Never again with using nuclear bombs

My reflections on the 55th anniversary of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki:

If you defend the bombings, read Charles Pellegrino's “The Last Train from Hiroshima.” Pellegrino narrates the lives of that rarest of groups: people who survived both bombings.

If you only think of nuclear weapons as large blast bombs, Pellegrino has your antidote. Under the bomb's hypocenter, radiation will vaporize you before the impulse can travel from your nerves to your brain relaying the message of pain and death. Flash can burn you alive without killing you. Radiation sickness kills slowly and unpredictably.

My opposition to the bombings has softened over the years. Iwo Jima was the one island where American casualties outnumbered Japanese dead; Okinawa was a killing ground for American and Japanese alike. Those two campaigns cost half as many American casualties as the entire preceding Pacific campaign.

At this distance in history, we have forgotten how war-weary Americans were in August 1945, and that the worst combat and most killing came toward the end of the war.

We honor the dead by vowing, “Never again.”

Jeff Klinzman

Coralville