''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.

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.

In its diversity of perspectives, The Unfinished Atomic Bomb: Shadows and Reflections is testament to the ways in which contemplations of the A-bomb are endlessly shifting, rarely fixed on the same point or perspective. The compilation of this book is significant in this regard, offering Japanese, American, Australian, and European perspectives. In doing so, the essays here represent a complex series of interpretations of the bombing of Hiroshima, and its implications both for history, and for the present day. From Kuznick’s extensive biographical account of the Hiroshima bomb pilot, Paul Tibbets, and contentious questions about the moral and strategic efficacy of dropping the A-bomb and how that has resonated through time, to Jacobs’ reflections on the different ways in which Hiroshima and its memorialization are experienced today, each chapter considers how this moment in time emerges, persistently, in public and cultural consciousness. The discussions here are often difficult, sometimes controversial, and at times oppositional, reflecting the characteristics of A-bomb scholarship more broadly. The aim is to explore the various ways in which Hiroshima is remembered, but also to consider the ongoing legacy and impact of atomic warfare, the reverberations of which remain powerfully felt.

In this harrowing history of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, Paul Ham argues against the use of nuclear weapons, drawing on extensive research and hundreds of interviews to prove that the bombings had little impact on the eventual outcome of the Pacific War. More than 100,000 people were killed instantly by the atomic bombs, mostly women, children, and the elderly. Many hundreds of thousands more succumbed to their horrific injuries later, or slowly perished of radiation-related sickness. Yet American leaders claimed the bombs were "our least abhorrent choice"—and still today most people believe they ended the Pacific War and saved millions of American and Japanese lives. In this gripping narrative, Ham demonstrates convincingly that misunderstandings and nationalist fury on both sides led to the use of the bombs. Ham also gives powerful witness to its destruction through the eyes of eighty survivors, from twelve-year-olds forced to work in war factories to wives and children who faced the holocaust alone. Hiroshima Nagasaki presents the grisly unadorned truth about the bombings, blurred for so long by postwar propaganda, and transforms our understanding of one of the defining events of the twentieth century.

The Japanese are a diligent people, constantly working to ensure institutional success. The Japanese have an innate ability to copy foreigners. In their effort to build a strong country, the Japanese sought knowledge from abroad; and perfected these learnings in order to effect rapid national development. In their quest for progress, the Japanese have cherished the trait of national self-reliance. Until the Jeiji Restoration, Japan had pursued a national policy of seclusion that forbade almost all contact with the outside world. The nineteenth century was one of exploration and imperialism for most of the world. The Japanese would not be left alone, merely because they wanted to pursue a national policy of autarchy. European powers began establishing commercial relations with Japan. In 1953, a commodore in the US Navy visited Japan with the aim of opening trade contacts. After years of negotiations, treaties were signed authorizing an opening of a few ports to foreign trade. Simultaneously, Japan embarked on a policy of expansion in China and Korea due to its need for fertile soil and natural resources. This policy led to war with China in and with Russia.

Provides a general overview of literature relating to Japan and covers a broad range of subject matter, from art, feminism, and linguistics, to corporate culture, history, and medicine. Includes books published since 1980 that are related to the geographical area of Japan and to Japanese culture within that area.