™s NOME NUGGET
OLDEST NEWSPAPER IN ALASKA— MF.MRF.R ASSOCIATED PRESS
VOL. XLVII. No. 95. NOME, ALASKA, WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 8, 1945 PER COPY —15?
1
Russia Will Be At
War With Japan
Thursday Morning
WASHINGTON, Aug. 8—(/P)—
President Truman announced that
Russia had declared war on
Japan.
President Truman made the
momentious announcement to a
hurriedly summoned news con
ference. He said he had only a
simple statement to make but it
was so important he could not de
lay it.
Then with a broad grin he de
clared Russia had just declared
war on Japan. That is all the dis
closure. The Soviet Union at last
has pitted its enormous might
alongside Britain and United
States against the Pacific enemy
has not been unexpected.
Official Washington at once
took this development, along with
the unleashing of the atomic bomb
ing against the Pacific enemy as
a sure sign that Japan cannot long
continue to resist.
LONDON, Aug. 8 — (/P> — The
Moscow radio announced tonight
that Russia was at war with
Japan effective August ninth. The
announcement broadcast at ten
p.m. Moscow time quoted a state
ment from Foreign Commissar
Molotov.
At two p.m. Pacific time the
Moscow radio said that Japan
had previously appealed to the
Soviet Union to. mediate the con
flict. Japan rejected the Potsdam
ultimatum of July twenty-sixth
by United States, Britain and
China demanding unconditional
surrender however, thus Japan’s
request for mediation “loses all
basis.”
The announcement said that
after the rejection the Allies asked
Russia to join in the war against
the Japanese. The Moscow decla
ration followed by two days the
atomic bomb announcement.
President Signs
United Nations
Charter
WASHINGTON, Aug. 8—m—
The ratification of the United
Nations charter by this country
was formally completed when
President Truman’s signature was
placed in the Senate’s instrument
approving the document.
The cermeony was conducted in
the executive offices when he
signed the historic one-page doc
ument.
See Jap Suicide Plane Debris
U.S. H*vy Photo
Soundphoto—Army nurses, who survived the Jap suicide plane at
tack on the U.S.S. Comfort, Navy hospital ship, about fifty miles
south of Okinawa, inspect the charred wreckage of the enemy air
craft. The vessel, which was evacuating wounded from Okinawa,
suffered 29 killed, 33 seriously injured and one missing, including pa
tients, medical personnel and crew.^
__- ■■ _
Major Bong
Killed By
Exploding Plane
BURBANK, Calif., Aug. 3—i/P)
—Major Richard Ira Bong, 24,
American ace fighter pilot of all
time was killed yesterday when a
jet-propelled P80 plane was dis
integrated by an explosion a few
minutes after he left the Lockheed
air terminal on a test flight.
The airman, who had forty Jap
planes to his credit apparently
made an attempt to escape the
crashing plane. His parachute was
partly opened. A Lockheed me
chanic said Major Bong radioed
as soon as he was in the air he
was having trouble. Eye witnesses
said the plane exploded with a
terrific roar.
Major Bong was married last
February to Marjorie Ann Vetten
dahl at Superior, Wisconsin. He
was assigned in June to test jet
aircraft.
People Outdoors
Burned Alive By
Atomic Bomb
SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 8—(tf>)
—Toyko radio said “the destruc
tive power of the new bomb
spreads over a large area. People
who were outdoors were burned
alive by the high temperature.
Those who were indoors were
crushed from falling buildings.
As soon as reports from the
Will Take Seventy
Years To Dissipate
Bomb Rays
NEW YORK, Aug, 8—<>P)—In a
statement by an unnamed promin
ent scientist, he said the rays of
the atomic bomb exploded on
Hiroshima will not be dissipated
for seventy years, nor will their
possible lethal effects entirely dis
appear.
He apparently refers to the
particles of earth becoming radio
active under the blast effects. For
many years scientists have been
making such particles and expos
ing them to blast rays from the
cyclotron. These are neutrons,
which are noncharged particles of
atomic size.
No one has said whether the
atomic bomb emits a blast of neu
trons, but that is possible in a
blast of cyclotron, the closeup of
which produces radioactive par
ticles. A very concentrated blast
of neutrons, if any, from an atom
ic bomb would not be. It is any
body’s guess what the effects are.
