[PDF] Nagasaki The Forgotten Prisoners eBook

Author : John Willis
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 385 pages
File Size : 22,27 MB
Release : 2022-08-02
Category : History
ISBN : 1912914433

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This is one of the most remarkable untold stories of the Second World war. At 11.02 am on an August morning in 1945 America dropped the world's most powerful atomic bomb on the Japanese port city of Nagasaki. The most European city in Japan was flattened to the ground 'as if it had been swept aside by a broom'. More than 70,000 Japanese were killed. At the time, hundreds of Allied prisoners of war were working close to the bomb's detonation point, as forced labourers in the shipyards and foundries of Nagasaki. These men, from the Dales of Yorkshire and the dusty outback of Australia, from the fields of Holland and the remote towns of Texas, had already endured an extraordinary lottery of life and death that had changed their lives forever. They had lived through nearly four years of malnutrition, disease, and brutality. Now their prison home was the target of America's second atomic bomb. In one of the greatest survival stories of the Second World War, we trace their astonishing experiences back to bloody battles in the Malayan jungle, before the dramatic fall of Fortress Singapore, the mighty symbol of the British Empire. This abject capitulation was followed by surrender in Java and elsewhere in the East, condemning the captives to years of cruel imprisonment by the Japanese. Their lives grew evermore perilous when thousands of prisoners were shipped off to build the infamous Thai-Burma Railway, including the Bridge on the River Kwai. If that was not harsh enough, POWs were then transported to Japan in the overcrowded holds of what were called hell ships. These rusty buckets were regularly sunk by Allied submarines, and thousands of prisoners lived through unimaginable horror, adrift on the ocean for days. Some still had to endure the final supreme test, the world's second atomic bomb. The prisoners in Nagasaki were eyewitnesses to one of the most significant events in modern history but writing notes or diaries in a Japanese prison camp was dangerous. To avoid detection, one Allied prisoner buried his notes in the grave of a fellow POW to be reclaimed after the war, another wrote his diary in Irish. Now, using unpublished and rarely seen notes, interviews, and memoirs, this unique book weaves together a powerful chorus of voices to paint a vivid picture of defeat, endurance, and survival against astonishing odds.

Author : Frank W. Chinnock
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 323 pages
File Size : 30,11 MB
Release : 2021-11-21
Category : History
ISBN : 1000458997

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This book, first published in 1970, examines the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, when an entire industrial city was devastated and the bulk of its population killed or wounded. Coming days after the bombing of Hiroshima, Nagasaki has largely been forgotten. This book traces the decision by the US to use the second bomb, and the choice of Nagasaki as its target. It follows the bomber to the skies over Nagasaki, and the terrible events that unfolded. Using diaries, written accounts and the testimonies of hundreds of Japanese civilians who survived the bombing, this book provides the definitive text on the Nagasaki atomic bomb.

Author : Hugh Clarke
Publisher : Allen & Unwin
Page : 136 pages
File Size : 30,98 MB
Release : 1985-01-01
Category : History
ISBN : 1742696694

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''What I saw was apparently three white parachutes in a triangular fashion about 60 degrees elevation. Suddenly there was a brilliant flash like a photographer's magnesium flash. Instinctively, I dropped to the ground beside a kerbing at the side of the alleyway. Then came the blast with a deafening bang and I felt as though I had been kicked in the guts. I found myself gasping for breath, pinned under a lot of rubble and unable to see. The world was black.'' ''When we looked up, it looked like the end of the world was coming as the sun appeared to be falling towards the earth.'' This is the remarkable story of the Australian prisoners of war who survived the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. When 'Fat Boy' was dropped, in August 1945, there were 24 Australian POWs in a camp less than two kilometres from the epicentre of the blast. Two other Australians were imprisoned in a camp eight kilometres away. How they came to be there, how they endured their imprisonment, how they survived a nuclear attack, is the inspiring story told in this book. This is the story of bombardier Hugh Clarke and his mates. Through it, often in their own words, a remarkable group of men tell us what they witnessed that sunny morning in 1945. But they tell a great deal more - the conditions within the camp, the courage of their fellow POWs, the unceasing battle for survival. Sometimes with humour, often with sadness, Last Stop Nagasaki! recounts the days leading up to the horrific birth of the Nuclear Age.

