20150806 (Hiroshima & Nagasaki)

Many more victims were vaporized directly beneath the fireball. Nothing, not even a shadow, remained.

August is the cruelest month

Sixth and ninth in particular

I was 888 days old when across

The world from me how many

Children like me were fried from the sky

Burned to smoke or some closer by 

Vaporized no one can say they said

This was done to spare us a half

Million dead invading soldiers 

The calculus of death went something like this 

At Hiroshima said to be a military center

Ninety thousand immediately dead

Many more thousands injured died later 

At Nagasaki a harbor and industrial city 

Selected because target number one

Was badly overcast it had clear skies

Forty thousand immediately dead

Many more thousands injured died later

The war ended many were grateful

For years afterward the military did not

Release its films from their days-later

First inspections of the sites for 

Public viewing in stark contrast

To their eager release of films

Documenting Nazi camp horrors

It is seventy years ago and still most

People restate the claims of lives saved

By these two incidental slaughters of 

A quarter of a million Japanese mostly civilians

Historical research and witness

Statements prove the claims to be lies

All lies

Pure propaganda 

Foisted on the all-too-willing

American people fed for years on racism

Hatred patriotism are we now

Far back enough from the event

To be honest about our evil

Japan was ready to surrender

Exhausted starving war weary

Unable to sustain resistance had

We decided to quarantine the island

There needn’t be another death on either side

But we needed to minimize Russia’s contribution

We needed to learn how effective

A uranium-based bomb Hiroshima

Versus the plutonium based bomb Nagasaki

Was in wreaking damage and death

We needed to justify developing 

These weapons to taxpayers

But most of all we needed to show the Russians

Who would soon assume enemy status

We had terrible weapons

Means and will to use them

Sadists come out in wartime

At home and abroad

We give our own weapons and trust

For the most part they’ll abide war conventions 

We know those limits

Will be tossed aside in the flush of revenge

With the help of the Brits we broke the rules

Burned Dresden many others in regular firestorms

When we found the high-flying B-29s

Couldn’t hit industrial targets as intended

We gave them whole cities to incinerate

Did we think we were burning no mothers

No children no old people 

None consigned to hellish death

Atom bombs did the same 

Only faster only easier though

Ever so costlier

In relative peace moral people

Now blanch to learn how needlessly 

Murderous we were forgetting 

We stand ready to do it again

With more powerful weapons still aimed

From silos submarines airplanes if needed

It’s time to replenish the warheads over thirty years

At a cost that could teach all our children

Save all our sick house all our homeless

We should change all our money 

To read we trust in weapons 

More than in God

To be honest about it

c. J.S.Manista, 2015