hometown 18 miles north of Albany. "Either they were shooting at us or we were shooting at them."

World War II veteran Stephen Dennis poses in Mechanicville, N.Y. Dennis enlisted in the Navy soon after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Less than a year later, he survived one of the Pacifics fiercest naval battles. On the day Japan formally surrendered to end WWII, the young sailor from upstate New York was transmitting the news to the world that the bloodiest conflict in history was officially over.

Dennis enlisted four days after the Dec. 7, 1941 aerial assault on Hawaii brought the U.S. into the war. After an accelerated boot camp that lasted just 14 days, he was assigned to the Atlanta, a newly commissioned light cruiser. By the spring of 1942 the Atlanta was in the Pacific, where the ship participated in the Battle of Midway. On Nov. 13, 1942, the ship was hit by a torpedo and surface fire from enemy ships as well as friendly fire from the USS San Francisco during a chaotic night battle near the island of Guadalcanal, the largest in the Solomon Islands. Dennis was below deck in the forward part of the Atlanta, helping load powder for guns that got so hot "we had to hose them down," he said.

More than a third of the Atlanta's crew was killed, including the admiral commanding the ship, which was later scuttled because it was so severely damaged. The U.S. lost five other ships, casualties of the Japanese navy's superiority in night fighting early in the war. Boats were sent out from Guadalcanal to rescue the surviving Atlanta crewmembers. When Dennis stepped on shore "I didn't even get my feet wet," he recalled a buddy from back home who was serving in the Marines spotted him. "I spent three days in his foxhole, and he fed me, too," Dennis said.

F4U and F6F fighter planes are flying in formation over the USS Missouri, while the surrender ceremonies to end World War II take place aboard the U.S. Navy battleship.

Despite the drubbings the U.S. suffered in the sea battles, the outgunned and under-supplied Navy helped turn the tide of the war in the Pacific in the Allies' favor, said Mark Evans, historian at the U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command in Washington, D.C. "They fought on a shoe string," Evans said. "But Guadalcanal is where we turned the Japanese back."

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Alucard · Oct 13, 2015

So many innocent people were killed by those atomic bombs. Horrifying!

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The Bombs of August

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