"My God, what have we done?"
Today, while our country is discussing the right and wrong of foreign policy in wartime, the shocked utterance of American bomber co-pilot, Capt. Robert Lewis should ring loud and clear in our minds. Lewis, from the cockpit of the Enola Gay, watched the cloud rising from a bomb his crew had dropped on Hiroshima and cried, "My God, what have we done?"
Can "WE" as a nation, as human beings, ever be allowed to forget what we have done? In an hour, over 100,000 people died, including twenty-three American prisoners of war. Twenty-two died from the bomb, the unfortunate survivor of the explosion was dragged from the prison and slaughtered because he was one of "US." In a short time, most of those who joined slaughter of that lone soldier, venting their rage against America, died of radiation poisoning. Before the radiation passed another 100,000 had died.
We cannot forget, nor can we allow the world to forget, what happened on Aug. 6, 1945. We cannot forget that others were working on building the same kind of bombs. We cannot forget that they succeeded in building and testing weapons more terrible than the one we used. Most of all, we cannot ignore that fact that one day someone may unleash one of these on us as we did on the Japanese. The Cold War, the nuclear weapons, the fear of a generation were born in an act of war so devastating that the entire Earth is endangered.
We citizens of the last Superpower live in the shadow of Hiroshima. A shadow cast by the knowledge that "what we have done" is blot out the sun and rain blackness upon the world. The mushroom cloud has not passed. It hovers above us every time another "weapon of mass destruction" is created. It lingers in our consciousness so near the surface that our leaders can use our fear to drag us into new wars by claiming someone might use "weapons of mass destruction" against us. Our fear of ourselves has become the cornerstone of how we approach others. While we cannot lift the shadow of the bomb from our collective consciousness, we can, and must, lift the level of our actions out of the mushroom cloud of fear. We can stop creating new rage against America, but only if we look at our flaws as carefully as we look at those we see others.
Can "WE" as a nation, as human beings, ever be allowed to forget what we have done? In an hour, over 100,000 people died, including twenty-three American prisoners of war. Twenty-two died from the bomb, the unfortunate survivor of the explosion was dragged from the prison and slaughtered because he was one of "US." In a short time, most of those who joined slaughter of that lone soldier, venting their rage against America, died of radiation poisoning. Before the radiation passed another 100,000 had died.
We cannot forget, nor can we allow the world to forget, what happened on Aug. 6, 1945. We cannot forget that others were working on building the same kind of bombs. We cannot forget that they succeeded in building and testing weapons more terrible than the one we used. Most of all, we cannot ignore that fact that one day someone may unleash one of these on us as we did on the Japanese. The Cold War, the nuclear weapons, the fear of a generation were born in an act of war so devastating that the entire Earth is endangered.
We citizens of the last Superpower live in the shadow of Hiroshima. A shadow cast by the knowledge that "what we have done" is blot out the sun and rain blackness upon the world. The mushroom cloud has not passed. It hovers above us every time another "weapon of mass destruction" is created. It lingers in our consciousness so near the surface that our leaders can use our fear to drag us into new wars by claiming someone might use "weapons of mass destruction" against us. Our fear of ourselves has become the cornerstone of how we approach others. While we cannot lift the shadow of the bomb from our collective consciousness, we can, and must, lift the level of our actions out of the mushroom cloud of fear. We can stop creating new rage against America, but only if we look at our flaws as carefully as we look at those we see others.
posted by Gwen Mayo | 9:25 AM
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