Remember, as we are ruled by people anxious to re-commit this crime, what we, the United States, a “Christian” nation, did sixty-one years ago today:
Remember, as we commit crimes against humanity anew. Remember what you know is right, remember the essential human decency that the warmongers amongst us try to crush:
Suddenly, a strong flash of light startled me – and then another. So well does one recall little things that I remember vividly how a stone lantern in the garden became brilliantly lit and I debated whether this light was caused by a magnesium flare or sparks from a passing trolley.
Garden shadows disappeared. The view where a moment before had been so bright and sunny was now dark and hazy. Through swirling dust I could barely discern a wooden column that had supported one comer of my house. It was leaning crazily and the roof sagged dangerously.
Moving instinctively, I tried to escape, but rubble and fallen timbers barred the way. By picking my way cautiously I managed to reach the roka [an outside hallway]and stepped down into my garden. A profound weakness overcame me, so I stopped to regain my strength. To my surprise I discovered that I was completely naked How odd! Where were my drawers and undershirt?
What had happened?
All over the right side of my body I was cut and bleeding. A large splinter was protruding from a mangled wound in my thigh, and something warm trickled into my mouth. My cheek was torn, I discovered as I felt it gingerly, with the lower lip laid wide open. Embedded in my neck was a sizable fragment of glass which I matter-of-factly dislodged, and with the detachment of one stunned and shocked I studied it and my blood-stained hand.
Where was my wife?
Suddenly thoroughly alarmed, I began to yell for her: ‘Yaeko-san! Yaeko-san! Where are you?’ Blood began to spurt. Had my carotid artery been cut? Would I bleed to death? Frightened and irrational, I called out again ‘It’s a five-hundred-ton bomb! Yaeko-san, where are you? A five- hundred-ton bomb has fallen!’
Yaeko-san, pale and frightened, her clothes torn and blood stained, emerged from the ruins of our house holding her elbow. Seeing her, I was reassured. My own panic assuaged, I tried to reassure her.
‘We’ll be all right,’ I exclaimed. ‘Only let’s get out of here as fast as we can.’
She nodded, and I motioned for her to follow me.”
Remember, and decide.
Do you want to be responsible for this crime … again? Is your fear, your uncertainty, your prejudices and religion and night terrors and need to feel safe worth this, again? Think about it, because we are ruled by people who seem anxious to use these terrible weapons again, THINK … do you want to be part of this crime … again?
Sixty-one years ago the United States aimed the power of Gods at another nation, another people. Sixty-one years ago we told ourselves it was justified, we told ourselves that we were IN THE RIGHT, and we were righting a wrong. Sixty-one years ago, with a single weapon, with the power of Zeus’ thunderbolts and Thor’s hammer, we stripped skin from bone, melted viscera from soul, tore mother from child, ripped lovers apart. Sixty-one years ago, we entered a new world, yet we’ve acted as though the old rules, the old divisions, the old hates and prejudices and fears and reasons and self-justifications still worked. We bottled the fires of hell and the lightning in the clouds and we stacked it up in piles and stacks of potential death, secure in the idea that we were “good people” and that we could do no wrong, that we were catching lightning in bottles to secure ourselves from demons, and we imagined those demons were people who looked or thought a little different from us.
Remember, sixty-one years ago we tore history asunder, and remember that the self-righteous often commit the greatest crimes.
