7:29 a.m. (on the clock) Flick, flick, bang! Wham! Some building across the backyard and down a ways seems to be undergoing demolition and/or renovation. Apparently, they're allowed to start making noise at 7:30 in the morning.
7:30 a.m. Electronic marimba sound. I open my iPad and press play on the radio station I cue up for the morning (SWR2). (Rattle, wham! Wham!) I nestle back into my pillow, shoving off the comforter that's suddenly too warm after the cooling of night. Two cats trap my legs against their heavy sleeping backs.
August 6, 2014. On this date 69 years ago the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, killing 70,000 people...The dying continued over ensuing years, the announcer goes on, with a toll of 128,000. He says something like that. I'm only half hearing because of the noise outside, because I'm still partly asleep.
Sixty-nine years since a bomb was dropped, an untested event. Yes, the bombs had been infamously tested in Western deserts, sickening people there. But could anyone have known what would happen to a whole city with a bomb like that? The same excuse does not hold for Nagasaki. They knew what would happen (not entirely, perhaps, just three days later), and they dropped it anyway.
There are only 365 days a year. You can't have a date all to yourself. This day, August 6th, is certainly most occupied in collective memory by the bombing of Hiroshima. It's a heavy-duty date, like September 11th, although when you compare the death toll, Hiroshima becomes distressingly unimaginable.
I won't dwell on it today. I wrote in 2013 about August 6th and my time in Hiroshima (For the solemn date of August 6, part 1 and August 6th, part 2). It's a powerful date. I will move into a separate post to think about Simon, who died on this date in 2004.
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