Hiroshima: Never again a nuclear holocaust

For tonight’s special presentation on Straight from the Sky, we bring you a historic first for our tv show - a trip to Taipei with the Cebu media to look into Clean Coal-fired technology that the Taiwanese seems to have perfected. Watch this very interesting show on SkyCable’s channel 15 at 8pm.

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I got back last Saturday evening after my short, but hectic trip to Japan, which is now starting its winter season. It’s so cold in certain places that going outdoors is no longer funny. It’s always good to be back. As always, whenever I return from a foreign trip I must say my piece, that the reason why I hate going on trips abroad is due to the reality that I must return home. While there’s nothing that can beat “Home Sweet Home” the nagging question always ringing on my head is, “Why can’t we make things the way they do in countries like Japan?”

I was in the City of Hiroshima the whole day of Friday, taking the “Nozomi” Shinkansen from Tokyo to Hiroshima (that’s the distance from Manila to Cagayan de Oro) in just 4 hours. All we wanted to do is visit the ruins of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial (Genbacku Dome) and museum. We also had 4 hours to do this, so we could rush back to Tokyo by 10:00pm on the same day.

Today, Hiroshima is a bustling city, which was literally rebuilt from the smoldering ashes of the first Atomic bomb dubbed “Little Boy” dropped by a lumbering B-29 Superfortress piloted by Col. Paul Tibbets. That was the bombing that made history as Hiroshima was the first city ever to taste the horror of a nuclear explosion, where some 140,000 people within a 2-kilometer radius were instantly cremated. The fireball (they call it the hypocenter) was so intense, the ashes of people were imprinted on walls and sidewalks. The time was 8:15am on August 6, 1945.

I have read many accounts of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended in the unconditional surrender of Japan. But reading books and looking at the pictures seems too detached from reality. Seeing the pictures inside the museum and looking at all the artifacts that was displayed in the museum was a totally different experience. There were many tourists (most of them domestic Japanese tourists) inside the museum floor and many were in tears. It was as if we arrived a few hours after Hiroshima was bombed. Yes, I, too cried a few tears about man’s inhumanity to man.

Most of the recovered items were the tattered clothes taken from Hiroshima survivors who were more than 2-kilometers away. But they still ended up dead because of the ill-effects of nuclear radiation. The “lucky ones” where the people living 2 kilometers within the hypocenter. They were instantly incinerated. There really isn’t an exact number of deaths from the Hiroshima blast as people and buildings were blasted out of existence. To think the Hiroshima A-bomb is nothing compared to today’s new generation of nuclear bombs.

When my watch struck at 3pm, I dedicated a Chaplet of the Divine Mercy for those who perished in that holocaust, including the 187 Christian Martyrs led by Fr. Peter Kibe who were beatified in Nagasaki exactly a week ago. Somehow, the Lord showed me a miracle of sorts. After the rain, a beautiful rainbow appeared to have emanated from the dome of the Hiroshima Prefectural Commerical Exhibition Hall or the A-Bomb dome which they now call the Genbaku Dome.

It was perhaps a similar message that God gave to Noah after the great flood that never again will he destroy the earth through a flood. The Hiroshima message to mankind is, never again a nuclear holocaust; if only man learns his bitter, albeit bloody lessons in human history of wars.

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I left Cebu for Japan due to the funeral of the mother of my brother-in-law Yuki Kono. When I left, I heard that CDN columnist Job Tabada passed away, then I learned that my uncle Engr. Eduardo Segura also passed away, then as I was reading the Internet, I learned that our good friend, former Mayor Eulogio “Yoyong” Borres also passed away.

I will not forget Mayor Borres who was a very close friend of the Avila Family. As a civil engineer, he constructed the Avila Building. In 1969, when the Oriente Theater was on fire, he stood beside me knowing that my father at that time was in Ormoc City. He was the first elected mayor to ask me to join politics and even asked my father’s permission. Even when he was out of politics, he still insisted that I should be a politician, a request I always politely denied. May we request our pious readers to please pray for the repose of his soul.