WHAT'S THAT NOISE?

On Aug. 10, 1945, the day after the detonation of an nuclear bomb over Nagasaki, Japan, a Japanese photographer, Yosaka Yamahatma, went out with a couple of friends and took some photographs of the carnage. His notes said that he surprised himself by being calm and unemotional... perhaps he was in shock. I would be. But, here's a message about the resiliancy of the human animal... up pops a smiling face of a young Japanese girl out of a basement hole with a big smile on her face. Ready to get her picture taken.

I doubt if she lived a week after the blast. To this day the "black rain" as it's called in Japan is the secret legacy of that day in August. The incidence of birth defects in southern Japan is 200 times higher than the world average. But... think of the millions of lives that the detonation saved both of American as well as Japanese lives. We were getting ready to stage an invasion of the island when the opportunity to end the war came. Truman took it.

Anyhow, just look at that smile.

Bob