As President Biden visits Hiroshima, I share my travelogue penned in August 2004.
What have we done! city annihilated, leveled in minutes, children vaporized

For 6 years, complete censorship was imposed in Japan.  No one was allowed to write about the bomb.  No one was allowed to tell the awful story.  No one was allowed to say it the way they saw it. 

I had seen the history of Hiroshima through the eyes of the British, through the eyes of historians, and now I was seeing it for myself. 

People were snuffed out in minutes

….where it was said that nothing will grow for 75 years, new buds sprouted, and in the green that came to back to life among the charred ruins, people recovered their living hopes and courage.