Nagasaki

SANTA FE -- Frederick L. "Dick" Ashworth, the weaponeer aboard the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan, died Saturday while undergoing heart surgery in Phoenix, family friend Glen Smith said. He was 93. Mr. Ashworth, a Massachusetts native who retired in 1968 as a Navy vice admiral, was assigned to the Los Alamos-based Manhattan Project, which built the A-bomb. Three days after the bombing of Hiroshima, he was aboard the bomber that dropped a weapon nicknamed Fat Man on Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945.

OSLO — Demanding his acquittal, a self-styled anti-Islamic militant on trial for killing 77 people in Norway's worst peacetime atrocity took the stand for the first time Tuesday, describing the deaths as "the most spectacular sophisticated political act in Europe since the Second World War" and saying he would do it over again. The defendant, Anders Behring Breivik, 33, spoke after judges permitted him to read from a prepared statement that some Norwegians feared was little more than a manifesto to propagate xenophobic and far-right views.

The U.S. has sent its first representative to the annual memorial for the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, as the Japanese city remembered the historic horrors of radiation amid the nation's unfolding nuclear crisis. As in past years, a moment of silence was observed at 11:02 a.m. Tuesday, 66 years after the moment the bomb dropped on the southern city on Aug. 9, 1945, in the closing days of World War II. Mayor Tomihisa Taue called for change in Japan's policy, which has for decades vehemently pursued nuclear power and asked the nation work to develop safer kinds of energy.

An 86-year-old Peabody resident and Marine Corps veteran recently had one of his military identification tags - or dog tags - returned to him. It was lost 66 years ago, during World War II. Richard Urie was presented with the tag by Boston-based assistant US attorney Timothy E. Moran on Sunday at Urie's retirement community, Brooksby Village . The tag was lost in 1945, when Urie was stationed in Saipan in the Western Pacific. Dog tags are issued in duplicate so one tag can stay with a soldier's body if he or she dies in battle, and the military keeps the other tag. Urie lost...

TOKYO - The United States sent a representative for the first time yesterday to the annual memorial service for victims of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, one of two nuclear attacks that led Japan to surrender in World War II. The US bombing of Nagasaki 66 years ago killed some 80,000 people. Three days earlier, the United States had dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing up to 140,000. US Charge d'Affaires James P. Zumwalt, the first American representative to attend the Nagasaki memorial service, said in a statement that...

CHICAGO -- Fred Olivi, who copiloted the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, has died. He was 82. Mr. Olivi, a native of Chicago, died Thursday at a rehabilitation center in a Chicago suburb, officials at Panozzo Bros. Funeral Home said. He suffered a stroke in August. The crew of the Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later, on Aug. 9, 1945, the crew of the B-29 bomber nicknamed "Bockscar" dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Japan surrendered six days later, ending World War II. "While thousands died, I feel...

TOKYO - A speech and a Nobel prize have raised hopes in Japan that Barack Obama will become the first sitting American president to visit Hiroshima or Nagasaki, the two cities devastated by US atomic bombs in World War II. Past presidents have avoided a visit that could raise controversy at home, and US officials say it is highly unlikely Obama will travel to either city during a two-day stop in Japan next month. Yesterday, the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki went to the US Embassy in Tokyo to formally invite Obama to their cities before a UN review of the Nuclear...

The British novelist David Mitchell has won fervent critical admiration, and rightly, for his world-spanning mix of the phantasmagoric and the acutely real. In their cosmic reporting, the sinuously interwoven fictions in “Ghostwritten’’ and “Cloud Atlas’’ wield nightmare, paranoia, and acrid comedy. At their best they have the transporting force of scoured revelation. They can also breed resistance: vision and migraine at the same time. They attach lead boots while attaching wings.

TOKYO - Tsutomu Yamaguchi, the only person officially recognized as a survivor of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings at the end of World War II, has died at age 93. Mr. Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on a business trip for his shipbuilding company on Aug. 6, 1945, when a US B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on the city. He suffered serious burns to his upper body and spent the night in the city. He then returned to his hometown of Nagasaki, about 190 miles to the southwest, which suffered a second US atomic bomb attack three days later.

STONE MOUNTAIN, Ga. -- The military record of Theodore "Dutch" Van Kirk gives only the slightest hint of his role in history: Fifty-eight missions in North Africa. One in the Pacific. It was that single Pacific mission that forever altered the course of history. Van Kirk, then 24, was the navigator on the Enola Gay, the B-29 Superfortress that dropped "Little Boy" -- the world's first atomic bomb -- over the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. It was a perfect mission, Van Kirk recalls.

