The day was August 6, 1945 for Hiroshima, while it was August 9, 1945 for Nagasaki. Horror descended on these two cities in 1945. Next year, the tragedy would turn eighty. Yet the terror it unleashed is as raw as if it happened yesterday.
The bomb dropped on Hiroshima may have been known as "Little Boy", but its effect was no less horrific than that by the "Fat Man", the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. Sure, the Nagasaki weapon was worse. Yet the devastation was equally horrible because "every man who died was (not a mere number. But was) a name. Each one was loved by many," as lamented a survivor, underpinning the real horror and tragedy of war which in the final analysis destroys human relationship, nay, humanity itself.
For every dead person, there lived a few others whose radio-actively contaminated life was much worse than death itself. For generations were born babies with deformities, and all this for the vanity, for the lust for power of a few crooked individuals!
Japan undoubtedly has a phoenix personality. You would agree with me if you, too, have seen the visuals of the earthquake today or of the tsunami in 2011. Despite huge tragedies, the Japaneese remain cool and collected, carrying on with life.
Yet these fatalities can be borne resiliently as they are natural disasters. A horror created by humans that Japan faced in 1945 was much the worse, precisely because it was unnatural in every sense of the term. Sure, the Japanese have bounced back repeatedly, and without losing their essential identity, almost like the resilience of the harassed Jews who faced that horror called Holocaust!
The real horror, however, is that despite these two horrors, the Holocaust and the Hiroshima-Nagasaki tragedy, mankind has learnt nothing much. Both these cruelties continue even today, in different versions, in newer garbs; under more 'modern' nomenclatures. They go on and on, and will go on and on. That is the real 'horror, horror, horror' to quote Conrad's depiction of the real 'Heart of Darkness'.
Pratima@Evil continues, and that is real horror, the true tragedy!
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