Recently, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize Foundation honors books that attempt to advance peace through the written word and has used that precept to honor two books that about the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In 2006, Stephen Walker’s book, “Shockwave: Countdown to Hiroshima,” was the non-fiction winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and in 2016, Susan Southhard’s book, “Nagasaki: Life after Nuclear War,” was the non-fiction winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.
The Shockwave book brings alive the people and events that led to the decision by President Harry Truman to drop an atomic bomb over Japan. The Nagasaki book focuses on the enduring impact on a few survivors of that bombing, and how the physical, cultural, and social impact of that bombing continues in succeeding generations, even through today.
I have been fortunate to be a part of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize since its inception. That has given me the opportunity to have dinner with both Stephen Walker and Susan Southard while they were in Dayton. I was taken by their passion as they talked about promoting peace by writing about the horrors of war, particularly nuclear war.
As a matter of history, I will note that Dayton had also played an important role in the actual bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In what was then known affectionately as the Runnymede Playhouse at the Talbot estate in Oakwood, a small group of engineers and scientists from the Dayton Project developed a method to produce polonium-210, a key ingredient for the trigger for the atomic bomb.
This super secret operation enabled the Enola Gay B-29 to drop the “Little Boy” bomb over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and the Bockscar B-29 to drop the “Fat Boy” bomb over Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. Almost immediately Emperor Hirohito announced the unconditional surrender of Japan.
Those bombings may have ended the war but they did not end the impact and pain inflicted on the lives of the people maimed or horrified by those bombs. As Susan Southard said, “the basis of peace is for people to understand the pain of others.” Reading her book will make anyone feel that pain. In its own way, I had the opportunity to feel that pain when I visited Nagasaki in 2017.
My visit gave me a first-hand look at the city, even though I was looking at it in hindsight through the prism of the Atomic Bomb Museum and the Nagasaki Peace Park.
While the museum depicts in graphic detail the horror of the blast and enshrines the few surviving artifacts, the park is a beautiful expanse surrounding the Fountain of Peace and hosts a myriad of memorial sculptures that were given by communities and countries around the world.
Together they provide an opportunity for meditation and prayer, giving all who come to the Nagasaki Peace Park the opportunity to remember the victims of the atom bomb and to pray for everlasting peace in the future.
The serenity of the Nagasaki Peace Park and the Fountain of Peace made me stop and think about the gravity of what happened in 1945, and instilled in me anew the horror that would result if a country, any country, would exercise the nuclear option sometime in the future. That is a frightening thought.
I am grateful that the Peace Park gave me time to remember.
We all should take the time to remember. We need peace in the world, not just for the next 75 years, but forever.
Dayton attorney Merle Wilberding is a regular contributor.
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