Sunday, August 07, 2005

NO MORE HIROSHIMA!

------------NO MORE HIROSHIMA!!!!..............

The date:August 6,1945: Target:HIROSHIMA............................

SIXTY-YEARS YEARS AGO TODAY, HIROSHIMA WAS BOMBED
BY ENOLA GAY, an American bomber at the instruction of then US President Truman.

And that started endless sufferings which continue to this day....
The horror began at 8:15 A.M. on a hot summer day in HIROSHIMA,
a busy port with two rivers converging in-between the vastly populated city.

The bomb exploded several kilometers= IN MID-AIR= BEFORE IT REACHED THE EPICENTER and THAT >>> made the devastation even more horrendous.

The bomb was seen hundreds of kilometers away, and its effects covered a radius
hundreds of kilometers WIDE and more...

.It incinerated the entire city and killed instantly almost all who were nearby.
By some miracle, those who survived walked the street stripped of clothing,
skin parts dripping away, faces burned, blood spluttered all over...
the air smelt of burnt human corpses, burnt hair, and more.

These people lived to tell the horror to the next generation, ...
and vowed that NEVER AGAIN WILL THERE BE A repeat of what happened
in HIROSHIMA.

THE bomb instantly killed hundreds of thousands...and has wrecked havoc on the lives of its citizens sixty years hence. The survivors developed MULTIPLE CANCER
as a result of that bombing. Each year, the list of victims grow as new names are added.
The survivors, their children...and their children's children continue
to suffer from the effects of that tons of TNT.


I KNOW. I have been to Hiroshima several years back. My family went to a prefecture south of Kyushu and on the way back, we stopped by Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. Am I grateful we did!


I SAW the pictures taken BEFORE and AFTER the bombing; the remnants of the day of horror, the old kid bike, the young boy's torn uniform, the wall where the black rain fell, the nail that slipped off from a boy's fingers, the pictures taken by the people from Enola Gay, and those taken by a fellow victim, the children crawling for water, the bodies piled up, burnt and dead...and more....


I READ the inscriptions, the labels...and the stories;


I HEARD the tales of horror, the handwritings of survivors;I


FELT the chaos, the scorching heat[more than 100 degrees C], the grief of the people, the loss it incurred,the devastation it caused...and the lives it has to pay.


I CRIED....AS I WALKED PAST THE EXHIBITS...


AND I CRY, EVEN NOW...AS I REMEMBER THE EXPERIENCE THAT WAS HIROSHIMA.


I SHED TEARS.....
I SHED TEARS because there was TOTAL CARNAGE in BOMBINGS AND KILLINGS
AND THESE HAVE NOT STOPPED...EVEN TODAY.

"WARS MAKE BEASTS OF MEN."- so says a big car company Executive when we talked about the last war. Indeed!

AT THE CENTER of the Park is a VAULT where names of victims are kept.On it is an epitaph which says: "SLEEP WELL AND REST IN PEACE; WE WILL NEVER MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE AGAIN."

The message is for the world, as it is for the people who died there.
The message is for these power-hungry leaders to stop and think..

.And I pray that PEACE DESCEND UPON THE HEARTS OF THESE MEN
WHO PREY ON INNOCENT CIVILIANS AND PEACE-LOVING PEOPLE.

Today, Hiroshima is a CENTER FOR PEACE ACTIVISTS.There is an eternal flame on one side that will only be extinguished when the last nuclear power is destroyed.

HIROSHIMA left an impact in the deepest recesses of my mind and heart.

I WILL NEVER FORGET HIROSHIMA and the memories of that short visit.
IT changed my outlook in life.
IT changed the way I look at the "SUPERPOWERS."

PEACE remains an impossible dream for us
who are supposed to be enjoying the free world....

AHHH!!!! PEACE! WHAT price must mankind pay for that elusive dream?


NO MORE HIROSHIMA!

and PEACE TO ALL MEN OF GOOD WILL!!!

2 comments:

sesto callende said...

i echo your call. no more hiroshima. let's keep this battlecry burning lest our memories fade and we forget. and let it happen again.

:)

Cory said...

Everytime I hear the name mentioned, I never stop crying.
While walking through the exhibits, I cried unabashedly then; I still do now.

Your're right. Spread the word that in this part of the world,
we want PEACE!...WE WANT WORLD PEACE!