August 6, 1945
Comments: 7
There’s not much I can say about this that won’t be said by someone else so let me just mark the day with a heartfelt prayer that we can learn the right things from history, because otherwise we are truly doomed. Those in search of links could take a look at this collection posted to Plastic.
I’ve never been to Hiroshima (it’s on the list of places in Japan I’ve been meaning to visit — a list that never seems to get any shorter) but I did visit Nagasaki nearly 10 years ago. If I didn’t live in Tokyo, that’s where I’d want to live: beautiful city, great food (OK, not the grasshoppers), on the sea, full of charming, relaxed, cosmopolitan people. I rode into town on my bicycle and before I’d even lowered the kickstand to the ground and begun thinking about where to have lunch, an old man had struck up conversation and was offering to take me to his favourite sushi restaurant. He’d lived in the city his whole life and remembered August 9, 1945 perfectly well.
I guess I should mention one other Nagasaki story I have. This one occured long before I came to Japan. In Fremantle, Western Australia, my across-the-road neighbour was an old fellow by the name of Jacques. He’d been taken prisoner somewhere in the Pacific (can’t recall where) and was being held with other POWs in the hold of a old freighter moored in Nagasaki harbour.
They were kept in the bottom of the ship, below the waterline, and he said that when the bomb went off they heard it and then the sides of the hold became too hot to touch.
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Posted to Oh, the Humanity • 2003.08.06 (Wed) • 21:46
Comments
Posted by Curmudgeon 2003.08.06, 23:12
Having visited the peace museums in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I have always been struck by how the area around the hypocenter in Nagasaki has become a pleasant neighborhood, full of nice boutiques and cafes and altogether seeming like a good place to live. It’s reassuring to know that life goes on despite the most horrific of disasters, and can do so while not forgetting the horror that occured there all those years ago. Now if only something could be done about that hideous peace stature…
Posted by Jeff 2003.08.07, 02:11
Twenty years ago today I was standing at Hiroshima’s groundzero. I was working on a film crew making a film about American POWs who were killed by the bomb (there was a prisoner of war camp right next to the city hall).
Approximately twenty American prisoners were incarcerated there and it wasn’t until the 1970s that the American government even acknowledged their deaths. At the time of the filming they still didn’t acknowledge how they died.
The ceremony marking the anniversary was one of the most solemn occasions I have ever attended. The lighted lanterns, floating on the Motoyasu River were beautiful.
Posted by michy 2003.08.07, 11:34
I was in Hiroshima for the 50th anniversary, thinking about it still gives me shivers. I have never been so affected by any place I’ve visited. I’m Aussie and my Grandma lived through WWII and she couldn’t understand why I would want to go to Japan, she stills feels the pain of the war. But being in Hiroshima showed me the other side of the story - everyone should take a day to visit Hiroshima and walk through the Museum and truly feel the consequences of our actions. We owe it to the past and the future.
Posted by vinayd 2003.08.07, 13:32
so did you have sushi with that old man in nagasaki? how old was he when the bomb dropped?
Posted by Kurt 2003.08.09, 09:46
Thanks for the mention of Nagasaki. I’m going there next month for a couple of days, just picking it more or less arbitrarily as a destination, but I’ve had a hard time running across anyone else who’s ever been there, or that can give me any impression of the place. Most Japanese just mention Huis Ten Bosch as if that’s the only reason one would go to the area (sigh).
Posted by meow 2004.03.31, 13:31
Oh Dear! This is horrible. The Americans don’t realise how mucj damage they did to the japanese people
Posted by ffg 2006.12.07, 07:14
i think it is horable
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