- Introduction
- About this Site
- Germany's History
- Hitler Comes to Power
- The Holocaust
- Nazi Death Camps
- Anne Frank
- Anne's Diary
- Hiroshima
- Sadako's 1000 Cranes
- Sadako Lives On!
- Singapore
- Lim Bo Seng
- Mrs Kathigasu
- Comfort Women
- Comfort Women: 01
- Comfort Women: 02
- Aftermath
- Epilogue
- Sign Guestbook
- View Guestbook
Epilogue
In 1945, near the end of World War II, the United States Air Force dropped the world's first atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The tragic effects of the bombs are still being felt by the Japanese people today.
The atomic bombs destroyed two cities and killed over 200,000 people. They also contaminated large areas with radiation, which continue to cause illness and death even today. Atomic radiation is dangerous to all living things. It is like a poison that stays inside the body for a long time.
The story you will read in "Sadako's 1000 Cranes", is about a real girl from Hiroshima who was only 2-years-old when the atomic bomb was dropped on her city. Ten years later, she died of a blood disease called leukemia. Her disease was caused by the effects of atomic radiation.
Coming to Terms
A Peace Museum and Peace Park were opened in Hiroshima in 1955 to commemorate the bombing. Hiroshima Day, August 6, is always observed there with ceremony. But the Japanese were slow to come to terms with the darker side of their own past. By concentrating on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they tend to see themselves as victims of the war. They forgot their own aggression and war crimes. In 1995, for the first time, a Japanese leader apologized to the victims of Japan. On the 50th anniversary of the Japanese surrender, PM Tomiichi Murayama expressed "feelings of deep remorse." He offered a "heartfelt apology" for Japan's actions in the war.
On Hiroshima day, 55 years later after the dropping of the bomb, 60,000 people stood for a minute's silence in the city's Peace Park. The city's mayor, Takashi Hiraoka, warned that as long as there were nuclear weapons, the story of Hiroshima could happen again. And 1,500 doves were released into the sky over the city as a symbol of hope and peace.
"Unbroken Peace"
Sankiche Toge, a survivor of Hiroshima, wrote the famous Japanese peotry about the atomic bomb. The prelude from his Genbaku Shishu (Poems of the Atomic Bomb is engraved on a memorial in the Peace Park in Hiroshima:
Bring back the mothers!
Bring back the old people!
Bring back the children!
Bring me back!
Bring back the human beings I had contact with!
a world of human beings,
Bring us peace, UNBROKEN PEACE!