P. A. Chacko SJ
U S president Harry S. Truman repeated his madness, just two days later, by ordering a second bombing of Japan in 1945 during the World War II.
First, the bombing of Hiroshima took place on Aug 6. Turning a blind eye on the magnitude of death and destruction with the tens of thousands killed and many millions maimed, Truman’s madness was repeated. He ordered ‘a rain of ruin from the air’ to bomb Japan a second time. The targets were Japanese cities of Kokura (present-day Kitakyushu), Niigata and Nagasaki. Due to lack of visibility, only Nagasaki was targeted.
Earlier, on July 16, 1945 the atom bomb had been tested at the Trinity Test site in New Mexico. Watching the ferocity of the explosion sending out a 40,000 feet high mushroom chemical cloud, ‘the father of the atomic bomb,’ and Director of the laboratory, Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, exclaimed in frustration, quoting a text from Bhagavat Gita: ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’
Another destroyer
Two years’ later, AK 47, Automat Kalashnikova 1947, perhaps the world’s deadliest weapon, was produced. It was branded after its maker Mikhail Kalashnikov. He was military engineer and a Russian Lieutenant.
The Kalashnikov assault rifle he produced has been responsible for far more deaths of millions all over the world. It is in the hands of the military, the police, the terrorist, the religious fundamentalist, and the criminal.
He was proud of his invention and was rewarded and awarded by Russia for his ‘contribution’ to humanity’s destruction. Later, he had a change of heart. In the final year of his life, he expressed deep regret. In a letter to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, he wrote: “The pain in my soul is unbearable. I keep asking myself the same unsolvable question: If my assault rifle took people’s lives, that means that I am responsible for their deaths.”
On his own admission, he went to a church for the first time at the age of 91 and was later baptised. At the age of 94 he went to meet his Maker without AK 47 and empty-handed.