Where were you when the towers came down? That’s a common question on this date. I was on the floor of our quarters in Mannheim, Germany, my husband stateside for required Army training as I scrunched against the couch, arm clutching our dog to my side as I watched the events unfolding on TV. It seemed so incomprehensible, and yet there it was. And there I was, sorrowed and uncertain about what had just been unleashed.

I had a similar experience today as I visited Los Alamos, a key site of the Manhattan Project which resulted in the development (and the eventual deployment) of the first nuclear weapon. I am a child of the Atomic Age. I grew up with air raid drills and the threat of a nuclear winter. I know about the Enola Gay, have seen the films that show the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But, until today, I had never seen what those bombs, Fat Man and Little Boy, actually looked like.

Little Boy, the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945, was 120 inches long and 29 inches in diameter. Other than it’s weight (9,700 lbs.), it could fit into a cargo van. I expected it to be bigger, to look more ferocious. It is hard to fathom that this was the cause of such catastrophic destruction.

After falling from the Enola Gay for 43 seconds, Little Boy detonates 1,968 feet above Hiroshima, 550 feet from the Aioi Bridge. Nuclear fission begins in 0.15 microseconds.

0916:03 (8:16:03am in Hiroshima, one second after detonation)- The fireball reaches maximum size, 900 feet in diameter. The mushroom cloud begins to form. As temperatures on the ground reach 7,000 degrees Fahrenheit, buildings melt and fuse together, human and animal tissue is vaporized. The blast wave travels at 984 miles per hour in all directions, demolishing over two-thirds of Hiroshima’s buildings in a massive, expanding firestorm. 80,000 people are instantly killed or grievously wounded. Over 100,000 more will die from the bomb’s effects in the coming months.

https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/the-atomic-bombings-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki.htm

This seems so incomprehensible. Once again, I am sorrowed and uncertain about what we are capable of unleashing. I understand that human nature leads us to conflict, that there are real dangers, and real enemies that aggressively seek to destroy. Defense is a necessity. But I also understand that war is a terrible game we play with human lives, terms like “acceptable loss” and “collateral damage” linguistic masks for the unspeakable. I long for the day when we can move beyond our inclinations to harm one another, when [we] shall beat [our]swords into plowshares, and [our] spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall [we] learn war any more. (Isaiah 2:4). That day may be a long way off. Perhaps it will never come. But it just might be possible, and so I will continue to hope.