Saturday, August 07, 2004

Blast from the past

It occurred to me as I was walking into the building I work in yesterday that August 6th was the day the US dropped the Bomb on Hiroshima. Fifty-nine years ago, I guess. August 9th is the day the Bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. So right now, fifty-nine years ago, that second shoe hadn't dropped yet. Not that anyone knew it would; but I have to wonder what it was like sitting there on August 7, 1945, realizing the atomic bomb existed, and had been used. That now a single weapon could destroy a city. What were people thinking? What were Americans and the Allies thinking? What were the Japanese thinking? I wonder if the Japanese even knew on August 7th... the people in and around Hiroshima notwithstanding.

What was life like in Nagasaki fifty-nine years ago today...?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm sure it was scary...
But like every threat, soon after people must have started thinking it couldn't happen to them... it only happens to "Bad People"
But I always like to think that our civilization is only a step away from collapse... I'm sure the romans were pretty smug before the barbarian invasions... So were the Aztec before the Spanish showed up and so where the Spanisg before the English sunk their armada, and so are the American still after 9/11...
Bad things always happen... it's just a matter of when...