One medium tank may require
two tons of spare parts a year.
scene were available the shaken
Jap cabinet was called into a spe
cial session in the official resi
dence of Premier Suzuki.
Domei said relief workers were
unable to even distinguish the
dead from the injured, much less
identify either. Authorities were
unable to establish the extent of
the civilian casualties.
B-29s Firebomb
Another Warned
Japanese City
I
GUAM, Aug. 6—f/P)— B29s fire
bombed another forewarned Jap
city. More than a hundred B-29s
raided Fukuyama on Honshu is
land shortly before midnight in
the fourth attack day on home
land targets and brought to sixty
i one the number of cities scorched.
I Topping daylong flights, which
; started by the escorted daylight
! bombing of Yawata, the Pitts
burgh of Japan, by two hundred
twenty-five Superforts. Yawata
was also on the forewarned list.
A Navy Department commenta
tor bluntly warned Japan that
Admiral Halsey’s fleet was again
near and explained that only de
structive winds interrupted Third
Fleet assaults that have cost the
enemy more than a thousand ves
sels and thirteen hundred planes
in the last twenty-two days of
July.
Aleutian Planes
Again Raid
Kuriles’ Shipping
ADAK, Aug. 6—(/P)—Two more
flights of big Navy Privateer
search planes swept the Kuriles
Sunday, Tokyo time, bombing and
strafing fishery buildings and
beached small craft at Otomari
Cape on Onekotan island, catch
ing a single landing craft offshore
Atomic Bomb Dead
Far Too Numerous
To Count
SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 8—f/P)
—Hiroshima is completely de
stroyed and the dead are too nu
merous to be counted Radio Tokyo
declared and claimed the use of
the atomic bomb is a violation of
international law.
Practically all living things,
human or animal were “literally
seared to death” by the new wea
pon, the enemy broadcast to
America. Japan said in a later
broadcast to Europe in French, re
ferring to Hiroshima as “an open
city,” although it was known to
be a quartermaster depot and im
portant garrison town, it branded
“the attack by such means against
open towns and defenseless citi
zens were unforgiveable action.”
It quoted authorized quarters as
contending that international law
forbids belligerent nations “the
unlimited choice in means by
i which to destroy their opponents.”
Another flight caught two sev
enty-five foot coastal cargo ships
off the east coast of Shumushu is
land, northermost of the Kuriles,
and poured five thousand rounds
of machinegun fire into them and
both were left burning and sink
ing.
One Privateer was damgaed,
but all returned to their base.
Work started on the original
White House in December, 1792.
Atomic Bomb Completely Destroys
Over Half Of Hiroshima, Many Dead
_
By MORRIE LANDSBERG
GUAM, Aug. 8—(/P)—One Su
perfortress, dropping one atomic
bomb “completely destroyed”
sixty percent of Hiroshima, im
portant Japanese military base.
General Spaatz warned the en
emy that more Superforts were
ready to drop more of the world’s
most destructive explosive on her
cities.
Four and one tenth of Hiroshi
ma’s builtup area of six and nine
tenths miles is totally wiped out.
Five unidentified military tar
gets were destroyed, General
Spaatz announced, giving the first
official report on Monday’s raid.
Additional damage was reveal
ed outside the destroyed section
by reconnaissance photographs on
which the communique was based.
However the harbor area of
Hiroshima appears to have been
barely touched by the tremendous
?
concussion of the new explosive.
In contrast the wrecked heart of
the city with a population of
434,000 appears devastated with
awful thoroughness as if a giant
bulldozer had swept up the build
ings and houses and dumped them
into the river.
The concussion of fire effect
was so overpowering that several
firebreaks and seven streams—
one fire break was about three
blocks wide—failed to stop the
raging conflagration.
Hiroshima is about the size of
Memphis, Tennessee, and tightly
congested. That probably contrib
uted in a degree to the destrucion
of the heart of the city. A few
concrete structures remain stand
ing like bleak sentinels. They are
believed to be airraid shelters, al
though they are not destroyed the
photographs indicate they are
burned out.