Seventy-six years ago this past August 6, the first atomic bomb devastated the city of Hiroshima, Japan. Just three days later, a second bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. All told, both in the initial explosions and in the aftermath of radiation-caused deaths, up to approximately 225,000 people perished, mostly civilians. Author John Hershey was perhaps the most prominent chronicler of Hiroshima's devastation and rebirth. His 31,000 word article "Hiroshima" was published in The New Yorker magazine in August, 1946, and remains one of the most compelling examples of journalism of the last 75 years. Hershey wrote about the city a year after its devastation:
“Over everything—up through the wreckage of the city, in gutters, along the riverbanks, tangled among tiles and tin roofing, climbing on charred tree trunks—was a blanket of fresh, vivid, lush, optimistic green; the verdancy rose even from the foundations of ruined houses. Weeds already hid the ashes, and wild flowers were in bloom among the city’s bones. The bomb had not only left the underground organs of the plants intact; it had stimulated them.”
At that time, it would have been hard to visualize a revitalized, modern and peaceful Japan that has hosted two Olympic games, first in 1964 and then this year. With the 2020 games successfully concluding today, Japan showed that "optimistic green" that symbolized its rise from the ashes of war.
(photo: In the foreground, the Atomic Bomb Dome, with the Peace Memorial in the background. Hiroshima Peace Memorial)
