Saturday, August 09, 2008 Roperos: Bomb like no other By Godofredo M. Roperos Politics Also
WE were having our grade six class in one room, which was converted into a classroom, when the report came through the radio in the municipal building.
There was uproar in our class, as well as outside, in the nearby town market. The United States had dropped a bomb in Japan, which immediately surrendered to Gen. Douglas McArthur.
But even before Japan could send its notice of surrender, a second bomb was dropped in agasaki. And as in Hiroshima, thousands of people died in a matter of seconds.
But it was many months later when we learned about the extent of the destruction wrought by the two bombs, a punishment for its intransigence against peoples that wanted only peace. Before that, the Japanese had bombed and destroyed a school building and burned part of the commercial center of our town’s poblacion.
While atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese in our town were not much—they killed my grade four teacher and the drugstore owner when they occupied our town---they still traumatized many of us. That time, when there was still little known of the atom bomb, the war’s end was a relief and an occasion for thanksgiving to our parents.
It was many years later, when we were studying in the university, that we fully learned about the tragedy in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the horror of the atom bomb.
We read the story of Hiroshima from a book about the day when the bomb was dropped. It had the point of view of the American pilots who dropped the bomb, the point of view of the Japanese civilians who witnessed the devastation.
Last Wednesday, the tragedy of Hiroshima was recalled by the Japanese, including Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, who gathered at the site.
There is a monument there to the more than a hundred thousand residents who died during the explosion, called the A-bomb dome. It is the remains of an exhibition hall that was burned to a skeleton by the bomb’s crucifying heat on that fateful day on Aug. 6, 1945, when I was only a few months older from my 15th birthday.
Since that day, the world was never the same. The US, whose wealth and scientific genius created the first atom bomb, has remained almost the absolute world power, being in possession of all sorts of nuclear weapons. But it is surrounded with dozens of daring pretenders challenging its atomic supremacy.
There was Russia, then North Korea sometime ago, then China, Pakistan, and possibly, Iran. But making a nuclear arsenal is costly, and only the US has that much cash.
