If Russia in 2020 was able to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Great Victory, the United States can remember how tens of thousands of innocents were burned in a nuclear flame three quarters of a century ago.
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the first and only time that nuclear weapons were used as intended.
Until now, there are still those in Japan who have seen the horror of the Americans with their own eyes. According to The Guardian, today these people are struggling to remind the world of what happened, which the United States pushed into the arms race again.
Keiko Ogura was eight years old when the American B-29 bomber “Enola Gay” dropped a 16 kiloton nuclear bomb on Hiroshima at 8.15 am on August 6, 1945. About 80 thousand residents of the city were killed instantly, and over the next 5 months this number increased to 140 thousand due to exposure to radiation.
“My dad said something was wrong this morning and told me not to go to school”, – she said.
That morning, Keiko Ogura was playing outside the house when she was knocked down by the blast. The house where she lived with her parents and two brothers was seriously damaged, although it was located far from the epicenter of the explosion.
“It was dark and absolute silence. I didn’t know what to do except sit down on the ground. All I could hear was my younger brother crying”, – the woman recalls.
By evening, people who were closer to the epicenter began to appear at the house. As Keiko Ogura recalls, their faces and hair were burnt, and their skin literally hung down. These people asked for water. The girl brought them water from a well, and they died on the spot while trying to drink.
As noted by The Guardian, citing data from the Japanese Ministry of Health, over 300,000 victims of the unprecedented US strike have died so far.
A Kyodo poll also showed that more than 75% of survivors, despite their advanced age, do their best to educate the public about the consequences of the American nuclear bombing.
“At the beginning it was very painful to remember those days”, – says Keiko Ogura.
“But I wanted young Americans to know what their country had done. I don’t blame them for what happened, I just want them to know the facts and draw conclusions”.
Sueichy Kido, who was 5 years old at the time of those sad events, recalls hearing the roar of an aircraft engine on August 9, 1945.
“I remember someone saying that it doesn’t look like a Japanese plane. Then there was a flash and a roar”, – he said about the nuclear strike that killed 74,000 residents of Nagasaki.
He lived two kilometers from the epicenter. The blast wave literally demolished the house, the mother of five-year-old Sueichi Kido received severe burns to her face and chest.
“Nothing is left of our area”, – he said.
“It was black everywhere. I remember seeing charred bodies floating in the river”.
In his 80s, Sueichi Kido serves as chairman of an organization representing the survivors of the US nuclear bombing. The man emphasizes that he will devote the rest of his life to being part of the very latest generation of hibakusha, as people who survived the bombing are called in Japan.
“People like me wondered why they lived when so many others died”, – Keiko Ogura supported him.
“I could never forget the two people who died before my eyes. But I will talk about what happened until my last breath so that they and other victims do not die in vain”.