10-05-2004 Post By Gene Holtmeyer

60 years later, Nagasaki remembers A-bombing
Nagasaki marked the moment 60 years ago Tuesday when an American plane dropped a plutonium bomb, killing tens of thousands and sealing Japan's defeat in World War II.

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I see that some people in Japan are indignant because we dropped the atomic bomb and the mayor of Nagasaki is angry. We were at Okinawa since about a week after the invasion and it was the bloodiest battle of the South Pacific because the Japs lost 200,000 men and we lost 50,000 including the wounded. The Kamikazi pilots were coming over nightly and diving into our ships. We heard about the atomic bomb being dropped on August 8th over there. On August 9th we heard that Russia had declared war on Japan. On August 10th at 10 pm word was passed that the war was over and I never saw such a display of celebration at night. Most of the ships in the harbor were firing anything with tracer bullets into the air, they also fired pyrotecnics and used searchlights.To me it was the most beautiful spectical I had ever seen. Would you believe that on August 12th we went on a mine sweeping operation up toward Japan in which we expected to lose 25 ships. We had some Destroyer Escorts with us and air cover provied by F6Fs and Corsairs. We could not believe that we would have done something so stupid since basically the war was over. The Japs were a lot more intelligent than our leadership and did not come out after us.

The story today talks about the following"
“Together with some 260,000 A-bomb survivors ... I swear in the presence of the souls of the victims of the atomic bombing to continue to tirelessly demand that Nagasaki be the last A-bomb site,” said Fumie Sakamoto, who represented the survivors at Tuesday’s memorial. Sakamoto was a junior high school student when Nagasaki was bombed.

If that bothers them why arn't they crying over the fact that they lost 200,000 men at Okinawa and that we lost 50,000. They bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Did you ever hear them morn about how many people they killed at Pearl Harbor and elsewhere in the South Pacific. Lets put it this way, after that bomb was dropped not another fighting person on either side was killed to my knowledge.

I personally had made up my mind that I was going to die either at Okinawa or certainly when we would have hit Japan in October. We had 1,000 ships at Okinawa and we would have sat offshore and bombarded them unmercifully two months later. Believe me I prayed every night i was there.

We based out of Sasebo, Japan and went ashore on liberty one day. All the guys except me headed for a bar but I wanted to see the sights knowing I would never be there again. A Catholic church was interesting. I left my shoes on a rack outside and entered. The alter was basically the same as some American alters. Instead of pews they at two straw mats with and isle and on both sides. I had a great time walking amoung the Japanese people and they were all polite. In later years I thought that was not too bright for suppose I had run across a fanatic, I am dead. I have always felt that war is stupid.