A B-29 over Osaka on 1 June 1945. US Air Force Public Domain

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“Did you know that the worldwide food shortage that threatens up to five hundred million children could be alleviated at the cost of only one day, only ONE day, of modern warfare.”

— Peter Ustinov, actor, writer, and director (16 Apr 1921–2004)

by Dr. Molly Joseph

What this sane voice echoed way back in 2004 finds its deep resonance in human hearts when an unbridled war is loosened up on the world, unleashed by nations keen on domination and fostering their weapon industry. The helpless caught up victims are the innocents who have nothing to do with war or war mongering…

WAR! WAR!

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Man revels in ruthless killing spree, destroying, demolishing, erasing one culture, one community. Demolishing human abodes, monuments, apartments, offices… all shattered in a split second, while you were gauging the capacity of the destructive power you fostered, be it nuclear, chemical or biological.

In your fit of fury you seldom realise it boomerangs on you, on your progeny. You are burning your own ship!

That fear is the one now dominating over the ones who started the present war, causing worldwide economic dip. Now that the war is unleashed, it seems more difficult to contain it. Hope good sense prevails.

What does a war precipitate? I had a hands‑on feel of the ferocity of war in my Japan visit, especially when I visited Hiroshima.

How on an otherwise peaceful morning at 8.15 a.m., on 6th August 1945, America dropped its atom bomb “Little Boy” on Hiroshima and “Fat Man” on Nagasaki.
How awful it was, falling on little children going to school, farmers working in fields, busy housewives plying inside, and men and women commuting on their way to office!

The atomic bombings of Hiroshima (6 August 1945) and Nagasaki (9 August 1945) used bombs of different sizes and types: “Little Boy” (Uranium‑235) and “Fat Man” (Plutonium‑239). The bombs and blast effects reached miles in radius, causing over 200,000 total deaths. The red fireball emitting nuclear radiation and heat remained for a few days, causing large‑scale damage to people in faraway premises. More died later due to radiation sickness, cancer and burns.

My Visit to Hiroshima

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Now at Hiroshima, which was burnt to nothing, devastation devouring the very earth, the Japanese have built up a Peace Memorial. With new soil covering the old, they have nurtured a charming greenery with tall looking trees and a garden. The skeletons of the giant building still stare at us… those that underwent destruction, now kept in steel frame reinforcement.

What of the people crushed and burnt beneath? The central part of the sanctuary holds that Amar Jyothi, the undying flames of memory, and they lead to the holy arch where people ring the bell and pray. The whole venue has pathways boulevarded with trees. Cherry Blossoms, white and pink, that excited me elsewhere in Japan, now appeared pale and strewn, well expressing the poignant insignificance of human life. There seeped in melancholic reminders of the undeserved sufferings inflicted on the innocents…

How these man‑made horrible wars leave behind scars of such an everlasting wound!

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Even now some of the survivor progenies are alive, they being denied family and reproduction because children may come out with inherited genetic borne diseases.

Visiting the Museum was a heart‑rending experience. Rubbing against the broken relics, skeletons, bits of costumes consumed by fire and, above all, heart‑rending photographs of the gory scenes where people scramble for escape. Mothers with children clung to their breasts, fathers hovering over them like an envelope or shield, allowing and accepting the radiation, burns and all on their bodies. Scenes and narrations of survivors deformed with broken parts of body, with empty eye sockets and hollowed cheeks…

God! You shuddered, shivered at this depth of human suffering!

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Seemed these genetic borne diseases took years to repeat. Shocking it was to hear of a two‑year‑old baby who escaped death at the time of blast, living normally for ten years and then having to die with leukaemia at the age of twelve!

The survivors formed Nihon Hidankyo in 1956, collecting thousands of witness accounts and pushing for nuclear abolition, for which they were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize later. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists puts the count of deaths here at 140,000 out of a population of 255,000. Many… our bus driver’s mother was a survivor who witnessed it. He told how she remembered her family had shifted to ground zero a week early, to have a hair’s breadth escape. Gory scenes of people looking like ghosts, bleeding, trying to walk only to collapse… the smell of death. The Black Rain, radioactive fallout, fell as ash and debris contaminating water and food. Survivors struggled without water and food, using well water to clean up wounds. Hiroshima Peace Memorial pulsates with this credo only: Never Again!

At the end of the museum, touching posters teem with powerful pleadings for love and peace: “Awake, arise! Humanity, for a world of love and peace.”

Humans inflict sufferings on each other! Wars! Warmongers! What do you gain?

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Ultimately, when you emerge out of the museum, at the exit, there is the book for you to pour out your thoughts in a line or two…

I scribbled:

O, Japan!
You, the people of Hiroshima, Nagasaki!
Hapless victims of our human greed!
Forgive us!
Let us never ever repeat such a heinous act again.

I apologised for the whole humanity.

Later I felt I had to add something more, so I turned round, came back and wrote something for the ordinary people of Japan and not the militarists:

Japan! Your resilience marvels!
You are the brave human spirit, the sterling hope of man!
Your rise like a phoenix from ashes, your brave human spirit inspires!
With you, Japan!

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Dr. Molly Joseph (pen name Myna), born on 12 March 1956 in Kochi, Kerala, India, is an Indian academic and bilingual writer who retired as Professor and Head of the English Department at St. Xavier’s College, Aluva, Kochi, and also served as Professor of Communicative English at FISAT Engineering College & Business School; she earned her doctorate on post‑war American poetry, focusing on the work of William Carlos Williams, and published her first book, Aching Melodies, in 2013 with Penguin Partridge India. A prolific author, she has published 24 books of poems, translated two novels, and released two storybooks for children, while also writing travelogues, reviews, and children’s short stories. Her major recognitions include the Wordsmith Award 2018 and the India Women Achiever’s Award from the Asian Literary Society, New Delhi, and she contributes to international journals such as Different Truths, Literary Vibes (India), Spill Words, and Prodigy (Global), as well as reputed global anthologies like Musings During a Time of Pandemic, I Can’t Breathe, and War in Gaza. Dr. Joseph regularly attends SAARC and BIMSTEC literary conferences, literary meets, and the World Congress of Poets; two of her books were released at the KISTRECH International Festival of Poetry in Kenya, held at Kisii University. Her poetry addresses contemporary issues such as anti‑war campaigns, nature and gender exploitation, the pandemic, the need for more space for women’s writing, travel literature, and children’s writing. Her book Where Cicadas Sing in Mirth won the Galaxy Academy Award for Experimental Verse for its indigenous diction—characterised as “Ribbon Poetry” with simple words, flow, and indentation coiling up to approximate contemporary reality—and she also received the Yan’an Gold Medal Outstanding Poet Award from the Yan’an Writer’s Association, China. Believing in the power of the word and its seed‑power to create a brave new world, she currently serves as a Fellow of the International Academy of Ethics, India. She can be reached at mynamolly@gmail.com and via her YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/user/mynamolly.