74 years ago, U.S. bombers dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, reducing the two cities to rubble, hastening the end of World War II and changing the lives of many people.
74 years later, with the exception of the bombed-out dome that remains in the Peace Memorial Park, Hiroshima looks and feels like any other big city in Japan for most days, China News Service reported. But every year on August 6, as the "Peace Bell" rings, Hiroshima will once again pour out the preciousness of peace in silence.
"I had to run among the corpses"
In 1945, keiko Kokura was only 8 years old when U.S. pilots dropped the deadly atomic bomb on Hiroshima. She later recalled the scene that day, saying that in a dazzling burst of bright light, she was thrown to the ground by a powerful explosion and then lost consciousness.
Keiko said, "When I woke up, it was dark all around me, and I felt like night had come. After the explosion, the city of Hiroshima was razed to the ground. It seems that someone's big foot trampled on Hiroshima City, flattened it, and then the fire began to burn. To escape the fire, I had to run among the corpses. ”
August 6 marks the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. On August 6, 2015, on a river near the atomic bomb site on the side of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, people routinely released lanterns to pray for peace. (Source: China News Service)
After the Hiroshima nuclear explosion, children were afraid to take to the streets because pedestrians seemed to be terrible ghosts coming out of nightmares, "After burns, people cut off the skin on their bodies along with flesh." If they put their hands down, they would feel a lot of pain, so they would walk with their hands forward like ghosts, and their arms were still hunched over patches of broken skin," Keiko said.
On August 6 and 9, 1945, in order to prompt Japan, which had launched a war of aggression, to surrender as soon as possible, the U.S. military airdropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively, killing more than 100,000 people, the vast majority of whom were civilians.
Even if they survived the nuclear explosion, their lives changed completely. For many years thereafter, people who were concerned about the contamination of the nuclear explosion would be infected with diseases and stayed away from them. Nuclear radiation threatens the lives of these people and turns them into marginalized people in Japanese society, causing them to be discriminated against.
"It's not just the Japanese who died there"
Whenever Mr. Lee talks to children about his experience as a survivor of the Hiroshima nuclear explosion, he first brings up a picture of the huge mushroom cloud produced by the explosion. Then the 90-year-old would say, "There are not only Japanese people who died there."
When he was 2 years old, Lee Zonggen moved to Japan from the Korean Peninsula with his parents, and when he grew up, he often encountered inexplicable discrimination. At the age of 14, he falsely claimed to be Japanese and got a job in the national railway department. Two years later, when the atomic bomb exploded in Hiroshima, Lee was on his way to work.
"I squatted on the ground with my hands over my eyes, ears and nose. I was there for a while. When I opened my eyes, I couldn't see anything. It was dark all around. ”
While everyone faces the same risk when a bomb explodes, people from the Korean Peninsula tend to experience more serious consequences. Some have had to return to polluted cities because they have no relatives and nowhere else to go, while others have been evacuated but have been forced to return to the city to clear the rubble.
Because of the explosion, Li Zonggen suffered serious head injuries and maggots at the wound. His mother cried to help him pick out the maggots and told him, "I can't let them go, and the only way to escape this pain is to die." ”
After a long period of recovery, Li Zonggen finally returned to work. However, due to the fear that he would be infected by nuclear radiation, the unit eventually dismissed Li Zonggen. Later, Lee Jong-geun married a compatriot of Korean descent and started a family. But until 2012, Mr. Lee never told anyone that he was from the Korean Peninsula and was a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
"All we did was end the war"
At about 2 a.m. on August 6, 1945, Russell Gakenbach and nine other crew members flew over Hiroshima aboard the Anola Gai bomber. Unbeknownst to Gakenbach at the time, it was carrying an atomic bomb, nicknamed "Little Boy", with an explosive energy equivalent to 15,000 to 20,000 tons of tnt explosives.
When the atomic bomb was dropped, the first thing that caught Gärkenbach's eyes was a blinding white light, followed by a huge mushroom cloud rising around it. Gakenbach said, "No one made a sound, everyone just looked at each other, everyone was stunned." ”
It wasn't until the next day that he learned that they had dropped an "atomic bomb," and the crew didn't really understand the devastation of the mission until they saw pictures of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima a few days later.
In 2018, asked how he felt about the explosion, Gakenbach said, "It's been 73 years." I still believe it was the right decision. All wars have turned the world into hell. It was a war that the Japanese had started, and all we had done was end it. ”
For 74 years, the debate over whether the U.S. decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was justified. Peter Lax, an American mathematical giant and atomic bomb pioneer who participated in the Manhattan Project, said of the japanese invasion prevented by the atomic bomb that saved millions of lives.
"If U.S. forces were forced to land in Japan, they would surely have caused more casualties than the Allied landings in Normandy in 1944," he said. After dropping the atomic bomb, Japan quickly conceded defeat and surrendered, and everything ended. ”
Only memory can bring true forgiveness
After the nuclear explosion, Hiroshima still has tenacious vitality. In the autumn of 1945, weeds began to emerge stubbornly from this scarred land. The following summer, oleanders bloomed, and many centuries-old camphor trees began to sprout new branches.
At the same time, support from all over Japan and overseas poured into Hiroshima, and from cars that made the city work again, to trees that turned scorched earth into green vegetation, to the promulgation of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial City Construction Act on August 6, 1949, Hiroshima's image as a peace memorial was reshaped.
Today, at 8:15 a.m. on August 6 every year (the moment the atomic bomb was dropped in Hiroshima), Hiroshima's "Peace Bell" rings for the victims and tells the world about the preciousness of peace.
Some people say that the atomic bombing of Japan still has a warning effect, "People are now afraid of atomic bombs, partly because they really see from Hiroshima and Nagasaki the great disasters that atomic bombs can bring, and it is this fear that makes people dare not use nuclear weapons today." ”
It is also said that only memory can bring true forgiveness, and forgetting can risk repeating history. A member of a peaceful anti-war group in Japan said that in order not to repeat the historical tragedy, the Japanese must clearly understand the country's history of provoking wars and aggression and tell the truth to the next generation.
War will only bring pain, and may the world be insulated from pain.