This is Afghanistan II

Katie Stack, 19, looks at the flag-draped casket carrying the remains of her husband Marine Lance Cpl. James Stack, 20, after they arrived at Chicago Executive Airport on November 18, 2010 in Wheeling, Illinois. James Stack was killed November 10 while serving with 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment in Sangin, Afghanistan. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

When I went to America I had a deep hatred toward America. I asked myself why they ended the war by a means which destroyed human beings. When I talked about how I suffered, I was often told, “Well, you attacked Pearl Harbor!” I didn’t understand much English then, and it’s probably just as well. From the American point of view, they dropped that bomb in order to end the war faster, in order to create more damage faster. But it’s inexcusable to harm human beings in this way. I wonder what kind of education there is now in America about atomic bombs. They’re still making them, aren’t they?

Yamaoka Michiko, a hibakusha (one who was exposed to the atomic bomb), who was fifteen when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and, thanks to Norman Cousins, went to America a decade later for treatment and plastic surgery, which took a year and a half and involved thirty-seven operations, including efforts at skin grafts.

Japan At War: An Oral History compiled by Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook

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Source: gematriya