Posted on Thursday, August 09, 2007 11:05 PM
Today marks the 62nd birthday of the second dropping of a nuclear bomb on a real target; at 10:58 in the morning, the city of Nagasaki was hit with the nuclear weapon known as
Fat Man.
Six days later, Japan announced its surrender to the allied forces.
The statue on the photo is a statue of two kimono-clad girls, erected in tribute to the young people of Asia, who suffered in the fires of war, while trusting in the future, and to all the peace-loving people of the world, aspiring a world free of war.
The photo was taken by me on January 2, 2005 in Nagasaki, just outside the A-bomb Museum.
The statue was modeled after a painting of two young girls, lying side by side at about four kilometres from the hypocentre, their kimono becoming their shroud.
The painting was made 29 years after Hiroshi Matsuzoe, the painter, witnessed the event. A replica can be seen at the A-bomb Museum.
Personally, I think that the dropping of Fat Man three days after Hiroshima was totally uncalled for.
I'm well aware of the gruesome acts the Japanese performed during the war, and in that light, the use of Little Boy was perhaps the only way to show the Japanese Emperor that the Americans actually were willing to put their money where their mouth was at the time.
However, I suspect that Fat Man has been used mainly for research.
There were a number of cities which were kept out of the regular bombing schedule to see what a nuclear device would do. Nagasaki and Kokura (Bockscar's primary target for Fat Man) were among those cities, and based on the information I read, I gather the Americans could have waited a little longer.
But no-one knows for sure; let's just hope this will never be repeated and that some day, we will live without fear of a nuclear strike.
K.