Author : George Weller
Publisher : Crown
Page : 352 pages
File Size : 36,38 MB
Release : 2006
Category : History
ISBN :

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Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Weller covered World War II across Europe, Africa, and Asia. At war's end, correspondents were forbidden to enter Nagasaki and Hiroshima, but Weller, presenting himself as a U.S. colonel, set out to explore the devastation. As Nagasaki's first outside observer, he witnessed the bomb's effects. He interviewed doctors trying to cure those dying mysteriously from "Disease X." He sent his forbidden dispatches back to MacArthur's censors, assuming their importance would make them unstoppable. He was wrong: the U.S. government censored every word, and the dispatches vanished from history. Weller also became the first to enter nearby POW camps. He gathered accounts from hundreds of Allied prisoners--but those too were silenced. Weller died in 2002, believing it all lost forever. Months later, his son found a fragile copy in a crate of moldy papers. This historic body of work has never been published.--From publisher description.

Author : Hugh V. Clarke
Publisher : Unwin Hyman
Page : 135 pages
File Size : 43,46 MB
Release : 1984
Category : History
ISBN : 9780868614120

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The author describes his experiences as a Japanese prisoner-of-war held a few miles away from Nagasaki, and describes his impressions of the detonation of the second atomic bomb

Author : Mark Felton
Publisher : Grub Street Publishers
Page : 310 pages
File Size : 22,72 MB
Release : 2011-06-13
Category : History
ISBN : 1844684121

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The author of Guarding Hitlertells the truly heart-rending stories of Caucasian and Eurasian children held captive inside Japanese internment camps. The Japanese treatment of Allied children was as harsh and murderous as that of their parents and military POWs, but this whole episode has been overlooked. Children were plucked from comfortable colonial lives and forced to mature hastily in terrible circumstances, where survival became a daily game, and where their lives were constantly threatened by disease, starvation, and physical abuse. Many of these children were separated from their parents, or they saw their families destroyed by the Japanese. Most witnessed almost daily episodes of bestial violence that no child should ever see, and the entire cumulative experience has had a deep and lasting effect into their adult lives. They are among the last victims of Japanese aggression, and even over sixty years later many carry the mental and physical scars of that atrocious episode. “The fate of [Japan’s] military prisoners is now well known, but the equally poor treatment handed out to the civilian internees and their children is a less familiar topic. Many books on this subject focus on a particular part of the Japanese Empire. Felton has taken a different approach, and covers most of the Japanese Empire, from Singapore and the rest of mainland China, through Hong Kong, Malaya, Burma . . . and on into the Dutch East Indies and the Philippines.” —HistoryOfWar.org

Author : John Willis
Publisher : BBC Books
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 19,27 MB
Release : 2025-05
Category : History
ISBN : 9781785949005

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There was a German bomber flying right towards us - a Dornier, one of their biggest. It was so low we could see the pilot flying it and the gunner in the nose of the bomber pointing his machine gun at us... Schoolboy in Kent, during the Battle of Britain My legs pressed harder around my father's waist; my arms nearly choked him. The humming of Japanese aircraft was loud enough for everyone to hear now, and panic spread like ink on a blotter. Child saying goodbye to her parents, Singapore 1942 In the early 2000s, the BBC set up one of its biggest oral history archives, recording the lives and experiences of the ordinary people who lived through World War Two. It amounted to 47,000 testimonies and over 400 diaries and letters, all of which have remained hidden in the archives for twenty years - until now. In The People's War, John Willis unearths untold stories of everyday bravery, moments of terror, and tales of life-affirming community, that guide us through the years of the Second World War. From soldiers in North Africa and prisoners of war in East Asia, to evacuees in the British countryside and women in the factories, The People's War is a truly ambitious and comprehensive journey through a devastating and pivotal period of our history, as you've never read before. Follow the remarkable stories of ordinary individuals who lived, fought, grieved, loved, and survived through World War Two.

