Abstract: It has become clear that nuclear weapons are only a symptom of an all-pervasive malignancy of the spirit of the world and of humankind. Some Japanese have an expression for this period of human history in which we find ourselves; they call it "the era of nuclear madness." We propose here a workable moral strategy that would put "everyone" back to work; bring peace and stability; end war-sacrificed lives; and ensure corporate profits, growth, and cooperation; and would allow people to return to peaceful opportunity-laden homelands.
The sun was rising, only a few clouds; prospects for a good day ahead; but August in Japan"..this was likely to be a hot day. With quiet thoughts to themselves and of family members in Hawaii and on the American west coast, some, very hungry, were optimistically expecting the war to end soon.
That Day: August 6, 1945, 8:15 AM: In the center of Hiroshima, just above Shima Hospital , it seemed like the sun had descended to the earth, followed by the sky blasting down in a Richter-10 cosmic quake from the gods, "rattling the earth's axis," scorching, searing, roasting, irradiating, blasting, and crushing everything and everyone below. The sun touched Hiroshima, a blazing inferno with no escape; nuclear radiation made people's bones radioactive, blast winds in excess of 200 mph. The blast overpressure blew out ear drums and forced eyeballs out of their sockets (exophthalmos), hurled and slammed people into walls. Scorched blistered skin sloughed and peeled off their bodies and dragged on the ground as they tried to escape. The retinas of eyes looking up were burned. Stone and concrete buildings were fire-gutted to their cores, the shatter-blasted glass window fragments sharply tearing into the bodies of those within, and without.
This happened to Hiroshima citizens within seconds on August 6. Birds and butterflies never had a chance. On August 7 the Mayor and whoever else he could find, had to deal with 70,000 dead under their crushed burned homes and heaped and strewn all over the streets, bridges, and river banks of Hiroshima. Over the next two weeks more people would die, day and night, average, 160/hour. Radioactivity was all over the center of the city. Thirteen square kilometers of homes, stores and shops destroyed. One small and primitive nuclear bomb, the equivalent explosive power of 16,000 tons of TNT detonated over the city of 350,000, emitting a huge flood of nuclear radiation. By Dec 31, 1945 the death toll was about 140,000 and the counting could not stop then.
Three days later, August 9, 21,000 tons destroyed Nagasaki and its people. By hindsight and knowledge later gained, neither bomb was necessary. Friend Sumiteru Taniguchi, age 16 in 1945, was the only one of 28 postmen in his group to survive. He was a mile away from the hypocenter.
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