Today is the anniversary of the destruction of Hiroshima and its people in eight seconds, 8/6/45 -- the worst massacre and bloodiest day in American and Japanese history. In human history. 140,000 perished immediately and within hours and days. Survivors are still dying from the long-term after effects, their average age now 71, the cenotaph in Hiroshima bears 217,000 names.

For many Japanese, Hiroshima remains a painful topic to articulate, a never-healed wound of their history. As filmmaker Nobihuro Suwa said a few years ago, "Japanese people can't see or talk about this city. It's both too intimate and too immense."

But we can: compare 9/11 and this monstrous outrage against innocent people, ordered by an American president against the advice of many. When I hear 9/11 I think Hiroshima Hiroshima.

In my view and that of a number of historians, this was an act of state terrorism against a civilian population. Yet as Hiroshima mayor Akiba said 6 Aug 2004: "As the U.S.-U.K. led war on Iraq made clear, the assertion that war is peace is now being trumpeted as truth." He noted that the current U.S. nuclear policy, geared "to mini-nukes and other so-called 'usable nuclear weapons,' appears to worship nuclear weapons as God."

A discussion on Hiroshima is very timely any time, but especially in the August of its anniversary and the current context of post 9/11 and 'War is Peace.' Whatever your view. In the engaged classroom, one can try to show Resnais's 1959 film and Nobuhiro Suwa's H Story (2001) or Yoshishige (Kiju) Yoshida's Women In The Mirror (Kagami No Onna Tachi, 2002) to spark reflection.

The discourse, din and hype on 9/11 is blocking out the stark memory of this singular monstrosity.
It remains a stark reminder of Tolstoy's 'Government is violence.'