Hiroshima and Nagasaki, remembered

As a subscriber to the New York Times "What We're Reading" email that lists editors' top picks, I couldn't help but click on the one linking to John Hersey's New Yorker essay, "Hiroshima," written a year after the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima (Aug. 6, 1945) and on Nagasaki, three days later, which would be today, Aug. 9.

Here is the intro that caught my eye:

The New Yorker Witness to the Inconceivable As Japan marks the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings by the United States, it’s well worth returning to the seminal article that laid the horrors of nuclear warfare before the world. John Hersey’s meticulous recreation of the moment the bomb hit Hiroshima, and his intertwined tales of victims, survivors and a shaken country, holds up 69 years after it was published. It set a standard for narrative journalism and bearing witness.

Here is the link to the article.

I didn't mean to, but I read the whole thing both because of my interest in narrative journalism and because the dates pass through my mind most years. I posted it to Facebook and then deleted it because it is not the kind of thing people usually share.

You probably don't want to read it on a nice summer day. It's not useful to sit around feeling guilty,  but if you follow politics and the debate over the pros and cons of the Iran Nuclear deal, it's worth a thought that it is nowhere in the U.S. consciousness that our country is the only one that dropped the bomb and not only that, we did it to civilians, twice.

People are thinking about it, however.

Alex Wellerstein's, "Nagasaki, The Last Bomb," is fourth on The New Yorker's most-emailed list.

I read that one too.

Here is the history on the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But now, back to reality, a sunny, less humid day, good for a lot of good things.