



On August 9, 1945, a second atomic bomb is dropped on
Japan by the United States, at Nagasaki, resulting finally
in Japan’s unconditional surrender.




On August 9, 1945, a second atomic bomb is dropped on
Japan by the United States, at Nagasaki, resulting finally
in Japan’s unconditional surrender.
On August 8, 1945, the Soviet Union officially declared war on
Japan, pouring more than 1 million Soviet soldiers the following
day into Japanese-occupied Manchuria, northeastern China, to
take on the 700,000-strong Japanese army.
Despite a strong Japanese army comprised of a million men
awaiting them, the Soviet force, under command of Marshal
Alexander Vasilevsky, swept into China, Korea and the Kuril
Islands, forcing a rapid retreat.
By the end of the engagement, the Soviets had only lost around
8,000 troops compared to the 80,000 lost by Japan.


On August 6, 1945, the United States became the first and only
nation to use atomic weaponry during wartime when it dropped
an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
Approximately 80,000 people are killed as a direct result of the
blast, and another 35,000 are injured. At least another 60,000
would be dead by the end of the year from the effects of the
fallout.
Though the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan marked the
end of World War II, many historians argue that it also ignited
the Cold War.
PT-109 was a US Navy patrol torpedo boat commanded by
Lieutenant (junior grade) John F. Kennedy during World War
II in the Solomon Islands.
The boat was rammed and sunk by a Japanese destroyer on
August 2, 1943.Two crewmen were, in fact, killed, but 11
survived, including Lt. John F. Kennedy.
His actions in rescuing his crew after the sinking earned him
a Navy and Marine Corps Medal and contributed to his later
political career.

PT-109, a film dramatizing this story, starring Cliff
Robertson as Kennedy, opened in 1963.
Called the U.S.’s first ambassador to Japan, a 14-year-old
fisherman by the name of Manjiro is considered America’s
first Japanese immigrant, arriving in the country on May 7,
1843, by way of a whaling ship.
According to the National Endowment of the Humanities,
the boy and his crew were caught in a violent storm, with
their ship eventually washing up on a desert island 300
miles away from their coastal Japanese village.
Rescued five months later by an American whaling ship,
Manjiro was adopted by American Capt. William Whitfield,
who renamed him John Mung and brought him back to the
states to his home in Massachusetts.
Nakahama Manjirō (John Mung)
(January 27, 1827 – November 12, 1898)
William H. Whitfield
(November 11, 1804 – 14 February 1886)