Everyone should... (Part II)

Everyone should visit Hiroshima, Japan, where the first of the only two atomic bombs to be dropped in anger exploded in 1945.

Everyone.

There’s the photograph of a shadow. A man, sitting on a stoop, was obliterated. He literally evaporated with the blast, but it left his shadow, burned into the stone steps, behind.

That image is one of so many stark reminders of the power of nuclear terror. It sits in Hiroshima, home to a museum and surrounding grounds that bring home the abject horror, an understatement, of the use of nuclear weapons.

And the ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were infants compared to the multitudes today, yet those tiny primers of the death and destruction available today killed thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people instantly, and thousands upon thousands upon thousands more suffered short and long from the effects of the blast and the radiation.

Today, we struggle with the prospect of a rogue nation, Iran, having nuclear weapons, and just crazy enough to use ‘em. But lots of nations have ‘em, including the U.S. Who knows what would prompt someone, sane or insane, to use ‘em again.

The power of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was and is that they sent a message to the world that we shouldn’t, couldn’t use ‘em – ever again. That notion has held for more than six decades.

But I wonder if the passage of time, and the sacrifice those many residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki made on our behalf, has not dulled that important lesson.

So, remember.

Remember that man and his shadow.

Visit Hiroshima. Everyone.