The flying machine, a harbinger of death, flew across oceans, a beast in the morning calm.
The Enola Gay*, and Little Boy** silently sliced the skies, roaring ever closer to ground zero.
Hiroshima bustled, the sound of birds, of children, of mothers preparing breakfast, of fathers shaving their one day old stubbles.
Dogs barked, cats tucked themselves in corners, children skipped, vegetable stands ploughed the streets.
The Enola Gay flew nearer.
Hiroshima’s people oblivious of the hell that awaited them, the fires of apocalypse that would soon consume them, laughed and quarrelled and worked and haggled the price of the fresh morning fruit.
It was at 8:15 AM, the metallic beast prowling above released Little Boy.
Little Boy fell, down towards the city, to fracture its people, in the hubbub of early morning.
The Atomic Bomb exploded, its light blotting out the morning sun, its deafening roar bursting eardrums.
The payload was delivered.
The Generals at Command Centre were triumphant.
The Enola Gay flew away, leaving a mushroom cloud rising higher and higher as it rained down unspeakable horrors, indescribable destruction.
It has been said that in Hiroshima that day, and in the weeks and months that followed, the living envied the dead, their skin peeling off as they roamed their city, their home, consumed by the sickening howls of pain from every quarter.
Little Boy exploded as it fell, releasing a heat that burnt people, searing their shadows into walls, preserved till today, a ghastly reminder of that savagery that befell all.
Radiation from the Bomb creeped into flesh, scorching innumerable innocents, as nuclear ash fell all around.
Man had created a weapon of such savagery, such indifferent brutality, a bringer of horrors, grotesque and merciless.
Man had used the weapon, not once, but twice, for three days later Fat Man*** was unleashed on Nagasaki.
I could write on, attempting to describe the indescribable horrors that rained down on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I could write on, about the deformed babies being born, decades after those two days in early August of 1945.
I could write on, about the inhumanity man visited upon fellow human beings.
I could write on, about the stockpiles of nuclear weapons – tens of thousands of bombs – far, far more powerful than those that reduced Hiroshima and Nagasaki to radioactive ash.
I could write on, about the nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons housed in the silos of those who preach peace, of those who crow on about democracy, of those who let their people starve while testing the means to carry these weapons of hell across oceans.
I could write on, about the hypocrisy, the money spent on machines of destruction, as most humans of this world go hungry each night and day.
I could write on, and on, and on.
But what more can anyone say, as the wailing, the shrieking screams of the victims echo across time,
till today.
_________
* Enola Gay – the plane that carried the Atomic Bomb.
** Little Boy – the code name for the Atomic Bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
*** Fat Man – the code name for the Atomic Bomb dropped on Nagasaki on August 9th, 1945.
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