August 7th, 2025
Yesterday was the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. That attack was the first use of an atomic weapon in human history, and it is an event that horrifies people to this very day. We try to ignore it. We ty to forget that it ever happened, but as Kenneth Clarke wrote about the atomic bomb in his book, Civilization,
“Add to this the memory of that shadowy companion who is always with us, like an inverted guardian angel, silent, invisible, almost incredible- and yet unquestionably there and ready to assert itself at the touch of a button: and one must concede that the future of civilization does not look very bright.”
Almost every day I read something online about Putin threatening to use nukes. Trump blusters in a similar way. Despite our best efforts, we can’t disregard our unwanted companion. The movie, Oppenheimer, proves that fact. The angel is close at hand.
That dark angel has been following every one of us for eighty years. I am a bit too young to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, but I can recall signs in the lower level of my elementary school designating it as a fallout shelter. I can remember watching Stanley Kubrick’s film, “Dr. Strangelove” when I was student at West Point n the 1970’s.
The angel was closest to me when I was an Army officer stationed in what was then West Germany. I was deployed there in the early 1980’s, back when Reagan was raving about the “Evil Empire”. The Cold War was intense at the that time, and it seemed like any day it would turn hot. I woke every morning in Germany wondering if “the balloon would go up”. I was a helicopter pilot, maybe ninety miles from the East German border. U.S. policy at the time allowed for NATO to use nuclear weapons first in a war with the Soviet Union. There were plans (or so I heard) of using tactical nukes in the Fulda Gap to keep the Reds from striking deep into West Germany. I remember watching the movie “The Day After” while I was in my unit. I saw the film in the pilots’ break area on the Army airfield. Henry Kissinger spoke on a television program after the show was over. He stated the obvious: we have to prevent a “day after”.
Around the same time, young people in West Germany were protesting against nuclear weapons of any sort in their country. That made total sense. They had skin in the game. One of the most popular songs when I was there was 99 Luftballons (translation: 99 Air Balloons), by Nena. The lyrics of the German pop song were about the beginning of an unintentional nuclear war. The song is still relevant. Almost simultaneously, Pink Floyd released an album called The Final Cut. That too was about nuclear war. The angel was hovering above me during those years.
I have two friends, Senji and Gilberto. They are Buddhist monks. They have a temple on Bainbridge Island near Seattle. They live very close to a U.S. Navy nuclear submarine base. They work with a group called Ground Zero to protest against nuclear weapons. Senji is my age. He is part of Japan’s postwar generation. He is especially passionate about preventing nuclear war. It is personal commitment for him. Gilberto and Senji always commemorate the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is their calling to help others to remember those war crimes.
They are currently in the process of completing the construction of a peace pagoda on land that is right next to the Navy base. That is part of their effort to bear witness. I admire them for it.
Nearly completed peace pagoda
Frank is Emptiness 