The Pacific Theater in World War II

I recently watched two DVD's about the Pacific Theater during World War II. These DVD's were The Price for Peace which is a Stephen Spielberg and Stephen Ambrose production and Enola Gay from The History Channel. Among the insights from these DVDs are:

• Over 8,000 ethnic Japanese committed suicide on the island of Okinawa as a result of Japanese propaganda about the atrocities that American forces would commit if they gained control of the island. This was a complete loss of life because the victorious American forces moved the civilians out of harm's way and provided food, water and medical treatment to Okinawa's civilians.
• The Japanese adopted suicide tactics because they were vastly overextended and outmanned as they fought Americans, Britons, Chinese, Dutch and the Soviet Union. (The Japanese were even threatening to invade India.) Japanese soldiers blew themselves up under enemy tanks and their kamikaze pilots were never taught how to land.
• The Japanese were completely prepared to defend mainland Japan to the last man. They began digging foxholes all over Japan and brought back their best soldiers from all over their empire. In one raid on Tokyo using conventional bombs, 100,000 people were killed. This did not dampen Japanese willingness to fight. Even after the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the Japanese continued to fight. Their newspapers said that the loss of 140,000 citizens was not a major military setback as few soldiers were killed or military facilities were destroyed. The Soviet Union declared war on Japan before the atomic attack on Nagasaki, but the Japanese still refused to surrender.
• Development of the atomic bomb in the U.S. began in 1939 after Albert Einstein wrote a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt about the importance of atomic research. Before the Manhattan Project, the U.S. only spent $2,000 on atomic research.
• Robert Oppenheimer, a lead scientist for the Manhattan Project, had many Communist sympathies and ties. However, he was not the Soviet spy in Los Almos, Klaus Fuchs was.
• When the atomic bomb was tested in New Mexico, the explosion was seen as far away as Amarillo, Texas, 420 miles away.
• The total cost to develop the atomic bomb was $2 billion.
• The atomic explosion in Hiroshima was equivalent to 13,500 tons of high explosives. The center of impact momentarily registered heat of 100 million degrees. The temperature on the ground at Hiroshima reached 5400 degrees Fahrenheit. Some 70,000 people died instantly. Nine out of 10 doctors and nurses in Hiroshima were killed or injured. The water mains were shattered in 70,000 places and two-thirds of the buildings were totally destroyed.
• The atomic attack on Nagasaki had a number of setbacks. Weather forced the mission up a few days. Unlike in the attack on Hiroshima, the bombs were fully armed at take-off. The plane flew into a bad storm and came under attack from Japanese planes. The pilots had to drop the atomic bomb to make it home because their fuel was at very low levels. The plane nearly missed running into the mushroom cloud that arose from the explosion. The bomb on Nagasaki detonated three miles away from its target. As a result, the bomb detonated in a hilly terrain and in an area which had more industrial facilities than residences. This was why 70,000 people were killed in Nagasaki versus some 140,000 fatalities when Hiroshima was bombed.