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August 6, 1945: The Day the Sun Rose Twice
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August
6, 1945
The Day the Sun Rose Twice
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by
Helen Schary Motro
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| HORRORS
OFTEN begin on what looks like the best of days. As the jets streaked through
the bluest of skies, a brilliant sun shone into the airplane windows upon the
doomed passengers of Sept. 11. Fifty seven years earlier another morning explosion
marked humanity's trial run at destroying itself.
Sunrise had already come at 8:15 a.m. on Aug. 6,1945, but the fireball overhead
was so blinding that in Hiroshima it became known as the day the sun rose twice.
The significance of the world's first nuclear bomb attack does not lie in the
magnitude of its casualties. Actually, the number of victims from but one single
night of intensive conventional American bombing on Tokyo equaled the 200,000
who would eventually perish from Hiroshima's explosion.
But its agony lived on and on. The insidious effects of radiation gnawed away
at blood, eyesight and nerves for decades. Thousands were hounded by leukemia
or maimed for life. Survivors were terrified as to what might develop every time
their children got a simple nosebleed. Each blood count struck terror.
Victims too often became pariahs. Although the Japanese government has declared
no evidence that A-bombs generate genetic defects, controversy still simmers.
Second-generation Hiroshima children continue to face discrimination when it comes
to getting married — it is feared the bomb still lurks in their genes.
Today, Hiroshima's population is more than a million. The daily newspapers report
the standings of its baseball team in the national Japanese leagues. But it can
never be a normal city.
Peace Memorial Park stands at the center of the town, dominated by a skeletal
dome. On display is a Buddha whose stone face was melted by the bomb. Visitors
see the shadow of a man printed by the extreme heat into the stone step where
he had been sitting.
It was hard to win an atrocity contest in the 20th century. Clamoring in the crowded
lineup were the wildly successful Nazi genocide, the Armenian eradication at Turkish
hands, and the carbon copies which cropped up in Cambodia and Rwanda. Lungs were
burned out by nerve gas in the Argonne Forest in World War I; the action was repeated
on the Kurds 75 years later in Iraq. What are the true numbers of those who perished
in the Soviet gulag? The ink is still wet on massacres unearthed in the Balkans.
Yet they only amplify an honored tradition. People have banded together to create
collective murder machines long before the Trojan War.
But the events of Aug. 6,1945 started a unique new chapter.
Since "Little Boy" was dropped on Hiroshima and "Fat Man" on Nagasaki three days
later, each of us lives with the curse that humanity's time on Earth is no longer
permanent. In 24 hours we could make our world as free of human life as Jupiter.
The log written by the captain of the American bomber plane contained one simple
sentence: "My God, what have we done?"
Most people today have grown up with the possibility of nuclear annihilation.
Paradoxically, as nuclear capability spreads, nervousness about it seems to decrease.
Hiroshima's mayor sadly calls it a lowering of humanity's threshold.
This year's catastrophe has abruptly brought us back to peoples' limitless enthusiasm
for eradicating others of their species. And whether they resort to suicide missions
on commercial airlines, ingenious dissemination of dread disease, or turning chemicals
into mass poison, the specter of Hiroshima lurks as the ultimate horror.
Meanwhile, as every year, the city of Hiroshima readies itself for commemoration.
It should be memorialized worldwide. Remembering the grotesque morning on which
human beings made the sun rise twice may galvanize a collective resolve to never
broach that abyss again.
Helen Schary Motro is an American lawyer and writer who lives in Israel.
Copyright 1996-2002. Toronto Star Newspapers Limited
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