I've just read Nam Le's Hiroshima. I'm not sure I got it and feel I have to read it again. I think it is cleverer than I am. Probably not a good idea to be reading something as tragic and poetic at 6.30am on the tram on the way to work.
And yet it got in there. I remember the sample from Single Gun Theory's Metaphysical... "The day was clear, when we dropped that bomb." I've been in London and Berlin and Paris, and sometimes you think it was a bright sunny day like today when tanks rolled in and evil was being done. It does your head in.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Big days. Clear days. Fucked up shit.
9/11 was a big day too. Atrocious shit. The worst of humanity. The photograph above is being discussed again. The article I read yesterday morning is here. I don't like the tone of the article at all. The writer comes across as a novice. We know that the Twin Towers destruction was murderous and unacceptable; there is no need to keep driving that point home in your clumsy way.
But because I had just read Nam Le's story Hiroshima, I thought I'd do some background reading, and oh man. We really should not let 9/11 eclipse the enormity of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The only times weapons of mass destruction have been unleashed have been by the USA. No warning to the innocent civillians they were about to murder. Hundreds of thousands of them. Dropping these bombs on innocent civillians as the Russians turned on Japan and within such a short time of Japan's wartime surrender anyway.
And the Americans... their big dilemma was after these two weapons of mass murder, do we drop the next few as they roll off the production line or save them up and throw handfuls at them?
Seriously, after such disgusting mass murder they were ready to drop more nuclear bombs on unsuspecting civillians.
Despicable cunts.
But the tone of the story above... it would have you believe that the 9/11 mass murder was the worst mass murder in the history of mankind. Sorry, it was not. Not by a long way.
So as the anniversary of 9/11 comes along - and an awful moment it was in our history - maybe do a little reading. Think about Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
3 comments:
You need to add an "at the time of writing" or repost with the date set to September 2011... but good piece. Chris
P.S. Bigger pic here.
Anonymous Chris - It was a timing thing. I know it's months away but I read the Nam Le story when I did, and I tend to get a bit obsessed by things. Unfortunately my reading affected the rest of my day.
History bored me as a kid but fascinates me now. I wish we humans were nicer to each other. Alas...
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