Only the Dead Have Seen the End of War

Today's title as I noted when I first kited it a number of years to commemorate this day in world history is a quote from Plato. Since my last original thought died of loneliness a very long time ago, I also offered a thought from Margaret Atwood that's an accurate, concise and brutally candid definition explaining ‘war is what happens when language fails.’

Someone (else) once said war doesn't determine who is right, only who is left.

Seventy-two years ago, today, the United States bombed Hiroshima, Japan, with a weapon so horrible in its power of destruction, that for a long time we, as a species, lacked the words in any language to fully convey the depth of destruction and tragedy it, and its twin, dropped on Nagasaki just days later, had created.

A picture is worth a thousand words, but I suspect no one knows how many lives it costs. A thought worth holding, perhaps, as we consider these two images.

"In some sort of crude sense...the physicists have known sin..."

"...and this is a knowledge they cannot lose." Robert Oppenheimer 

The scale and scope of the damages provided humanity a glimpse into an atomic abyss from which we knew there could be no escape, and we’ve managed for over seven decades to not unsheathe the sword of nuclear annihilation again against one another.

These two images of “modern” Hiroshima should offer us hope that we can, indeed, learn to speak with one another, but more importantly than speak, should compel us to listen.

65th Anniversary Remembrances of Hiroshima Bombing

City of Hiroshima, circa 2015

“We got your message on the radio…It’s never going to fade away.”

-bill kenny