>Hmmm. We definitely recognize the anniversary dates here in the US as August 6th and August 9th. With the International Date Line being where it is:
>
>http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/international_date.html
>
>Japan is one day ahead of us at that time.

I'm just guessing here, but maybe the date was taken from local time of the US base where the planes were stationed (Tinian - an island in the Pacific), in which case the "correct" US dates would be 5th & 9th.

The International Dateline confuses lots of things - I recall that islands close by are free to decide on which side of the dateline they lie & just over two years ago, one island swapped sides so that it could officially be the first place in the world to celebrate the start of the new millenium (or end of the last millenium, depending on you point of view).

I always remember Neil Armstrong as setting foot on the moon on 21st July, though its recorded as 20th July (in the UK it was around 4am on 21st).