this day sixty years ago an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, killing at least a hundred thousand people instantly. while the staggering loss of innocent lives in Hiroshima should never be forgotten, it is important to recognize what the Imperial Japanese army was doing in the years leading up to that day.
in 1937 the Japanese invaded the city of
Nanking, China. The official Chinese estimate of the death toll in the Rape of Nanking is three hundred thousand.
these people didn't die in a blinding flash of light. they died at the ends of bayonets and guns, and a staggering number of them were brutally raped.
now what do we do with this information? please don't ask me. it's all I can do to keep my sanity as the war-victim ticker keeps rolling steadily forward into the present day.
no nation is innocent; no place on the map is untainted by war. grief is the matrix we live in.
I mourn today for the victims of Hiroshima, but I mourn for the ghosts of Nanking, too.
and I think of them sorrowfully when I imagine how quickly these old war-ghosts are being crowded out by new ones. Even ghosts need their dignity, their elbow room. I hope they are adapting okay, and not starting wars of their own.
angry spirits, crowded together and squabbling in a million different tongues, cannot do good to the world, even if they are just a vapor.
do they bicker, I wonder, as to whose flag they must worship?
related articles: what is the deal with suffering?
