Pacific war veterans and Japanese survivors of the attacks.Īt what most participants described as the last major gathering at this historic site for a vanishing generation of World War II vets, the local organizers did the once-unthinkable - they brought the two sides together.įor some, like Kuryla, who raptly listened to Matsushima's accounts, the event became the final act of cleansing of a long-harbored hatred. Six decades after the war, and with their countries now the closest of allies, no two groups remain more polarized on the issue than U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified. Few questions in modern history remain more divisive than whether the U.S. On opposite sides of the fateful mushroom cloud, Matsushima and Kuryla are bound by invisible links that drew them and 200 others this week to an extraordinary and controversial commemoration here.
