The monument erected in memory of Sadako Sasaki, the Hiroshima girl behind the paper cranes for peace
On Sunday, the world will mark the 78th anniversary of one of the worst crimes against humanity: the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, an act that was as cruel as the Holocaust,
which ended with Germany’s defeat in World War II in May 1945.
No bomb has inflicted as many casualties as the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Some 140,000 people in this Japanese city, which had a population of 350,000, perished in the bombing. The rest of the population was badly affected. Most of them suffered severe burn injuries. Those who did not die immediately died days, months, and years later of infections and radiation-caused cancer. Among them was Sadako Sasaki, a two-year-old girl who was exposed to radiation. Known as the girl behind the Hiroshima paper cranes, she died of leukaemia at the age of 12. While she was receiving treatment in a Hiroshima makeshift hospital, she folded paper cranes in keeping with the belief that anyone who folded 1000 origami cranes and offered them to gods would have their prayers answered. Though she died, the legend continues. Even today, Japanese children who visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and Park bring along with them paper cranes to place them at the foot of a monument erected in her memory.
As though the human suffering of the first bomb was not enough, a second atomic bomb killed some 80,000 people in Nagasaki three days later.
The United States, which carried out these heinous crimes that killed tens of thousands of children, justified the crimes by saying that the bombs were necessary to end the war quickly and prevent more casualties. What kind of doctrine was that? Live and let die? It seems to continue, as has been evident in civilian killings in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places due to US military action.
US President Harry S. Truman, just four months into office after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, never showed any remorse or regret for ordering the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the civilian deaths. By displaying the devastating power of the new weapons, Truman wanted to send a warning to the Soviet Union, which he believed would invade Japan and alter the post-war balance of power.
To date, the US has offered no apology for the indiscriminate, evil, and disproportionate attacks that violated international law and morality.
Even when US President Joe Biden visited Hiroshima in May this year to attend the G7 summit, he stuck to the US policy of offering no apology. Biden wrote in the peace memorial guestbook: “We remember the past and honour the memory of those who perished. We renew our pledge to work together for a world without nuclear weapons. We owe this to ourselves and to future generations.” It was a dry comment, devoid of emotions, regrets, and apologies, but loaded with hypocrisy and reeking of chutzpah.
While Biden was in Hiroshima, I was also there, along with nine other journalists from different parts of the world, to cover the event as a guest of Japan’s Foreign Ministry. Apart from reporting the event, our itinerary included a meeting with Sadao Yamamoto, a 91-year-old A-bomb survivor.
When the U.S. Boeing B-29 bomber dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima at 8.15 a.m., Yamamoto was a 14-year-old second-year student at Hiroshima Junior School.
He told us that on that day, about 8,200 schoolchildren and their teachers from some 39 schools were working as volunteers to demolish wooden houses to build a firebreak belt which would minimise damage in the event of an air raid. It was just four months ago that Tokyo was reduced to smithereens by the US Air Force. Known as Operation Meetinghouse or the Great Tokyo Air Raid, the air raids saw Tokyo destroyed by some 2,000 tonnes of incendiary bombs. The March 9–10 attacks were so devastating and enormous that they created a firestorm that burned 267,171 buildings and killed an estimated 80,000–100,000 people—overwhelmingly civilians—in a single night. It left one million people homeless, reduced much of the city to ashes, and, above all, forced Japan to mull surrender.
With no signs of World War II ending in Asia, despite the Allied forces’ victory in Europe and Japan’s willingness to negotiate the terms of surrender evoking little response from the Allied forces, the people of Hiroshima took no chances. The authorities mobilised the entire city, including junior high school children.
Yamamoto was at the East Parade Ground, 2.5 kilometres away from the hypocenter. He was at the East Parade Ground, some 2.5 kilometres from the hypocenter. When the B-29 appeared in the clear skies of Hiroshima, the 8,200 children thought it was a usual surveillance plane. But in a flash, 90 percent of the children on the East Parade Ground were dead. The temperature at Ground Zero reached more than 3,000 degrees Celsius, high enough to evaporate iron and even melt tungsten, the hardest metal in the world. “It was hell on earth.”
Many with burn injuries jumped into the Motoyasu River. Soon it was full of corpses. Others were walking corpses. Unable to bear the heat within their bodies, they cried for water, but it was not given to them, for the people believed if water was given to people with burn injuries, they would not survive. With or without water, many did not survive.
Yamamoto suffered burns on the left half of his face. The entire batch of his school’s first-year students—some 320 children—were killed by the bomb nicknamed Little Boy. The bomb with 15,000 metric tonnes of TNT was caused to explode by nuclear fission, or the splitting of a uranium-235 atom.
Yamamoto, who later passed out as an engineer, spends his retirement spreading the message of world peace through music, despite his many battles with health complications caused by the bomb. Never again another Hiroshima; let’s build up a world without nuclear weapons, says every song of the peace choir he conducts.
His message to Biden was to go to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and see for himself the cruel reality of the US nuclear attack. “I expect a declaration not only from G7 leaders but also from China, Russia, and other nuclear power nations that they will never ever use their nuclear weapons.”
When asked whether he would forgive the United States for what it did to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he said forgiving was peace. “I once hated the US for what it did to us, but now as a peace activist, I can forgive the US,” he said.
As Japan commemorates the anniversary of the atomic bombings, its role in the global campaign to eliminate about 14,000 nuclear weapons, which are much more devastating than the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is overshadowed by its support for NATO’s war rhetoric and its political leadership’s tendency to drift away from the pacifism enshrined in Article 9 of its Constitution.
The world looks to Japan to play a leading role and achieve world peace. Therefore, it should not disappoint peace-loving people.
