Afterthoughts: “I Hereby Resolve to Write to You, Especially When I Die”
Includes the Poem “Remembering Nagasaki,” Penned by Jon Olsen for Nagasaki Day, 2014
Below are several of the beautiful responses I received from readers after publishing “I Hereby Resolve to Write to You, Especially When I Die”:
Nagasaki Day: 80th Anniversary
Jon Olsen approved this draft on August 5, the day before Hiroshima Day and four days before Nagasaki Day. He included a poem he wrote in 2014 for Nagasaki Day, so I decided to add it and publish this on August 9 in remembrance of the approximately 200,000 Japanese civilians incinerated in Nagasaki and Hiroshima on this eightieth anniversary of the unprecedented and unparalleled crimes against humanity committed by the Allies.
After sending that poem, Jon noted, “Nagasaki has been sort of the afterthought, but its victims deserve as much recognition for their anguish as Hiroshima.”
I agree with this but would add that the Nagasaki victims are doubly tragic because they were even more gratuitous than the already unnecessary Hiroshima mass murder victims. Most people close to the situation felt both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings were gruesome war crimes given that Japan was already on the verge of surrendering. Truman and his fellow warmonsters wanted to play with their new toys, however, and demonstrate their power to Russia in what was to become the first act of the Cold War.
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