MARLENE QUARONI | FLORIDA CATHOLIC CORRESPONDENT
Posted: 08.21.09
DANIA BEACH | On the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, a U.S. Army Air Force B-29 dropped an atomic bomb over the city of Hiroshima, Japan, killing 140,000 people. Three days later, another B-29 dropped another atomic bomb over Nagasaki, Japan, killing 80,000 people.
“Like all survivors close to the hypocenter, I heard nothing,” said Asher Soto, a young member of a south Florida Buddhist group, as she read the personal account of a Hiroshima survivor during a Hiroshima/Nagasaki observance, “Never Again!” The event took place at St. Maurice Parish on the 64th anniversary of the bombing.
“There was just the silent flash,” Soto read. “Lying in the rubble I couldn’t move and I knew I was faced with death. I heard my classmates asking for God in weak voices. My clothes were tattered and covered with blood. Even though it was morning, the sky was dark, as dark as twilight. I saw streams of human beings shuffling away from the center of the city. Parts of their bodies were missing and strips of flesh hung like ribbons from their bones. The strangest thing was the silence. People moved in slow motion, shuffling through the dust and smoke. I heard thousands of people breathing the words, ‘Water, give me water.’ Many simply dropped to the ground and died.”
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