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Thursday, July 16, 2009 |
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SOCIAL JUSTICE: Hiroshima and Nagasaki
By St Mary Administrator @ 10:23 AM :: 193 Views ::  :: Social Justice
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Every August 6 and 9, Americans observe the bombing of these two Japanese cities to “end the WWII and save American lives”. Controversy has always surrounded these bombings. Hiroshima was a city, not a military base or an industrial center.
Why, then, was it inflicted with such horror? The attacks were supposed to save “a million American lives”, which was a very inflated figure but one which was accepted by the American people without question, even though the bombings were condemned as barbaric and unnecessary by high American military officers, including General Eisenhower.
Probably around 200,000 people were killed in the attacks and through radiation poisoning; many were civilians, including several thousand Korean workers and 12 incarcerated Navy fliers. Here is a haunting account of what a survivor saw: “A long line of people were talking toward me … who had survived the epicenter of the explosion. Their hair was standing straight up, their burned skin hanging down from their outstretched hands and arms. They looked as if they were ghosts…”
Today, we still live under the threat of nuclear annihilation. We must do our best as Christian people to support the reduction of nuclear weapons, and encourage peacemaking efforts which will make such weapons obsolete. The “ghosts” of the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki call us to this talk!
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