August 6, Hiroshima: The Memory, Which Must Not Been Faded.
On August 6, with six other battle-planes, Jabit III, Full House, The Great Ariste, Necessarily Evil, Top Secret, and Enola Gay, William Bradford Huie flied a meteorological-research plane, Straight Flush.
Few seconds after the drop, an inferno took shape in Hiroshima without giving the residents any chance to look up toward the sky. Survivres' skins were sored, walking around the area as well as looking for water.
Among the participants in the mission, Huie was the only person who regret what they've done. After his return to his home country, he fell into emotional instability, committing repeated crimes until he was hospitalized in Texas.
The atomic-cloud over Hiroshima.
Enola Gay: the battle-plane that dropped atomic-bombs on Hiroshima.
A Painting illustrated by a Hiroshima citizen.
Burned bodies flowing on a river.
A family walking through a bridge over a river filled up with bodies.
Many years later, when Huie was in a hospital in Texas, he wrote a letter about what he had done. At this point, he was analyzed as mentally damaged; but as far as reading this letter, nobody may recognize him as a mental case.
"Whilst in no sense, I hope, either a religious or a political fanatic, I have for some time felt convinced that the crisis in which we are all involved is one calling for a thorough reexamination of our whole scheme of values and of loyalties. In the past it has sometimes been possible for men to "coast along" without posing to themselves too many searching questions about the way they are accustomed to think and to act - but it is reasonably clear that our age is not one of these. On the contrary, I believe that we are rapidly approaching a situation in which we shall be compelled to reexamine our willingness to surrender responsibility for our thoughts and our actions to some social institution such as the political party, trade union, church or State. None of these institutions are adequately equipped to offer infallible advice on moral issues and their claim to offer such advice needs therefore to be challenged."
Even tough Japan and the United States economically and politically allied tightly since the end of the WWII, disagreement between the two over the Hiroshima-and-Nagasaki issue has been argued. While Japanese claim the incident as one of the most unpardonable mission from humanitarian standpoint, Americans argue that the atomic-bomb mission end the war. For more than sixty years, the two have failed to reach an agreement on the issue.
In February, 2011, A book written by Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken, has topped on the New York Times' Book-sale list for six weeks. It says in the book that the Japanese Empire's worsened treatment of prisoners of the war than that of Nazi Germany. While only 1% of the war's American prisoners captured by Nazi and Italy died, 37% of American prisoners of the war died in Japan and in Japanese territories. The author concluded in the book that the U.S. can justify even the atomic attack with the fact of Japanese treatment of American soldiers who died in a great agony.
However, can we really justify any war-crime just by statistics? When it comes to the comparison of statistics of the war's victims of people in general by countries, Japan is way ahead of the group with 800,000 while that of the U.S. is zero.
A Map of The Japanese Empire: 1942.
Japanese, however, can't behave themselves as a victim of the war with the thought that every country is guilty. Started with the defeat of Russia in Russo-Japanese War, All Asian countries found a hope in the fact that the same Asian nation in the far East defeated a Western nation.
In contrast with their expectation, Japan smashed its way to build itself as a garrison state that looked down the same race after the February 26 Incident, which rebelling troops occupied Tokyo as well as killed Japanese powerful politicians to rebuild Japan as a power in the global context.
"I hope to stay unemployed as a war photographer till the end of my life," said Robert Capa, the most famous war photographer of the 20th century. In his quote, he expressed many aspects of wars. What do you see in the line?
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