Lessons from history
At Issue: Memorials for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki some 55 years ago.
Our View: We hope mankind has learned from the lessons of history of nuclear destruction.
At 11:02 this morning, 55 years ago today, the city of Nagasaki was reduced to rubble by an atomic bomb that instantly annihilated thousands of innocent lives and the destruction of an entire city.
Two days earlier, the city of Hiroshima suffered the same consequence when the first atomic bomb was detonated in what’s known as “hell on earth”.
Last Saturday, the names of 5,021 people who were in Hiroshima on the day of the bombing and who have died since last year’s anniversary were added to the monument dedicated to the victims. The number of names on the cenotaph in the city about 430 miles southwest of Tokyo now stands at 217,137.
Hell On Earth’s after-effects is the very issue that haunts mankind, i.e., the high rate of thyroid cancer (higher than U.S.. national average) and the lifetime consequence of pain and suffering for those affected by high dosage of radiation.
Even as far away as the Republic of the Marshalls, we know full-square what affected Marshallese had to endure, since the detonation of the A-Bomb in Bikini some 55 years ago. The detonation not only sank an entire island, it left behind health ailments not known before by mankind.
We hope the entire global community would cooperate in current efforts by nations with nuclear arsenals to hammer an agreement never ever to use mankind’s most destructive invention against itself. Let us learn from the lessons of history and do away with nuclear weapons forthwith. Let the tolling of the bells in both cities (Hiroshima and Nagasaki) ring forever in our ears as a constant reminder of the lethal and long term effects of such destructive weaponry. Si Yuus Maase`!
