Sherry Chandler

See the wikipedia article for story and pictures.

Charles M. Whitt writes to remind me that August 6 is the anniversary, the 62nd, of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The bomb was nicknamed Little Boy. Little Boy killed 130,000 people.

Charlie sends this remembrance and poem:

Visiting Hiroshima

Many years ago, when I was a 19 year-old kid, the United States Navy sent me to Iwakuni Japan to join my unit, patrol squadron twenty eight, (VP28) stationed there. Iwakuni is near Hiroshima where the first atomic bomb was exploded over a city.

I heard from other sailors that a museum had been built there, at ground zero, and it was a popular tourist attraction for both foreigners, and the Japanese. I didn’t want to go there alone, but no one else would give up their Saturday rest to go with me. So off I went on a train for the 30 mile trip. After getting lost a few times, I finally found a cab driver who spoke enough English to get me to the park and museum.

Once there, two students, about 12 year-olds, came up to me and ask (in fair English) if they could walk with me. They had an expensive tape recorder and wanted to record my voice for their English class. (hope my KY accent didn’t confuse them too much)

They stayed with me all the time I was there, then put me on the right bus for the train station when I left.
I will always remember them, and their enthusiasm for having found a foreigner to talk with. And I must admit that it was pretty exciting for me too.

Hiroshima
(visiting ground zero museum)

I want to tell a story now that makes my neck skin crawl,
And threatens every civil notion taught that I recall.

It was in service to the state that took me to the scene;
To the farthest boundary west, and all points in between.

In the land of Shinto shrine as south as you can go,
To a place, among a race, I’ll never really know.

Just thirty miles away from here the Genesis of death,
And memories etched in concrete of souls forever left.

I came alone unto the town aboard a crowded train;
No single friend could I persuade to bear the chilling rain.

A gray museum dank and long of cement work cast high
To house the relics of the day the sun fell from the sky.

The only western face that day as clearly I recall;
The one that I saw looking back from mirrors on the wall.

I saw the melted metal; I saw the cancerous skin
I saw no joy on any face without, or from within.

As deeply touched I knew they were these pilgrims to the shrine
Their thoughts were no more filled with awe than were the thoughts of mine.

Students in their uniforms of navy blue and white
As solemn as the elders to behold this tragic site.

Impressions that it made on me; (the ones I brought away)
Have lithographed my memory in shades of black and gray.

Spacious lawns were green with spring and flowers bloomed in place;
The granite spire was for each child who perished in the waste.

I could have left and not looked back but for that haunting scene
And years have only made more clear precisely what it means.

I think that it would surely take a world devoid of soul
To look upon that monument and war with words extol.

If we sit mute while leaders plan the next catastrophe
Who’ll be there to set the stones to our kids’ memory?

— Charles M. Whitt