(C) Common Dreams
This story was originally published by Common Dreams and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Facing the Nuclear Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - The New York Times [1]

['Kathleen Kingsbury', 'W.J. Hennigan', 'Spencer Cohen', 'Opinion Staff']

Date: 2024-08-06

In the United States the atomic bombs signaled military victory. In Japan the remaining survivors have been left to contemplate whether the world has learned anything from their trauma — or whether the world powers are on a collision course to repeat it.

In the United States the atomic bombs signaled military victory. In Japan the remaining survivors have been left to contemplate whether the world has learned anything from their trauma — or whether the world powers are on a collision course to repeat it.

Opinion The Last Survivors Speak.

It’s Time to Listen. The Last

Survivors

Speak.

It’s Time to

Listen.

The waiting room of the Red Cross hospital in downtown Hiroshima is always crowded. Nearly every available seat is occupied, often by elderly people waiting for their names to be called. Many of these men and women don’t have typical medical histories, however. They are the surviving victims of the American atomic bomb attack 79 years ago.

Not many Americans have Aug. 6 circled on their calendars, but it’s a day that the Japanese can’t forget. Even now, the hospital continues to treat, on average, 180 survivors — known as hibakusha — of the blasts each day.

When the United States dropped an atomic weapon on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, the entire citizenries of both countries were working feverishly to win World War II. For most Americans, the bomb represented a path to victory after nearly four relentless years of battle and a technological advance that would cement the nation as a geopolitical superpower for generations. Our textbooks talk about the world’s first use of a nuclear weapon.

Many today in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where the United States detonated a bomb just three days later, talk about how those horrible events must be the last uses of nuclear weapons.

A view across the Motoyasu River of the Atomic Bomb Dome in Hiroshima.

The bombs killed an estimated 200,000 men, women and children and maimed countless more. In Hiroshima 50,000 of the city’s 76,000 buildings were completely destroyed. In Nagasaki nearly all homes within a mile and a half of the blast were wiped out. In both cities the bombs wrecked hospitals and schools. Urban infrastructure collapsed.

Americans didn’t dwell on the devastation. Here the bombings were hailed as necessary and heroic acts that brought the war to an end. In the days immediately after the nuclear blasts, the polling firm Gallup found that 85 percent of Americans approved of the decision to drop atomic bombs over Japan. Even decades later the narrative of military might — and American sacrifice — continued to reign.

This article is part of the Opinion series At the Brink,

about the threat of nuclear weapons in an unstable world. Read the opening piece here. This article is part of

the Opinion series At the Brink,

about the threat of nuclear

weapons in an unstable world.

Read the opening piece here.

For the 50th anniversary of the war’s end, the Smithsonian buckled to pressure from veterans and their families and scaled back a planned exhibition that would have offered a more nuanced portrait of the conflict, including questioning the morality of the bomb. The Senate even passed a resolution calling the Smithsonian exhibition “revisionist and offensive” and declared it must “avoid impugning the memory of those who gave their lives for freedom.”

In Japan, however, the hibakusha and their offspring have formed the backbone of atomic memory. Many see their life’s work as informing the wider world about what it’s like to carry the trauma, stigma and survivor’s guilt caused by the bombs, so that nuclear weapons may never be used again. Their urgency to do so has only increased in recent years. With an average age of 85, the hibakusha are dying by the hundreds each month — just as the world is entering a new nuclear age.

Countries like the United States, China and Russia are spending trillions of dollars to modernize their stockpiles. Many of the safeguards that once lowered nuclear risk are unraveling, and the diplomacy needed to restore them is not happening. The threat of another blast can’t be relegated to history.

And so, as another anniversary of Aug. 6 passes, it is necessary for Americans — and the globe, really — to listen to the stories of the few human beings who can still speak to the horror nuclear weapons can inflict before this approach is taken again.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/08/06/opinion/hiroshima-nagasaki-atomic-bombing.html

Published and (C) by Common Dreams
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0..

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/commondreams/