Hiroshima: Where Mankind Managed to Do More Than Death

Hiroshima: Where Mankind Managed to do More Than Death

Photo: Hiroshima: Where Mankind Managed to Do More Than Death

The traveler who comes to the modern and populated city of Hiroshima, the Japanese island of Honshu, keeps marveling at the great wonders and sumptuous buildings, hotels and well defined avenues through which thousands of cars, buses, taxis and motorcycles pass.  However, in the middle of this dazzling whirlwind the visitor cannot forget that it was the first martyr city virtually volatized for the sake of United States domination of the world.

This impact is received when visiting and traveling through the Park of Peace, the Museum of Victims and the eternal flame on the black cenotaph that inscribes the names of the victims of genocide by the White House to blackmail the world on 6 August 1945.

Precisely the geographical configuration of the city, the capital city of the same name, sunk between large mountains and hills enabled the B-26 bomber Enola Gay to enter by surprise by the sea and launch their deadly artifact jokingly dubbed by the Pentagon as "Little Boy" (little boy).

So on that fateful morning on 6 June at 8:15 (local time), the Enola Gay appeared in the sky about 12 thousand meters over the city escorted by two other B-29 bombers and dropped its onus, which exploded in the air above the Shima Hospital.

The bomb measured three meters wide, weighed four tonnes and stored a single kilogram of uranium-235, which at a cost of two billion dollars, went down with a parachute and exploded 600 meters high.

Smoke, fog and blackness (the mushroom cloud) floated for more than six hours on the more than 400,000 terrified inhabitants, among them Chinese nationals, Koreans, Malaysians and Indonesians, uprooted from their countries into forced labor.

This mushroom cloud was preceded by extreme temperatures of a million degrees centigrade. Three entire kilometers were completely vaporized and the only thing left of the people was just their shadows.

More than 65,000 buildings, houses and hospitals and 70,000 people were vaporized instantly. The area had 300 doctors, of whom 60 died and 210 were injured as a result. The assistance centers and emergency care, as well as 18 hospitals disappeared.

Another 110,000 women, men and boys died shortly after charred or mutilated. Hiroshima was erased from the map.

The horrors of this tragedy are explained by a young guide to the then Cuban President Fidel Castro during his journey in early March of 2003 to the Museum of Victims, as he once paid homage and laid a wreath before the monument within the Park of Peace

"Barbarism like that will never repeat itself ," wrote the impassioned leader of the Cuban Revolution in the book in which the visitor expressed his impressions about the Holocaust of Hiroshima.

Earlier, the Cuban statesman during his meeting with leading authorities pronounced emotional and heartfelt words of remembrance of the tragedy experienced by Hiroshima as part of the U.S. nuclear blackmail of the world.

In his speech, the Cuban leader recalled how the American attack took place seven days before his birthday (August 13) while studying at the University of Havana.

He drew a parallel between the horrors suffered by Hiroshima and what the Cuban people were about to experience during the missile crisis of October 1962, when thousands of nuclear weapons of the United States were threatening to make the Caribbean Island disappear and concluded that the two countries prefer peace.

He added that because of that fact (the Hiroshima attack), it can be said that the concepts of the world have changed, although, he pointed out, unfortunately the incident did not serve as an example, but to a senseless arms race with tens of thousands of bombs of all types.

In this context, the Cuban leader took the view that mankind still has not shown its ability to preserve itself and in times of war are compounded by the diseases against which we should be fighting.

"I have been pondering on what happened that day (August 6) and did not want to miss this city and express my profound sympathy and my wishes for the innocent victims of the 6th (Hiroshima) and the 9th (Nagasaki) of August 1945," and Fidel Castro assured that Hiroshima showed that mankind could do more than death.

-The author is Head of Editorial Prensa Latina Asia and former correspondentel in China, Korea, Japan, India and Vietnam. He accompanied the leader of the Cuban Revolution during his tour through Asia in February-March of 2003.

Prensa Latina

Translated from the Portuguese version by:

Lisa KARPOVA

PRAVDA.Ru