Lost World War II Letter Promises “Rain Of Atomic Bombs”
On the fascinating site Letters of Note:
At 11:00 a.m. on August 9th, 1945, just a minute before the second atomic bomb in the space of three days was dropped on Japan, a B-29 bomber named The Great Artiste quietly dropped three canisters from the sky. Inside each of the canisters, alongside a shockwave gauge designed by American physicist Luis Alvarez, was an unsigned copy of the following letter.
The letter, written by Alvarez and two fellow scientists, was addressed to Japanese nuclear physicist Ryokichi Sagane —a man with whom Alvarez had previously worked at Berkeley — and pleaded with him to inform his ‘leaders’ of the impending ‘total annihilation’ of their cities.
The letter reached Sagane a month later after being found 50km from the centre of devastation: Nagasaki.
Alvarez and Sagane met again 4 years later, at which point the letter was finally signed.
Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse Five
On the fascinating site Letters of Note:
In December of 1944, whilst behind enemy lines during the Rhineland Campaign, Private Kurt Vonnegut was captured by Wehrmacht troops and subsequently became a prisoner of war. A month later, Vonnegut and his fellow POWs reached a Dresden work camp where they were imprisoned in an underground slaughterhouse known by German soldiers as Schlachthof Fünf (Slaughterhouse Five). The next month — February — the subterranean nature of the prison saved their lives during the highly controversial and devastating bombing of Dresden, the aftermath of which Vonnegut and the remaining survivors helped to clear up.
Vonnegut released the book Slaughterhouse-Five in 1969.
Below is a letter he wrote to his family that May from a repatriation camp, in which he informs them of his capture and survival:
Letters of Note: Hunter S. Thompson
From the great repository of correspondence Letters of Note:
The furious written rant concerned the movie adaptation of Thompson’s novel, The Rum Diary, to which Sorensen’s studio had acquired the rights. Progress had been slow and confused on their part. So slow in fact that Thompson reached boiling point.
Transcript
HOLLY SORENSON / Shooting Gallery / Hollywood / Jan 22 ‘01
Dear Holly,
Okay, you lazy bitch, I’m getting tired of this waterhead fuckaround that you’re doing with The Rum Diary.
We are not even spinning our wheels aggresivly. It’s like the whole Project got turned over to Zombies who live in cardboard boxes under the Hollywood Freeway… I seem to be the only person who’s doing anything about getting this movie Made. I have rounded up Depp, Benicio Del Toro, Brad Pitt, Nick Nolte &…
