62 Years Ago Today

You'll be hard-pressed to find any prominent reference to it in the American media, but sixty-two years ago today, the United States dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. It was the first nuclear weapon ever used on a human population. Altogether, nearly 250,000 Japanese died from the bomb and its fallout. Those who weren't vaporized instantly died in the ensuing weeks, months, and years from radiation sickness, cancer, and other diseases.

I visited Hiroshima over Thanksgiving last November.






The first thing that shocked me about the city was how modern it looked, how different it appeared from the obliterated wasteland of 62 years ago that I first saw in my high school history textbook. Now Hiroshima looks just like any other small city: Boston, Jacksonville, or Des Moines. Now it has skyscrapers and parks and trolleys and shopping malls. The last picture up there is Ground Zero as it appears today.

Hiroshima also has several moving memorials to those who died, many of whom were children. When you read the translated diaries of the survivors, which are held in a museum dedicated to the victims, you learn that August 6, 1945 was a clear, sunny day and many of the children in a local elementary school thought the falling bomb was a pretty, silver balloon.

If you ever find yourself in Japan, it's worth spending a night in Hiroshima. Tonight at 7:30 p.m., HBO will show a documentary on the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki called White Light, Black Rain, The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Some of the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs will tell their stories. Check it out.

It is quite scary and sobering to think that today's thermonuclear weapons are thousands of times more powerful than the bombs that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Given the hideous strength of today's nuclear arsenals, you have to question the morality of using nuclear weapons ever again. You also have to question the wisdom of any leader who would use them. The nuclear fallout and black rain alone would have unintended consequences and would likely drift across the globe, killing friends, allies, and maybe even our own people. (Hmmmm, why did World Wide Suicide by Pearl Jam suddenly start playing on my Pandora radio?)

Mutual Assured Destruction indeed.