Daily Times

The morning of the 6th of August, 1945 was just like any other morning in Hiroshima. Japan had been engaged in a war with the Allies led by the US since it attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii in the early morning hours of the 7th of December, 1941.

Most of the people in Hiroshima that morning in 1945 were mothers and children and old men going about their normal everyday duties. They were going about their normal day to day activities. All Japanese men who were battle worthy were serving in the armed forces.

At 8:45 am something happened which had never happened in any prior war in recorded history. A single bomber, a four-engine propeller-driven B-29 bomber of the US Air Force called Enola Gay appeared in the sky and dropped a single bomb over Hiroshima. But it was no ordinary bomb. It was an atomic bomb of the kind that the world had never seen or heard of.

The bomb was exploded at a height of 1,879 feet for maximum effect. The co-pilot of the bomber noted: “Where we had seen a clear city two minutes before, we could no longer see the city at all.” At burst point, the temperature reached several million degrees Centigrade, or equivalent to the temperatures on the sun.

People and buildings evaporated or were incinerated by the fires that came later. Within one year, 140,000 people died, or half of the population of the town. More would die in the years and decades to come.

Some of this tragedy is brought out in the 1991 Akira Kurosawa movie, “Rhapsody in August.” It’s a flashback based on a grandmother’s memory. She had survived the bombing because she was out of town.

In October 2015, while visiting the imperial capital of Japan, Kyoto, I ran into a man who was selling Samurai swords. Somehow the topic of Hiroshima came up and I learned that his uncle had been killed during the A-bomb attack. His eyes teared up as he told me that he was named after his uncle.

Last month, on my second visit to Japan, I decided to visit Hiroshima. The 74th anniversary of the bombing three weeks had been observed three weeks earlier. Our tour guide turned out to be the child of parents who had survived the bombing. Both parents had passed away but they had left behind their memories with the guide.

She first took us to the Atomic Bomb Dome, a building which was hollowed out by the blast but which whose skeleton survived. It conveys the horror of the bombing and conveys a pledge to abolish nuclear weapons.

The dome is located at Ground Zero. It is on the banks of the Honkawa River. One goes silent just looking at the dome and wondering what it must have been like for those who were in the building at 8:45 am that day.

Further down the road is the Peace Memorial Park. The Japanese have built it as a reminder to what happened here and as a promise to makes sure it never happens again. There is a section which commemorates the lives of children lost, many of whom were playing in their school yards when they evaporated into eternity.

Nearby was the Museum. That was the hardest part of the trip. Inside had been memorialized forever in searing words and pictures the suffering of the innocent who were killed or maimed or orphaned.

The intended target was obscured by clouds so instead the city of Nagasaki was bombed. The bombers could not afford to carry the bomb back with them to the base from which they had come. It’s not clear why they did not just drop it over Pacific

In a picture, a mother holding an infant is saying: “Baby, open your eyes. Please, open your eyes. Your mother wants to see you looking at her.” Of course, the baby has closed his eyes for the last time. The mother was so dehydrated by the blast that she had no tears left to shed over the body of her baby.

There was a child saying to the rescuers: “Please, get some water for my mother. I don’t care what happens to me. Just help her. Please do something. Why do you just keep looking at her? She is my mother. Help her.” Of course, there was nothing they could do for her. She was gone.

And then there was the woman who was so thirsty that she was drinking the black rain that was falling, not knowing it was simply ash and carbon from the wreckage.

The museum also had a room-sized simulation of how the bombing occurred. You stood next to a circular area that had a diameter of a dozen feet and got an aerial view of the city. Then you saw the B-29 arriving and letting go off the bomb. And then you saw the blast, the mushroom cloud, and the shock waves, and then the devastation.

Among the casualties were the 20,000 Koreans who had been brought over by the Japanese as forced laborers. Unknown to the Americans, 12 US soldiers were serving as prisoners of war in Hiroshima and died in the blast.

Three days later another atomic bomb was dropped by the US Air Force. The intended target was obscured by clouds so instead the city of Nagasaki was bombed. The bombers could not afford to carry the bomb back with them to the base from which they had come. It’s not clear why they did not just drop it over Pacific.

Nagasaki became the ill-fated city to be bombed. It was pulverized when the A bomb was detonated over it at two minutes after noon, 1,640 feet above the ground. The altitude was chosen to maximize the destruction done to light wooden buildings which housed the civilian population.

President Truman had written in his diary in late July 1945 that “soldiers and sailors were the target of the atomic bomb, not women and children.” Yet those are the ones who were killed.

US military leaders had opposed the use of the A bomb. These including General MacArthur, Admiral Nimitz of the Navy, and General Curtis Le May. Fleet Admiral William Halsey Jr. said the only reason it was dropped that the scientists had wanted to try their newest toy.

In a documentary, The Fog of War, former US defense secretary Robert McNamara said if the US had lost the war, Americans would have been tried as war criminals.

The US decision to use atomic bombs opened Pandora’s Box had international consequences. Every major power wanted to get them. Eventually the bomb arrived in South Asia.

With tensions flaring up between India and Pakistan, the people of South Asia are living under the threat of annihilation in South Asia.

The writer can be reached at ahmadfaruqui@gmail.com