RE "WHY did Japan surrender?" (Ideas, Aug. 7): The atomic bomb did play a key role in the surrender of Japan, in two ways. Japan did not know that the Nagasaki bomb was the last one we had. They did know that the destruction and death rained on Tokyo was by huge formations of bombers. The atomic bombs were delivered by one plane, each, and these bombs had lingering, fatal health effects that the Japanese did not understand. Equally important, Stalin knew of and understood the lethality of the atomic bomb.

TOKYO - The United States sent a representative for the first time yesterday to the annual memorial service for victims of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, one of two nuclear attacks that led Japan to surrender in World War II. The US bombing of Nagasaki 66 years ago killed some 80,000 people. Three days earlier, the United States had dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing up to 140,000. US Charge d'Affaires James P. Zumwalt, the first American representative to attend the Nagasaki memorial service, said in a statement that...

The U.S. has sent its first representative to the annual memorial for the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, as the Japanese city remembered the historic horrors of radiation amid the nation's unfolding nuclear crisis. As in past years, a moment of silence was observed at 11:02 a.m. Tuesday, 66 years after the moment the bomb dropped on the southern city on Aug. 9, 1945, in the closing days of World War II. Mayor Tomihisa Taue called for change in Japan's policy, which has for decades vehemently pursued nuclear power and asked the nation work to develop safer kinds of...

HIROSHIMA, Japan — The site of the world’s worst atomic bomb attack echoed with choirs of schoolchildren and the solemn ringing of bells today as Hiroshima marked its biggest memorial yet and the first to be attended by the United States and other major nuclear powers. Washington’s decision to send US Ambassador John Roos to the 65th anniversary of the bombing was seen by many as potentially paving the way for President Obama to visit Hiroshima — which would be unprecedented for a sitting US leader.

The British novelist David Mitchell has won fervent critical admiration, and rightly, for his world-spanning mix of the phantasmagoric and the acutely real. In their cosmic reporting, the sinuously interwoven fictions in “Ghostwritten’’ and “Cloud Atlas’’ wield nightmare, paranoia, and acrid comedy. At their best they have the transporting force of scoured revelation. They can also breed resistance: vision and migraine at the same time. They attach lead boots while attaching wings.

TOKYO - Tsutomu Yamaguchi, the only person officially recognized as a survivor of both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings at the end of World War II, has died at age 93. Mr. Yamaguchi was in Hiroshima on a business trip for his shipbuilding company on Aug. 6, 1945, when a US B-29 dropped an atomic bomb on the city. He suffered serious burns to his upper body and spent the night in the city. He then returned to his hometown of Nagasaki, about 190 miles to the southwest, which suffered a second US atomic bomb attack three days later.

An 86-year-old Peabody resident and Marine Corps veteran recently had one of his military identification tags - or dog tags - returned to him. It was lost 66 years ago, during World War II. Richard Urie was presented with the tag by Boston-based assistant US attorney Timothy E. Moran on Sunday at Urie's retirement community, Brooksby Village . The tag was lost in 1945, when Urie was stationed in Saipan in the Western Pacific. Dog tags are issued in duplicate so one tag can stay with a soldier's body if he or she dies in battle, and the military keeps the other tag. Urie lost...

HIROSHIMA, Japan — The site of the world’s worst atomic bomb attack echoed with choirs of schoolchildren and the solemn ringing of bells today as Hiroshima marked its biggest memorial yet and the first to be attended by the United States and other major nuclear powers. Washington’s decision to send US Ambassador John Roos to the 65th anniversary of the bombing was seen by many as potentially paving the way for President Obama to visit Hiroshima — which would be unprecedented for a sitting US leader.

TOKYO - A speech and a Nobel prize have raised hopes in Japan that Barack Obama will become the first sitting American president to visit Hiroshima or Nagasaki, the two cities devastated by US atomic bombs in World War II. Past presidents have avoided a visit that could raise controversy at home, and US officials say it is highly unlikely Obama will travel to either city during a two-day stop in Japan next month. Yesterday, the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki went to the US Embassy in Tokyo to formally invite Obama to their cities before a UN review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation...

You have never heard of George Weller. Therein lies a story. No, hundreds of stories. Journalism always has been disposable - this was an ancient truth long before the modern decline of the newspaper - but two generations ago the war correspondent, that indefatigable set of eyes and ears at the front line, was also indispensable. And so at this moment of journalism’s peril there arrives, perhaps just in time, a heavy volume that tells us what journalists did amid indescribable peril, and reminds us of what journalists can do amid the most trying circumstances.