3-19-11
After the signing of the documents of Surrender in the ceremony in Tokyo Bay aboard the battleship Missouri on September 4, 1945, the crew aboard CA-69 got the bad news – they were not going home. Instead, the Boston became the flagship of a group of vessels tasked with Demilitarization Duty – the capture and destruction of small arms, submarines and suicide boat facilities up and down the coast of Honshu. Much of their time was spent on the east coast of Honshu, north of Tokyo.
This is exactly the area where the epicenter of last week’s massive earthquake is located — just offshore of Sendai — a coastal city that received a lot of attention from the Boston. I can’t shake the images — captured on video and posted on YouTube of the tsunami waters raging outside the windows of the airport, sweeping cars, boats and buildings past the terminal while horrified passengers ran away from the glass.
The coastal cities and towns from Sendai to Tokyo (the areas of “direct hit” by the tsunami) where well known to the Boston sailors. Also well-known to the crewmembers were Hiroshima (still smoldering 8 weeks after the Bomb when they visited) and Nagasaki. The men had a close-up view of the hellish scene of mass destruction unleashed by these two “Atomic Bombs”.
Now, almost seven decades after unleashing the fury of America following their ill-advised attack on Pearl Harbor and the resulting near-total devastation of their homeland and their people, Nature has unleashed a furious one-two punch on Japan. And in a very cruel irony, the only nation (so far) on the receiving end of the horrors of nuclear weapons, the same atomic power – used for peaceful purposes (electricity generation) – is on the brink of once again leveling that unfortunate country and their ill-fated people.
May God have mercy on Japan.