Atomic bomb game

(the exhibit presents the position of the game at the moment the atomic bomb destroyed Hiroshima)

Interesting bit of Go history (source):

The number of go tournaments held in Japan during World War II were far fewer than those held before the war. Many young players were being drafted into military service and, because of a paper shortage, newspapers were compelled to reduce their size. Go columns were among the first to be dropped. In spite of this, newspapers continued to sponsor tournaments and games, even though they would probably never be published. 

As the war dragged on, conditions for staging even the most important games became extremely difficult. In the spring of 1945, Kaoru Iwamoto, 7-dan, earned the right to challenge Hashimoto Utaro for the third Honinbo title. However, finding a venue for the title match in bombed-out Tokyo had become impossible. 

A venue for the games was finally found in Hiroshima. However, the police chief of the city, who was an amateur go player, ordered the players not to play there, since it was too dangerous. However, when the police chief was called away on official business, the players, taking advantage of his absence, ignored his order and played the first game of the match July 23-25 under a rain of bullets from strafing airplanes. 

When the chief returned and heard that a game had been played, he was furious and fabade players in no uncertain terms from playing any more games in Hiroshima. 

Another venue was found in Itsukaichi, an outer suburb of Hiroshima, and the second game was played there Aug. 4-6. 

On the morning of Aug. 6, Hashimoto happened to be in the garden when the atomic bomb was dropped. He saw a brilliant flash of light and the mushroom cloud rise above the city. A tremendous blast of wind shattered all the windows and turned the playing room into a shambles. The position on the board had to be set up again. Under these circumstances, they managed to complete the game; Hashimoto won by five points. 

That evening, atomic-bomb survivors started to pour into Itsukaichi and the players began to understand the magnitude of the disaster and just how lucky they were. The house in which they were to have played their game was destroyed and its owner killed. 

The war ended a week later and the match was resumed in November, ending in a 3-3 tie. A playoff became necessary, but Japan was in such disarray that it was not until July 1946 that a best-of-three playoff was arranged. Iwamoto won the first two games, and thereby took the Honinbo title. 

Hashimoto and Iwamoto were important forces in the go world during the years following the war. Had they been killed in Hiroshima that fateful day, the history of go today would most likely be quite different. 

Iwamoto defended the Honinbo title against Minoru Kitani in 1947, but Hashimoto came back in 1959 to recapture it. Then, with the prestige of holding the top title in the go world at that time, Hashimoto broke away from the Japan Go Association and formed the Western Japan Go Association. Although, a bitter rivalry existed between these two organizations for a while, they coexist amicably today and cooperate on many levels to promote go in Japan. 

Iwamoto, who will be 97 on Feb. 5, has contributed much to the popularization of go in the West. In 1929, he retired as a go player and immigrated to Brazil. However, two years later he returned to Japan and resumed his go-playing career. Perhaps it was this experience that caused him to want to make go a truly international game. He has gone on numerous overseas tours and has established go centers in Amsterdam, Sao Paulo, Seattle and New York.

Just for the record, let me say this: after reading about this game, I started reading about the history of Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, bombings of Tokyo, etc. It is my opinion that targeting civilians by bombing raids the way Allies did in the World War II in Japan (not just the atomic bombs, but also bombings of Tokyo with incendiary bombs) and Germany (e.g., Dresden, Berlin) is not much different from what Islamic terrorists do today. Probably not different at all. And therefore, there is not much difference between President Truman who made a decision to destroy two cities full of thousands of civilians (eventually leading to the deaths of close to 200,000 people) and Osama Bin Laden.

I am ashamed of the times when I excused such things by calling them collateral damage. This was not collateral damage. This was terrorism.

Let me say only this much to the moral issue involved: Suppose Germany had developed two bombs before we had any bombs. And suppose Germany had dropped one bomb, say, on Rochester and the other on Buffalo, and then having run out of bombs she would have lost the war. Can anyone doubt that we would then have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and that we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them?

— Leo Szilard

Belarus’

My grandfather on my father’s side was a partisan in Belarus’. The partisans were parachuted into a Nazi-occupied area and lived in small communities in forests. Their goal was to disrupt local Nazi operations — a mission they continued to fulfill until the main forces liberated Belarus’. (On this map, green areas were under control of partisans and were mostly in the forest-rich Belarus’, Northern Ukraine and Western Russia. Partisan missions went as far as Russia, Southern Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Eastern Poland.)

They constantly hunted the Nazis and were constantly hunted by them. They could be betrayed at any moment by the civilians and oftentimes were. In many cases, partisans burned down the villages of suspected collaborators, while Nazis burned down villages of suspected partisan sympathizers.

There were people who could betray you among your closest friends, and there were people among Nazis whom you could make contact with. And there were people who were playing on both sides or suddenly changing sides. In other words, nobody could be trusted.

My father said that his father never talked about what he had to do during the war.

This scene from a recent Russian serial film shows a group of partisans taking a Nazi-occupied fortification and headquarters in order to recover documents regarding chemical weapons. Another group is working on stopping a train carrying these weapons and blowing it up. This is all happening next to the town of Baranovichi, which is prominent in Chassidic history.

What is interesting to me is to observe how cheap a human’s life was during a battle. Your friend with whom you shared the same spoon and the same tent could fall right next to you, and you had to keep on going — or share his fate.

The whole episode is interesting, in my opinion. I find the very last scene fascinating.

Ah, war, war...

Эх война, война, война...

Дурная тетка, стерва она.

А война, война идет,

А пацана девченка ждет.

— Любэ

Interesting clip about everyday realities of WWII. Also, a nice song. (Here is an English version with the translated lyrics on the right in the info section. For ladies only, here is a version with a woman singing. As a rule, Russian sounds 10 times more beautiful when it’s sang or spoken by a woman.)

World War II in half an hour

(the somewhat failed counter-offensive of the 1941–1942 winter)

Very-very awesome. Even if you don’t know Russian. Even if you haven’t lost most of your family. Still very awesome. Just wait for stuff to load, and when the “interlude” screen appears, just press the rectangular green button. Don’t press green or red arrows unless you want to see details (some nice pictures, videos, additional maps, etc.). Things will move themselves between the interlude screens.

“Победители” (Victors).

I have to say: after watching this, the opening of the “second front” by Americans and British in France looks very comic. Very-very-very pathetic and comic. Obviously, every soldier who fought anywhere deserves our gratitude, but there is a reason why Americans “don’t get it” regarding World War II. Even fighting in the Pacific was a joke comparing to what was happening in Eastern Europe. To see what I mean, watch the above link.


(“Yay, we took the beaches of France!.. Five years too late... While the Russians have killed about 10 million Germans and fought over the territory several times the size of Western Europe.”)