75th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki

The photo to the right is the atomic bomb that landed on Nagasaki on August 6 and Hiroshima on August 9, 1945.  Between 90,000 and 146,000 people were killed in Hiroshima and 39,000 and 80,000 people in Nagasaki, nearly all civilians. Half died the first day, the rest died months and years later from radiation poisoning. The deliberate choice of these cities was based largely on the premise of maximum psychological impact that the bombings would have on the entire nation.

“Let Us Be Midwives
An untold story of the atomic bombing”  by Sadako Kurihara, translated by Richard Minear

Night in the basement of a concrete structure now in ruins.
Victims of the atomic bomb jammed the room;
It was dark—not even a single candle.
The smell of fresh blood, the stench of death,
The closeness of sweaty people, the moans.
From out of all that, lo and behold, a voice:
"The baby’s coming!"
In that hellish basement,
At that very moment, a young woman had gone into labour.
In the dark, without a single match, what to do?
People forgot their own pains, worried about her.
And then: "I'm a midwife. I’ll help with the birth."
The speaker, seriously injured herself, had been moaning only moments before.
And so new life was born in the dark of that pit of hell.
And so the midwife died before dawn, still bathed in blood.
Let us be midwives!
Let us be midwives!
Even if we lay down our own lives to do so.

Sadako Kurihara (1913 – 2005) was a poet, writer and peace activist who survived the Hiroshima bombing. “Let Us Be Midwives” was based on her experience in a shelter in the aftermath of the bombing. (In reality, the midwife survived and was later able to meet the child she had delivered.) Translator Richard Minear is professor emeritus at UMass Amherst.