I am seated alone on a jetty jutting into the Atlantic
Ocean. The steady rhythm of waves slapping the
rocks carries me to the speck of a ship on the distant
horizon. In reverie I am a kid again transported to a
different ocean in an earlier time, aboard a small
destroyer escorting a navy hospital ship through mine
infested waters into the harbor at Nagasaki. We pass
a fleet of small fishing boats and two Japanese
warships, one half-sunk and one on the beach. The
shore is lined with bombed-out factories. Our job is to
evacuate Dutch and Javanese POWs to Okinawa.
Five weeks earlier, on August 9, 1945, in Nagasaki…

single bomb
a city destroyed
war’s end

When our ship is docked and secured, a group of us go ashore to see the sights. As I recall, through the mist of many years, we see a major city leveled against a hilly terrain and a somber sky, devastation unthinkable. We learn that much of Nagasaki is destroyed by a single atomic bomb. Ironically, the radiated rubble is roped off, as though a line of hemp could contain the poisonous fallout. Naval dispatches tell us the bomb was necessary to “save” lives. I look around and I see the horror and ugly filth that one explosion can cause and feel dirty. Dust in my hair, eyes, nose, mouth, dust inside my head.