It’s the 60th anniversary of the first A bombing, an event whose impact eclipsed the forgotten months of firebombing beforehand.
In a single night in 1945, 100,000 Tokyo civilians were deliberately burned to death, on the justification that this would help end the war in the East, in similar fashion to the deliberate fire bombing of German civilians in cities like Dresden by the British. This pattern of destruction was carried out in dozens of cities before the Hiroshima or Nagasaki bombs.
“At 5,000 feet you could smell the flesh burning," he later told Australian broadcaster ABC. "I couldn't eat anything for two or three days.”
On this 60th anniversay I am extremely thankful to be part of generation which did not have to fight in a war – a generation which is in the minority and has a responsibility to try all the harder to avoid being seduced by its unmentionable glamour.
“Youngsters do not understand the horror of war,” agrees Mrs. Suzuki Ikuko. “When the Iraq War started I couldn’t watch it on TV. It was too painful. But my grandson said he though it was cool. He said it was like a videogame.”
tags: [war]