Front of the “Cenotaph “made in the memory of those who lost their lives in Hiroshima A-Bomb attack on 6thAugust1945 (Pic taken by my husband on 6th August2007)
After the fierce fires subsided, people started looking out over a burnt plain in every direction. The surviving articles of daily life lay burned and smashed where they had fallen. Piles of unrecognizable corpses lay everywhere. The survivor’s hauled away debris, mourned over the bodies, and began finding life out in the rubble.
Few survivors, many stories, various emotions, different feelings at one place –Hiroshima. One such story is of Shinchi. Shinichi was 3yrs old. On 6thAug1945, he was riding his tricycle in front of his house, a sudden flash, he and his tricycle were badly burned. He died later that night. For the father his son was too young to be buried in a lonely grave away from home, thinking he could still play with the tricycle, he buried Shinichi with the tricycle in the backyard. In the summer of 1985, forty years later, his father dug up Shinichi's remains and transferred them to the family grave. The tricycle, Shinichi's love, was donated to the Peace Memorial Museum(one of the exhibits in Museum)
A mother of two, saw her two daughters aged 2yr and 4yr. burnt to death in front of her. And she could to do nothing. It is heard that the mother tortured herself till she died in yr 2002. A mother of a 13yr old girl could never find her only daughter’s body. All she could recover was her daughter's slipper which she preserved as her daughter's memoir till the day she died, afterward it was donated to the Museum by her brother.
These are few stories but there are incountable . Those who survived this attack are called as “Hibakusha" (explosion-affected people). The survivors were the worse sufferers and usually were diagnosed from diseases resulted by the bombings. One such was Sadako, she was 2yrs. old at the time of attacks. She died 10yrs later from leukemia (one of the disease caused due to the nuclear attack). Many other suffered from various types of cancers, slimming of bones, Cataract, Chromosomal aberrations and radiation sickness. Its been 62yrs since “Little boy” (Little Boy was the codename of the atomic bomb , developed via the "Manhattan Project" which was dropped on Hiroshima, on August 6, 1945 by the B-29 Superfortress Enola Gay, piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbets) was dropped but still the children’s are born with mental deformities (Microcephaly).
Amidst all this suffering, when there was no food, clothing and shelter- the people of Hiroshima were struck by another tragedy. On 17th Sept1945 , Makurazaki Typhoon, one of the three most devastating typhoons hit their lives. Bridges that had survived the atomic bombing were washed away. Railroad tracks and roads under reconstruction, surviving company buildings all were drenched―efforts to rebuild lives were washed away. Water drove people out of the tiny air-raid shelters and barracks where they were sleeping and carried off the few possessions that were left.
Reduced to heaps of rubble by the atomic bombing, Hiroshima struggled with the problem of stabilizing the lives of the people and reconstructing the city as quickly as possible. Government offices and citizens started to regain their footings. Out of their efforts rose the Peace Memorial City Construction Law, and "the Peace Memorial City Hiroshima" finally began to take shape. This was the first step of Hiroshima towards its success, a success which came from their “Never say die spirit”, from their hard work and labor.
I often ask myself“ Was it so necessary to use nuclear weapons to stop the war ?”
LONG LIVE THE SPIRIT OF HIROSHIMA .....!!
Thank you dear husband for taking me to Hiroshima, I will cherish this trip forever.
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