Remembrance of the Terrible Price of War

Let me begin by saying that I have a personal interest in the story behind this article. My family spent almost four years in an Internment Camp as prisoners of the Japanese in Hong Kong during World War II. I was born in that camp. Our experiences in that camp have permanently damaged my family. Some would say that I would have justifiable reasons to resent the Japanese people for that experience. I do not. War brings death, pain and trauma to both the victims and aggressors in war.

And recent events have brought public reflection forward again on the dropping of the atomic bombs on the Japanese people in 1945.

August 9, 2024, was the 79th anniversary of the two atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki by the United States. The first bomb was dropped on the city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1045. Its population at that time was between 320,000 to 400,000. Nagasaki had a population of 270,000. Approximately 140,000 civilians — men, women and children — were killed in Hiroshima. The death toll in Nagasaki was approximately 70,000.

The question of why the U.S. decided to employ such terrible weapons against Japan, particularly against civilians, has been the subject of renewed controversy.

For more than seventy years, the U.S. and its WWII allies, aided by mainstream media, have conducted a massive propaganda…