Sixty Seven Years Since Hiroshima

"I was praying for the souls lost in Hiroshima and trying to imagine what must have happened on a beautiful August day." - Harry S. Truman

“We’re going to kill a lot of people, but we’re going to save a lot of lives too. We won’t have to invade.” - Paul Tibbets, pilot of the Enola Gay.

“The world of the dead is a different place from the world of the living and it is hardly possible to visit there. That day in Hiroshima the two worlds nearly converged.” - Richard Rhodes

A moment of silence for all who perished, suffered, or lost family members in WW II........................

Sixty seven years ago on this day, 6 August 1945, U.S. President Harry Truman gave an order that forever changed history. The United States was engaged in the throws of WWII and in a desperate attempt to prevent any more American casualties the atom bomb, Little Boy, was unleashed on Hiroshima, Japan. The devastation was catastrophic and resulted in the immediate deaths of estimated 80,000 people. In the coming months injury and radiation brought the death toll upward to 140,000. And when Japan still refused to surrender a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Thus began the nuclear age.

Since then the world has been in a race over arms; it is what led to the notorious Manhattan Project and the cold war between the U.S. and Russia. Can't we learn from history? Nuclear war could mean the end of humanity...so thought Einstein and other visionary scientists who signed a document stating their position against the use of such horrific weapons. Even General Eisenhower (later President Eisenhower) admitted that he questioned the morality of using the cruel device.

After Hiroshima's reconstruction, the city has been a leader in the quest for peace. Every year on the anniversary of the bombing, the city mayor reaches out to countries around the world to unite in prayer.

God be with us and with those who have died before us. Let us know peace between nations.

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The oleander is the official flower of the city of Hiroshima because it was the first to bloom again after the explosion of the atomic bomb in 1945.