“My God, what have we done!”

Nagasaki, the only holy city of Japan

oday’s Nagasaki seems a normal city, as many others of Japan. During the day, its streets are full of sarariman and students, of bicycles and cars. At night, the lights of florescent and neon signs cover the pachinko, and silently challenge the end of the day in the quiet darkness. Life seems to go on innocently, amidst the usual intervals of busyness and calm, which mark the rhythm of any downtown center.

That morning of 60 years ago

It seems strange to think that only 60 years ago, in a warm and clear day of August, this city was raised to the ground by a 7-foot long bomb, of 10 thousand pounds, filled with highly enriched Plutonium 239. It exploded at 11:02 am of Aug. 9, at about 1,500 feet above the ground of the catholic district of Urakami, and in a matter of seconds, it destroyed 80% of the houses located in that 5-mile radius from its epicenter.

A plaque at the Memorial Park of Peace of Nagasaki carries the numbers of that human-made tragedy, uselessly trying to describe the agony involved: 73,884 deaths; 74,909 wounded; 120,820 sick caused by radiation poisoning; 11,574 burned buildings; 50,000 houses semi-destroyed.

A lightning. And then, nothing, the desert. Even the commanders of US army, who were used to strategies and battles, of fights and assaults, remained speechless and confused by what had happened. To manage the invisible, and manipulate the small atoms and parts of plutonium – not a natural element on earth – was not taught in army schools. They could not imagine, and they were not prepared to deal with it.

You cannot win when you kill women and children

Admiral William Leahy, Chief of Staff to the Presidents, remembers with anguish: “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.”

A human-made Tragedy
73,884 deaths
74,909 wounded
120,820 sick caused by radiation poisoning
11,574 burned buildings
50,000 houses semi-destroyed

General Dwight D. Eisenhower could not contain his anger: “Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'... The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”

The US President Harry Truman, instead, did not have any doubts that the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, contributed to save the lives of many young US soldiers: "We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans.”

Always a Step Behind…

Sitting near the few remains of the Catholic cathedral of Urakami – a few stone steps, a half standing arch, and a section of the original wall which includes a couple of statues of saints – I’m overwhelmed by great sadness and bitterness, thinking to what happened 60 years ago. And the sadness increases, almost like the circular waves painted on the pebbles of this small square, which represents the epicenter of the bombing. The silence that encircles this space, as if it was a sanctuary without walls, renders every word useless, at times disrespectful and villain, as if you were cursing.

Near these many deaths, the many cries of those who lived through it, their thirst, their burned eyes by this chemical sun,… died part of our reason, too, part of our human story, our dreams of progress. The dark rain that fell on Nagasaki with its entire radioactivity seems to have touched forever any human well meaning, any limit, any devotion. From now on, we seem condemned to arrive always a step behind, exclaiming with the pilot Robert Lewis, after the bombing of Hiroshima: “My God, what have we done!” And the sad part, this did not impede another copy shadow of that Atomic mushroom, just three days later, on Nagasaki, a 55,000-foot deadly mushroom cloud.

Lanterns moving in silence

Any war, any genocide, any mass killings, any concentration camp, any “preventive” attack the way Harry Truman imagined it, will remain blind in reaching its goal, will be deaf to the questions, will be ingrained of ideologies that mask a power play, useless economic or political dominance, dangerous scientific discoveries, illusions and nightmares of aimless conquerors.

With the evening dusk coming to the scene, and 1,600 peace lanterns, which silently float on the Urakamigawa river in remembrance of the victims of 60 years ago, we must be still, kneel, and pray. And we remember those incredible words of Takashi Nagai (1908-1951), a Catholic doctor who suffered personally the effects of the atomic bombing, and who wanted to write and reflect on this event in Nagasaki, and why God had allowed this killing of human lives:

“Isn't there a profound relationship between the destruction of this Christian city and the end of the war? Wasn't Nagasaki the chosen victim, the spotless lamb, the holocaust offered upon the altar of sacrifice, killed for the sins of all the nations during the Second World War?...On our knees, among the ashes of the atomic desert, we pray that Urakami-Nagasaki will be the last victim of the bomb.”

Fr. Tiziano Tosolini
Xaverian Missionary in Japan