The Cost of War: Br Peter Carroll on Why, 80 Years On, Hiroshima and Nagasaki Must Not Be Forgotten

On August 9, 1945 - just three days after the world first saw the overwhelming destruction of an atomic bomb in Hiroshima - the United States dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki. Today marks the 80th anniversary of that devastating event, a moment that shook humanity to its core. The horrors that unfolded prompted the international community, in the years that followed, to establish strict controls on nuclear weapons and ensure that their use would carry the gravest consequences. In his editorial, Br Peter Carroll reflects on the bombings and reminds us why we must remember these tragedies - so that future generations never forget the costs of nuclear warfare.

This week we commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. They were truly unique, history-altering events. Conflict and warfare could never be the same again. Once the technology was made available beyond the United States to Russia, the UK and other nations, we lived in a MAD world. Mad for crazy, but, more fearfully, for mutually assured destruction. A nuclear conflict would almost certainly end in widespread if not total destruction. We have lived in the shadow of this reality for 80 years.

With all that followed the dropping of the atomic bombs, including the rapid conclusion of the Pacific conflict, thus ending World War II, we have tended to lose sight of the bombs’ impact on individuals, families and communities.

Photograph of Hiroshima after Atomic Bomb. Pic Credit: National Archives

Dr Michihiko Hachiya, whose hospital was less than a mile from the centre of the atomic bomb that hit on that warm August day, kept a diary of events and emotions. His eight-week diary was published in 1955 as The Doctor of Hiroshima. Told from a Japanese perspective, it is markedly different to the one commonly offered by the victors. In unequivocal terms, the book depicts the incomprehensible horror and tragedy of the event and aftermath. It's the extraordinary true story of immense shock and pain.

Immediately after the blast he and his wife, Yaeko, dragged themselves to the devastated hospital building and the few colleagues they could find. In time, they began to heal physically and started to treat the impossible numbers of patients - a small girl covered in burns, an elderly man with pneumonia, a young boy and his little sister looking for their parents. They also began to investigate the strange unexplainable symptoms afflicting their patients, things they never dreamed they would see, but which we today know are the effects of radiation poisoning.

Aerial view of the densely built-up area along the Motoyasu-gawa looking upstream. Except for very heavy masonry structures, the entire area was devastated. Ground zero of the atomic bomb was upper right in the photo, opposite the second bend in the river. Pic Credit: National Archives

The ‘hypocentre’ (ground-zero) of the Hiroshima blast was a bridge in the centre of the city. Some individuals were vaporised, leaving only their shadows, others perished immediately, others, including a group of small school children huddled together on a bridge with the skin literally peeling from them, in agony and sheer incomprehension until death mercifully took them. Thousands jumped into the river to alleviate the pain of their burns, only to drown. Over 100,000 people were killed in an instant, and thousands of others lingered on for hours or days. Yet others, in the ensuing months and years, developed radiation-related illnesses that killed them or created genetic deformities.

Photograph of the downtown shopping district near the center of town. Only rubble and a few utility poles remained after the explosion and the resultant fires. This street was equivalent to the very famous Tokyo Ginza. Photo was taken facing east. Pic Credit: National Archives

Just three days after Hiroshima, Nagasaki suffered the same fate, with over 80,000 killed instantly, leaving thousands more in agonising conditions that led to death. Surface temperature at the hypocentre reached 3,000 to 4,000 degree celsius with a blast wind reaching 440m/second. Almost all of the humans and animals in this area were killed instantly by the explosion, pressure and heat.

In Nagasaki, another doctor, Dr Takashi Nagai, a convert to Catholicism, kept his own diary of the aftermath of the bomb.

“A young woman ran clutching a headless child. An aged couple, hand in hand, slowly climbed the mountain. As she ran, a girl’s clothes burst into flames, and she fell writhing in a ball of fire. On top of a roof that was enveloped in flames, I saw a man dancing and singing wildly: he was out of his mind.”

These are but a few of his poignant and brutal descriptions of the events he witnessed. Dr Nagai’s book, The Bells of Nagasaki, is considered a classic. Nagai’s story is told in A Song for Nagasaki, written by Australian Marist priest and missionary to Japan, Paul Glynn SM.

In 1985, on the 40th anniversary of Hiroshima, St John Paul II broadcast a message to the people of Japan. In it he said, in part:

“To speak of Hiroshima and of Nagasaki is to become vividly aware of the immense pain and horror and death that human beings are capable of inflicting upon one another. But it is also to be conscious of the fact that such a tragic destiny is not inevitable. It can and must be avoided. Our world needs to regain confidence in its capacity to choose moral good over evil.

I wish to take this opportunity to repeat something which I believe requires much thought. The vast majority of people want peace. Yet “the contemporary world is, as it were, imprisoned in a web of tensions . . . Humanity’s helplessness to resolve the existing tensions reveals that the obstacles, and likewise the hopes, come from something deeper than the systems (on which modern life and international relations are built). It is my deep conviction . . . and is, I hope, the intuition of many men and women of good will, that war has its origins in the human heart. It is man who kills and not his sword, or in our day, his missiles.” (JP2, 1983)

Old photo looking north from vicinity of T-bridge. The picture shows extremely combustible wood houses along the bank of the Ota-gawa, and the characteristic Jap river craft. Pic Credit: National Archives

It is therefore the human “heart” that must change. From a new heart, peace is born.

In this perspective Hiroshima, from August 6, 1945, and Nagasaki from three days later, have a unique responsibility before the world. The people of these two cities can proclaim, with the force of their own experience, the value of life over death, of peace over war…that the waging of war is not inevitable or unchangeable.

Certainly, it is not enough to say this, as if peace could be achieved through the repetition of slogans. What is needed is a serious and comprehensive education for peace, and a committed response to the inequalities and injustices rampant in our world. If each individual, group and nation is willing, honestly and sincerely, to follow this path, there will never be another Hiroshima”.

There is an evident tendency in our world today to forget the lessons of history, even relatively recent history. Whether it’s the outrageous events of the Holocaust, or the evils perpetrated by Fascism, Communism or totalitarianism generally, the inhumanity of ethnic cleansing or genocide, the horrors of militarism and war, or the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, contemporary leaders and their followers act as though these events, and their tragic consequences, never occurred. People, and particularly young people, must know what has been experienced in the past.

We must never forget.

Never forget.

Br Peter Carroll, SoTS Provincial

All picture courtesy: National Archives