Hiroshima - the first atomic bomb attack
A Terrible Memory burned into the bodies of hundreds of thousands
"Hundreds of people who were trying to escape to the hills passed our house. The sight of them was almost unbearable. Their faces and hands were burnt and swollen; and great sheets of skin had peeled away from their tissues to hang down like rags or a scarecrow. They moved like a line of ants. All through the night, they went past our house, but this morning they stopped. I found them lying so thick on both sides of the road that it was impossible to pass without stepping on them." - Michihiko Hachiya lived in Hiroshima during the Second World War. He wrote an account of the dropping of the atom bomb in his diary on 6th August, 1945. Retrieved from the Spartacus Educational website at http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/2WWhiroshima.htm
"It was to spare the Japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of July 26 was issued from Potsdam. Their leaders promptly rejected that ultimatum. If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air the like of which has never been seen on this earth. Behind this air attack will follow sea and land forces in such numbers and power as they have not yet seen and with a fighting skill of which they have already become well aware." - President Harry S. Truman, speech (6th August, 1945)
Thus was the era of nuclear war introduced to the world this day some 63 years ago. And for the past few years it seems to me that the world has lost sight of the horror, the sheer inhuman horror of that era. When the so-called "Cold War" ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall citizens of the world have been lulled into a kind of torpor and perhaps moral quietude about this issue.
Maybe all the other horrors of the modern world have eclipsed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I wonder about that. I wonder if racism could be involved. I wonder if Japanese lives are less valuable than occidental, and particularly United States, lives. Or is it a reflection of the fact that the Japanese at the time were enemy combatants, systematically dehumanised in the propaganda of war, as Islamic people are now being made victims of similar propaganda in the wake of 9/11?
Images of the First Atomic Bomb used at Hiroshima
The energy released by the bomb was powerful enough to burn through clothing. The dark portions of the garments this victim wore at the time of the blast were emblazoned on to the flesh as scars, while skin underneath the lighter parts (which absorb
Seizo Yamada's ground level photo taken from approximately 7 km northeast of Hiroshima.
The mushroom cloud over Hiroshima after the dropping of Little Boy
Hiroshima, in the aftermath of the bombing
Map showing the locations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan where the two atomic weapons were employed
- The Ugliness of War (a flashback look at the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki)
During the past month I have been working on a translation of a book written by Dr. Nanao Kamada from Hiroshima University, and released in 2007 in Japanese and English (that I know of). I have always... - Killin' by the Million
Are we on the brink of destruction? Some twentieth century authors and film makers seem to think so. International literature throughout the twentieth century has seen great apocalyptic literary works that... - Your Nukes Our Lives!
In 1940 to 1995, USA and Russia started the hectic race to acquire all kinds of weapons, especially nuclear weapons thinking that this would be a deterrent factor against each other. Its true that... - GLOBAL PEACE INDEX
The United States ranked 96th out of 121 countries on a recent Global Peace Index ranking. The top ten countries were: 1. Norway 2. New Zealand 3. Denmark 4. Ireland 5. Japan 6. Finland 7. Sweden 8. Canada 9.... - http://hubpages.com/_3a44c2s2bfwln/hub/Hersheys-Atomic-Japan
- http://hubpages.com/_3a44c2s2bfwln/hub/Hiroshima_Bombing_Affects
- http://hubpages.com/_3a44c2s2bfwln/hub/Hiroshima-marks-63rd-nuclear-bomb-anniversary-today
The fate of the earth
Nuclear weapons have not gone away. They are still in the arsenals of combatant countries around the world, some acknowledged, and some unacknowledged. And that fact alone is extraordinarily scary.
As Jonathan Schell wrote in The Fate of the Earth in 1982: These bombs were built as "weapons" for "war," but their significance greatly transcends war and all its causes and outcomes. They grew out of history, yet they threaten to end history. They were made by men, yet they threaten to annihilate man. They are a pit into which the whole world can fall - a nemesis of all huiman intentions, actions, and hopes. Only life itself, which they threaten to swallow up, can give the measure of their significance."
Some years ago I was in Germany at the beginning of summer and walked with a friend up a gently swelling hill covered with, I think, beech trees, and these lovely little yellow flowers all around on the soft green grass, birds twittering in the branches and the sun warming our backs as we walked. It was so peaceful, so gentle, so quiet.
