As President Biden visits Hiroshima, I share my travelogue penned in August 2004.
People were snuffed out in minutes…
The A-Bomb emitted heat rays, blasts, and radiation, which raised the surface temperature to 3,000-4,000 degrees centigrade. (think of it…I mean, don’t even try). Simultaneously an intense shock wave was unleashed, and an enormous amount of radiation was emitted, instantly destroying the entire city.
There is a wall-to-wall panoramic photograph of Hiroshima after the bomb. It is completely leveled and burnt and there is no sign of life. There is this one domed structure of a shell and a couple of buildings that had remained standing. Sheer devastation. In the river are the two pillars of the bridge without the bridge. Hiroshima was thoroughly obliterated.
A huge number of people unable to endure the pain of burning flesh, jumped into the river that runs in front of the A-Bomb dome. Thousands of corpses were seen floating. The once majestic dome of the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall will be preserved forever as a reminder.
Roof tiles melted, all wooden structures within 2 kilometers were crushed with the pressure, and people were blinded or cut in half, or blown apart. Soot blended with rain and hyperactive soot rained down. A replica of black streaks on a white surface stands in the museum.
Parts of keloid removed from people’s arms are on display, as is the cancerous bone marrow. There is a child’s lunch box with charred food inside, turned to blackened coal, a child’s tricycle, burnt; a set of dishes melted and fused together, a melted glass bottle fused to concrete, smears of black rain on a white wall, and one of the most horrifying remnants – a block of concrete with a shadow etched in it. The shadow is the remains of a burnt corpse, no longer a corpse, but a mere dust embedded in the white concrete slab.
Most people who had been outside within one kilometer of the hypocenter died within a few days due to radiation exposure. Many who survived ended up with leukemia and cancer. People were snuffed out in minutes. The city was nothing but burnt rubble. This area where I stood was obliterated. Now it is the Peace Memorial Park. On the pillars are letters sent by Hiroshima mayors to protest every time a nuclear bomb testing is conducted, hoping that this will be the last, and they are posted in silver letters, side-by-side on the huge pillars.
By the end of the year, some 140,000 people had died. Most of them were non-combatants, ordinary citizens.
And then the effects of radiation started materializing and people started getting sick and dying.
You walk through the lives of children who never made it home from school, of fathers who went to work and did not return, of mothers who ran out desperately looking for their children as their flesh melted away; you see remnants and remnants of people’s lives now encased in Lucite cases with captions that send chills through your entire being.
Once Is Not Enough
After the first bomb, fearing the atomic bombing of Hiroshima would end the war with Japan, before the Soviet Union could enter, Soviet Premier Stalin decided to accelerate his plan to enter the war and declared war and launched an attack on Manchuria. The next day the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, bringing Japan to surrender and the Soviet Union backed off.
P.S. President Biden visited the museum yesterday, and according to the New York Times, ‘paid silent tribute….But the president offered no comments on what he saw, much less the apology some Japanese still wish the United States would provide.’
How did Japan recover? Read Part 5: The Healing Begins
And read:
Part 1: Hiroshima. What Have We Done!
Part 2: The Museum Speaks
Part 3: What I Believed Then; What I Know Now
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