Author : John Willis
Publisher : Random House
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 22,49 MB
Release : 2025-05-01
Category : History
ISBN : 1473533929

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There was a German bomber flying right towards us – a Dornier, one of their biggest. It was so low we could see the pilot flying it and the gunner in the nose of the bomber pointing his machine gun at us... Schoolboy in Kent, during the Battle of Britain My legs pressed harder around my father's waist; my arms nearly choked him. The humming of Japanese aircraft was loud enough for everyone to hear now, and panic spread like ink on a blotter. Child saying goodbye to her parents, Singapore 1942 In the early 2000s, the BBC set up one of its biggest oral history archives, recording the lives and experiences of the ordinary people who lived through World War Two. It amounted to 47,000 testimonies and over 400 diaries and letters, all of which have remained hidden in the archives for twenty years – until now. In The People's War, John Willis unearths untold stories of everyday bravery, moments of terror, and tales of life-affirming community, that guide us through the years of the Second World War. From soldiers in North Africa and prisoners of war in East Asia, to evacuees in the British countryside and women in the factories, The People's War is a truly ambitious and comprehensive journey through a devastating and pivotal period of our history, as you've never read before. Follow the remarkable stories of ordinary individuals who lived, fought, grieved, loved, and survived through World War Two.

Author : John Willis
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 196 pages
File Size : 45,43 MB
Release : 2020-09-15
Category : History
ISBN : 1912914182

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This is a unique book. Using for the first time the full unpublished letters of Pilot Officer Geoffrey Myers it offers a fresh and distinctive insight into World War 2. While Geoffrey Myers was a caught up in the major turning points of the early years of that war - the Battle for France, Dunkirk and the Battle of Britain - his French wife and two half-Jewish children were trapped in Nazi-occupied France, desperate to escape the enemy and be reunited with her husband in England. These secret letters were never posted and never read by Geoffrey's family until later in the war. They were designed to be read if he was killed. They begin, 'Three months now, and I have kept silent. I have been hoping to write letters that would reach you. I have been wanting to do something that would help you to escape from Occupied France and to get us all out of this living grave.' Contemporary personal accounts of the Battle of Britain of such frankness are extremely rare. Individual narratives on this scale, encompassing two of the great turning points of the war, the Battle of Britain and Dunkirk, and much else besides, just do not exist. So the letters from Geoffrey Myers to his family are unique, offering an original insight from a witness to so much history. More than that, the letters tell a powerful love story between two people caught up in war, and at real risk of never seeing each other again. As a Daily Telegraph journalist before the war, Geoffrey Myers writes with eloquence and insight and, because his notebooks were not designed to be published, the letters are an unvarnished, sometimes brutal, portrayal of war as his Battle of Britain Squadron suffers terrible losses. As an Intelligence Officer, Geoffrey was well placed to understand the chaos all around him but his letters are shot through with humanity, and sometimes humour. While Geoffrey wrote his account of the war for his children to read if he survived, his family were in mortal danger. As a Jew he understood only too well what would happen if the Nazis discovered his children hiding in Occupied France. For months he had no idea if his family were dead or alive, free or imprisoned. His letters reflect his deep love for his wife, Margot, and children and his acute anxiety for their safety, as they try to escape the tightening net of the Nazis and head south through France and Spain. Unique interviews with his wife offer insight into her remarkable story during those precarious months. This moving story of a couple whose love is caught in the crossfire of war is a powerful and rare portrait of, not only the turbulent events of those times, but also how a family survives with so much death and danger swirling around them both.