And then my friend quietly remarked, "Do you know that below this hill, some metres under our feet, are many megatons of nuclear warheads?" That kind of shattered the peace of the moment for me.
J. Robert Oppenheimer, the brilliant scientist who led the team which developed this terrible weapon, is said to have thought, at the moment of the first successful detonation of an atomic device, of a quotation from the Bhagavad Gita , the famous Hindu scripture, a quotation from the Eleventh Chapter, entitled Visva-Rupa-Darsana-yoga, or the "Yoga of Theophany", the chapter in which Krishna displays His Universal form-His divine Opulence-to Arjuna: "The Lord said: ‘Time [death] I am, the destroyer of the worlds, who has come to annihilate everyone. Even without your taking part all those arrayed in the [two] opposing ranks will be slain!'"
T.S. Eliot wrote The Wasteland in 1922, a long and ambiguous poem that foreshadowed the anguish of the atomic age. These lines from Section V: What the Thunder said, are particularly apposite:
What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal
It's interesting that William Carlos Williams, the great US poet, remarked of this poem that it "wiped out our world as if an atom bomb had been dropped on it."
Certainly literature can help us maintain the memory of atrocities and hold the hope that humanity might one day learn to live in peace, but that hope seems precarious in the face of so much naked aggression and hatred as is loose in the world today.
As time goes by and the number of survivors of that terrible day in 1945 gets smaller and smaller, we need something to keep the knowledge alive, to keep us focussed on changing, of bringing the world a little humanity, a little dignity, a little peace.
This we can only do by, to quote Gandhi, by being the change we want to see in the world. This means by treating all life as sacred, each person as an end in himself or herself, as worthy of dignity and respect and understanding.
When I think of the thousands killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on those fateful days in1945, I am reminded of other words by Eliot, this time from one of the Four Quartets , first published in 1944:
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
And then a few lines later in Little Gidding Eliot sounds a note of some ambiguous hope, some possibility of redemption:
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
On this anniversary of the dawn of the atomic age, I can only cling to this shred of hope.
The Sadako Sasaki story as a fairy tale
- H I R O S H I M A : WAS IT NECESSARY?
I found this excellent website put together by Doug Long after I had written the above Hub. Its well worth a visit.
Comments
Tony McGregor (author) from South Africa on December 01, 2010:
Manna - thanks for stopping by. I try to keep this alive because I feel so strongly about it. Thanks for the support.
Love and peace
Tony
Manna in the wild from Australia on November 30, 2010:
This is indeed a story that needs to be kept current.
Tony McGregor (author) from South Africa on August 06, 2010:
Charlie - it is very difficult indeed.
Cindy - you are a great teacher!
Thanks good friends for coming by and commenting. It means a lot to me.
Love and peace
Tony
Cindy Vine from Cape Town on August 06, 2010:
Every year I read Sadako and a thousand paper cranes with my class, and every year I cry when she dies from the radiation poisoning
ralwus on August 06, 2010:
It is hard to have hope for true peace with such hatreds and such terrible consequences summed up in a tiny atom all too ready and indiscriminate for destruction. great hub my friend.
Tony McGregor (author) from South Africa on August 03, 2010:
Dimitris - thank you for the coming by and I know, it is all too horrible for words, isn't it? I just feel so angry that firstly human life is counted so cheap, especially if it is "other" humans; and that, when so many in the world don't have the basic necessities of life, governments can go on spending billions on ever-more sophisticated ways of killing instead of helping people to live lives with some basic human dignity. It's actually criminal, but as Petra noted above, history is written by the victors who tend to whitewash over the crimes and, as she says, come up smelling like roses.
Thanks again for being so human! We need more people like you, Dimitris!
Love and peace
Tony
De Greek from UK on August 03, 2010:
Too painful, Tony. I just could not make it to the end
Tony McGregor (author) from South Africa on July 16, 2010:
Petra - you are so right! There can never be any justification for the bomb, or for dropping it (twice) on Japan. And as you say, history will be re-written to make it sound OK. Because history is always written by the victors, never the vanquished.
Like you I also am troubled by the different values placed on the lives of different people, especiually when those differing values are used to justify the unjustifyable.
Thanks so much for stopping by and commenting. I appreciate it.
Love and peace
Tony
Petra Vlah from Los Angeles on July 15, 2010:
There is no justification for what happened; none. As long as is not our tragedy, it does not matter. A human tragedy becomes real ONLY when it hit home.
