At 1:45 a.m. on August 6, 1945, a US B-29 bomber, named Enola Gay , took off from Tinian Island in the Mariana Islands. It carried the world's second atomic bomb, the first having been detonated three weeks earlier at a US test site in Alamogordo, New Mexico.
~ From the website, Hiroshima Day Committee
Taking a huge 180 from yesterday - today we promote peace, fight for the abolition of ALL nuclear weapons anywhere, and remember those who lost their lives because they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It is especially sobering to read the statistical figures regarding the size of the bomb, how many died, how many died based on how far away they were when the bomb was dropped, what kind of radiation sickness developed in the people who survived the blast.
Death Toll
About 140,000 +/- 10,000 (including 20,000 soldiers) were dead by the end of December 1945; 90% of these are thought to have been killed within 2 weeks after the bombing.
But why would anyone want to unleash such destruction on ANY human being??? Why? I don't think there is ever a good reason for that. No good reason at all.
This month's NaBloPoMo theme is called "Tomorrow", as in, the future. Truly, the role of "the future" played a very big part in the decision-making process of how, when, and why to deploy that bomb on a city that ultimately was no different than any other city in the world: people going about their daily business, not thinking they were the target of a deadly atomic bomb. Some historians in Hungary say, "The past is less certain than the future." That quote is used in a paper written by William Lanouette, Ph.D., Washington D.C. called, "Reason and Circumstances of the Hiroshima Bomb (Umstande und Grunde des Abwurfs)".
"Hiroshima raises profound questions about how the Twentieth Century will be remembered ... "
(Photo above courtesy of an unknown Japanese photographer whose undeveloped roll of film was found in a cave. For the full story and even more disturbing images click here.)
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