Three months ago, I exchanged e-mails with Priscilla K M regarding the fact that there is very little available in English that deals with the horrific circumstances of the Dutch-Indonesians on Java under the Japanese during WWII that I describe in “with nothing but our lives”. Priscilla is the founder of The Indo Project whose […]
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RSS feed for this sectionLeo Vroman, poet – illustrator – scientist
Leo Vroman April 10, 1915 – February 22, 2014 This Dutch poet, illustrator and scientist died yesterday in Fort Worth, Texas at the age of 98. He lived in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) from 1940 to 1945 and was a POW of the Japanese on Java and in Japan. After the capitulation of […]
Please help me get this story told
In today’s topsy-turvy book publishing industry it does not matter that you have written the most compelling, forceful, soaring, and moving novel or memoir with sharply etched characters, displaying deep wisdom of the nature of human beings. No publisher will look at you unless you have a successful social media presence, what they call a […]
Was the use of atomic bombs justified to achieve victory in WWII?
Was the use of atomic bombs justified to achieve victory in WWII in the Pacific on terms satisfactory to the United States? What do you think? SUPPORTERS OF THE USE OF THE ATOMIC BOMBS GENERALLY EMPHASIZE THESE BASIC PREMISES: The Japanese were the aggressors, starting with the drive for Manchuria in 1931 The Japanese were […]
ATOMIC BOMB DETONATED OVER NAGASAKI August 9, 1945
Because of poor visibility this second atomic bomb (“Fat Boy”) missed its intended detonation point over Nagasaki by almost two miles, and the damage was less extensive than that in Hiroshima. An estimated 40,000 people were killed outright, less than half the number of the more than 80,000 people that were killed in the devastating […]
Delivery of key components of Hiroshima atomic bomb
On July 30, 1945, the USS Indianapolis, which had just delivered key components of the Hiroshima atomic bomb to the Pacific island of Tinian, was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine. Only 316 out of 1,196 men survived the sinking in shark-infested waters. This “On This Day” item in The New York Times today brought my […]