Living in Hope

people died on the spot. Ten thousand of them simply disappeared. Yet these cities have now been built up once again with wide streets, spacious houses, parks and gardens, all of which have a modern look. Only one ruined building has been left as it was, in order to remind one of the grim punishment meted out to the Japanese during the Second World War. When Mr. Khushwant Singh visited Japan, he learnt, much to his astonishment, that the Japanese do not exploit the events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in order to discredit the U.S.A. It is other nations, on the contrary, who have exploited these events for this purpose. When Khushwant Singh asked the reason for this attitude, a Japanese replied in a surprisingly calm tone: “We hit them first at Pearl Harbour. We killed a lot of them. They warned us of what they were going to do, but we thought they were only bluffing. They beat us fair and square. We were quits, and now we are friends.” (The Hindustan Times, April 4, 1981) A memorial has been erected to commemorate the dead, the victims of a gruesome tragedy. In the museum are displayed photographs depicting death and destruction on a mass scale. About 70-lakh Japanese visit Hiroshima every year to witness this spectacle. In the course of conversation with the