I've read history (especially military history) with great interest since I was a child, and I'm good with remembering dates, so I usually remember where I am in the annual military cycle. June 22 for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, December 7 for Pearl Harbor, June 6 for the Normandy Invasion, and so forth.
Today, August 6, is the date for the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima, and August 9 is the date for its companion event, the bombing of Nagasaki, sixty-nine years ago and counting.
You can understand some important things about military history from the dates, the maps, the photographs, and the published histories. Among my piles of books, I have many volumes of the official histories of World War II, published by the Army. Thus far the histories.
Then there are the people, the human beings, the incarnations of the Image of God -- who have their own, and their more reliable, and their more significant, histories. When the massive edifice of the Pentagon has been long abandoned for something better -- or worse -- those other histories will go on. As C. S. Lewis truly said, "We shall live to remember the galaxies as an old tale."
Such a story was lived out by Hiroshi Mori, who was a youngster living in Nagasaki on the Big Day.
His story -- well really, its aftermath -- is briefly recounted by Davydd Price, here, in a brief essay titled "Mr. Mori." Mr. Price currently writes at his blog, "10 Miles From Everywhere."
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