Aug. 9, 2005, is the 60th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan. Hiroshima was bombed three days earlier.

The complete reports of George Weller, the first foreign reporter to enter Nagasaki after the bombing, are here.

Weller's reports were censored on direct orders from Gen. Douglas MacArthur, and did not come into public view again until Japan's national newspaper, Mainichi, published them in a series of articles earlier this month.

By an unexpected turn of our history, a bit of the truth, an insignificant part of the whole, was allowed out in the open. But those same hands which once screwed tight our handcuffs now hold out their palms in reconciliation: "No, don't! Don't dig up the past! Dwell on the past and you'll lose an eye."

But the proverb goes on to say: "Forget the past and you'll lose both eyes."

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The Gulag Archipelago
1973

From Whiskey Bar.