What bothers me the most is the supreme arrogance of America in trying to explain away the “motives” of committing criminal acts against humanity. Japan, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, as well as Iraq and Afghanistan today are only examples that illustrate how unimportant the lives of others are as opposed to how precious the American ones have always been.
A life is a life, is a life. Color should not matter, religion should not matter, but sadly it does. If we are to believe the facts, a Jewish life is worth a hundred Palestinian lives, an American life is worth a thousand Muslim lives; the world is watching and says nothing, we got used to the atrocities and look the other way while the bloodshed goes on and on.
I have very little hope that we will ever learn; what we will do is re-write history and come out smelling like roses.
Tony McGregor (author) from South Africa on May 24, 2010:
Billy - thanks for coming by and commenting! Peace is my constant prayer because we have seen too much of war and violence. I wish I could have talked with your father about Hiroshima.
Thanks again
Love and peace
Tony
billy sidhu on May 24, 2010:
My dad visited Hiroshima shortly after the attack- he told us of the horrific effects. Only pray for peace on earth.
Tony McGregor (author) from South Africa on April 29, 2010:
Blackreign - the suffering caused by the bomb on Hiroshima was a dreadful indeed and mostly the people who suffered had absolutely nothing to do with Pearl Harbour as you say.
Thanks so much for the visit and the comment. I appreciate it very much that you took the time.
And hugs to you too!
Love and peace
Tony
blackreign2012 on April 28, 2010:
Its sad that generations of a people totally gone. Ppl who had nothing to do with the attack on pearl harbor but they still had to pay the price for what their government "did". There is no telling what really happened with that pearl harbor deal. I have come to the realization that The United Snakes government can and will stage anything if its suits their purpose so I am quite sure there is way more to the pearl harbor saga that meets the eye. I shutter to think of the women and children who suffered.. I saw the japanamation version of this horrific event and I was tearing and speechless by the end. How could anyone inflict such carnage and it not effect them? But these humanists/genocidalist are an uncaring lot disassociated from their own humanity and therefore cannot and will not have empathy for the horrible crimes they commit. Whoa.. got on my soapbox a little there but this subject strikes a cord with me. As usual excellent hub ~hugs~
Saad Shaukat on March 12, 2010:
Time to do something practical! Better late then never!
We should join our hands and work together towards a nuclear free world. Global Zero is one such initiative struggling to bring down the level of nukes to zero. Please read more about it at,
https://hubpages.com/politics/Moving-backwards-on-...
Tony McGregor (author) from South Africa on February 13, 2010:
Thanks good people for commenting.
Indeed the atom bomb is a weapon like no other and should not ever be used again. The consequences of using it, human and ecological, are just too devastating and uncontrollable.
Love and peace
Tony
ocoonocoon on February 13, 2010:
The fact remains that these were the only two nuclear weapons dropped on human populations. Considering the horrible destruction that could occur if there were a nuclear war, I think that there should be more global attention paid to what happened to the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is truly awful.
Americans, especially, are largely ignorant of the horrors caused by these bombs, and it seems that they are turning a blind eye to what happened. The Japanese did horrible things during the war, but so-it seems- did the Americans. It seems arrogant and contradictory to say, "we had to kill thousands of women and children in order for good to prevail." War brings out the worst in people, and should be avoided at all costs. Let's at least not toss this aside with a simple, "it had to be done."
trooper22 from Chicago on May 22, 2009:
Lest we forget, the question is not whether the bomb should have been used, it is whether it will ever be used again. No horror of human imagination has ever equaled the reality of this weapon's destructive potential.
This is a great hub, and a very important reminder that no one should take lightly.
Ironically I published a hub much like it before I seen this one.
https://hubpages.com/education/Killin-by-the-Milli
Shamel from Germany on April 20, 2009:
Those are very horribles images! I can understand your fury now towards nuclear weapons. This madness should have an end or we will all regret.
cobraski from Maryland on April 15, 2009:
Very informative hub. I will check out Doug Long web at the bottom. Thanks
britneydavidson from united kingdom on February 10, 2009:
great hub...what would happen with the people there? it sounds so horrible...
anjalichugh from New York on January 01, 2009:
The first time I saw a channel coverage of (after effects of) 'Nagasaki' & 'Hiroshima' explosion, I was in middle school. Seems to be ages since then. I still remember how horrified I was, when it was reported that 'most human bodies were not even found as they had simply evaporated by a million degree heat generated due to explosion'. It was one of the worst attacks, the human race had ever witnessed. Since then, we've had many of such gruesome killings, in different parts of the world. It's hard to justify wars no matter how grave the provocation might be. The end result is always catastrophic.
