August 6, 2026 – A Brief Reflection

In the liturgical calendar, today is Transfiguration Sunday. Yet in 1945, this liturgical holy day became forever connected with the dropping of the first atomic bomb. The following is an excerpt from Thomas Merton’s prose poem The Original Child Bomb: Points for Meditation to be Scratched on the Wall of a Cave:

29: At 2:45 A.M. Enola Gay got off the ground with difficulty. Over Iwo Jima she met her escort, two more B-29’s, one of which was called the Great Artiste. Together they proceeded to Japan.

30: At 6:40 they climbed to 31,000 feet, the bombing altitude. The sky was clear. It was a perfect morning.

31: At 3:09 they reached Hiroshima and started the bomb run. The city was full of sun. The fliers could see the green grass in the gardens. No fighters rose up to meet them. There was no flak. No one in the city bothered to take cover.

32: The bomb exploded within 100 feet of the aiming point. The fireball was 18,000 feet across. The temperature at the center of the fireball was 100,000,000 degrees. The people who were near the center became nothing. The whole city was blown to bits and the ruins all caught fire instantly everywhere, burning briskly. 70,000 people were killed right away or died within a few hours. Those who did not die right away suffered great pain. Few of them were soldiers.

33: The men in the plane perceived that the raid had been successful, but they thought of the people in the city and they were not perfectly happy. Some felt they had done wrong. But in any case they had obeyed orders. “It was war.”

Eighty-one years ago today, the atomic bomb “Little Boy” was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later “Fat Man” was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. Did this bring the war in the Pacific to an end? Were countless lives of allied forces saved? Yes. But what a price that was paid… 150,000 – 246,000 dead by the end of 1945 (90% of the casualties were civilian… 20-25 allied prisoners of war were also killed).

Is the world safer? No! Is the Doomsday Clock the closest to midnight in its history? Yes!

On January 27, 2026, the Doomsday Clock was set at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest the Clock has ever been to midnight in its history. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board (SASB), which sets the Clock, called for urgent action to limit nuclear arsenals, create international guidelines on the use of AI, and form multilateral agreements to address global biological threats. (Source)

Merton concluded with the following words:

40: As to the Original Child that was now born, President Truman summed up the philosophy of the situation in a few words. “We found the bomb” he said “and we used it.”

41: Since that summer many other bombs have been “found.” What is going to happen? At the time of writing, after a season of brisk speculation, men seem to be fatigued by the whole question.

When will we ever learn… violence only leads to more violence. When nations attack each other militarily, it is the innocent people who are caught in the middle. This must stop!