Vladimir Uhri from HubPages, FB on December 29, 2008:
There is no one good war. But there is just and unjust war. I went through one, WWII, I was a small boy.
The wars are result of hate. The only solution is spiritual solution, the eleimination of hate which is love. We have to address roots of the evil.
An interesting for me is that explosion on Nagassaki was never seen on the pictures.
Tony McGregor (author) from South Africa on December 11, 2008:
"Because the effects of that atomic bomb, still eating away at the minds and bodies of the hibakusha, have for decades been so underestimated, a complete picture of the damage has yet to emerge. Most severely neglected have been the emotional injuries. Therefore, the city of Hiroshima is initiating a two-year scientific exploration of the psychological impact of the A-bomb experience." from an address by the present-day Mayor of Hiroshima, Tadatoshi Akiba, on 6 August 2008 and published on the OpenDemocracy website: http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/hiroshima-194...
Tony McGregor (author) from South Africa on August 08, 2008:
Haven't seen that clip but will go there. No I'm not in favour of sticking my head into the sand anytime! Not even in pursuit of political correctness (I'm not particularly PC myself). The view is not good! As for sticking our noses there it depends very much on how and why. The Middle East is in anycase a minefield for those who are PC and those who are not. Of course PC also depends on one's perspective. In whose terms is the correctness defined? I believe in an open mind, an open heart and lots and lots of compassion for people, for individuals.
peacenow on August 08, 2008:
I agree that it is important to not lose the essence of the individual point of view. This is the humanity thread thread that binds us all together.
Regarding radical Islam, have you viewed the short clip "Obsession" (can be seen on Youtube)? This is not a fabrication. Do you think that we should stick our heads in those Middle Eastern sands rather than our noses? I do not think that we should chose to be naïve in the suit of being politically correct.
Tony McGregor (author) from South Africa on August 06, 2008:
Hi Steven - no, I'm not forgetting the evil that the Japanese did during the war. I don't think, though, that evils can be compared in that way. I did not address the issue of whether or not the bomb ended the war more quickly - that's the subject of on-going scholarly debate. War is a terrible thing. Both sides commit atrocities in modern warfare. As for Hitler, whether or not he signed the Geneva Convention, his soldiers committed one of the worst genocides in human history, so his signing or not signing the Convention is rather beside the point, isn't it?
The point of my piece is that the coming of nuclear weapons has altered the course of our history irrevocably, and the consequences are still not clear.
The point of the racism comment was simply that people look at things from their own perspectives, which often contain racist elements, and we ignore these at our peril. I wanted to draw attention to the response to, for example, 9/11, which has been met with ferocious and atrocious military adventures in Afganistan and Iraq, quite out of proportion to the actual damage caused by the Islamic terrorists and, in the case of Iraq at least, based on a total fabrication of an excuse. Based on a blatant lie, in fact. And so I draw the conclusion that its OK to bomb Arabs and Islamic people into the dust, to destroy their countries, to kill and maim hundreds of thousands of them in retaliation for the deaths of some 2 000 mainly white people. And it was OK to use weapons of mass destruction against Japan because they were the enemy, and therefore were not human.
None of this excuses, or in any way diminishes the pain and suffering, which must be incredibly hard to bear, caused by the Japanese soldiers in the Philipines and elsewhere.
As I say, if one starts to try to compare or weigh up the suffering caused by different sides, it becomes an exercise in futility. But if one stays with the individual human who has suffered, and tries to understand these things from the individual point of view, thereby gaining some compassion, then maybe we can get something going which would, maybe some day in the future, ensure that these things won't happen.
stevenschenck from Sacramento California on August 06, 2008:
Wow - I was reading along and then that line about race - have you forgotten the rapes, torture and murder Japan commited in the Philippines - Twelve of my family members were used for bayonet practice by officers and every woman in our family alive during the occupation was gang raped in camps, my grandfather watched as Japanese poured gas on American prisoner of war and burned them to death.
Why not write about how many lives were saved 63 years ago, or the courage of our president to stop the most brutal army ever to exist on the plant, Japan never signed the Geneva Convention, hell, even Hitler signed and followed it.
